Zimbabwe

2010

  
Presidents Mugabe and Zuma at this month's SADC summit. (EPA)

ANC plans taint Southern Africa’s press freedom leader

As heads of state gathered last week at the summit of the Southern African Development Community, or SADC, in Namibia, their discussions were dominated by the progress of Zimbabwe’s precarious power-sharing political agreement, which includes pledges to address a repressive media environment. Leading the mediation in the Zimbabwean crisis has been neighboring South Africa, which…

Read More ›

Cano winner Lydia Cacho signed a letter protesting the prize. (CPJ)

Cano laureates say no to UNESCO Obiang prize

Each year, UNESCO honors a courageous international journalist with the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, named in honor of the Colombian editor murdered in 1986 by the Medellín Cartel. The prize is chosen by an independent jury and over the years I’ve attended several moving ceremonies in which some of the most daring journalists…

Read More ›

Armed riot police and security officers guard the entrance to The Daily News after it was shut down in 2003. It may soon reopen. (AP)

In Zimbabwe, Daily News is on the way back

Zimbabwe’s beleaguered independent media won a major victory when an official commission granted publishing licenses to four daily newspapers, including The Daily News, the nation’s leading paper before it was outlawed seven years ago. The news was greeted with cheers from independent journalists, who have endured years of repression, arrest, and violence at the hands of Zimbabwe’s…

Read More ›

Monitor reporter Angelo Izama, right, went through the courts to gain access to government documents and was denied. (Monitor)

Freedom of information laws struggle to take hold in Africa

In Uganda, a ruling this week in a landmark case of two journalists seeking to compel their government’s disclosure of multinationals oil deals highlighted the challenges to public transparency just before media leaders, press freedom advocates, officials, and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter gather in Ghana next week at the African Regional Conference on the Right…

Read More ›

2010