Back to Index

A news giant reduced to a shadow
Guthrie Munyuki
December 2004

Guthrie Munyuki worked for The Daily News, a newspaper that Robert Mugabe's government forced into closure. He talks about the endless struggles and dashed hopes of a team of journalists proud of their independence.

The day I joined the editorial team of the Daily News, I knew that my life was going to change. And the change was radical in the best sense of the word. I joined the team of the big independent daily on 1st August 2001, as a journalist specialised in the arts and human-interest stories. I came from a weekly that had been launched in December 1997, but which had lost all credibility because of the political pressure that influenced its content. But on the Daily News there were no taboo subjects. There was only room in the paper's young team for journalists genuinely devoted to the service of Zimbabwe's millions and who produced complete and balanced reports. The daily's success was both the fruit of hard work in a hostile environment and its own reward in a solid team spirit.

Despite the intimidation it suffered - physical assaults and arrests of its journalists and bomb attacks on its offices - The Daily News continued to appear without any change in line. The editor, Geoffrey Nyarota, survived two murder attempts, including a bomb attack on his Harare office on 22 April 2000. Months later, he actually met the bomber, Bernard Masara, who told him that he had been sent by State Security agents. We were stunned by this revelation.

We had made ourselves the ambassadors of truth and we believed that failure was not an option. But after the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) was passed in 2002, the government managed to silence us. After starting a legal battle with the state, The Daily News had to close. On the evening of Friday, 12 September 2003, police came to shut the offices and ordered all the staff to leave the building. In those moments, three years of work, three years of hopes and effort, were swept away. I cried when I saw the police take away our computers. Admittedly, I had already had trouble with the police, on 16 June 2002, when uniformed officers broke my arm. But the pain I felt that day was different : I saw all the years of hard work blown away just by the determination of my country's government. The newspaper's staff has fought appeal after appeal through the courts for more than a year in a bid to resurrect The Daily News. Once a giant of independent news it has been reduced to a shadow. It is now no more than a forgotten name and even our readers seem to have abandoned us. We have become irrelevant. Some journalists were lucky enough to leave the country to further their education or pursue careers elsewhere. But most of the newspaper's staff were dismissed or laid off. It is very painful. Most of us have been forced to take jobs with semi-official newspapers, something that would have been unthinkable a year ago.

By November 2004, there were only eight journalists, two technicians, the management and the secretaries left at the Daily News. They were evicted from their former offices for non-payment of rent. All the provincial offices have been closed. As for me, I don't have a job. It's very hard to leave The Daily News behind me and get myself hired by another newspaper. It is very difficult to have a decent life without stable employment but I am ready to put up with it because I am convinced that this nightmare will come to an end one day. All I am waiting for now is the Supreme Court decision on whether the Daily News will live again or is finally buried.

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP