SW Radio Africa (London)
Violet Gonda
10 October 2008
There was an uproar from the journalism fraternity when some of them were barred from covering a scheduled press conference at Morgan Tsvangirai's home on Wednesday, by his security guards.
The journalists were told those without accreditation would not be allowed to enter the MDC President's Strathaven home because they had no accreditation.
One of the journalists said: "It was surprising to see the MDC implementing ZANU PF's repressive laws."
The MDC information department admitted that the incident had happened but said this was a "case of misunderstanding and would not happen again." An official said the security guards were merely doing their job and they did not know the history behind the controversial issue of accreditation, which has been manipulated by the Mugabe regime over the years.
On Friday one of the ZANU PF chief negotiators, Patrick Chinamasa, showed that the regime has not changed its attitude about the press in any way. According to the state controlled Herald newspaper Chinamasa "called for a paradigm shift by all the three parties and wondered why pirate radio stations like Studio 7, Voice of America and (SW) Radio Africa were still operating as MDC-T mouthpieces 24 days after the signing of the agreement which called for their shutdown."
Chinamasa's utterances have raised questions from some observers about why the MDC, a party that has been a victim of Zanu PF's repressive media laws, would sign an agreement that contained anything that compromised the hope of a free media.
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