Prominent lawyer and former Harare mayor Muchadeyi Masunda has described the arrest of Alpha Media Holdings (AMH) senior journalist as a sad and disturbing development Masunda (MM), who is also the AMH Editorial Advisory Board chairperson, made the remarks on the platformIn Conversation with Trevorhosted by AMH chairpersonTrevor Ncube (TN) He said journalists had an important role to play in a democracy and must be left to do their work without interference Below are excerpts from the interview TN: Greetings, welcome to In Conversation with Trevor, brought to you by Heart and Soul Broadcasting Services Today I’m in conversation with Muchadeyi Ashton Masunda, an attorney and international commercial and sports arbitrator Welcome to In Conversation MM:I’m delighted that at long last I’m having a physical face-to-face interview with you, and I hope you’re not going to subject me to gratuitous abuse as you have been warned to do since the last I don’t know how many years that I have known you TN: We meet at a time, when just this morning, I mean, our colleague, Blessed Mhlanga, was arrested, rather he handed himself over to the police after the police had been making some noises about wanting to interview him What’s your reaction to this kind of treatment of journalists MM:It’s a very sad and disturbing development, you know, because it strikes at the very root of an important facet of any democratic state, which is freedom of expression And I think it’s, I don’t know, you know, what it is that has actually happened, maybe it’s a bit sub-judice for anyone to comment at this stage, but one hopes that justice will prevail And, but one thing that we must never ever lose sight of is that there are four pillars of good governance and democracy And the proverbial fourth estate constitutes one of those four pillars And the journalists have a particularly important and pivotal role to play in society because they keep a check on the other three pillars of governance and democracy, namely the executive that comes out of the legislature, the legislature itself, and the judiciary And the fourth estate is the only one of those four pillars that has from time immemorial been entrusted with that very important role Source: The Standard Zimbabwe All Zim News is a central hub for all things Zimbabwean, curating news from across the country so no story is missed Alongside aggregation, our team of nationwide reporters provides real-time, on-the-ground coverage Stay informed and connected — reach us at admin@allzimnews.com. Source: Thestandard
