JUSTICE IN ZIMBABWE 34 ____________________________________________________________________ commercial broadcasting services within Zimbabwe. The company took advantage of this gap and, after identifying a suitable frequency, started to broadcast. Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Minister of Information and Publicity, Professor 55 Jonathan Moyo, declared the company’s radio station to be unlawful and threatened to “take appropriate action”. To forestall any such action, the company applied urgently to the High Court for an order interdicting the Minister from interfering with or confiscating its equipment. The evening before the application was heard, however, a group of policemen led by an Assistant Commissioner Liberman Ndlovu came to the company’s premises armed with a search warrant authorising them to search for and seize the company’s equipment. Late that evening the company obtained an order from the duty judge, Mr Justice Chatikobo, interdicting the police from seizing the equipment until after the company’s urgent application had been heard the next day. Despite having seen Mr Justice Chatikobo’s order, Ndlovu proceeded to break down the door to the company’s studio and have some of the company’s broadcasting equipment seized. According to the company’s legal practitioners, Ndlovu said he did not take his orders from the court but only from his superiors, and disregarded even the advice of the Attorney-General not to proceed with the search and seizure. In later proceedings instituted against him for contempt of court, Ndlovu did not dispute the practitioners’ assertions, but claimed that Mr Justice Chatikobo’s order was “so blatantly absurd” that his defiance of it did not constitute contempt. He stated in an affidavit that he found the order confusing and had no opportunity to verify its genuineness.56 The court found him guilty of contempt but, curiously, did not impose any penalty upon him. Open defiance of a court order by a senior policeman has therefore gone unpunished.57 Alleged contempt of court by Secretary for Information The police demanded to sit in on meetings of the general council of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. They claimed that they had a lawful right to do this under