Mail & Guardian reporter
Mercedes Sayagues, the Mail & Guardian’s correspondent in Harare, will have to leave Zimbabwe at the end of the month if the Mugabe government sticks to the threat it issued through its press mouthpiece, The Herald, on Thursday. Government officials told The Herald that Sayagues, a Uruguayan journalist and former aid worker in Africa, would have to leave Zimbabwe by the end of February. Independent journalists in Zimbabwe and their foreign counterparts based in the country had been predicting for some weeks that a clampdown on residence rights for foreign journalists was imminent. The government has become increasingly hostile to sections of the Zimbabwean media not reflecting its perspectives. Commenting on the threat to expel Sayagues, M&G editor Howard Barrell said: “The Zimbabwe government would do well to think again. It can scarcely afford any further damage to its image, and any attempt to expel Mercedes will certainly earn it that. “She is a colourful, courageous journalist,” said Barrell, “motivated by a profound concern for the welfare of people and democratic values. “If Mugabe’s media policeman Jonathan Moyo and the government are scared of Mercedes and the words she writes for us, they might as well give up. They’ve had it. There’s no hope, then, for their survival. They should think again.”
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