The last vestiges of the independent media in Zimbabwe face new pressure as the government prepares for next week’s launch of a repressive new licensing system which will give it the power to close any newspaper and to stop any journalist working.
It comes days after the latest incident in an escalating campaign by President Robert Mugabe’s government to muzzle the critical independent press — the sacking of the editor of Zimbabwe’s Daily News, Geoffrey Nyarota.
Nyarota, the founder and editor of the country’s most widely read newspaper, was sacked on Monday by the Daily News’s board of directors. The assistant editor, Davison Maruziva, resigned in protest at the action.
Although the Daily News board has suggested it fired Nyarota on managerial grounds, it appears the board chairman, Sam Nkomo, succumbed to pressure from the government. According to media sources, the board feared that the government would refuse to register the paper under the new regulations if Nyarota remained as editor.
Nyarota said that he believes the Daily News board gave in to pressure from the minister of information, Jonathan Moyo. ”Moyo has collected my scalp without lifting a a finger in public, but I am sure has has been busy plotting this behind the scenes,” he said. ”It is no coincidence that the Daily News has come under this pressure at this time.”
Nyarota launched the Daily News in 1999. Its crusades against corruption and human rights abuses won it a large following and it overtook the state-owned Herald as the country’s largest selling newspaper.
Nyarota and his staff have been arrested and jailed several times. The paper’s printing plant was destroyed by an explosion two years ago, shortly after government officials vowed the paper would be silenced. No arrests have been made for that bombing, nor for an earlier explosion at the paper’s editorial offices.
But where explosions failed to muzzle Nyarota’s voice at the Daily News, the threats posed by the government’s new licensing system appears to have succeeded.
The Zimbabwe National Editors Forum hailed Nyarota as ”a courageous editor” who provided readers ”with unadorned news and robust views, for which there is a clear public demand”.
Iden Wetherell, deputy chairman of the editors’ forum, spoke of a sustained campaign by the government. ”This is not the time for media managers and workers to show timidity or division that can be exploited by enemies of a free press,” he said.
The Media Institute of Southern Africa also voiced its worry the the dismissal of Nyarota would be the start of increased restrictions against independent newspapers. – Guardian Unlimited Â