HARARE – Opposition Transform Zimbabwe leader Jacob Ngarivhume was jailed for four years on Friday, a day after a court in Harare convicted him of inciting public violence in 2020.

Ngarivhume will serve an effective three years behind bars after magistrate Feresi Chakanyuka conditionally suspended a year of his sentence.

The politician’s lawyer Prof Lovemore Madhuku descried his conviction and sentence as “outrageous”, and vowed to appeal to the High Court.

Addressing journalists outside court, Madhuku said: “The court rejected our plea for a fine and decided the only appropriate sentence was imprisonment. We will take the matter up. The court rejected over three applications that we made.

“We are filing an appeal on Tuesday, and we are also applying for bail pending appeal. So we expect our client to be out and a free person in the next week or so.

“We believe that the High Court will certainly not uphold the conviction. We are very confident about that. There’s everything wrong about the conviction.

“Even if the High Court were to uphold the conviction, we also believe that the sentence of 36 months, effective sentence, is outrageous by any calculation.

“You cannot send a political leader to prison for three years for merely tweeting what you consider to be incitement. We respect the judgement of the court, but we must make it very clear as his legal team that we are very disappointed by it.”

Ngarivhume was arrested along with journalist Hopewell Chin’ono on July 20, on charges of inciting violence. Ngarivhume had called for anti-government protests on July 31 and Chin’ono wrote about the call.

Ngarivhume had denied writing the tweets and police investigators admitted during his trial that they did not verify if it was indeed his Twitter account that sent out the tweets allegedly inciting public violence.

Sentencing Ngarivhume, magistrate Chakanyuka said: “The law is clear, incitement to commit public violence is generally a serious offence. The court agrees that he is a first offender, that this is his first brush with the law but a fine or suspended sentence would not deter other would-be offenders. A sentence must be meaningful.

“Therefore, the sentence that would be appropriate is as follows: 48 months imprisonment, with 12 months suspended.”

Ngarivhume hugged his emotional wife before he was taken away by prison officers to begin his sentence.