Crackdown on Zimbabwe press begins

EVEN WHILE Daily News of Zimbabwe editor, Njobile Nyathi, appealed to the international community to help prevent the independent media in her country from being muzzled, Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe’s regime moved one step closer to achieving that goal by threatening to shut down another independent newspaper. Addressing a Commonwealth Journalists Association dinner at the University of the West Indies’ St Augustine campus on Monday (World Press Freedom Day) night, Nyathi said the ruling Zanu-PF party planned to steal  Zimbabwe’s parliamentary elections in March 2005 and was taking steps to ensure that the independent media was silenced in the run-up to the elections and on election day itself.

However, even as Nyathi sounded this warning, a CNN report on Monday indicated that the Zimbabwe’s State-appointed Media and Information Commission (MIC) informed the weekly-published African Tribune Newspaper (ATN) that it would be shut down because it was allegedly operating without a government registration certificate as required by the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act. According to ZWNews, MIC chairman Tafataona Mahoso told the Tribune in a letter: “You have a mandatory obligation to notify the Commission of such substantial and material changes. The Commission has not been notified and in terms of the law, you are hereby suspended notified of the Commission’s intention to suspend or cancel ATN’s registration certificate.” Mahoso gave ATN one week to say why it should not be shut down and claimed the MIC had not been informed about ownership changes at the paper as required by the Act.

One of ATN’s main shareholders is former journalist and Zanu-PF legislator Kindness Paradza, who was suspended from the party last week over allegations in the State media that he was seeking funding from Britain for the paper.  Zimbabwe’s membership in the Commonwealth was suspended at last December’s Commonwealth Heads of Government summit in Abuja, Nigeria due to the current practices of the Mugabe regime. A six-nation committee (Australia, Canada, India, Jamaica, South Africa and Mozambique) has since been established to bridge a growing divide within the Commonwealth about whether or not Zimbabwe’s suspension should be continued. Paradza was also alleged to have been communicating with the Daily News of Zimbabwe, which was closed down last year by the Mugabe regime and now only publishes on the Internet.

In a speech in the Zimbabwean Parliament in March, Paradza was highly critical of the country’s media laws. “These laws should be critically and soberly examined to check whether they do not restrict or prohibit local investment in the broadcasting services,” he declared. His sentiments and those of Nyathi’s were reinforced by a statement from Independent Journalists Association of Zimbabwe president, Abel Mutsakani, in Monday’s edition of the Daily News of Zimbabwe. “In the last 12 months we have seen the crackdown on the media being intensified and taken to new heights,” he warned. The Daily News also reported last Friday that Zimbabwean Information Minister Johnathan Moyo said there was enough room in local jails for Zimbabwean journalists who peddle “lies” to the foreign media. “Such reporters are terrorists and the position on how to deal with terrorists is to subject them to the laws of Zimbabwe,” Moyo stated.