A special edition of a newspaper banned three months ago by the government of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe hit the newsstands in Nigeria on Friday as Commonwealth leaders were debating how to handle the Zimbabwe crisis.
“The voices Mugabe wants to silence,” shouted the front-page headline of the 48-page edition of The Daily News, distributed as Commonwealth leaders met with the shadow of Zimbabwe looming large over their four-day summit in the Nigerian capital.
The paper, adorned with colour pictures depicting state oppression against the media and the opposition in Zimbabwe, was tucked inside an influential Nigerian newspaper, ThisDay.
“This is part of a new effort to ensure that the newspaper hits the newsstands on Zimbabwe’s streets,” said the paper’s legal adviser, Gugulethu Moyo.
“The story of Zimbabwe is the story of The Daily News,” she said.
The Daily News, the only private newspaper in Zimbabwe, was banned on September 12 after a Supreme Court judgement declared it illegal.
It appeared briefly on October 25, a day after an administrative tribunal ordered it to obtain an operating permit from a government-appointed commission before the end of last month. But several journalists and top company officials were arrested and charged with illegally publishing a newspaper, and The Daily News has been off the presses since then.
The paper has been strongly critical of the Mugabe government and its stance has won wide respect among ordinary people in Zimbabwe, where it boasted as many as 950Â 000 readers.
The special edition was published in Nigeria to try to give maximum exposure to the plight of the paper and the deep political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe, which was suspended from the Commonwealth last year after Mugabe won elections marred by vote-rigging and violence.
Commonwealth leaders have set up a special committee to look into the Zimbabwe crisis and try to avoid a damaging split over whether the Southern African nation should remain suspended from the 54-member global body.
Without The Daily News, Zimbabweans only have the government-run propaganda sheets The Herald and its Bulawayo regional edition, The Chronicle.
Under the headlines “Press bombed”, “Mobs destroy newspapers” and “New reign of terror erupts on farms”, the special Nigeria edition chronicled a history of media and opposition repression by Mugabe’s 23-year-old government and the disastrous effects of its controversial land reform programme.
Under the land reforms, Mugabe’s government has seized land from white commercial farmers and redistributed it to landless black Zimbabweans.
Critics of Mugabe have said the land seizures have worsened a food crisis in Zimbabwe sparked by a severe drought in the Southern African region.
Other Southern African countries affected by the drought have since recovered and do not require food aid, while up to 5,5-million Zimbabweans — almost half the country’s population — are expected to require humanitarian aid by the end of the year. — Sapa-AFP
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