Trevor Ncube, the owner of the Mail & Guardian said he will be bringing an urgent court application on Monday against the relevant Zimbabwe authorities to explain why his passport was confiscated.
”This is intended to break my spirit. It is intended to intimidate me. It is intended to silence me,” Ncube told the Mail & Guardian Online on Friday.
Ncube, who also owns Zimbabwe’s Standard and Independent newspapers, had his passport confiscated as he landed in Bulawayo on Wednesday.
As he landed, he was cleared through customs but then recalled from the car-park, ostensibly to have a spelling discrepancy checked.
The customs official, who had a list of passport numbers with him, telephoned a senior official and said: ”It’s him” — an action which suggests that there is a renewed crackdown on Zimbabweans who live outside the country.
”I was informed that the instruction to confiscate my passport came from the president’s [Robert Mugabe’s] office, meaning the Central Intelligence Organisation, ” he said.
Ncube said he is disappointed and angry about having his passport taken away, but said that it was just a piece of paper.
”It does inconvenience me [but] it doesn’t change me. It doesn’t change my spirit for this country.”
Ncube was this week also erroneously placed on the Australian government’s list of Zimbabweans who are under sanction, though he is in negotiations to have his name removed from the sanctions list.
”I’m obviously shocked at both actions. I’m barred from Australia and now I’m barred from leaving Zimbabwe,” he said.
Australia, an outspoken critic of the Zimbabwe government, on Thursday acknowledged mistakes in the list of people facing sanctions for cooperating with Mugabe’s increasingly authoritarian regime.
According to The Associated Press (AP), Jon Sheppard, the Australian ambassador in Zimbabwe, said the list had been difficult to compile and may have been released prematurely.
”It will be reviewed and we expect deletions,” he told AP.
”We are asking people who are surprised to find themselves on the list to bear with us.”
Sheppard said Australia has gone a step further than other countries by including senior executives of state-owned enterprises on its list of people facing sanctions.
”It shows we are trying to do something,” he said.
But when the Mail & Guardian Online telephoned Sheppard on Friday, he denied making the comments, and then slammed the phone down.
”I am not aware of saying that. Not to you, not to anyone. Please phone media enquiries. I am not in the position to answer questions. I have to refer you back to our media officers.”
Ncube said that the Australian embassy in Zimbabwe had phoned him to apologise ”profusely”.
Britain, the United States and European Union have also imposed targeted travel and financial restrictions against Mugabe’s regime.
Patriotic Zimbabwean
Ncube said that his name was on a government list of more than 60 prominent Zimbabweans whose passports would be similarly confiscated if they travelled back to their homeland.
The confiscation of Ncube’s passport seems to be based on a recent set of constitutional amendments which allows for the limiting of Zimbabwean citizenship against those who the Zimbabwe government alleges to be harming the interests of the country.
He appears to be the first person to have his travel documents taken away from him under the new laws. Ncube said he did not think his name would be on the list of targeted persons.
”I had no reason to suspect that because I’m a patriotic Zimbabwean. I have businesses here at home in Zimbabwe and also in South Africa,” said Ncube, who was in Bulawayo for his brother’s wedding.
He said he was not deterred by the government’s actions and that he would continue to speak out against injustices where they existed.
Exiles
Console Tleane, head of media at the Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) in Johannesburg, told the M&G Online on Friday that they view the confiscation of Ncube’s passport ”as a further demonstration of the regime’s desperate attempts to silence its critics, particularly those who have spaces to express themselves where they live, such as in South Africa”.
In a statement to the media on Thursday, FXI said: ”[Ncube] has clearly attracted the wrath of the authorities on the basis of his activities in the media, which is hardly surprising given the fact that media freedom has been all but eliminated within Zimbabwe.”
”This latest action shows that Zimbabweans living abroad will increasingly feel the brunt of the repressive actions of the Zimbabwean regime. Those who have left the country, not to live abroad permanently in exile or asylum conditions, like Ncube, will eventually be forced to assume such status, that is, become exiles.
”But more than anything, this latest actions will further dampen any efforts to find a solution for the problems in Zimbabwe,” he said.
Tleane said that the action taken against Ncube has other consequences.
”As a newspaper owner the actions of the Zimbabwe regime will clearly be understood to be a further attempt to muzzle the independent press.”
”Those in South Africa, still enjoying relative freedom of expression and the media in particular, should express solidarity with Ncube.”
Danie Fourie, a public affairs consultant in South Africa and a friend of Ncube’s, expressed his concern and said the situation was like the ”old South Africa happening in Zimbabwe”.
”This is a sword that the Zimbabwean government is hanging over the heads of [their] people. It sends a signal that they are extending their reach beyond Zimbabwean borders,” he said.
Fourie adds that all businessmen in South Africa should stand up for Ncube and that the South African government should take a ”principled position to regulate the media and freedom of press” in Zimbabwe.
Foreign Affairs Department spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepe told M&G Online on Friday that they cannot comment on the matter.
The SA National Editors Forum (Sanef) on Thursday condemned the actions of the Zimbabwean government, saying it was using ”draconian” legislation to try to suppress critical voices within and outside of Zimbabwe.
”The government is trying to silence all dissent whatsoever,” said John Makumbe, a lecturer in political science at the University of Zimbabwe.
”Trevor publishes the only independent newspapers in Zimbabwe. This is a new onslaught against what remains of a free press. The government will pounce on all critics and tell them they are locked in Zimbabwe. The country is becoming like a big prison. We are all in jail,” Makumbe added.
Iden Wetherell, group projects editor of the Zimbabwe Independent, told Agence France Presse that the incident had left the newspaper publisher angry.
”He’s a well-known public figure. His life’s an open book,” said Wetherell.
Ncube has been a fierce and vocal critic of both Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party and the country’s beleaguered opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
Ncube bought the Mail & Guardian, which has published articles critical of the Mugabe regime, in 2002. He acquired the company from Britain’s Guardian Newspapers Limited group, which retains a 10% shareholding in the company.
Ncube’s Harare-based newspapers, the Zimbabwe Standard and Zimbabwe Independent are effectively the last of what remains of the independent press in Zimbabwe.
Ncube’s newspapers have received several warnings from the government’s media and information commission. The commission has already closed down four publications, including The Daily News, which was Zimbabwe’s biggest newspaper.
In 2004, police arrested Wetherell, the then-Zimbabwe Independent managing editor and the 2002 recipient of World Press Review’s International Editor of the Year Award, on charges of defaming Mugabe. News editor Vincent Kahiya and reporter Dumisani Muleya were also arrested.
The arrests followed an article written by Muleya and Dzamara, which said that Mugabe had ”commandeered” an Air Zimbabwe airliner for a trip to East Asia, leaving passengers stranded at the airport. The paper noted this was the second time Mugabe had diverted an Air Zimbabwe flight.
Mugabe’s government has seized thousands of white-owned commercial farms under a land-reform programme critics say has crippled Zimbabwe’s agriculture-based economy and contributed to widespread hunger. It has also introduced sweeping media controls, arrested its critics and shut down independent newspapers.
Recent elections have been marred by intimidation and fraud, according to independent observers. – Sapa, M&G reporters