Gay Today: World

Zimbabwe: Government Blaming
Woes on Homosexuals

Spins Conspiracy Theory
to Account for Negative Press

President Mugabe's
Homophobic Regime Bridles at Critics

Compiled By GayToday

President Mugabe

Harare, Zimbabwe—Here in a nation at war with its neighbor, The Democratic Republic of Congo, and where a President, Robert Mugabe, has gained a measure of oddball fame for his vitriolic outbursts of homophobic slander, there is now some genuine concern for the welfare of gay and lesbian Zimbabweans and for the preservation of a free press.

President Mugabe, known on planet Earth as its most homophobic head of state, is using homophobia as a ready-made excuse to smear journalistic political opponents. Having called homosexuals "lower than pigs and worse than dogs," this country's leader is now through David Martin, his spokesperson, blaming homosexuals for the drubbing his nation has recently been taking in the Western Press.

Zimbabwean gay activists, who operate in an atmosphere of fear and intimidation, are under severe stress, having tried heroically to deflect such high-level criticism. The activists' methods have included a brave picket line of twelve.

Martin, acting as the government's voice, charged conspiratorially that "powerful political offices in the West" and "homosexual foreign correspondents" have fed their readers lies about Zimbabwe, reportedly because of President Mugabe's widely publicized views damning their homosexual orientation.

Mugabe's forces seem poised to bring an end to press freedoms in Zimbabwe. A copy of The Standard, a major Zimbabwean newspaper famed for having uncovered high-level abuses of public funds, was burned Friday by a group of approximately 150 angry youths wearing Zanu-PF tee shirts and threatening to follow suit with the newspaper's entire office if any articles critical of the government were to appear in the following day's issue.

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Government-owned newspapers, on the other hand, have been granted a free hand to praise political benefactors who pay their editors' salaries. Even so, among journalists working on these papers, there remains a substantial number expressing grave concern as they witness the speedy burials of their democratic press freedoms. Members of The Zimbabwe Union of Journalists insist that a battle to save Zimbabwean journalism's soul is fully in progress.

Spokesperson Martin, while blaming homosexuals for anti-government reporting, is said to have waxed furious about their "fat bum, ignoramus, obese, lunatic lies."

Mugabe's Vice-president, Simon Muzenda, has been implicated in bribery scandals by newspapers that have stood outside his government's control. Zimbabwe's Ministry of Information, however, is currently planning full-scale censorship that conveniently hides from all scrutiny those government officials whose corrupt rule may no longer remain a target for investigative critics.