VOP relocates to Jozi (21-06-07)

ave receivers in Zimbabwe.
VOP – which used to package programmes in central Harare and then send them to Netherlands for broadcasts – had its equipment seized by Mugabe’s secret police last year. Its staff was arraigned before the courts and charged with breaching the Broadcasting Services Act, granting the State-owned Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) monopoly over airwaves.
The station is headed by award-winning veteran broadcaster John Masuku.
Masuku bemoans the shrinkage of independent media in Zimbabwe. ZBC toes the government line, he says, independent radio is effectively banned and the independent print media faces daily harassment.
The Johannesburg-based station, which buys time from legally-registered shortwave broadcasters, has angered President Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) government, which last month asked the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights to ban the broadcaster, together with the independent SW Radio Africa, beaming into Zimbabwe from London; and Studio 7, broadcasting from Washington DC.
Justice minister Patrick Chinamasa told the ACHPR last month that the broadcasters were being funded by the British government to catalyze outgoing Prime Minister Tony Blair’s alleged agenda of regime change, a charge rejected as absurd by Masuku.