The High Court in Blantyre, Tuesday, heard the appeal case involving Vincent Wandale, the self-acclaimed leader of People\u2019s Land Organisation (PLO)\u2014a grouping of people from Thyolo and Mulanje, who are agitating to \u201creclaim\u201d land owned by estate owners.<\/p>\n
Wandale was on November 3 last year, convicted of conspiracy to commit misdemeanour, criminal trespass and unauthorised use of land.<\/p>\n
Wandale allegedly organised people of Thyolo District to share land belonging to Conforzi Estate.<\/p>\n
Lawyer representing Wandale, Michael Goba Chipeta, said in the court that the Magistrate\u2019s Court committed grave errors which caused miscarriage of justice in the case.<\/p>\n
He said the court convicted Wandale of conspiracy to commit a misdemeanour, although the evidence which was tendered in court did not prove any misdemeanour in the particulars of the offence.<\/p>\n
Chipeta also said it was erroneous for the lower court to convict Wandale of unauthorised use of land saying the people did not occupy the land but only showed intent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people\u2019s aim was to occupy the land but they did not. In fact their plans were foiled within five hours when the police came,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Chipeta added that the offence of criminal trespass was brought as an alternative charge.<\/p>\n
He, therefore, argued that the court was not supposed to convict Wandale of the offence, having already convicted him of the main charge of conspiracy to commit a misdemeanour.<\/p>\n
State Advocate, Collin Chitsime, conceded that the conviction and sentencing of criminal trespass should be quashed but he maintained that the other two convictions and sentencing should stand.<\/p>\n
After hearing from both sides, presiding Judge, Justice Sylvester Kalembera has set April 28 to deliver his ruling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The High Court in Blantyre, Tuesday, heard the appeal case involving Vincent Wandale, the self-acclaimed leader of People\u2019s Land Organisation (PLO)\u2014a grouping of people from Thyolo and Mulanje, who are agitating to \u201creclaim\u201d land owned by estate owners. Wandale was on November 3 last year, convicted of conspiracy to commit misdemeanour, criminal trespass and unauthorised […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":42979,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42977"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42980,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42977\/revisions\/42980"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}