Editor fired after anti-state comment

Bornwell Chakaodza, editor of Zimbabwe’s main state-controlled daily newspaper the ‘Herald’, was fired on Thursday after attacking President Robert Mugabe’s government over lawlessness on white-owned farms and in urban townships, news reports said. The board of Zimbabwe Newspapers announced that 45-year-old Chakaodza had been “asked to go on leave, pending redeployment in the near future”. Reports said that although no reasons were given observers said his future was already in serious doubt in early July when he published an editorial condemning the government-backed invasions of white-owned farms by so-called guerrilla war veterans, and the deployment of troops in Harare’s poor townships. Reports said Chakaodza had also had angry exchanges with the then information minister, Chen Chimutengwende, in which the editor refused to allow his newspaper to continue acting as the propaganda organ for Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party.