Standard editor gets death threat

By Violet Gonda
31 January 2007

An envelope addressed to the acting editor of The Standard newspaper Bill Saidi was left on his desk on Wednesday. Inside he found a bullet with an attached note that said “Watch your step.”

Saidi told SW Radio Africa there was also a copy of a cartoon that appeared in the Standard last week showing baboons laughing at a soldier’s payslip and a copy of an editorial written by the Zimbabwe Independent last year. The editorial had been critical of the case in which the government had charged certain people of plotting to kill Robert Mugabe.

Saidi said it is clear this was a threat meant to intimidate the independent newspaper. He said the envelope had initially been delivered to the paper’s advertising section but was then brought to his desk as it was addressed to the editor.

His initial reaction was that somebody was playing a prank but when he saw the note he saw that someone was seriously trying to intimidate the private newspapers. Saidi believes the threat came from people who think the Zimbabwe Independent and Standard newspapers are too critical and must be silenced.

But he also believed that if they were serious they wouldn’t have given them any warning. “At the Daily News when they bombed our printing press they didn’t give us any warning. They just shot the thing (printing press) into pieces. There was no warning.”

After speaking to us both Bill Saidi and the newspaper’s CEO Raphael Khumalo were on their way to the police station – with the bullet.