Joseph Madhimba

Joseph Madhimba is a Zimbabwean academic and former radio and television personality. Madhimba used to read the news bulletins.

Service/Career

ZBC

In August 1995, Mad­himba, who was head of tele­vi­sion news at ZBC, sued The Chron­i­cle for $20 000 in defama­tion dam­ages after the publication pub­lished a let­ter in Novem­ber 1992. The Chron­i­cle published the letter on its let­ters page sug­gest­ing Joseph Mad­himba looked and sounded like a “grim death’s head”. The case was heard by Jus­tice Bartlett in Harare in June 1995. The judge dis­missed Mr Mad­himba’s claims with costs. The pas­sage in the let­ter to the Ed­i­tor that Mad­himba ob­jected to said:

“Joseph Mad­himba, who cut his teeth on those dated com­ments that used to dis­grace the Main News in our un­re­pen­tant red days, looks and sounds like a grim death’s head. I saw him con­duct­ing an in­ter­view the other day. He smiled.”

The judg­ment said Mad­himba al­leged that the com­ments were in­tended to mean that he lacked skill and abil­ity in dis­charg­ing his du­ties, that his com­port­ment was re­volt­ing, dis­grace­ful and fool­ish, that he re­sem­bled gloom and death, and that he was an un­wit­ting tool of com­mu­nist forces within the coun­try. Ev­i­dence was given dur­ing the hear­ing of the case by Mad­himba him­self and by the Ed­i­tor of The Chron­i­cle, Stephen Mpofu.

In de­cid­ing whether the re­marks were defam­a­tory, be­fore look­ing at any de­fence, Jus­tice Bartlett agreed to ap­ply the same test he had set out when de­cid­ing in favour of then At­tor­ney-Gen­eral Pa­trick Chi­na­masa in his suit against Jongwe Print­ing and Pub­lish­ing.

This re­quired the Judge to de­cide whether the words com­plained of were, in the way they would or­di­nar­ily be un­der­stood, be ca­pa­ble of the mean­ing at­trib­uted to them, whether that was the mean­ing to which they would prob­a­bly be rea­son­ably un­der­stood, and fi­nally whether the mean­ing was defam­a­tory.^[1]

Polytechnic of Namibia

In 2011, Madhimba was suspended at Polytechnic of Namibia where he was the head of department (HOD) for business management.

The suspension came after Joseph Madhimba accused the institution's registrar, Corneels Jafta, of, amongst others, 'very poor communication skills and is arrogant, foul-mouthed and provocative'. Madhimba also said Jafta 'has no respect for other academics and does not listen to others'.

In a letter of complaint to the Deputy Minister of Education, David Namwandi, Madhimba charged that after 19 of 33 students did not qualify for the International Marketing examination, he was summoned to Jafta's office to explain. ^[2]

Madhimba levelled a nepotism charge against Jafta whom he said allegedly instructed him to allow 'into a degree programme, the son of his friend who did not have the prerequisite diploma'. Madhimba said the student was struggling because he allegedly did not comply with the entry requirements. ^[3]

References