Zimbabwe shuts down newspaper

JOHANNESBURG – Zimbabwean authorities have shut down the Tribune, a weekly newspaper in the capital, Harare, marking the second time that officials have used a two-year-old media law to silence an independent editorial voice in that troubled African nation.

“This is part of a concerted campaign by government to close democratic space,” said Iden Wetherell, editor of the weekly Zimbabwe Independent and chairman of the Zimbabwe National Editors Forum. “Another inconvenient voice has been silenced.”

The government of President Robert Mugabe has faced frequent criticism in recent years. Under Mugabe, the nation’s only leader since the overthrow of white minority rule in the early 1980s, the government has seized land from white farmers, charged the main opposition leader with treason and expelled foreign journalists. Hyperinflation has wracked the economy. The hungry and jobless have flooded into neighboring countries. And this week, the government announced it was taking control of all farmland, no matter the race of its previous owners.

Only four newspapers can now freely cover the nation’s economic and political turmoil, journalists said. The government controls radio and television broadcasts and the other daily papers.

Thursday’s order by Zimbabwe’s Media and Information Commission closed the Tribune for one year, charging it had failed to properly notify officials of a change in its business name.

But journalists said the action came even though the newspaper was properly registered, its journalists accredited and its owner a member of parliament from Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party.

In September, authorities used the same law to shut down the Daily News, an independent daily, as well as Daily News on Sunday. The Daily News’ publisher, Sam Nkomo, and three other employees are on trial for contempt of court and for refusing to comply with the media law’s requirement that newspapers be registered and journalists be accredited by the media commission.