The editor-in-chief of Zimbabwe’s only independent daily newspaper, which was forced to close by the government last week, told state radio on Monday he had resigned from his post.
”I’ve resigned with effect from today,” editor Francis Mdlongwa told the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation.
Mdlongwa said he had been considering leaving the Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ) group, which publishes the independent Daily News, for some time.
”It’s unfortunate I have to leave at this time when the ANZ is having this crisis,” he said.
Last week police forced the closure of the Daily News offices and printing presses after the Supreme Court ruled that the paper, which is fiercely critical of President Robert Mugabe, was operating illegally.
The United States on Monday said it was ”deeply troubled” by the closure.
”These actions are unwarranted infringements on press freedoms and they are the latest incidents in a pattern of intimidation and violence directed against the independent media,” said deputy State Department spokesperson Adam Ereli.
The International Press Institute, a global press freedom watchdog, also condemned the crackdown.
”Members of the International Press Institute unanimously condemned the action of armed police, which they said was an attempt by the government to stifle the lone daily critical voice in the media,” the body said in a statement during its annual conference in Salzburg, western Austria.
Under Zimbabwe’s strict media laws all news organisations, newspapers and journalists have to be registered with a government media commission.
The Daily News unsuccessfully challenged the law on the grounds it was unconstitutional. It was told to register before challenging the law.
In his first public reaction to the shutdown, Information Minister Jonathan Moyo castigated the Daily News executives as irresponsible.
”We’ve simply been dealing with irresponsible people who don’t mind jeopardising and compromising the interests of journalists and workers and who do not mind compromising the law by placing themselves above the law,” Moyo told state television late on Monday.
The television also reported that news editor John Gambanga had resigned, but this was immediately dismissed by Gambanga.
”That is not true, I don’t know where they got that from,” he said.
Earlier, lawyers for the embattled paper applied to register with the state-run Media and Information Commission.
But by late afternoon the newspaper was still not operating and company lawyers were preparing to make an urgent application to the courts to allow workers back into their offices.
State-approved analysts were sceptical of the paper’s chances of being registered soon.
An unnamed lawyer quoted in Monday’s edition of the state-controlled Herald, the Daily News‘s main rival, warned that the outspoken tabloid might be off the streets for some time.
”They are approaching the Media and Information Commission with dirty hands and it does not follow that they will be automatically registered,” said the lawyer.
The Herald also speculated that the Daily News risked having its equipment confiscated by the state under the media law, which allows the government to seize assets of a media house that operates illegally.
Meanwhile police confirmed they intended to charge the chief executive of the Daily News, Sam Sipepa Nkomo.
”The police have so far completed … his docket under the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act and we are waiting for a prosecutional directive from the attorney general’s office,” police spokesperson Oliver Mandipaka told state television.
Nkomo is likely to appear in court soon, the report said.
Condemnation of the paper’s forced closure continued on Monday from local civic and human rights groups.
The Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights said in a statement the Supreme Court ruling against the Daily News was ”the biggest assault on the right of freedom of expression in the history of our independence”.
Mugabe’s government accuses the paper of being a mouthpiece of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
The Daily News has also been the target of two bomb attacks and several of its journalists, including the former editor-in-chief Geoffrey Nyarota, have been arrested several times since the paper was launched in 1999. — Sapa-AFP