PAMBAZUKA NEWS 74
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 74
In collaboration with the Ministry of Education of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Belgium has initiated a project to produce five million primary school textbooks for Congolese children and teachers, Belgian Secretary of State for Cooperation and Development Eddy Boutmans has said.
Children account for more than half of the 12.8 million people in Southern Africa threatened by starvation, and related diseases such as measles, cholera and HIV/AIDS.
Some 14 million children are to be immunised against polio as part of a final drive to eradicate the virus from Ethiopia, the health ministry said last Thursday.
Greg Notess is a well-known name to online librarians and researchers. His recent piece on locating free full-text articles on the Interent is a useful read. Take a look.
The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has introduced an innovative system aimed at preventing corruption at its offices.
Freedominfo.org is a newly released site that provides data on freedom of information laws from areas all across the globe. Designed to link the efforts of freedom of information advocates around the world and give voice to movements that have previously struggled for greater openness, this site contains a global survey that summarizes these laws in 45 countries.[From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2002 http://scout.cs.wisc.edu]
Government ministers in Madagascar are to receive ten-fold pay increases in what the new president says is a move to curb corruption. President Marc Ravalomanana, who has just won a violent power struggle on the island, said that if officials were paid properly, they would not need to abuse positions.
Overcrowding in primary school classrooms might not be a cause for alarm in Tanzania but a group of visiting young politicians from the US were dumbfounded to learn that some classrooms in primary schools in Dar es Salaam accommodate as many as 270 pupils at a time.
HIV/AIDS poses a development challenge of unprecedented urgency, especially in Africa. Apart from the terrible personal costs, the pandemic is the single biggest threat to the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals. Over one-third of HIV/AIDS sufferers live in countries classified as heavily indebted, says Oxfam in a new briefing paper.
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has criticised the Global Fund for Aids for allocating large amounts of money to the fight against HIV/AIDS in South Africa while ignoring the dire need of other countries in the region.
The government has established a special investigations and prosecutions task force to investigate criminal conduct related to serious mismanagement of public resources in the past 10 years.
The South African National Civic Organisation was thrown into chaos this week when key members of its national executive committee resigned amid allegations of corruption and mismanagement of funds.
Nigeria has started pre-testing an innovation aimed at ensuring an uninterrupted supply of contraceptives in the face of declining donor support, increasing demand and global shortage.
The Botswana, Zimbabwe and South African governments are discussing the establishment of a transfrontier park along the Shashe/Limpopo (Shalimpo) rivers confluence and the Truli block area.
Humanitarian organisations in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have stepped up their efforts to contain a cholera epidemic in the region that continues to strike more people.
Cameroon's Supreme Court has ordered fresh legislative elections in nine constituencies because of irregularities committed during polls held on 30 June.
Classified documents obtained by Stephen Weissman, the former staff director of the U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on Africa, confirm the role that a CIA covert action program played in bringing down Congo's only democratically elected government. The documents confirm widespread suspicion that the Eisenhower administration was involved in the overthrow and execution of nationalist leader Patrice Lumumba in 1960-61. Dr. Weissman argues that the four-decade old events have implications for the war-ravaged Congo of today.
The Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) has suspended wildlife exports following international and local pressure after suspected irregularities in the trade were exposed.
As the fight against malaria gains momentum in the country, villagers in Kanyemba, Lower Guruve, have mobilised local resources and skills at all levels, a move that has seen a remarkable decline in reported malaria cases throughout the district.
“Rudimentary” health care research infrastructure and very little activity involving HIV/AIDS are problems facing Nigeria, but there is also a window of opportunity regarding an anti-retroviral treatment programme in its planning stages. These are some of the factors identified by Nigerian delegates meeting after the XIV International AIDS Conference.
