MEDIA-ZIMBABWE: Bombing of Printing Press Frightens Journalists

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Lewis Machipisa

HARARE, Jan 29 2001 (IPS) - Journalists in Zimbabwe are living in fear of attack after Sunday’s bombing of a printing press of a newspaper critical of the government, and of a brutal attack on a driver working at a state-controlled newspaper.

Four bombs early Sunday morning reduced the Daily News printing press to chunks of cast iron and a mess of burnt newsprint and smouldering ash. A day before, a driver at the Herald was beaten and left for dead in Chitungwiza, a satellite town of Harare, as he delivered copies of the newspaper.

The Daily News, Zimbabwe’s only independent daily, was, however, back on the streets Monday just hours after the massive bomb attack.

The paper would not say where they had printed for fear of risking the new printing press. But, the paper’s pages had been halved to 16 pages only.

Fortunately, no one was injured in the huge bomb explosion for which no group has claimed responsibility, although speculation is rife that the attack was carried by a section of the veterans of Zimbabwe’s liberation war.

But, in a statement Monday, the war veterans, who support the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), denied the allegations, saying they had received with shock the news of the blast.

The statement came two days after a group of war veterans marched through the streets of Harare, threatening to attack the private Daily News, and its staff. They accused the paper of supporting the country’s main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

During the procession, the war veterans tore up copies of the newspaper and warned that they would teach the Daily News a lesson. In retaliation, members of the opposition also have been destroying copies of the Herald in several low-income suburbs of Harare.

Even before the blast, the war veterans have already imposed a ‘ban’ on the Daily News after the paper carried a report that Zimbabweans had rejoiced over the death of Laurent Kabila, the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), who was assassinated in Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC, three weeks ago.

Some Zimbabweans apportion the economic decline in Zimbabwe on their government’s decision to send thousands of soldiers to prop up the Congolese government against rebels, backed by Rwanda and Uganda.

The attack on the newspaper has been condemned by the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists. “If this situation is allowed to prevail, journalists’ lives will be at risk,” says Basildon Peta, secretary general of the Union.

“No one will be free from this wave of violence whether one works for the independent press or the public media as evidenced by the action taken by war veterans when they converged at the offices of the Daily News last week … and the action of the MDC (opposition) youths who almost killed a Herald driver on Saturday,” warns Peta.

Following the blast, Tony Namate, a cartoonist at the Daily News, has described Zimbabwe as a country on the brink of a major disaster. “Our country is burning,” says Namate. “Anarchy has arrived, I’m afraid.”

“But we will just have to soldier on. As journalists, this is the moment that Zimbabweans need us most. We are not afraid, because the nation is behind us. We are small, but we are bigger,” says Namate, a popular cartoonist.

His colleague, Dumisani Muleya, who writes for the private Zimbabwe Independent, warns that, “in the light of what is now a clear media war ragging on in Zimbabwe, no journalist whether government of otherwise can feel safe.”

‘At the end of the day, all journalists find themselves working under precarious conditions that have serious implications for their own personal security and freedom of expression in general,” says Muleya.

“Zimbabwe has never known such kind of hostile working conditions for journalists, and the media industry should work in collaboration with all other interested parties to diffuse the situation before greater damage is done to the media industry itself,” he says.

Another journalist at the Zimbabwe Independent, Brian Hungwe, says journalists “don’t feel safe at all, more so with presidential elections coming up in 2002.

“Those that have a grudge with the truth have taken it upon themselves to unleash their anger on the torch bearers of the truth,” he adds.

Hungwe says the violence could be halted if the state acts on it. “This is happening in an atmosphere where the state apparently condones acts of violence. This development is a product of the presidential clemency order issued to political criminals behind the pre-election violence in June,” he claims.

Attacks on opposition members left 32 people dead and hundreds injured in pre-election violence that rocked the country in June last year.

But, using powers vested in him by Zimbabwe’s constitution, president Robert Mugabe issued Clemency Order on Oct 6, pardoning all who committed politically motivated crimes between January and July of last year.

Although some crimes such as murder, rape and theft are exempted from the blanket pardon, Mugabe, lamented human rights groups, by his action condoned numerous other crimes and sent a clear message that crimes committed in support of the ruling party will go unpunished.

The private media fears the pardon might give the ruling ZANU- PF supporters the courage to harass them in the run-up to presidential elections in 2002.

Sunday’s attack on the Daily News also followed a recent threat by the Information Minister, Jonathan Moyo, that it was only a matter of time before Zimbabweans put a stop to what he called the newspaper’s ‘madness’.

“It is absolutely clear who has done this,” says Trevor Ncube, executive editor of the Zimbabwe Independent, which also has been criticised by the war veterans.

“I blame (President) Robert Mugabe. He and his people are driving this country into civil war. They have failed to silence us with legislation, with intimidation, and now (with) this (blast),” he said.

The chief executive of Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe, which owns the Daily News, Muchadeyi Masunda, agreed. “We’ve been under a lot of pressure in the last two weeks,” he says. A journalist at the Daily News, Julius Zava, was beaten by the war veterans last week.

Since it was founded in March 1999, the Daily News has become one of the biggest-selling newspapers in the country, fiercely competing with the state-controlled Herald newspaper.