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Zimbabwe journalist discusses oppression in his African country
The Associated Press (AP)
January 23, 2008

http://www.todaysthv.com/news/news.aspx?storyid=59449

Little Rock, Arkansas: Easing governmental restrictions on journalists before planned March elections in Zimbabwe will not be enough to allow opposition leaders to wrest power away from President Robert Mugabe, a former independent newspaper editor said Wednesday.

Geoffrey Nyarota, who faced repeated arrests as editor of The Daily News, said the African nation's constitution already enshrined freedom for the press and opposition parties. However, Nyarota said Mugabe simply ignores those rights and derides anyone opposing his rule as being a mouthpiece of the West.

"Everybody should have free access to the media. It is not enough for him to say: 'I now allow you access to the media,'" Nyarota said. "It is meaningless."

The now-shuttered Daily News served as the nation's sole independent daily newspaper, as the state controlled the other newspapers, radio stations and television channels. In January 2001, its presses were destroyed by a bomb hours after a government official described the paper as "a threat to national security which had to be silenced." It later ceased publishing.

Mugabe, 83, has ruled Zimbabwe since it gained independence from Britain in 1980. He pushed for the often violent seizures by blacks of white-owned commercial farms that began in 2000. Those seizures disrupted agriculture in a country once considered southern Africa's bread basket, sparking official inflation of 8,000 percent and prompting citizens to flee.

Nyarota, in Little Rock to speak to the Arkansas Committee on Foreign Relations, said the West largely gave Mugabe a pass when he first came to power. However, the leader always had "dictatorial tendencies" other nations only realized when he began the land seizures.

Changes to Zimbabwe's media, security and electoral laws - negotiated in talks between the ruling party and opposition aimed at ending the nation's political and economic crisis - were rushed through parliament at the end of
2007. They became law Jan. 11.

Along with easing rules on protests, the revised laws relax rules for journalists to obtain licenses, and set up a new licensing authority.

Independent media groups say the real test will be if foreign journalists receive visas and accreditation to visit Zimbabwe for the elections. In the recent past, foreign journalists have routinely been denied visas and accreditation.

Nyarota, who now lives in Boston, hopes to be able to return to Zimbabwe one day. However, he said freedom will continue to be curtailed in Zimbabwe until Mugabe leaves office or dies.

"You hear people now say, 'We're putting our lives in the hand of God,'" he said. "I think that is wrong to expect democracy to come through divine intervention."

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