Nutrition for people living with HIV should be prioritised particularly as high cost and unavailability limits access to antiretroviral drugs, while government should make antiretroviral drugs and the tests for measuring patient response such as CD4 count free for people living with HIV. These were two of 11 recommendations made at a meeting of Journalists Against AIDS (JAAIDS), held in Benue State on 17 July.
Soldiers are both vulnerable to HIV and linked to the spread of HIV, particularly in situations of conflict. This publication outlines some of the reasons why and includes material from focus group discussions with soldiers in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and South-east Asia. It introduces some of the issues involved in, and approaches to working with, the military, including a section on HIV testing and on HIV prevention in the armed forces.
Cosatu said on Monday it planned a two-day national strike in October to protest against the government's privatisation plans. "The July Exco (executive committee of Cosatu has) decided to lift the suspension and continue with its programme of mass mobilisation," the Congress of South African Trade Unions said in a statement.
Findings from a preliminary study suggest that a drug combination that is the gold standard of HIV treatment in the developed world can help patients in developing countries as well. The new study, published in the July issue of the journal AIDS, followed up on a trial of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) in the African nation of Senegal.
Sierra Leone has just emerged from possibly the most brutal conflict known to sub-Saharan Africa. Now it faces a new challenge, having been identified as being on the brink of an HIV/AIDS crisis.
Prevalence of HIV-1 infection and syphilis dropped substantially among 15- to 24-year-old women attending antenatal clinics at inner-city health centers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
European Union foreign ministers have agreed to extend sanctions on the leadership of Zimbabwe to include an extra 52 people.
A Supreme Court hearing into President Levy Mwanawasa's election victory last year has been adjourned after witnesses complained of intimidation. More than 70 witnesses were due to testify that they had been prevented from voting in last year's poll.
A significant increase in donor support was needed to help displaced people return to their homes and productive lives - a critical component in consolidating peace, Kenzo Oshima, UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs said.
The United Nations and international aid agencies are sending their first humanitarian evaluation mission to the region around Uvira, South Kivu, in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where fighting has displaced over 50,000 people.
Homesick Angolan refugees are packing up their meagre belongings, throwing caution to the wind, and trekking back to battle-scarred homesteads many of them have not seen in decades.
This article from the new Social Source Newsletter takes a good, practical look at easing into open source in your organisation.
Many factors may explain the vulnerability of displaced people to sexual exploitation but there are "no excuses" for its occurrence, US-based NGOs said in a just-released document titled 'Report of the InterAction Task Force on the Prevention of Sexual Exploitation of Displaced Children'.
Humanitarian agencies have expressed concern at the plight of Somali refugees camped in the northeastern Kenyan town of Mandera who, they say, were forcibly returned by police to Somalia; and called on the government and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to provide better protection.
Nearly two decades after one of the world's most devastating famines in Africa, scientists are pointing a finger at pollution from industrial nations as one of the possible causes.
A row over genetically modified food is threatening to derail efforts to help the 12 million people across southern Africa who are facing a critical food shortage.
The U.N. Security Council tightened its 10-year-old arms embargo on Somalia on Monday, saying the flow of weapons was undermining efforts to stabilize the deeply splintered northeastern African nation.
The Environmental Health Project's library latest Hygiene Bulletin contains information on hygiene education in Ghana, diarrheal disease outbreaks in Afghanistan and Uganda, and an update to the online hygiene library.
Of the 21 million deaths from AIDS to date, three quarters were people living in sub-Saharan Africa. AIDS in Africa is fuelled by poverty, and it is causing a humanitarian and economic crisis in which children orphaned by the disease are growing up without parents, schooling or adequate food. What should African governments and the international community be doing to tackle this growing catastrophe?
The female condom could reduce the spread of HIV by increasing the prevention options available to sexually active adults. Marketing of the female condom at subsidised prices began in Lusaka, Zambia, in 1997. How effective has this been? Do people know about female condoms and are they likely to use them?
