The launch of a new paper in Zimbabwe is testament to the dogged resistance to state pressure by a band of idealists, writes ROBYN DIXONin Harare

THE NEWSPAPER consists of a small office with one authentically untidy desk and one table bare but for a borrowed laptop. A couple of chairs. Newspapers and papers stacked on the floor. And Boss Barns.

That would be Barnabas Thondhlana, one of Zimbabwe’s best-known newspapermen. He sits at the messy desk, explaining the vague order in the various piles. The big one is job applications, hundreds of them. The ones he doesn’t like (including those of four former state spies) get thrown onto the floor.

Boss Barns, as he is fondly known to his colleagues and drinking pals at the Quill Club, was there on the day in 2003 when armed police shut down the country’s last independent daily, the Daily News.They ordered the journalists out and put a padlock as big as his hand on the front door.

Now the affable 47-year-old is about to launch a new independent daily, NewsDay.It is the first major test of media freedom under Zimbabwe’s new government of national unity, set up in a political compromise after president Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party lost elections last year but refused to give up power.

No launch date has been set for NewsDay.The big question mark is whether the ministry of media, information and publicity, controlled by hardline Mugabe loyalists, will give the paper a licence to operate.

Trevor Ncube, NewsDay backer and owner of the Zimbabwe Independent,a weekly, and South Africa’s Mail & Guardian,says he has spoken to government ministers from all sides: “And I haven’t received a single indication that there’s somebody who doesn’t want us to be licensed,” he says.

His aim is to produce a paper trusted not only by Zanu-PF but by its erstwhile partner in the unity government, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

“We need a newspaper that says it’s okay to disagree. The fact that I disagree doesn’t mean that I should wish you dead.

“That’s the environment we have come from,” says Ncube, who describes himself as an idealist.

The Daily Newswas the first big independent daily in Zimbabwe, where state-controlled and subsidised media such as the Heraldvoiced the ruling party line. With the slogan “Telling It Like It Is”, cheeky cartoons and reports investigating corruption and abuses, the Daily Newssaw its circulation soar to more than 100,000.

Thondhlana was news editor when it launched in 1999 – the same year the MDC was formed by Morgan Tsvangirai, now the country’s prime minister. He later became editor of the Sunday Daily News.

“The vision was to give the population news that was not being covered by the state media. We didn’t think it was dangerous,” Thondhlana says.

But after Zanu-PF was nearly defeated in the 2000 elections, it cracked down. The spies of the Central Intelligence Organisation, Zimbabwe’s KGB, circled closer.

The paper’s editor, Geoff Nyarota, was riding in the lift with a stranger one morning around that time. The man confessed that he had been sent to kill Nyarota, but could not bring himself to do it, Thondhlana says.

In 2001, a large bomb destroyed the paper’s printing press. Later that year, a shop beneath the editor’s office was blown up.

In 2002, the paper’s office in the city of Bulawayo was gas-bombed. Nyarota was arrested twice, and numerous other Daily Newsjournalists were arrested and charged.

“Some people [at the paper] were saying, ‘Look, we can’t put our lives on the block for a newspaper. Maybe we should leave some of the issues we covered and go more social’,” Thondhlana says.

But the paper stuck to its guns. “I said, ‘Guys, let us stay resolved. We are here to provide balanced news. We must stick to that because for every head on a coin, there’s a tail.’

“We just decided we would not accept to be frightened. We would not stop covering the news the way we had covered the news.”

In those days, colleagues recall affectionately, Boss Barns was a real pro. He could have walked straight out of the Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon film The Front Page.

Yes, he sometimes took long lunches. “But he would then come back and work deep into the night to clear everything that was on his table,” says Augustine Mukaro, a former colleague. “Young guys would compete to be close to Boss Barns, just to enjoy the fun of being near Boss Barns.”

On the day the newspaper was shut down, editors and journalists, believing the closure was temporary, were afraid to resist the police who stormed in. “They just said, ‘This newspaper is closed, you’re going home.’ Armed soldiers came and pushed everybody out,” Thondhlana says.

Zimbabwe’s media law, which was used to shut down the Daily News,has not been repealed, as Tsvangirai struggles against recalcitrant Zanu-PF hardliners in the unity government.

There are some ominous signs: the editor and news editor of the Zimbabwe Independentwere arrested and jailed overnight last week for publishing the names of police and intelligence agents who arrested civic and opposition activists last year.

Ncube concedes that it could take time for NewsDayto take off, but believes a freer press for Zimbabwe is close. “I’m a pragmatist. I don’t expect people who are intolerant of a free press and free flow of information to be born-again lovers of plural media. It will take some cajoling, some trust-building. But it will happen. I have no doubt about that.”

But there are tough financial challenges: most Zimbabweans are simply too poor to buy newspapers, and the few surviving businesses can barely afford to advertise. – (LA Times-Washington Post service)

Impasse: pact on key posts elusive



Zimbabwe’s powersharing government has resolved most disagreements but is deadlocked on the appointments of attorney general and central bank governor, whose tenure was marked by hyperinflation.

Prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai (left) told a press conference the regional Southern African Development Community would be asked to mediate .

The posts of central bank chief Gideon Gono, an ally of president Robert Mugabe, and that of the attorney general have been the most contentious in the fragile unity government formed by Mr Mugabe and Mr Tsvangirai in February.

Critics say Mr Gono printed money, pushing the country’s inflation rate to the world’s highest. They also allege he raided private bank accounts to shore up Mr Mugabe’s regime.

Human-rights groups accuse the attorney general of presiding over the prosecution of opposition activists. – (Reuters)