Zimbabwe’s former information minister Jonathan Moyo, who was sacked after falling out of favour with President Robert Mugabe, has taken legal steps to stop his eviction from a government house, a state-run daily newspaper reported on Wednesday.
”Prof Moyo yesterday [Tuesday] went to the High Court to seek an order to stop the eviction from the Gunhill house he has been staying in from the time he joined the government in 2000,” The Herald newspaper said.
Mugabe dismissed Moyo, the architect of Zimbabwe’s tough media laws, on February 19, following his decision to register as an independent candidate for the country’s parliamentary elections on March 31 and said he would have to give up all perks immediately.
But Moyo’s lawyers argued that he had not been given a notice period of three months to vacate the house.
According to The Herald, the government’s line of defence is that Moyo ”did not have a lease agreement to warrant him to be given three month’s notice to leave the property”.
Zimbabwe’s ruling party barred Moyo from contesting in the March 31 parliamentary elections as a candidate from the western Tsholotsho constituency after he attended an unsanctioned meeting which allegedly went against Mugabe’s directive for party leaders to nominate a woman as one of the two vice-presidents.
Moyo (48) was then sacked. His dismissal capped a nearly six-year meteoric rise for the former academic, who went from being one of Mugabe’s harshest critics to his loudest cheerleader.
Moyo made his mark as the architect of the draconian Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act passed in 2002, barring foreign journalists from working in Zimbabwe for long periods and tightening controls on domestic media.
Four independent newspapers have been shut down and several journalists arrested under the law framed ahead of a parliamentary election in 2000 which the opposition and many foreign observers charge was marred by fraud.
His argument for the tough media law is that it is necessary to protect Zimbabwe from foreign journalists, whom the government views as pawns of Western countries like Britain and the United States. – Sapa-AFP