United Kingdom based newspaper The Zimbabwean’ reports that 150 copies of its paper were confiscated and torn to pieces by the Zanu PF Provincial Secretary for youth in Manicaland, Oliver Chiruka. The incident took place in Braamfontein, South Africa last Friday. The bearded Chiruka allegedly 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.
The paper says Chiruka accused readers of The Zimbabwean of teaming up in the diaspora to work with the Zimbabwean government's enemies. He threatened those at the terminus that anyone carrying copies of the paper will never board the bus to Harare. Chiruka declared that he would not allow British-sponsored newspapers to be read at the terminus.
He went into a political lecture over how Zanu PF supposedly gave every Zimbabwean free land, offered free education, free health and free food during times of drought, and questioned why they were betraying their own country when they were abroad? In the story for the Zimbabwean, journalist Savious Kwinika also reports that the Zanu PF man boasted about having been given farming land measuring 495 hectares, free farming inputs, a gun and draught power for tillage by the ruling party.
The report also queries why Chiruka himself is doing menial work as a loader for a bus company in South Africa. After confiscating the newspapers at the Tudor Hotel bus terminus, He went to a nearby fast food outlet where he seized another 48 copies. 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. The incident to him was 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," he said.
