Chenjerai Hove is a Zimbabwean author, poet, essayist, playwright, and human rights activist. He was Stavanger City of Refuge's Guest Writer from 2005-2007 and Miami's from 2010-2011. In his homeland, Hove was editor of the Zimbabwe Publishing House as well as President of Zimbabwe PEN from 1990-2007. He was also a founding member of the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association and on its board of directors. A vocal critic of the regime of Robert Mugabe, Hove was forced to flee Zimbabwe in 2001 and has lived in exile ever since. He is the author of several noteworthy and prize-winning works of fiction, poetry, and essays including the novels Shadows and Bones, which won the Zimbabwe Literary Award and the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. In January 2010, Hove was invited by the Center for Literature and Theater at Miami Dade College to participate in the Miami: City of Refuge writer-in-residence project, part of an international network offering displaced writers a place to live and work in freedom. Homeless Sweet Home: A Memoir of Miami (B&B Press) is a compilation of Hove's essays, poems, and plays written over the course of his nearly two years living and writing in Miami. The book includes pieces reflecting on life and culture in both Miami and Zimbabwe.

City of Asylum Pittsburgh, and their online magazine Sampsonia Way, are among ICORN and Shahrazad - stories for life's good friends and important allies. We are happy to share an excerpt of this piece written by Elizabeth Hoover, where Miami's ICORN Guest Writer Chenjerai Hove and Brian Chikwava discuss President Robert Mugabe’s ongoing repression of speach in Zimbabwe.

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You Must Face the Consequences

The price of committing journalism in Zimbabwe

By Elizabeth Hoover

Just this month, Zimbabwean police launched a manhunt for an editor accused of publishing a false story during the 2008 elections. Are hopes fading for greater press freedom in the country? Two exiled writers discuss President Robert Mugabe's ongoing repression of speech.

In April 2008, New York Times correspondent Barry Bearak was arrested in Harare, Zimbabwe, for the crime of "committing journalism." The Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter had been covering the elections, but, when the results weren't what President Robert Mugabe expected, the secret police started rounding up reporters.

Mugabe has kept his grip on power since 1980 with vote-rigging and intimidation. However, in 2008, he found himself in a run-off with opposition candidate. In response, Mugabe deployed militias to beat suspected opposition supporters, kill resisters, and arrest journalists. "Elections can be held in Zimbabwe, as long as Mugabe wins," Bearak explained to Sampsonia Way via e-mail.

Press freedom has been brutally suppressed since 2002, when legislations destroyed the independent newspapers and gave Mugabe control over the media. Knowing how the secret police monitors journalists, Bearak had been careful, but the demands of filing stories daily forced him to work in the open. "Necessity numbed my own caution," he wrote in the New York Times in 2008.

He would spend 72 hours in jail, swatting cockroaches, trying to keep warm, and getting an "insider's perspective" on the archaic and arbitrary justice system. "Mugabe likes to maintain this veneer of legality; the courts can apply the law unless he decides otherwise," Bearak said via e-mail. He secured his freedom with the aid of human rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa, who has survived multiple beatings by police. According to Bearak, police officer told Mtetwa they wanted her to experience the brutality she protested.

It turned out "journalism" was no longer a crime. "The magistrate considered the charges a bit laughable," Bearak said. After he was released, he fled across the border, but has been unable to return since new charges against him have been concocted. Because of this, he preferred not to comment on the current situation inside the country.

"This exclusion from Zimbabwe is very painful for me," he said. "I am unable to report on a story that I considered then, and continue to consider now, the most compelling in the region."

The elections eventually resulted in a power-sharing deal with Mugabe as president and Tsvangirai as prime minster. Under that agreement, the government pledged media reforms and independent newspapers have resumed publishing. However, Reporters without Borders calls the situation "fragile." After their publications hit the stands, editors and journalists are arrested, threatened, and accused of leaking state secrets. Just three weeks ago, the police issued an arrest warrant and launched a manhunt for the editor of the Zimbabwean, who they accuse of publishing a "false story" in 2008 about the alleged murder of an election official.

At this year's Book Fair in Gothenburg, ICORN and Shahrazad collaborate to bring the visitors two events featuring ICORN Guest Writers Chenjerai Hove, Sihem Bensedrine, and Philo Ikonya.

Miami's ICORN Guest Writer Chenjerai Hove gets Books&Books off to an early start on Banned Books Week (BBW ) with a reading from his book of poetry Blind Moon, and a talk on his plight as a censored writer in Zimbabwe. BBW begins Sept. 25, but this event will take place on Sept. 15, 8 pm, at the Gables Store, and will also feature the unveiling of the store's display of censored books.

The youths are on the loose in Norway, campaigning. Young men and women, all over the place. The pavements are red, not with human blood, but with red roses. My most favourite party is the one distributing red roses. Young men and women giving you a rose at every street corner. They talk to you rather gently, persuasively, wondering if you would like the bunch of roses. I never refuse roses except those given by some god-forsaken dictator. I know even tyrants like roses.

As I return to my desk, I have more than twenty red roses in my hands, as if I have just come from a flower shop to buy flowers for for birthdays and other special occasions.

I cannot resist thinking of home, election time, Zanu(PF) against the rest of the world, a matter of life and death.