Assault on media freedom in Zimbabwe

This, via The Zimbabwean:

The 14-tonne truck containing 60,000 copies of today’s edition of The Zimbabwean on Sunday has been found this afternoon near Chivi – burnt out. The driver, Christmas Ramabulana (a South African national), and distribution assistant Tapfumaneyi Kancheta, a Zimbabwean, were stopped 67 km from Masvingo last night and forced to drive along the Chivi-Mandamabwe Rd for 16kms before they turned off into the Mandamabwe Rd where the truck and its contents were set alight.

We condemn this barbaric attack against our staff and the newspaper and vow to leave no stone unturned until the perpetrators of this atrocity are brought to book.

The two men were badly beaten by their kidnappers and abandoned in the bush. They made their way to Masvingo where they arrived this afternoon and contacted our Harare office. Kancheta said his head was badly swollen from the savage beating, and the driver was having problems breathing. An ambulance has been dispatched to take them to hospital. The were both in severe shock and unable to give any details of the attack. The Zimbabwean on Sunday was launched in February this year as a sister paper to the popular weekly The Zimbabwean, which since last year has become the largest selling newspaper in Zimbabwe – selling 230,000 copies a week at its peak during the run-up to the landmark 2008 elections. The Zimbabwean on Sunday quickly established a reputation as the country’s leading Sunday paper.

Mugabe’s senior henchman, Emmerson Mnangagwa, recently blamed The Zimbabwean for Zanu (PF)’s electoral defeat. Mnangagwa heads the Joint Operations Command responsible for the atrocities being committed in Zimbabwe since the aged dictator lost the March 29 elections to popular MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

The Zimbabwean was established in February 2005 to stand against Mugabe’s media blackout. It exploits a loophole in Zimbabwe’s draconian anti-press legislation by being published and printed in South Africa and trucked into the country.

Despite frequently being harrassed and denounced, until this weekend every issue had made it safely to Harare, from where it was distributed throughout the country and devoured by a population starved of accurate information and fed a daily diet of the coarsest government propaganda.

If this angers you, please note that the subscription page of The Zimbabwean newspaper provides people around the world the option to sponser a subscription for Zimbabweans. There is no better way to stand up to bullies than to do everything you can to ensure the truth continues to be heard! Spread the word.

You can help make a difference… by sponsoring a subscription to The Zimbabwean to an individual or institution of your choice in Zimbabwe for ONLY £2.50 a month (delivery in city centres) or £5.50 a month (postage throughout Zimbabwe).

This entry was posted by Hope on Sunday, May 25th, 2008 at 10:14 pm. You can follow any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.