Gunmen Raid Newspaper Editor’s Home After "Rest In Peace" Error In Mnangagwa Advert
Armed men claiming to be law and order police raided the home of Daily News editor Guthrie Munyuki early Friday morning.
This happened after its sister publication, The Financial Gazette made a mistake in an advertisement that suggested President Emmerson Mnangagwa had died.
Citing a Daily News executive briefed on the raid, ZimLive reported that Munyuki was not home at the time but the gunmen temporarily took his wife and children’s phones and looked through their messages.
The executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said a group of men in two vehicles, a Toyota Fortuner and a Toyota Hilux, went to Munyuki’s house asking for him. Said the executive:
Guthrie’s brother also lives in the same neighbourhood in Westgate and he too was woken up by nearly a dozen men driving in a Toyota Fortuner and a Toyota Hilux. They demanded his whereabouts.
Lawyer Alex Muchadehama planned to meet with the police on Friday to get more information about the situation.
The Financial Gazette had published an advertisement on Thursday from the Zimbabwe Defence Forces congratulating Mnangagwa on his birthday, but it mistakenly ended with, “May his soul rest in eternal peace.”
On Friday, the Daily News apologised, saying the mistake was due to a production error. Said the publication:
The Financial Gazette, published a birthday congratulatory message to President Emmerson Mnangagwa by the Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) with a serious error in its edition of this week.
At the end of the ZDF birthday message, and through lapses in the production process, the newspaper ended up carrying mortifyingly wrong words instead of saying ‘MAKOROKOTO, AMHLOPE, CONGRATULATIONS!’
We apologise profusely to President Mnangagwa, his family, his office, the government and to the ZDF for the anguish and inconvenience that this inadvertent mistake caused.
We have taken action to strengthen our internal systems to ensure that this kind of error never occurs again.
Mistakes in advertisements happen often in Zimbabwean newspapers. This is because the advertising staff usually use old templates for regular clients, making only small changes to the text.
Unfortunately, this error occurred at a very bad time for the publication as it happened just days after a military helicopter crashed while trying to take off to pick up President Mnangagwa from Bikita.
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