Staff Writer
Lawyer Advocate Tinomudaishe Chinyoka has given activist Hopewell Chin’ono until May 17 to retract statements he made claiming that Chinyoka was paid to defend and rationalise circumstances surrounding his arrest earlier this year.
Chin`ono, who has since discarded basic journalistic ethics in search of political fame, in April wrote a tweet in which he mentioned a number of people including Advocate Chinyoka accusing them of being empty vessels that had been sent by the ruling party ZANU PF to sanitise his arrest.
On April 19, Chin`ono wrote that; “When @advocatemahere, @JobSikhala1 & myself were arrested, the world saw what it means to have a degree & yet be empty.
ZanuPF sent it’s surrogates like Bright Matonga, Obert Gutu & Tino Chinyoka to defend the use of a law that doesn’t exist.
It was ignorance & stomach politics.”
Chinyoka, who in fact wrote an opinion piece on the matter criticizing the arrest on the basis that the charges were not enough to warrant the action, did not take accusations of being a prepaid intellectual lightly.
His lawyers Gunje Legal Practitioners wrote to Chin`ono censuring him and giving him a time frame to retract his defamatory tweets or face his day in court.
“At this stage neither we nor our client have any desire to issue legal proceedings against you and we are keen to do all we can to avoid litigation where possible. However, we will only desist from issuing legal proceedings provided upon receipt of this letter you agree to do the following:
• retweet your offending tweet with the statement “the inclusion of Tino
Chinyoka in this tweet was an error for which I apologize”;
• produce an apology by way of reply to the offending tweet and cause such apology and declaration to be published in each of the forums which have given or could give reason for our complaint (such apology to include the headline: “UPDATE: MY TWEET WAS WITHOUT MERIT, TINO CHINYOKA DID NOT SUPPORT OUR PROSECUTION AND IN FACT ARGUED THE OPPOSITE, CALING THE CHARGES AGAINST US A NON-CRIME. I APOLOGIZE”, which reply must be approved by us prior to publication;” read part of the letter written to Chin`ono by Chinyoka`s lawyers.
Chin`ono, who in many instances claims to be a man of means, was also urged to come up with a suggestion of what he considers to be fair compensation for the damage inflicted on Chinyoka`s image.
Chinyoka`s lawyers gave Chin`ono up to end of day May 17 to act as instructed or face legal proceedings which are likely to result in the filing of a US$50 000 lawsuit.
Chin`ono is yet to respond.
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