Knowledge about AIDS is dangerously low among rural Ugandan women and girls who have dropped out of school. The 'senga', the father’s sister, used to give sexual advice to young girls, but this tradition is dying out in central Uganda. Could it be revived and adapted to provide information about HIV?
Patterns of risk behaviour and condom use among commercial sex workers (CSWs) have been heavily investigated in recent years. But what is known about the social context of these women's lives? What factors prevent them from having safer sex? Researchers from Population Services International investigate the lives of CSWs in Lusaka, Zambia.
Sudanese author Kola Boof will not give into death threats, and continues to speak out about the "daily event" of enslavement in Sudan. The Islamist Khartoum government denies the existence of slavery in Sudan. The highly controversial feminist author further has caused rage among her fellow Muslim Sudanese lashing out against "manmade religions," and now lives in American exile.
The Uganda Artists Asociation organizes weekly art meetings every Thursday from 4-8pm: it's a forum for artists and art lovers, making connections, and supporting networks.
This sourcebook is for all who work with others on participatory learning and change. It provides ideas and options for facilitators, trainers, teachers and presenters, and anyone who organizes and manages workshops, courses, classes and other events for sharing and learning.
AIDS has ravaged Africa. South of the Sahara, the epidemic is catastrophic. Every day seventeen hundred South Africans contract HIV, and in Botswana over a third of adults are infected. With the death toll ever increasing, this book explores how governments, charities and families are responding to the next wave of the crisis: millions of orphaned children.
Muckraking has a long, storied tradition, and Palast is evidently proud to be part of it. In this polemical indictment of globalization and political corruption, Palast (a reporter with the BBC and London's Observer) updates the muckraking tradition with some 21st-century targets: the IMF, World Bank and WTO, plus oil treaties, energy concerns and corporate evildoers of all creeds.
At a time when Zimbabwe is going through acts of reverse racism, The Curse of the Ripe Tomato is a brilliant book that mocks fundamentalism, racism and pseudo-intellectuality. It also questions how reconciliation can take place among Zimbabwe's divided people.
It began two years ago: a project to pay tribute to the “jewels” of African literature. In February in Accra, Ghana, the list of “Africa’s 100 Best Books of the 20th Century” was announced, and this month the project reaches its culmination with ceremonies, conferences and exhibitions in Cape Town and Harare, the latter as part of the annual Zimbabwe International Book Fair (ZIBF). The focus of these conferences, using the “100 Best Books” theme, will be The Impact of African Writing on World Literature. It will be interesting to see what emerges.
Women Fighting AIDS in Kenya (WOFAK) is an NGO founded in August 1993 by a group of women, the majority of whom are HIV positive. WOFAK targets women, who are particularly vulnerable to infection, in the following three regions: Homa Bay (South Nyanza), Kayole in the Eastlands of Nairobi, and Nairobi City Center.
Launched in March, 1996, the RESCUER programme was a referral project designed to address the high maternal mortality rate in Uganda. Centred in the Iganga District, it worked in six health units and one referral hopsital to empower Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs). Uganda is one of the least urbanised countries in Africa. Over 80 percent of the population (which totals 20 million people) live in rural areas. Uganda's economy depends mainly on agriculture; women contribute 60-80 percent of the labour. Women's health, therefore, has vital social and economic implications for national development. In this context, it is notable that the maternal mortality rate among Ugandan women is 506/10,000. Sixty-two percent of births are attended by TBAs and relatives.
Information technology (IT) has become a potent force in transforming social, economic, and political life globally. Without its incorporation into the information age, there is little chance for countries or regions to develop. More and more concern is being shown about the impact of those left on the other side of the digital divide - the division between the information "haves" and "have nots." Most women within developing countries are in the deepest part of the divide - further removed from the information age than the men whose poverty they share.
