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afrol News, 26 April - The Zimbabwean Minister of State for Information and Publicity in the President's Office, Jonathan Moyo and The Herald newspaper were on Tuesday (24 April 2001) given three days to retract a defamatory story that the paper carried by lawyers representing Sandra Nyaira, The Daily News political reporter, or jointly face a Z$ 250,000 defamation lawsuit, The Daily News reported today. Nyaira's legal action follows a story published by the government newspaper, The Herald, last week in which Moyo castigated Nyaira for reporting that Vice President Joseph Msika had literally begged veteran nationalist and freedom fighter Edgar Tekere to rejoin the ruling party Zanu PF. Moyo said the report was outrageous and that because of the story, The Daily News was now beyond redemption as it had lost all capacity to tell the truth. In a letter to Moyo, Nyaira's lawyer, Oscar Ziweni of Ziweni and Company said that the article was meant to demean and injure Nyaira. "In the circumstances, because your publication under reference was clearly actuated by malice and was deliberately meant to demean and injure our client's reputation as a journalist, we are instructed to demand a retraction of your offending article within three days from the date of this demand, to avert litigation, which is impending for defamatory damages against yourself," reads the letter. In an interview with The Daily News, Ziweni, said Nyaira has prospects of success in the matter against Moyo and The Herald because her article was legitimised and she was vindicated in consequence when, Tekere, the former Secretary-General of Zanu PF, issued a statement which intimated that Moyo's utterances in The Herald were false. - In the absence of an unequivocal retraction and apology as demanded we shall proceed with litigation without further notice to yourself and our client shall be claiming defamatory damages in the sum of Z$ 250,000 (US$ 5,000) against yourself co-jointly with The Herald, Ziweni said. Ziweni said Nyaira's claims for damages in the absence of a retraction would be aggravated by the fact that Moyo threatened Nyaira with unspecified harm when he said: "You ain't seen nothing yet." - The retraction has to be published in The Herald and has to unequivocally rebut all allegations, indirect references, imputations and insinuations contained in the offending article, said Ziweni. He said Moyo's article was defamatory in that it suggested to members of the public that Nyaira was dishonest, corrupt, journalistically incompetent and unsuitable to work as a political reporter for The Daily News. - You further wrongfully refer to our client as a fumbling political reporter in circumstances where there was no good cause, thereby implying that she is degenerate and inefficient in the execution of her professional duties, said Ziweni. He said Nyaira is being shunned and exposed to hatred, ridicule and contempt by members of the public who now view her in the light of Moyo's attacks. In a separate letter to Pikirayi Deketeke, the Editor of The Herald, Nyaira's lawyer Oscar Ziweni said the paper was liable for publishing a false and defamatory story. He said the paper should have verified the story with both Nyaira and Tekere before publishing it.
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