ZIMBABWE NEWSPAPER CONFISCATED!

Zanu PF thuggery in SA.

author/source:Zimbabwean.

"This sort of intolerance and violent behaviour characterises Zanu PF from the top down"
Savious KwinikaJohannesburg - About 150 copies of The Zimbabwean were confiscated and torn to pieces by a bearded man, identified as Oliver Chiruka, in an incident in Braamfontein last Friday witnessed by several people. Chiruka, the Zanu PF provincial secretary for youth for Manicaland, grabbed the newspapers from a vendor in full view of other street vendors and passengers boarding buses from Johannesburg to Harare at the terminus on the corner of Wolmarans and Harrison Streets for the Christmas holiday. He accused readers of The Zimbabwean of teaming up in the diaspora to work with the Zimbabwean government's enemies, such as the country's main opposition MDC and the British government, to impose "illegal economic sanctions" on Zimbabwe. "Whoever brings copies of The Zimbabwean here will never ever board the bus to Harare. I am not going to allow British-sponsored newspapers to be read here at the terminus. You forget that Zanu PF gave every Zimbabwean free land, offered free education, free health and free food during times of drought, so why are you betraying your own country when you are abroad? " fumed the man, himself an economic migrant from Mugabe's disastrous economic policies.

Chiruka even boasted that he had been given farming land measuring 495 hectares, free farming inputs, a gun and draught power for tillage by the ruling party. "Why is he then down here doing menial work as a loader for a bus company (name supplied)?" queried an observer. After confiscating the newspapers at the Tudor Hotel bus terminus, Chiruka went to a nearby fast food outlet where he seized another 48 copies.

A student from the university of Wits condemned the thuggish behaviour in the strongest terms. "Zanu PF's foolishness and barbarity amuses me. Even when people are in a foreign land, the party always wants to bully, dictate, and impose its own views upon ours. Right now we are being denied the right to read the newspaper of our choice. It is time we joined hands to deal ruthlessly with such misguided people," he said. The publisher of The Zimbabwean, Wilf Mbanga, said the incident did not surprise him, given the intolerance of alternative viewpoints evidenced by the party at the highest level. "This incident is a microcosm of what is wrong with Zimbabwe today. This sort of intolerance and violent behaviour characterises Zanu PF from the top down and is at the root of the Zimbabwean tragedy," said Mbanga.