FORMER Energy Minister Samuel Undenge, who was last week
jailed for an effective two-and-a-half years for abuse of office after he
handpicked a public relations company for the Zimbabwe Power Company (ZPC)
without going to tender, has said the penalty is excessive and induces a sense
of shock and outrage.
He said community service or a fine would have been
appropriate. Undenge, through his lawyers Messrs Alec Muchadehama and Dumisani
Mthombeni, yesterday appealed against both conviction and sentence at the High
Court.
In the notice of appeal, Undenge’s lawyers submitted that
the magistrate misdirected himself by ignoring the inconsistencies in the
evidence of the State witnesses during trial.
He submitted that the court wrongly convicted him.
“The court erred and misdirected itself in convicting
appellant on the basis that he directed ZPC to work with Fruitful
Communications without going to tender when in the letter the appellant never
said so and when in his mind the work was for free,” submitted the lawyers.
“Further, and in any event, there was no evidence that in
the circumstances of the case, ZPC needed to go through tender which, if this
was required, ZPC could have gone ahead and gone through the so-called tender
procedures.”
The lawyers further argued that the evidence of the State
witnesses was “tainted, unreliable and biased” in order to falsely incriminate
Undenge.
“The court erred in imposing an effective term of
imprisonment when a fine, coupled with community service and a suspended term
of imprisonment, would have met the justice of the case,” said the lawyers.
Undenge wants the High Court to quash the conviction and
find him not guilty and acquit him.
His lawyers yesterday approached the lower court with
intentions to make an application for bail pending appeal.
They appeared before magistrate Mr Hosea Mujaya, but the
matter was rolled over to today after the State indicated that it had just been
given the notice of appeal and needed time to go through it. Herald
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