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State of the media in Southern Africa 2002
2002
ALERT
DATE: 2002-03-28
PERSON(S): Geoff Nyarota
VIOLATION(S): Threatened
“The Daily News” editor-in-chief
Geoff Nyarota is likely to face legal
action this week if Jonathan Moyo,
the Minister of State for Information
and Publicity, goes ahead with his
threat against him over a “false” story
he allegedly published.
This will be the first time the government
will have implemented the
controversial Access to Information
and Protection of Privacy Act against
“The Daily News”, Zimbabwe’s only
independent daily.
Moyo accuses “The Daily News” of
misrepresenting a story it reported on
in its Friday March 22, 2002 edition.
The story claimed that the joint African
Caribbean Pacific-European Union
Parliamentary Assembly (ACP-
EU) passed a resolution calling for a
fresh presidential election in Zimbabwe
at a meeting held in Cape Town,
South Africa, on March 21. In a letter
written to Nyarota, the Minister asked
the paper to make a retraction over the
“deliberate falsehood” or face legal
action in terms of Section 80(1) (a)(b),
which deals with the abuse of journalistic
privilege. Subsections (1) (a)(b)
state: “A journalist shall be deemed to
have abused his journalistic privilege
and committed an offence if he falsifies
or fabricates information and publishes
falsehoods”.
“Under the circumstances and in the
belief that your false claim is as a result
of ignorance and not political mischief,
I am writing to ask you to publicly
correct your falsehood and give
the public correct information based
206 So This Is Democracy?
on the proceedings of the ACP-EU
Assembly meeting in Cape Town,”
Moyo said in the letter.
Nyarota received Moyo’s letter on
March 26 and said that he would rather
go to jail than retract a true story. “I
would rather go to jail, if it pleases the
Honourable Minister, than be forced
by him to correct a story that is 100
per cent correct,” Nyarota stated.
The act stipulates that anyone who
contravenes the three subsections shall
be guilty of an offence and liable to a
fine not exceeding 100 000 Zimbabwe
dollars (approx. US$1 829) or to imprisonment
for a period not exceeding
two years.
ALERT
DATE: 2002-04-03
PERSON(S): Peta Thornycroft
VIOLATION(S): Detained
On Tuesday April 2, 2002, Peta
Thornycroft, the Zimbabwe correspondent
for the British “Daily Telegraph”,
was questioned on the status
of her citizenship in the continuing
saga following her arrest on
Wednesday, March 27.
Thornycroft was asked by police to
report to the magistrate’s court in the
eastern border town of Mutare on
Tuesday April 2. On April 3, the journalist
told MISA-Zimbabwe that the
Mutare chief immigration officer
asked her where her parents were born
and whether she had renounced her
British citizenship. “I told them that I
renounced my British citizenship in
December 2001,” said Thornycroft.
She also said that all her travel documents
were returned and that she was
on her way to the capital, Harare.
This development is largely seen as