Caesar Zvayi, the former political editor of the state-run Herald newspaper who quit last month (read) to take up a job as a lecturer at the University of Botswana was served with a deportation order and driven to the Plumtree border post where he was deported, colleagues said.

Munyaradzi Huni, the political editor of the Herald’s sister paper, the Sunday Mail, said by telephone from Harare that Zvayi had been declared a prohibited immigrant and thrown out of Zimbabwe’s western neighbour.

“They were taking him to the border. He should be home soon, but I don’t have much detail about his movements at this time,” said Huni.

Just last week, Zvayi was defiant when a campaign was started by some Zimbabwean groups for him to be deported.

“I make no apologies for supporting Zanu PF because I subscribe to its Pan African values," Zvayi said. “I will never support the (Movement for Democratic Change) MDC as currently constituted because to me it is a counter-revolutionary Trojan horse that is working with outsiders to subvert the logical conclusion of the Zimbabwean revolution.”

He added: “Being at UB does not mean I stop being a Zimbabwean, supporting Zanu PF has no bearing on my qualifications as a journalist or competence as a media practitioner. The maliciousness and childishness of this campaign (to have him deported) is testimony to the fickleness of the people behind it who apparently believe universities employ people on political grounds. They need only look at the University of Zimbabwe today, whose Chancellor is President Mugabe, but which employs vocal MDC office holders, sympathizers and activists like Dr. Lovemore Madhuku, Dr. John Makumbe, and Eliphas Mukonoweshuro, among others.”

Botswana has been Zimbabwe’s leading regional critic after President Robert Mugabe won a controversial sixth term on June 27 in an election widely condemned as a farce. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai boycotted the poll, accusing Mugabe of using a campaign of violence to stay in power.

Just last week, Botswana threatened to boycott an August 16 Southern African Development Community (SADC) heads of state summit in South Africa if President Mugabe attends.

Zvayi’s deportation will likely add to the tensions which have built up over the years with Zimbabwe accusing Botswana of ill-treating its citizens through a customary law practise of publicly flogging petty criminals, including illegal immigrants.

In 2004, Zimbabwe’s former information minister Jonathan Moyo launched a protest at the practise with his Botswana counterpart, Boyce Sebetela. Moyo said flogging was “humiliating”, a charge denied by the Botswana government.

And on Friday, Moyo – now an independent legislator – warned Botswana that the move to deport Zvayi could cause untold damage to relations between the two countries.

Moyo said: “When a country has more goats than people, it suffers a serious leadership deficiency as is happening in Botswana where a primitive and intolerant military junta is masquerading as a democracy.

“They cannot hide the obvious fact that their unlawful deportation of Zvayi who was in fact in that country legally with a work permit, not as a journalist but as a college lecturer, has been done simply to please George Bush’s criminal administration that put Zvayi on its illegal sanctions list against Zimbabwe.

“The Botswana government apparently has a ‘monkey-see, monkey-do’ approach, I suppose because what Uncle Sam does Uncle Tom follows. In the end, Botswana will pay a heavy regional price for its shocking treachery including its xenophobic treatment of Zimbabweans in general.”

As political editor of the Herald, Zvayi "whipped up the terror campaign before and during the elections", according to an entry against his name on the EU sanctions list.

But Moyo says Botswana, by targeting Zvayi so soon after the EU and US sanctions, is clearly doing someone else's bidding.

He blasted: "Somebody should tell the reckless ruling elite in Botswana not to be too excited about selling the Kalahari desert which makes up most of their sorry country to the Yankees, who have turned it into a hopeless military base."

Zvayi is not the first academic to be kicked out of Botswana in recent years. In 2005, an Australian professor who had lived in the country for 15 years was declared a prohibited immigrant.

The Botswana government declared that Professor Kenneth Good “threatened national security”. The decision came days before Professor Good was scheduled to deliver a paper critical of the presidential succession in Botswana.

In addition, the paper written by Professor Good and a colleague was widely critical of how presidential authority is exercised, in essence finding that there were too few checks and balances in the decision-making process.

It was not immediately possible to get comment from the Botswana government on Friday.
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