By IPS Correspondents
HARARE, Aug 17 2001 (IPS)

Zimbabwe’s security agents have laid fresh charges against four journalists for publishing an article alleging that police vehicles were used in the looting of property on commercial farms near Chinhoyi, a town 121 Kilometres north- west of the capital Harare.

The accused, Geoff Nyarota, the editor-in-chief of the country’s only independent daily, The Daily News, and three other senior journalists, were called in Thursday afternoon and charged with publishing subversive material.

The four, including William Saidi, the paper’s assistant editor, John Gambanga, its news editor, and Sam Munyavi, a senior reporter, were on Wednesday charged with publishing false news.

But the police made a U-turn Thursday after realising that the charge would not stick, according to The Daily News on Friday. Last year, the Supreme Court, in a landmark judgement, ruled that the section was unconstitutional, following the arrest of two journalists from the Standard newspaper, a private weekly publication.

Lawrence Chibwe, the lawyer representing the four journalists, told IPS that his clients were now being charged under “The Law and Order Maintenance Act section 44 (2) (b),” a piece of legislation used during the colonial days to suppress black nationalism.

The section makes it an offence for anyone to distribute or circulate any subversive statement among the public, or any section of the public or who supplies or offers any written or printed subversive statement to any other person whether at price or not.

Any person who breaches the section is liable to a prison term not exceeding five years.

Mduduzi Mathuthu, the newspaper’s reporter in Bulawayo, the country’s second city, also was briefly arrested on Tuesday for publishing a story alleging that a crowd had walked out on Vice- President Joseph Msika during the Heroes’ Day celebration when the later asked them to chant the ruling ZANU-PF’s slogans.

The police alleged that the journalist’s story was likely to “cause fear, alarm and despondency among the public”.

This is the third time that Nyarota has been arrested this year. In April he was picked up, together with political editor Sandra Nyaira and deputy news editor, the late Julius Zava, on charges of criminal defamation.

The charges arose from a story linking top government officials to a scandal involving the awarding of tender in the construction of the new Harare International Airport.

Nyarota was arrested again in May over publication of stories in which three Zimbabweans, including legislator Evyln Masaiti, sued President Mugabe for allegedly fomenting violence during last year’s parliamentary elections.

The latest arrest followed stories that the paper published on the clashes between White farmers and ZANU-PF supporters in the Mhangura-Chinhoyi area that resulted in the looting and destruction of property worth over 100 million Zimbabwe dollars (over 1.9 million U.S. Dollars).

Following the disturbances, 21 white commercial farmers have been arrested for allegedly assaulting Black squatters in the Mhangura-Chinhoyi area.

To stop looting by squatters and farm workers, the government has deployed security forces in the area. As a result, some looters have been convicted.

The Media Institute of Southern Africa (Misa)-Zimbabwe Chapter Thursday condemned the arrest of the four journalists, saying the Law and Order Maintenance Act should be struck off the statute books.

“Contrary to the police charge, it is the arrest of the journalists, under a colonial piece of legislation, which, in fact, caused alarm and despondency in media circles and the general population of Zimbabwe,” Misa said in a statement.

Reacting to the police action Thursday, the Minister of Information and Publicity Jonathan Moyo described the arrest of the four journalists as “lawful”.

“International observers agree that the unsubstantiated allegations of The Daily News that police vehicles were supposedly used to assist looters to ferry looted property were deliberately false. (The allegations were) politically calculated to give the false impression of a breakdown of law and order in Zimbabwe to justify publicised British plan to invade Zimbabwe under the pretext of evacuating white commercial farmers,” he told the state-owned Herald newspaper on Friday.

He claimed that some of the farmers “have been using crude violence against defenceless rural settlers and sponsoring looting by farm workers.”

Moyo said he would soon introduce a new media law called the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Bill to make the media accountable to the public.

This is not the first time that The Daily News has been in trouble. In April last year a bomb placed on the ground floor of its offices in central Harare, destroyed part of the paper’s building. No one has been arrested.

And, in January this year the paper’s printing press was bombed beyond recognition. Again, no one has been arrested.

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