The Zimbabwean visited Harare Central Police Station
on Friday afternoon and established that some vendors
that had been arrested on Thursday were still detained
in custody whilst others were being released under
various circumstances but most saying they paid
bribes. Huge quantities of newspaper copies of the
Financial Gazette and The Zimbabwe Independent were
also at the central police station, after they were
confiscated from vendors.
Defiant vendors have insisted on selling copies of the
weeklies at $600 000 each despite the heavy-handed
response by the Pricing and Incomes Stabilisation
Commission to the increases last week. The commission
ordered that the prices be reduced to $150 000, which,
the publishers say is “ridiculous” and meant at
driving them into incurring huge loses.
“We were arrested yesterday and spent the whole night
there,” a vendor said. “I have been released after
bribing a police officer with $5 million and that is
how the majority of us have been released. They are
having refusing to give us back the newspapers, saying
the publishers or the distributing companies had to
come and collect them.”
Harare Central Police Station Officer Commanding
Investigation, Simon Sakupwanya confirmed to this
paper the arrest. “A number of them were arrested for
selling the newspapers above the stipulated prices but
I don’t have more details,” he said.
An acute shortage of newsprint and increasingly rising
running costs have forced media houses to review the
prices of newspapers upwards but only to clash with
the Zanu (PF) regime. Last week management from both
The Financial Gazette and the Zimbabwe Independent
were arrested and ordered to sell copies of the
newspapers at drastically reduced prices.
Post published in: News