Download - Media Institute of Southern Africa

State of the media in Southern Africa 2002
aging Editor of The Post, Zambia’s leading and only independent daily newspaper.
An article in 1996, in which he criticised a Zambian politician for attacking
a Supreme Court judge who had earlier struck an important victory for
the Right to Protest and Freedom of Assembly, saw him being condemned to
indefinite imprisonment. Also imprisoned was his editor-in-chief Fred M’membe
and fellow columnist, Lucy Shichone, by the speaker of Parliament. All three
initially went into hiding to avoid being hauled off to prison. Later on Bright
and Fred handed themselves over to the police. They were freed after 24 days.
In 1997, Bright joined MISA’s regional secretariat to head the Media Information
Unit. Bright’s disdain for the hypocrisy of the SADC governments was
evident on the occasion of May 3 1999 in a dynamic speech he delivered in
Windhoek, Namibia. In his speech, Bright angrily dismissed a proposed Media
Award the SADC governments were considering, questioning their moral
right to confer such an award amid their obvious reluctance to refrain from or
condemn government infringements on the rights of the media.
2000 – Geoffrey Nyarota
Geoff Nyarota’s first courageous stance of independence came when, as editor
of the Chronicle, he exposed corruption in high places in what was to
become known as the “Willowgate scandal”. Geoff was subsequently unceremoniously
removed from his post and relegated to an obscure position in the
Zimpapers Company - a move no doubt meant to silence him. It did not work.
The resilience of Geoff came of age in a sense, with the launching of The
Daily News in March 1999. It was a magnanimous dream that had as its roots
service to the Zimbabwean citizenry. The trail that The Daily News blazes has
come at a price - the paper’s journalists have been harassed and attacked; in
some parts of the country people can only read the paper in secret for fear of
reprisals; a bomb - no doubt targeted at the paper was detonated in the building
housing the paper early in 2001 while the newspaper itself courageously
exposed a plot by the Central Intelligence Agency to assassinate Geoff. Notwithstanding
this, The Daily News has played a vital role in publishing news
not available in other daily papers or through the electronic media, and in the
process has given knowledge, understanding, strength and courage through
information to its readers. The expansion in readership has been followed by a
massive expansion in advertising, and this is built on the exposure of truth
made possible only because of the enormous personal courage of Geoff Nyarota
and the team he leads. It is for this that he is being recognised as the recipient
of the MISA Press Freedom Award.
2002
2001 – Carlos Alberto Cardoso
Carlos Alberto Cardoso, editor of Metical, who was murdered on 22 November
2000, was born of Portuguese parents in the central city of Beira in
1952. He studied in South Africa, where be became involved in radical, antiapartheid
student politics, which earned him expulsion from the country.
Back in Maputo, he identified with the revolution against Portuguese colo-
320 So This Is Democracy?