Mugabe's Mouthpiece muzzled

13 May 2008 | 17:04 BST

By Sylvie Barak

Hacking without the machete

AFRICAN DICTATOR Robert Mugabe is no stranger to causing hostility and frustration, but now it seems the shoe is temporarily on the other foot, as the website run by the newspaper known by Zimbabweans as "Mugabe’s mouthpiece" was hijacked on Saturday.

A computer hacker calling himself 'r4b00f' attacked the state-owned Herald newspaper, which has been down since Saturday. The Herald, apparently still unable to undo the hack, has even started redirecting readers to another State-owned website, the Sunday Mail.

According to Reuters, all headlines on the Herald had been changed by the hacker to read 'Gukurahundi', the word which refers to the government-led massacres that took place in Zimbabwe in the early 1980s after independence was declared.

The bloody government-endorsed slaughters took the lives of some 20,000 people in western Zimbabwe according to human rights groups. Mugabe was Prime Minister at the time.

The Herald's IT Manager, Thomson Ndovi, admitted to Reuters that the propaganda news site had been hacked, but reassured all those who were missing government lies that "we should be up and running by tomorrow".

The hack occurred alongside the declaration by opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, that he would contest a run-off presidential vote against Mugabe, despite the fact that he probably won the first round hands down.

Obviously the cyber opposition to Mugabe is hoping that, this time around, Tsvangirai can really hack it. µ

L'Inq
Reuters

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