The Trillion Dollar Ad Campaign

The Zimbabwean, a newspaper printed in The UK but covering Zimbabwean news, has started a movement. It's called the Trillion Dollar Ad Campaign. They have taken useless Zim dollars (Because of hyperinflation, it's actually cheaper to print on the money than to use it to buy paper!), printed messages on them and distributed them around the streets of South African. The paper hopes South Africans will help their neighboring country.

Photo Credits: The Zimbabwean

To read more about this project, check out their website.

Here's to an new daily evening

The editors of The Financial Gazette, a private weekly paper in Zimbabwe, announced their plans to launch an evening daily paper soon. This event stands as a sign of loosening media restrictions in the country.

The paper, The Daily Evening Gazette, has been in the works for a while, according to the editors. Although a specific start-date has not yet been decided upon, senior positions will begin to be filled next week.

The country currently has only one daily paper, The Herald, which is state-run.

Journalist have been charged

Two of the journalist that were arrested a few weeks ago have been charged. The editor of The Chronicle, Brezhnev Malaba and the author of the story, Nduduzo Tshuma, were charged with defamation.

Zimbabwe Union of Journalists president Matthew Takaona said these charges raised eyebrows because the police had yet to investigate the allegations against their own.

Tshuma wrote a story in February linking the Bulawayo police and the Grain Marketing Board to maize sold on the black market. Neither men have pleaded yet.

Musical Criticism of Mugabe

I found this video accidentally while on Youtube. In today's world, the internet is a powerful weapon for voicing criticisms of governments (or just about anyone you want for that matter...) No longer do we just have to stand outside of city hall protesting. With a click of a mouse, we can create something to been seen globally voicing our concerns. And it doesn't hurt if it has a catchy tune and a few jokes.

2008 elections caught on tape

In 2008, Britain's The Guardian gave a prison guard a hidden camera to take into the prison where he worked. He was able to capture on film how Mugabe's party, ZANU-PF pressured people into voting for Mugabe during the elections. Their story is posted on Youtube here.

Documentary reveals human rights violations

Johann Abrahams has spent the last few months working with prison guards in order to capture the real prisons of Zimbabwe. He got guards who wanted to uncover the abuses to take hidden cameras into prisons. He has compiled the video into a documentary entitled "Hell Hole" that will air Tuesday on South African Broadcasting Corp's "Special Assignment." Some of the prisoners have already died since the filming.

Photo Credits: SABC

Journalists arrested for uncovering scandal

Three journalists were arrested and charged with criminal defamation and breaches of the Criminal Law Act. Why? For doing what most journalists would consider their jobs.

The three men, Brezhnev Malaba, the editor of The Chronicle, Nduduzo Tshuma, a reporter, and Sithembile Ncube, a general manager at Zimpapers, were arrested after printing an article that uncovered corruption at the Grain Marketing Board. The scam, to which officials on the board as well as a few police officers were tied, involved diverting corn supplies away from hungry villagers and onto the black market.

The Bulawayo police claim the paper printed "falsehoods." Mark Bench, the executive director of the World Press Freedom Committee has already begun writing letters to Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai voicing concern over the arrests.

The full story can be found here at the SW RAdio Africa website.