Subject: MISA-Zimbabwe Alert: Paper sued for Z$10 Million

MEDIA ALERT
15 JANUARY 2003

PAPER SUED FOR Z$10 MILLION

Beatrice Moyo, the wife of the Minister of Information and Publicity, has instructed her lawyers to sue The Daily News for $10 million (US$182 000) for damages allegedly caused by an article that appeared in the paper on Monday 13 January 2003. Apart from the suit Mrs. Moyo is demanding that the paper retract the story and apologies.

According to reports broadcasts by the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC), Mrs. Moyo contends that the article headlined "Moyo Beats Up Wife"
is not true but malicious and has caused suffering and damage to her dignity and social standing. ZBC reported on 14 January that Mrs. Moyo had instructed her lawyers Muzangaza, Tomana and Mandaza legal practitioners to sue the paper. John Gambanga the editor of the Daily News was sighted as the first responded.

The contentious article was reproduced by the Daily News from a story that appeared in the South African paper, The Sunday Times. The Sunday Times (12 January) story said that Jonathan Moyo beat up his wife while they were on holiday in South Africa. The paper also said that Moyo went on a shopping spree while in South Africa a move the paper attacked in its editorial comment as hypocrisy on the part of Moyo because millions of his countrymen are faced with starvation in Zimbabwe.

Mrs. Moyo however argues that the story is not true though she agreed in a story that appeared in the Herald (13 January 2003) that there were disturbances among some guests who were in their hotel room on new year's eve, but denies that she called for the police to intervene nor that her husband beat her up.

Mrs. Moyo dismissed the story as the work of "my husband's political enemies now seeking to intrude upon the privacy of our family using half truths, outright falsehoods and innuendos to score political scores with him at my expense,"

Minister Moyo also denied the story and attacked the Sunday Times for what he called its unprofessional conduct in the manner they stalked him. Moyo said that he was not committing any crime in South Africa and did not deserve to be reported on by the paper.

END Rashweat Mukundu
Research and Information Officer
MISA-Zimbabwe
221 Fife Ave
Box HR 8113
Harare
Zimbabwe
Phone: 00 263 4 721 841, 735 441-2
Cell : 00 263 4 011 602 685
E mail: [email protected]