The International Secretariat of OMCT has been informed by a reliable source of the arbitrary dismissal of 12 workers and of the suspension of 9 workers’ representatives by Doba Logistics one of the main contractors for construction work on the Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline Project co-funded by the World Bank. It is reported that the suspensions and dismissals of the workers by Doba Logistics occurred on May 14 2002, after their strike action against the non-application of the collective agreement signed with Doba Logistics in March 2002. This first collective agreement represented a victory for the workers and encouraged workers in other companies to negotiate collective agreements.
I am a supportive reader of the Pambazuka email newsletter....and I enjoy the contents. However, I am always troubled by Pambazuka's editorials which continually interview and quote voices that are not African but of persons in Europe or North America working on Africa. Let's take the case of the recent ACHPR's ruling on the violation of the social and economic rights of the Ongoni people in Nigeria. With the exception of one Lagos-based organization, the rest of your interviews were with "Western" people in London and New York working on Africa. Indeed with such a ruling coming from Africa where in fact African people were affected and actively involved in the campaigns, petition and court case, it is a great disservice to us that no African voices were represented. This appears as a reinforcement of "the West can speak for us", they know better about Africa. I greatly benefit from your newsletter but I'd also wish to see a fair and just representation of our voices as Africans--we are indeed smart and deserve credit!
By the second day of the UN's Bali Preparatory Committee (PrepComm) for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), most delegates from the Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) oscillated between disgust and depression. The "Chairman's Report"--the summary language that all the world governments were trying to agree upon--was little more than a neoliberal anti-environmental agenda. Naty Bernardino of the International South Group Network called it "Rio minus 10." As the governmental delegates were debating the language for the final declaration, an angry UN official, thinking his microphone had been turned off, was overhead lamenting, "What are we going to do about the United States?"
Central Africa is rich in oil and other natural resources but its people are among the world's poorest, say Catholic bishops who have appealed to petroleum companies, governments, international bodies and churches in western countries to help end the inequities linked to the oil industry in the region.
The African Development Bank (ADB) on Wednesday approved debt relief amounting to US $86.7 million for Burkina Faso and US $72.80 million for Mauritania. The bank said this would reduce their annual debt service obligations to the ADB by up to 80 percent, leaving them more resources for poverty reduction.
VITAL SIGNS 2002-2003 provides up-to-the-minute information on global warming, population growth, transgenic crops, HIV/AIDS, international trade, internet use and a whole range of other environmental, developmental, social, political and economic issues.
From 26 August to 4 September the world's leaders will be meeting in Johannesburg for the World Summit on Sustainable Develoment (WSSD), to agree a strategy for curing the world's environmental and social ills, building on the landmark successes of the Rio Earth Summit ten years ago. Or so the publicity would have us believe. In fact, fears are growing that the summit will be seized as an opportunity to further push the corporate-led globalisation agenda, with genuine environmental and social concerns being sidelined as governments push their own vested interests and those of the rash of corporations and corporate lobby groups attending the summit.
Tanzania's land laws and ownership rights will have to be reformed if the country is to succeed in encouraging investment in agriculture, the presidents of the World Bank and Tanzania agreed last week.
Despite playing host to this country's multi-billion-dollar oil industry, the communities of the Niger Delta enjoy none of the luxuries the wealth could provide. In Gbaramatu, a cluster of thatch-roofed fishing villages in the polluted swamps of Ijawland, they often ask why God has cursed them with the black slime that coats their rivers.
President Ange-Felix Patasse of the Central African Republic has issued a plea for help from the international community in the wake of a financial scandal which has virtually bankrupted the impoverished nation. In making his plea at a meeting with the diplomatic corps last Monday, Patasse, in power since 1993, pledged to stop the corruption.
The International Secretariat of the OMCT requests you to write to the authorities of Sudan voicing concern about the arbitrary arrest and detention of 11 leaders from the Four tribe by security forces in Zalingei, Western Darfour, on 11 July.
The Digital Freedom Network is looking for experienced writers throughout the world to write articles on a volunteer basis about local human rights issues. The articles are usually 500-1500 words in length and will be published on the organization's Web site, www.dfn.org.
