Credit: HSTv On X.com
He was released Tuesday 06 May on US$500 bail. But make no mistake: what has ended is not the injustice. Only the prelude.
Because what happened to Blessed Mhlanga is not just a legal episode. It is a portrait of a country where silence is enforced not just through arrests, but through exhaustion. Where freedom is granted in installments, under watch, with paperwork, conditions, and warnings. Where a journalist’s job—to bear witness—has been rebranded as provocation.
The state says Mhlanga incited violence. His weapon? A video. His offense? Broadcasting a war veteran’s call for the president to resign. Not his words. Not his rally. Just a report. And for this, the machinery of the law turned on him like a vendetta, locking him up for two and a half months as if truth-telling was an act of treason.
Let us be clear: this was never about bail. It was about punishment without conviction. Mhlanga’s prison hell was not the result of a trial gone wrong—it was the trial. The message was sent long before a judge ever ruled. Journalism that does not flatter power will be met with chains.
And yet, when the ruling finally came yesterday —“he is entitled to bail,” the judge said—it was treated like a triumph by the public. But in a just society, bail for a journalist isn’t a cause for celebration. It’s an indictment of how far we’ve fallen.
Bail is not freedom. It is parole without a sentence. A leash disguised as leniency. Mhlanga’s conditions are stiff: no contact with witnesses, weekly reports to CID Law and Order, no passport, no change of address. These are not safeguards—they are reminders. The system is still watching. The system still decides.
What’s more frightening is what this case reveals about the national psyche. That a journalist could disappear into remand prison for 72 days without mass protest. That newsrooms muttered rather than marched. That fellow ministers, artists, influencers, lawyers, and civic leaders spoke in whispers, if at all.
The silence was not just loud—it was damning.
But maybe that was the point. In Zimbabwe, silence is not just the absence of speech. It is cultivated, enforced, manufactured. And every time someone like Blessed is taken, the rest of us receive the signal.
Don’t report too boldly.
Don’t tweet too loudly.
Don’t remember too long.
The trauma he carries now is not just personal—it is structural. For 72 days, he was stripped of more than freedom. He was stripped of certainty. Certainty in his country’s protection. Certainty in the value of truth. Certainty that a journalist can do his job and come home.
And for what? For airing a citizen’s dissatisfaction with a leader? For fulfilling the basic duty of press freedom? That we even need to argue this is proof that we no longer live in a country where the Constitution means what it says. It says freedom of expression. But it means permission.
The state wants to make an example out of people like Mhlanga. But so should we. Let his example not be a warning but a rallying cry. Let us say, we saw what you did to him, and we will not forget. Let us remember that while the law ultimately granted him bail, it did not exonerate him. The trial looms. The charge still stands. The leash still tightens.
And let us ask: what is the cost of silence?
Because if Mhlanga’s imprisonment taught us anything, it is that the most dangerous silence is not the one forced upon the journalist. It is the one chosen by the people.
A silent population is a tyrant’s strongest ally.
Blessed Mhlanga is free—sort of. But Zimbabwe is not. Not until journalism is no longer criminalized. Not until truth-tellers are no longer treated like subversives. Not until ministers no longer hide behind fake patriotism while dissenters rot in cells. Not until we stop applauding when chains are loosened and start demanding that they be broken.
So yes, he is out. But the story is not over.
The real trial has just begun—and it’s not his. It’s ours.