(MISA/IFEX) – Zimbabwean Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Rugare Gumbo has threatened to sue “The Standard”, a weekly newspaper, for over Z$2 million (US$36,000). The threat comes in the wake a story that linked Gumbo to the death of Herbert Chitepo, a veteran nationalist and liberation war hero who was mysteriously killed during Zimbabwe’s liberation […]
(MISA/IFEX) – Zimbabwean Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Rugare Gumbo has threatened to sue “The Standard”, a weekly newspaper, for over Z$2 million (US$36,000). The threat comes in the wake a story that linked Gumbo to the death of Herbert Chitepo, a veteran nationalist and liberation war hero who was mysteriously killed during Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle.
In a story that appeared in the 30 September to 6 October 2001 edition of “The Standard”, the newspaper featured a report by a commission of inquiry instituted by former Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda. The report inferred that Chitepo’s death in a car bomb in Zambia in 1976 could have been an “inside job.” Gumbo and the late Josiah Tongogara, a national hero and commander of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, were named as ringleaders in Chitepo’s assassination.
In a letter to “The Standard”, Gumbo’s lawyer Terrence Hussein said that the newspaper must apologise and retract the story within seven days or face the Z$2 million lawsuit. The letter said that “The Standard” had, for malicious reasons, exhumed the report published a quarter of a century ago by a commission that did not have any judicial officers in its ranks, but rather political representatives of other countries.
The death of Chitepo and other nationalist leaders remains a contentious issue in Zimbabwe, twenty-one years after the country’s independence, with allegations that most of the leaders were killed by their own colleagues.
