The editor of THE Masvingo Mirror, Golden Maunganidze, was yesterday being interrogated by police in Harare over a story he wrote linking Tourism Minister Walter Mzembi to the disappearance of gifts meant for Robert Mugabe, writes Tichaona Sibanda for SW Radio Africa.
Hundreds of tonnes of sugar donated to Mugabe by party activists in Masvingo province on his 86th birthday, reportedly went missing and have never been found. The ‘theft’ triggered a massive upheaval in the province with certain top officials accusing each other of the disappearance.
Mzembi was one of those mentioned in a story written by Maunganidze. The Minister immediately filed charges of criminal defamation against the editor. This forced Maunganidze to go into hiding after police threatened him with arrest over the story.
Acting on advice from the media watchdog MISA, Maunganidze travelled to Harare Monday and presented himself to the police at the Harare central station. A journalist in Harare told us; ‘The information that we have is he’s not under arrest but is being questioned over the story he wrote linking Mzembi to the alleged theft of gifts meant for Mugabe’.
The government regularly uses the criminal defamation law as a weapon to silence journalists in the country. Five Harare based journalists were last week summoned to court to answer charges over a story linking business mogul Phillip Chiyangwa, and local government Minister Ignatius Chombo, to a serious land scandal in the capital city.
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