AMANITARE is organizing a Pan-African conference entitled, "African Women's Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights Conference: Prosperity Through Empowerment", that will be held from 4th to 7th February 2003 in Johannesburg, South Africa. With its forward-looking agenda, this conference will provide a rare opportunity to bring together African Women's Health and Rights movement activists with policy makers, researchers, health care providers, youth representatives, and the media from all sub-regions of the African continent - creating a unique forum for debate and creative strategising around Gender and Health in Africa.
The Second South-South Biopiracy Summit is to be hosted by Biowatch South Africa on the 22-23 August in Johannesburg, South Africa, just prior to the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). The aim is to raise awareness, enable information sharing, and build capacity on issues of access and benefit sharing, as well as to facilitate the development of mutual strategies and statements for the WSSD. The Summit will also provide an important opportunity to review the progress on implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), since its adoption in Rio ten years ago.
One of a series of International Policy Research Workshops held over the last eleven years in the UK, East Asia and Africa, the 5th HEARD HIV/AIDS workshop focuses on the need to anticipate the medium and long-term social and economic consequences of HIV/AIDS. Taking place between 28 October and 15 November in Durban, South Africa, we offer participants a unique opportunity over two weeks, to exchange ideas, review their experiences with strategies and tactics, and identify interventions appropriate to their local situation.
Family Health International's Female Condom Information Dissemination Project provides scientific, objective, and unbiased information on programmatic implications of the female condom. Our research and dissemination focus on sub-Saharan Africa. The Project produces and disseminates research briefs, via listservs, target mailings, conference presentations at selected conferences, and the Internet.
A group of young people who have been active in the WSIS process and with organizations involved in youth, ICTs, sustainable development, and human rights have formed a Youth Arm of the Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) campaign. We invite those interested in working with CRIS youth to join our mailing list.
With the number of civilians in flight from Liberia's war surging at 200,000, refugees reaching safety in neighboring Guinea speak of worsening atrocities by President Charles Taylor's forces -- looting, raping, burning and killing trapped villagers.
A Liberian conservationist, Silas Siakor, says the forests in the country risk future disaster if nothing is done to curb "indiscriminate" tapping.
Tanzania has expelled another group of 400 Ugandan illegal migrants who have now pitched camp at the Kamwema border post in western Mbarara district.
Tanzania's authorities insist that they need a new presidential jet despite reports that the World Bank has demanded an explanation.
The repatriation of Sierra Leonean refugees from Liberia by sea - currently the only safe way to move them - started last Friday and is expected to continue with a weekly load of 600 persons, the office of the UN High Commission for Refugees reports. Some 4,500 refugees had registered to return home, UNHCR said.
The African folklore tradition is being revived in Swaziland to communicate difficult contemporary problems like AIDS and child abuse. "These stories are not Swaziland-specific, and we believe they would be welcome and useful in other African nations," UN children's agency UNICEF representative, Alan Brody, told IRIN.
For the next two weeks from 22 July - 8 August the feature article on the Development Gateway's Population and Reproductive Health Portal will be entitled "Working Together to Improve Refugee Reproductive Health". The article features the programmes and activities of the Reproductive Health for Refugees Consortium, founded in 1995 to pool expertise and increase commitment and funding for reproductive health programmes for displaced populations globally.
The Shari'ah Islamic code is affecting non-Muslims in Nigeria. Those affected in recent times are 11 nurses. The 11 women are facing disciplinary action for their refusal to wear the Islamic prescribed uniform of veil and trousers, for nurses at the Federal Medical Centre, Azare, Bauchi State.
Children are said to be dying at their school desks in Zimbabwe as a "fatal cocktail" of Aids and food shortages sweeps the country.
The United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, said more than 440,000 people in the southern African country of Lesotho are at risk of starving, including about 62,000 children under age five. UNICEF has said Lesotho's problem is compounded by poverty and a high level of HIV/AIDS.
