By Never Kadungure
The editor of the Zimbabwe Independent newspaper Dumisani Muleya has made it clear that he is not on the run or hiding from the police as suggested in initial reports on the arrest of Sunday Mail editor Edmund Kudzayi.
Police raided Kudzayi’s home and later his offices at Herald House on Thursday morning. It was reported the police had also gone to the offices of the Zimbabwe Independent looking for Muleya. In Bulawayo the home of Chronicle editor Mduduzi Mathuthu was burgled on the same day in the morning.
“I am here in Harare if they are looking for me, they know where to find me. I am free and still going to all the public places I usually frequent where police frequent too,” Muleya is quoted as saying by the Daily News on Sunday.
“I am as free as Mandela was when he was alive. I am not hiding because I have not committed a crime,” he added.
On Saturday Kudzayi appeared in court facing accusations that he was the brains behind the popular anti-government Facebook page, Baba Jukwa. He is facing charges of insurgency, terrorism, banditry, sabotage, subverting a constitutionally elected government.
Recently President Robert Mugabe branded Information Minister Jonathan Moyo a ‘devil incarnate’, accusing him of appointing editors to state-owned newspapers who were sympathetic to the opposition.
Mugabe complained that Zanu PF had been infiltrated by “weevils” (a crop pest) bent on destroying the party from within.
The Zanu PF secretary for administration Didymus Mutasa later urged party youths in Mutare to use gamatox (a lethal pesticide) to deal with the alleged “weevils”.
