Zimbabwe’s controversial information minister Jonathan Moyo has resigned from government after being dropped from the ruling Zanu-PF’s party’s central committee and politburo, reports the Financial Gazette.
Quoting ”impeccable sources” in government, the paper claimed that Moyo handed his resignation to Acting President Joyce Mujuru earlier week. Mujuru, who was appointed vice president this month, told Moyo to wait until President Robert Mugabe returns from his annual holiday in the Far East next month.
Meanwhile an unnamed government source told the Financial Gazette, ”Moyo tendered his resignation on Tuesday to the acting president, who declined it, saying she had not appointed him in the first place so he should wait for the president’s return.”
Moyo has closed four newspapers since his appointment as information minister and government spokesperson in 2000. He has also deported several foreign journalists. The Financial Gazette said he had ”waged a war of attrition against the independent media” in Zimbabwe.
Attempts to contact Moyo failed.
The minister fell from grace earlier this month after calling an ”unauthorised party meeting” in the western district of Tsholotsho. The meeting, which angered Mugabe, saw several senior Zanu PF officials losing plum posts, among them justice minister Patrick Chinamasa.
Still, reporting to the ruling party’s politburo, Moyo attempted to distance himself from the split in Zanu-PF, saying: ”I have been a victim of misrepresentation too many times and my heart bleeds because of that and the fact that the same has devastated my family, especially my two young children who are at a loss as to what is happening”.
The minister also distanced himself from the draconian measures taken against Zimbabwe’s beleaguered independent press, telling Zanu-PF’s politburo, ”Today the Daily News is off the streets as a result of the violation of laws that we have collectively enacted, yet the truth is that some comrades here have conveniently distanced themselves from those laws and now I am personally held liable for the demise of the Daily News.”
Moyo closed the paper, and its sister Daily News on Sunday, claiming it was not properly registered under his Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, also known as Aippa.
The harsh law, violation of which can draw heavy prison sentences, has been universally condemned, with the International Committee for the Protection of Journalists saying that Zimbabwe is one of the ten worst nations on earth in which to work as a journalist.
Since the ruling Zanu-PF congress earlier this month, Mugabe has distanced himself from what he calls the party’s ”Mafikilozos” (late comers), including the flamboyant Member of Parliament for Chinhoyi Phillip Chiyangwa, arrested this week on spying charges. Chiyangwa is reputed to be a relative of the Zimbabwean president. – Sapa