(MISA/IFEX) – The 12 May 2002 edition of Zimbabwe’s state owned newspaper “The Sunday Mail” reported that the ruling Zimbabwe African National Unity Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party intends to sue all the media organisations that carried the story that was published by “The Daily News” alleging that a Karoi woman was beheaded in the presence […]
(MISA/IFEX) – The 12 May 2002 edition of Zimbabwe’s state owned newspaper “The Sunday Mail” reported that the ruling Zimbabwe African National Unity Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party intends to sue all the media organisations that carried the story that was published by “The Daily News” alleging that a Karoi woman was beheaded in the presence of her two young children.
Hussein Ranchhod and Company, the lawyers representing ZANU-PF, confirmed that they had received the directive to take action against the accused organisations. The targeted media organisations include “The Daily News”, its reporters, and all the newspapers and broadcasting stations in South Africa, the Commonwealth, the United States, Nigeria and Kenya that carried the story.
Jonathan Moyo, ZANU-PF’s deputy secretary for information and publicity (and also minister of state for information and publicity in the president’s office), said the party would be suing all media organisations that published the story without checking it first.
“We are suing them because we want them to be held accountable for the lies they have been telling for the past two years. We will sue all the media organisations that carried the story, including the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which has confirmed it was the source of the story,” said Moyo.
“We are sick and tired that the MDC, some journalists, “The Daily News” and certain media houses in the white Commonwealth, South Africa, America, Kenya and Nigeria [have] made it their daily business to demonise our party and we are not going to take it anymore,” Moyo added.
Moyo went on to say, “The situation had reached an unacceptable level ⦠where anybody real or imagined who dies are alleged to be an MDC supporter, official or member killed by ZANU-PF ⦠the world will be forgiven to think that the people who die in Zimbabwe are MDC and that ZANU-PF people don’t die.”
According to Moyo, the MDC works with certain non-governmental and human rights organisations and pays teachers across the country to write “fictitious” stories about alleged ZANU-PF violence in rural areas. These “fictitious” stories have appeared in “The Daily News” and have been beamed to the world by the international media. The so-called special correspondents that write such stories are teachers or foreign correspondents based in Harare.
“The other reason we are suing these media organisations is that we want the world media to realize that neither the MDC nor ‘The Daily News’ are credible sources of news,” Moyo explained. He added that the reporters who wrote the false story and the MDC know that they “have taken the world for a ride to get international support.” Journalists Andrew Meldrum and Lloyd Mudiwa are being charged for “abusing journalistic privilege” under the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act over the same story.
