Three months for Swaziland editor who compared judge to a punk
MBABANE—A Swaziland court on Friday sentenced a magazine editor to a suspended three-month term for articles written four years ago comparing the country’s chief justice to a high school punk.
Bheki Makhubu, editor of The Nation magazine, is currently in custody for contempt of court over separate recent articles critical of government and court abuses for which he was arrested in March.
The Supreme court ruled that Makhubu gets a three-month fully suspended sentence on condition that he is not convicted of any “offence of scandalizing the court” over the next three years.
In one of the articles published in 2010, the magazine accused the country’s Chief Justice Michael Ramodibedi of behaving like a high school punk or a street punk.
Makhubu was also accused of bringing the judiciary into disrepute by questioning whether the chief justice was appointed on merit.
The media operates under strict conditions in Africa’s last absolute monarchy, and is forbidden from criticising King Mswati III and his government.
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