The harbour at Walvis Bay is experiencing its worst oil pollution in about five years. Fish meal factories have been pumping fish oil into the harbour since late last week, which has resulted in a huge oil slick which has spread into the ecologically sensitive lagoon area.
Seemingly oblivious to the large group of crocodiles resting on a nearby sandbank, four rare black storks sun themselves in South Africa's Kruger National Park. But the real danger to these birds is not the teeth of the crocodiles, but the teeth of chainsaws thousands of miles to the north, where old growth forests are being mowed down.
The African Conservation Foundation is dedicated to supporting and linking African conservation initiatives, groups and NGOs, with the aim of strengthening their capacity, building partnerships and promoting effective communication and co-ordination of conservation efforts. Their goal is to help conserve the wildlife and flora of Africa through capacity-building, training and education.
Zimbabwe's refusal to respect Article 19 of the Declaration of Human Rights is, once again, in the news. This alert from the Global Internet Liberty Campaign (GILC) notes the ramifications of international media freedom violations for journalists publishing online.
groundWork, a local environmental NGO, is joining forces with international NGOs - such as Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, CorpWatch, Third World Network, Corporate Europe Observatory and the Goldman Foundation - as well as local NGO’s and community based organisations to host a variety of exciting events during the week prior to the WSSD. These activities will form part of a Corporate Accountability Week, which will take place from the 19th - 23rd August in Sandton.
The Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) on Sunday said it would encourage all teachers countrywide to leave their schools if the Ministry of Education Sport and Culture, together with the Public Service Commission, failed to take concrete and visible steps to protect their lives and properties.
The NGO Environmental Rights Action (ERA) has called on the Federal Government to withdraw soldiers deployed to guard oil flow stations in the Niger Delta and seek dialogue with aggrieved communities. ERA, in a statement by its programme director, Mr. Godwin Ojo said oil companies should halt their reckless environmental practices, which were at the root of the problems facing the environment and people of the Niger Delta.
In December last year Jane Kayomberera did a course on fruit preservation, later joining hands with Edith Munube to start a local women's group called the Entebbe Cottage Industry. This year, the women reaped their first harvest and paid school fees for the first term.
The CID is investigating the possibility that sh48,293,700 was paid by the National Insurance Corporation (NIC) to a ‘ghost’ insurance agent who allegedly handled the presidential jet insurance.
Corrupt practices in the private sector are on the increase, Institute of Southern African Development (ISAD) president Lewis Mosho has observed. Mosho said ISAD has identified that various forms of corruption exist in private sector firms and professional associations in their business dealings among themselves and between them and government institutions.
Corruption in the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA)- where over four percent of revenue is lost to corrupt staff every year - is motivated by greed not poor pay, deputy Commissioner General Justin Zake says.
The fraud and corruption trial of former African National Congress chief whip Tony Yengeni and businessman Michael Woerfel is to get underway after the Pretoria High Court on Wednesday declined to intervene. Transvaal Judge President Bernard Ngoepe turned down an application by the pair to review the Commercial Crimes Court's dismissal of their objections to the charge sheet.
Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are expected to meet their obligations under a new peace deal within 90 days after their presidents sign the accord, an official in Kigali said Tuesday, as Rwandan rebels gave a cautious welcome to the pact. The deal, which adds little to previous pledges, was announced in Pretoria, South Africa, on Monday, but no time frame was then released for the arduous task of flushing out and regrouping Rwandan rebels who are based in the eastern DRC or for Rwanda to then pull out its 20 000 troops from the country.
At least 12 people have been killed, and more than 35 injured, in fighting between rival warlords in Medina, a residential area of the Somali capital, Mogadishu. Witnesses say there was indiscriminate shelling of houses and many of those who died were civilians.
