[The Zim Govt can’t handle the truth… Out damned spot!! Jan]

Zimbabwe’s newest newspaper, the Weekly Times, is threatened with closure after it hit the streets with “a lot of political stories” to the chagrin of Tafataona Mahoso, the chairperson of the Media and Information Commission (MIC), also dubbed Zimbabwe’s media “hangman”.

The paper has been given seven days to show cause why it should not be shut down before it has even published its third edition.

Mahoso was annoyed with the first edition of the Weekly Times, which ran political articles deemed to be anti-government. One was an interview with controversial Roman Catholic Cleric, Pius Ncube, which also offended Mahoso.

Mahoso accused the publishers of the Weekly Times of lying that their paper would be a general news product when it was “running political commentary through and through”.

The move has drawn criticism from the US State Department
He was also angered that its publishers, who started it as a community paper in the second largest city of Bulawayo, had not given the MIC advance copies.

Mahoso’s letter to the Weekly Times partly read: “We understand that the paper came out on Sunday, 2 January, 2005, and was being sold on the streets here long before copies were delivered at the Commission.”

Mahoso said he was going to cancel the paper’s registration certificate and gave the publishers “seven days to show cause why your publishing licence should not be suspended or cancelled”.

Such rhetoric is Mahoso’s prelude to banning independent newspapers the government does not like, such as the national weekly Tribune newspaper last year.

The country’s sole independent newspaper, the Daily News, and its sister paper, the Daily News on Sunday, have also been banned by Mahoso, earning him the dubious accolade of being Zimbabwe’s “media hangman”.

Meanwhile, President Robert Mugabe has signed into law a new measure that sets prison terms of up to two years for any journalist found working without accreditation from the MIC.

The move has drawn criticism from the US State Department and the Washington-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

The CPJ also condemned another new measure signed into law, the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act, which could be used to jail journalists for up to 20 years for publishing or communicating to any other person “false” information deemed prejudicial to the state.

“We call on Zimbabwe’s government to reject all repressive media legislation and to ensure a free media climate for elections, in line with its own commitments to SADC,” CPJ executive director Ann Cooper said.

This article was originally published on page 2 of Cape Times on January 13, 2005

Source: Independent Online (IOL)
URL: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click…/p>