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Ban on Gukurahundi productions
MISA-Zimbabwe
September 01, 2010

MISA-Zimbabwe condemns the recent government ban on any films and Bulawayo-based artiste Owen Maseko's exhibition depicting Gukurahundi disturbances that took place after independence.

This ban does not only mirror the lingering paranoia of free flowing information that reflects badly on some arms of government, but also demonstrates the need for extensive media law reforms that go beyond the much publicised repressive laws such as AIPPA, broadcasting and criminal defamation laws.

In a government gazette published Friday August 27 2010, Home Affairs Secretary Melusi Matshiya announced that it was an offence in terms of the Censorship and Entertainment Control Act (Cinematography and Publications, Production of Pictures and Statutes) for anyone to show the Gukurahundi material. According to Matshiya the Board of Censors had in terms of Sections 12, 13 of the Act prohibited "the exhibition at the Bulawayo Art Gallery of effigies, words and paintings on the walls portraying the Gukurahundi era as a tribal biased event".

In banning media or artistic expression of the Gukurahundi atrocities the government is simply trying to suppress unpleasant elements of Zimbabwe's history that should be openly debated, among other issues, if the much touted national healing programme is to bear meaningful results.

Further, the ban does not only impinge of citizens' right to freedom of expression but disregards the African Commission on Human and People Rights' Banjul Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression in Africa. It guarantees freedom of expression and information, "including the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other form of communication" as a "fundamental and inalienable human right and an indispensable component of democracy".

Background

Maseko was arrested on 26 March 2010 initially on charges of violating Section 30 of the Criminal Law Codification and Reform Act which alludes to insulting or undermining the authority of the president; the charges have since been changed to Section 31 which deals with the publication of false statements prejudicial to the state.

In addition to Maseko's exhibition independent film producer, Zenzele Ndebele who in 2007 launched a documentary Gukurahundi - A moment of madness, was on 10 April 2010 allegedly confronted by state security agents over his documentary in Bulawayo's city centre.

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