Robert Sebufirira, editor-in-chief of the privately-owned weekly "Umuseso", and two of the newspaper's reporters, Elly MacDowell Kalisa and Godfrey Munyaneza, were arrested and jailed in Kigali on 17 and 18 July after witnessing an incident of police brutality.
A paralysed Kenyan journalist is seeking compensation from the Kenyan authorities following an incident in 1991 when police threw him out of a fourth-floor window, the media watchdog Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF) reported. Wallace Gichere, the-then chief photographer of the government-owned 'Kenya Times', was beaten and thrown out of the window by a group of 15 Special Branch members who broke into his Nairobi flat to arrest him, RSF official Jared Obuya told IRIN on Wednesday.
The Nigerian parliament, the National Assembly, has been called upon to promote transparency and accountability in the country by urgently passing the Freedom of Information Bill currently before it. The call formed part of the resolutions of a recent workshop on 'Contentious Issues in the Review of the 1999 Constitution' organised in Abuja by the Citizens' Forum for Constitutional Reform (CFCR), a network of civil society organisations.
The matter in which Daily News editor Geoff Nyarota and reporter, Lloyd Mudiwa are being charged with publishing falsehoods has been adjourned while the magistrate's court decide on an application by the defense lawyer for the matter to be heard in the Supreme Court. Mudiwa and Nyarota's lawyer, Chris Andersen argued on Monday 22 July, that the trial should be heard in the Supreme Court as it dealt with constitutional matters such as freedom of expression and protection of the law.
The Media Monitoring Project deplores the flagrant disregard for the due process of the law demonstrated by The Herald, which convicted opposition MDC MP Learnmore Jongwe of murdering his wife before any trial by a court in its editorial comment on Tuesday, July 23rd.
The killing of Rutendo Muusha-Jongwe was a terrible act of domestic violence that cannot be condoned. But in The Herald’s efforts to link this tragic incident to political violence and the silence of Western nations, the newspaper demonstrated its contempt for the proper administration of justice by usurping the work of the court in declaring that Rutendo had been murdered.
The paper declared:
“His (Jongwe’s) butchering of a defenceless woman is quite telling of the MDC’s disposition towards human rights…
“Unfortunately, violence begets violence and the chilling murder of Rutendo has shown how this violence is now being directed against its own innocent women.”
In this grossly unethical attempt to manipulate a personal tragedy for political gain, the paper ignored the regulations relating to the administration of justice and the fundamental constitutional right that every individual is entitled to a fair trial. For this reason any public comment likely to prejudice this right is forbidden and would constitute contempt of the court charged with conducting the trial.
The emotional nature of The Herald’s editorial and its repeated use of the word “murder” evidently ignores this basic rule and amounts to an unacceptable conviction by the media.
It was not the only paper to commit this basic offence: The Sunday Mirror carried a picture of Rutendo on its front page under the heading “Brutally Murdered” and compounded this error in the first sentence of its news story about the incident: “MDC Member of Parliament for Kuwadzana Judah Learnmore Jongwe who brutally murdered his wife is now facing murder charges.”
The reporter’s unequivocal statement, that the MP had murdered his wife, clearly pre-empts any court verdict on the matter and similarly constitutes an erosion of the right to a fair trial.
These are examples of unethical journalism at its worst and MMPZ expects justice to be dispensed accordingly.
It is not the first time such offences have been committed by Zimbabwe’s media and even public figures.
MMPZ believes that if Zimbabwe is to avoid becoming a country governed by the law of the jungle, it is the duty of the media and those in authority to bring an end to this gross affront to the administration of justice.
Military helicopters hovered over the capital and police in riot gear patrolled the streets on Tuesday, as Zimbabwean authorities tried to stave off anti-government protests ahead of the opening of parliament.
Although scores of countries took steps towards democracy during the 1980s and 1990s, progress in many is stalled and some are slipping back to authoritarian rule, putting human development at risk, according to UNDP report, "Deepening democracy in a fragmented world."