Thugs step up campaign against media

Zanu (PF) aligned thugs on July 12, threatened vendors selling copies of The Zimbabwean and ordered the vendors to ship the newspaper off the street. A thug in a Zanu (PF) 100% empowerment campaign T- shirt, torn shoes and smelling of dagga, ordered a vendor to stop selling copies of the paper. He threatened to beat him up and told him to return the newspaper to the distributor. The thug accused the paper of denigrating Mugabe and his cronies. He claimed the paper was pushing a western agenda and had no place on the media market in Zimbabwe. Readers gathered at the news stand were barred from buying the newspaper by the thug. Identified only as Rhodes, he harassed the vendor for half an hour, ordering him to sell nothing but the state controlled media.

A plain-clothes police officer intervened and saved the vendor who was clearly shaken by the incident. The officer did not arrest the thug but pleaded with him to leave the vendor alone or risk being taken down the station. Other vendors have also expressed fear over selling the newspaper saying they had received threats from Zanu (PF) aligned thugs.

his is not the first assault on the newspaper or those who work for The Zimbabwean from within Zimbabwe. Towards the run up to the June 27 Presidential run-off a South African Truck, carrying over 60 000 copies of the newspaper was hijacked and reduced to ashes by men suspected to be part of State Security.

Police officers and other members of the uniformed forces have been officially banned from reading the paper or giving any official comment to those working with the newspaper. The government, in an attempt to silence The Zimbabwean, has even classified imported newspapers as luxuries and is demanding duty in foreign currency.

Critics said the Mugabe regime was desperate to control the nation through the use of fear and disinformation and as a result were running scared of independent newspapers which offer the people of Zimbabwe alternative information. Zanu (PF) thugs have tried to ban the ordinary people from accessing news via satellite and were reported to have hacked down several satellite dishes in Kadoma, Mbare and a number of police stations in the country in a government sponsored effort to stifle the free flow of information.