Police Condemned for Arresting Gweru Journalist Covering Lockdown
30 March 2020
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A journalist was arrested in Gweru on the first day of a 21-day coronavirus national lockdown on Monday, drawing condemnation from unions.

Freelance journalist Kudzanai Musengi was held at a checkpoint in the Midlands city and detained at Gweru Central Police Station after producing an expired press card, colleagues said.

He was released following the intervention of the information ministry, said government spokesman Nick Mangwana.

“The 2019 press cards are valid proof that one is a journalist, until after the lockdown. Letters have gone (to police and military commanders) asserting that position,” Mangwana said.

Local and foreign journalists working in Zimbabwe have yet to be accredited for 2020, after the government delayed in publishing new fees.

A statutory instrument containing the new accreditation fees was only published on March 27 – at the start of a weekend and just three days before the lockdown. The Zimbabwe Media Commission’s offices were closed Monday.

The Zimbabwe National Editors Forum (ZINEF) condemned Musengi’s arrest and called on the government to take greater steps to protect journalists doing their work.

“ZINEF is appealing to the government to ensure journalists’ safety during the lockdown. Journalists have been rightly exempted from movement restrictions because the government accepts that they are offering an enabling essential service in the fight against coronavirus,” ZINEF coordinator Njabulo Ncube in a statement.

Foster Dongozi, the secretary general of the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists, said Musengi’s arrest was a “ridiculous development, very absurd.”

“We are in the middle of a global pandemic and here you have people worried about a journalist’s accreditation card which expired through no fault of his own, but that of the establishment that now locks him up,” Dongozi fumed.

“They said they were reforming media laws, and in the process delayed gazetting new fees for accrediting journalists and media houses, which was done only a few days ago.

“We have formally sent a protest to Rtd Major Anywhere Mutambudzi, the director of media services in the information ministry, who has assured us that they have advised security forces that journalists are using 2019 press cards. We have similarly engaged the national police spokesman Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi who says a radio has since been sent to all provinces indicating that journalists are using expired press cards. Our hope is that they get the message so that no other journalist suffers a similar, undeserved indignity.”

-Zimlive