President Robert Mugabe’s government has used its press-gag laws against another journalist, charging a local reporter with ”publishing falsehoods,” it was confirmed on Friday.
Officials of the Daily News, Zimbabwe’s only independent daily paper, said Chris Gande (33) its correspondent in Bulawayo, had been charged by police there on Thursday under the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
Gande reported last week that the family of the late Ndebele leader Joshua Nkomo had not been invited to a state function commemorating the third anniversary of his death.
Gande quoted Nkomo’s daughter, Thandiwe, as saying that the family had not received an invitation. In the end, the state press reported that his widow, Johanna, had been collected by military helicopter and taken to the function in the eastern city of Mutare.
Neither Thandiwe nor Nkomo’s younger brother, Stephen, a senior Zanu-PF official, attended , but gave no reason for their absence.
Gande was called to a police station where he made a formal statement in the presence of his lawyer, was fingerprinted, and then allowed to leave.
He faces a fine of ZD100 000 (about R18 000) or two years in prison if convicted.
In what is seen as a sustained campaign to silence the country’s independent press, Gande is the 24th journalist to have been charged since Mugabe was declared the winner of flawed presidential elections in March.
Eleven of them have been charged under the Access to Information Act for alleged falsehoods. Most of them have been arrested and held in police cells before being charged.
Journalists’ unions point out that no charges have been brought against the state media which, they say, daily carry deliberate smears against opponents of Mugabe’s regime.
International press freedom organisations say the Mugabe government is among the world’s 10 most hostile to the press.
In the last nearly two-and-a-half years of state driven lawlessness, the Daily News has been bombed twice, scores of journalists have been attacked by ruling party militias or arrested by police, newspapers have been illegally ”banned” in pro-ruling party areas, their vendors have been attacked and had their newspapers destroyed and there is a virtual blanket ban on visiting foreign journalists. – Sapa