Stealth Attacks on Zimbabwe Journalists
The World Association of Newspapers and The World Editors Forum have highlighted an pernicious attack on press freedom in Zimbabwe, set in motion last month by Robert Mugabe, but which has slipped under the radar.
He has imposed a “luxury tax” on imported newspapers.
The problem Mugabe’s regime faced was that - even after bringing the Zimbabwean press under State control - the editors and journalists he threatened, harassed and had beaten up - fled to neighbouring South Africa and the UK and set up newspapers outside of his control. One example is The Zimbabweanwhich is printed in Johannesburg and trucked into Zimbabwe. It had a circulation of 200 000.
The tax also applies to South African newspapers, which are very popular in Zimbabwe
I asked my friend Ray Hartley, editor of The Times in South Africa to explain in a globule why South African newspapers were a such threat to Mugabe’s regime. He says:
A lot of Zimbabwean readers look to the South African press for an independent insight into what the Mugabe government is doing because the Zimbabwean press has been decimated by censorship. They are also very keenly interested in reporting on the South African government’s approach to Zimbabwe. South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki has been the official mediator appointed by the SADC to try and negotiate a settlement between Mugabe and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
With hyper-inflation running rampant, real starvation is a greater threat to the ordinary Zimbabwean than news-starvation. Consequently this “luxury tax” has had the effect of practically wiping out any media critical of the Mugabe regime. The Zimbabwean has had to cancel its Sunday edition, and has had to reduce its print run to a mere 60 000.
In a letter to Mugabe (for all the good it will do them), the Word Editors Forum said:
“Restricting access to information by punitive taxation constitutes a clear breach of the right to freedom of expression, which is guaranteed by numerous international conventions, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
But Mugabe is a dictator whose thugs hack off people’s limbs and burn them alive, murder women because their husbands are opposition party officials, and attack supporters with machetes and pick-axe handles. He is unlikely to take this point on board. Indeed, breaching “the right to freedom of expression” was undoubtedly his aim.
His response will not be “oh dear, what have I done?”; more likely he will exclaim “mission accomplished!”.
Comments
| 11 July 2008, 11:07 am |
Wilf Mbanga should be given a reward for his work on The Zimbabwean, which he has managed to publish and distribute against almost impossible odds.
| 11 July 2008, 11:58 am |
O/T.
McCain stumbles over viagra.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G-X1t5Fq38
| 11 July 2008, 10:36 pm |
China and Russia veto sanctions against Zimbabwe.
| 11 July 2008, 11:18 pm |
And the pundits said that having cosigned the statement at the G8, there was no way Russia could renege. UN never fails to fail. Utterly sick.
| 12 July 2008, 6:15 am |
It´s a very good website you have here,
| 12 July 2008, 4:15 pm |
I give up on Africa.
| 12 July 2008, 11:48 pm |
Thank God for Russia and China, which refuse to make the plight of the Zimbabwean people any worse by countenancing sanctions, not against the Thatcher-imposed nomenklatura whom sanctions would not effect in the least, but against the ordinary people.
And no, sanctions did not bring down apartheid in South Africa. That collapse would have happened long before if the ANC had not been so supported by, and supportive of, the Soviet Union. As things turned out, the Soviet Union collapsed (as it would have done anyway, Reagan or no Reagan and Thatcher or no Thatcher), so no one saw any further need to prop up the old South African regime in order to prevent the gaining of a Soviet foothold there.
| 13 July 2008, 5:02 am |
“And no, sanctions did not bring down apartheid in South Africa.”
-there’s a whole lot of union academics in the UK who would disagree with your analysis esp. as its one of the central props of their position re. boycott/sanctions Israel.
| 13 July 2008, 6:00 pm |
David Lindsey has clearly not even bothered to read the list of sanctions proposed. They are not against the people of Zimbabwe, but against their leaders.
The sanctions would have imposed an arms embargo, and would have made it impossible for Mugabe and the key figures in the de facto military junta that now rules the country from travelling abroad, or from holding any assets abroad.
Does Lindsey really think that civilised countries should welcome visits by the heads of the Zimbabwean army and police, Constantine Chiwenga and Augustine Chihuri, both of whom openly stated before the election that they would never accept anyone other than Mugabe as President?
Stopping weapons reaching Mugabe’s forces would obviously work in favour of the Zimbabwean people, not against them.
As for the claims that sanctions did not bring down apartheid - nobody ever said they did. They were part of a multi-pronged strategy that included isolating the regime internationally, while democratic forces within South Africa waged all manner of battles (including the ANC’s armed struggle) to overthrow racial tyranny. It was the shifting balance of forces within southern Africa (including the defeat the apartheid armed forces suffered at Cuito Cuanavake in southern Angola in 1988) that was determinent in bringing down apartheid - but sanctions played an important supporting role in this drama.
In Britain, we boycotted South African goods, and stopped South African sports teams from touring, not because it made us feel good, but because that is what the ANC asked us to do.
And sanctions obviously made life very difficult for the apartheid regime. It made it much more difficult for it to acquire fuel, for example. Busting sanctions is always possible - but it can be very expensive.
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