A newspaper that gave Zimbabweans an alternative to the state-controlled press during the darkest days of President Robert Mugabe’s clampdown on the free press has announced its closure.

Next week’s copy of The Zimbabwean will be its last, the paper announced on its front page Wednesday.

Set up in 2005 by Wilf Mbanga, the newspaper offered a different – and very critical – view of Mugabe’s government to that given by the state-controlled Herald and Sunday Mail newspapers, and the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation.

Mbanga got round the restrictions by publishing outside Zimbabwe and trucking his publication in.

The Zimbabwean, now a weekly newspaper, is to continue as an online news service and a community information platform, it said.

The paper published an insert in Wednesday’s edition with photographs of 36 front pages from its 10 years in print.

The Zimbabwean newspaper has been criticised in some quarters for its perceived bias towards the opposition, earning it – and other publications – the controversial label of “opposition press”. Source: online