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Where's the outcry about Zim censorship?
Akwe Amosu
March 07, 2006

http://www.news24.com/City_Press/Columnists/0,,186-1695_1892296,00.html

CENSORSHIP is a burning issue in South Africa - to judge by the passionate exchanges over the Danish cartoons in the media.

So why doesn't the latest attempt to silence voices across the border in Zimbabwe provoke any comment?

This week, a handful of Zimbabwe's most courageous civil society leaders will find themselves in court, charged with breaching the country's notorious Broadcasting Services Act of 2001.

Their crime? Being on the board of Voice of the People (VOP), one of the last surviving attempts to broadcast independent news to Zimbabweans.

David Masunda, Isabella Matambanadzo, Millicent Phiri, Lawrence Chibwe, Nhlanhla Ngwenya and Arnold Tsunga could face two years in prison if found guilty.

VOP originated to provide an alternative voice on current affairs during the run-up to the 2000 parliamentary elections. But the communications trust quickly found it was walking a tightrope.

The government barred foreign correspondents and any Zimbabwean wishing to practise journalism on their home turf had to apply for a licence, while the Broadcasting Services Act made it a crime for a domestic station to broadcast - or merely own broadcasting equipment - without permission.

Independent applicants have repeatedly been refused such permission, giving the state-operated Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation sole reign over the airwaves.

But VOP reasoned that if independent voices could not broadcast news internally, and external broadcasters could not get in to see what was happening, someone in Zimbabwe would have to gather the news and give it to an external broadcaster to transmit. There was no law against that - or so they thought.

Radio Netherlands was willing to carry their stories. So VOP recorded and assembled programme material inside the country and sent it out to their Dutch partner who relayed it via their transmitters in Madagascar.

But last December, the authorities raided the VOP offices, seized papers and equipment and arrested VOP staff, holding them hostage until director John Masuku turned himself in. He was charged with broadcasting without a licence.

Then last month, VOP's six trustees were targeted. Staff working for Arnold Tsunga, a trustee and also the director of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, were taken and held hostage until their boss came forward to be charged.

The government has a long and dishonourable history of attacking the media. Four newspapers have been closed down in recent years and several reporters have either been silenced or hounded out of the country.

Violence has repeatedly been used against journalists who dare to report in ways unfavourable to the government.

Harare often claims its critics are the puppets of colonialists and racists. But that is not an accusation that can be levelled at the African Commission on Human and People's Rights, an African Union institution.

In December, the commission issued a scathing condemnation of human rights violations during Robert Mugabe's rule, citing "a growing culture of impunity". It called on the government to "respect the fundamental rights and freedoms of expression, association and assembly, by repealing or amending repressive legislation".

And it singled out the Broadcasting Services Act, the very legislation under which VOP's trustees and staff are being charged.

To criminalise citizens seeking to inform each other confirms that a profound fear of exposure lies at the heart of that government. We must not allow the Mugabe regime to cover its tracks with censorship.

* Akwe Amosu is a senior policy analyst for Africa at the Open Society Institute in Washington.

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