Iden Wetherell
Televised scenes of demonstrators being teargassed and robust editorials in the country’s leading daily have so angered Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe that he has ordered a radical shake-up of the state-owned media that will see his already tight grip reinforced.
Traditionally a faithful ally of Zimbabwe’s entrenched political establishment, the government media have recently adopted an unusually critical tone as Mugabe’s claim to hold the answers to the nation’s manifold problems looks increasingly threadbare.
The presidential hackles were first raised in December when contradictions emerged in the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) television coverage of protests organised by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) against tax hikes.
While ZBC managers followed the line handed down by the Ministry of Information blaming protesters for the subsequent violence, footage screened showed police firing teargas at random to prevent people gathering for a peaceful demonstration in the Harare city centre.
And when the ministry declared that white farmers and industrialists were behind the protests, viewers saw a church-based human- rights activist describing the government’s conspiracy theory as ” absolute rubbish”.
Callers to ZBC’s Radio Three agreed. As veteran talk-show host Gerry Jackson warned listeners to avoid trouble spots, many called in to dispute the official view that the unrest was the product of whites bent upon avenging Mugabe’s land grab.
“There was a flood of calls from mainly black listeners saying this was not true,” Jackson said.
She paid for her indiscretion, however. A notice of dismissal arrived four days later. There had been “a number of complaints” about her broadcast, she was told by ZBC management, including one from the office of the president.
Among buildings hit by teargas was Herald House, headquarters of the state’s press empire. Tommy Sithole, editor of the flagship Herald daily since 1983, was unamused. He described riot police as “trigger happy” and “over-zealous”.
“In many instances the targets were innocent people trying to go about their duties,” he said in an outspoken editorial.
Sithole was even more severe in his response to the riots against food prices which rocked the capital on January 19. “If the demonstrations were spontaneous, as seems certain, then both the ruling party and the government are in trouble,” he observed.
“Anyone wanting to wag a finger at the ZCTU or hurl abuse at ethnic groupings in the mistaken belief that the problem will go away is deluding himself,” he said in an apparent swipe at Minister of Information Chen Chimutengwende’s renewed accusation that whites were to blame.
These rather self-evident comments were treated as heresy at Zimbabwe’s Orwellian Ministry of Information. “His days are numbered,” Chimutengwende is reported to have remarked after reading Sithole’s editorial.
The board of Zimpapers, the Herald’s holding company, has been instructed by Mugabe to find a replacement, unconfirmed reports say. That could be self-confessed Stalinist Charles Chikerema, whose Sunday Mail has been conducting an editorial war against democratic reform, human-rights groups and the country’s white minority. He won a turf battle against Zimpapers’ reformist managing director Simba Makoni in 1996. Makoni was removed shortly afterwards.
The board is believed to be divided on the measures they are being ordered to take and Zimpapers insiders say the matter is as yet unresolved.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Information is reportedly preparing its most senior official, Director of Information Bornwell Chakaodza, to take the helm at ZBC. That way, observers say, there will be no more reporting “errors” when the next disturbances break out.