Two foreign journalists, including one of the BBC’s Africa correspondents, were yesterday ordered to leave Zimbabwe following a government crackdown on the media. Two foreign journalists, including one of the BBC’s Africa correspondents, were yesterday ordered to leave Zimbabwe following a government crackdown on the media.
Joseph Winter, who has also written for the Independent on Sunday, was given 24 hours to pack and leave the country while Mercedes Sayagues, who works for a South African weekly newspaper, was denied re-entry to the country after a business trip.The clampdown comes at a time of increasing repression orchestrated by President Robert Mugabe and his government in the run up to next year’s presidential elections.The expulsions were immediately condemned by the Foreign Correspondents Association of Southern Africa. Its chairman Kurt Hillinger said the orders were “part of a wider campaign by the government of Robert Mugabe to crack down on criticism from the judiciary, the media and the opposition”.He added: “Attempts to silence the media are always an advance step toward greater repression… It heralds a period of accelerating decline in Zimbabwe ahead of next year’s presidential elections.”Mr Winter said yesterday: “The immigration officials said they were giving me 24 hours to leave the country, and when I said I needed time to wind up my affairs, they indicated I could leave on Monday or Tuesday at the latest.”Mr Winter, a correspondent for the BBC’s African Service in Harare for the last four years and who lives there with his wife and family, said he had been invited to the immigration service early yesterday to be told the government had cancelled his work permit.The corporation is contesting the decision, on the grounds that Mr Winter has a valid permit to stay and work.Ms Sayagues was eventually allowed back into Zimbabwe for just 24 hours after she argued that denying her entrance separated her from her nine-year-old daughter.Ms Sayagues, who also has a valid work permit, said: “I am only one of those suffering and that involves a general onslaught on the judiciary and the rural people of Zimbabwe.”Basildon Peta, secretary of the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists, who also writes for the Independent and Independent on Sunday, said: “What the government has done is to confirm the widely-held view that Zimbabwe is now being run by a bunch of tyrants determined to destroy any free voice.”The country’s independent press has been subjected to increasing intimidation. The printing press of the private Zimbabwe Daily News was destroyed by a bomb three weeks ago, a day after self-styled independence war veterans threatened to “ban” it.. Bruce Mack, 28, was driving through thick bush on his family’s farm in the fertile Ixopo area of eastern South Africa when he was ambushed and cold-bloodedly shot in the head. The identity of his murderers is known: they are living on the farm next door.

Bruce Mack, 28, was driving through thick bush on his family’s farm in the fertile Ixopo area of eastern South Africa when he was ambushed and cold-bloodedly shot in the head. The identity of his murderers is known: they are living on the farm next door.
The popular young man died instantly on 11 October 1999, one of an incredible 464 mainly white farmers murdered in thousands of attacks on commercial farms since the end of apartheid in 1994. Six of nine farmers in the Ixopo area have been attacked and two farmers killed in what local farmers believe is a deliberate effort to drive them off the land.Last week the government declared war on attacks that are killing on average one farmer every three days.Farmers’ organisations welcomed the news from safety and security minister Steve Tshwete that four helicopters worth R40 million (just under £3.5m) would be bought to improve police reaction time to farm attacks, and that major operations would be launched, including recruiting farmers and farm workers into reservist structures “on each and every farm”.Especially since it came on the heels of a renewed increase in the attacks. The farmers’ group Agri SA said 12 people had been murdered in 58 assaults last month, up from January last year.Mr Tshwete said he was also appointing a committee of experts to investigate the causes of farm assaults Some are in retaliation for poor treatment of farm workers. But farmers’ groups argue that most assaults on commercial farms arise from the efforts of poor rural people to take over land, racial anger fired by apartheid and growing gun ownership.”Bruce’s murder was cold-blooded and calculated, and it makes me very angry,” says his father, David Mack, 60.

“It was part of a campaign to get rid of farmers.” Mr Mack, who runs a vegetable and game farm amid the rolling hills of the KwaZulu-Natal coast, believes the expectations of land-hungry people were raised by democracy in 1994, and by irresponsible promises made by politicians. Their hopes dashed, people have become angry and impatient, and are taking matters into their own hands.An under-resourced police force that has shrunk from 143,000 in 1995 to 123,000 last year simply cannot cope. The swamped Ixopo police arrested two of Bruce Mack’s killers but botched the case and charges were dropped.Agri SA said South Africa’s 45,000 commercial farmers believed the security forces were “really trying their best” with scarce resources to give protection and combat crime. Relations between farmers and the police were improving, and the government was taking seriously pleas for protection.President Japie Grobler called on farmers and farm workers to join the proposed police reservist and army commando systems to support the security forces in their fight against farm violence.For several years now farmers have been protecting themselves through radio and mobile phone-linked security networks.