Iden Wetherell
President Robert Mugabe stepped up his offensive against Zimbabwe’s independent media this week with the arrest of more journalists amid clear signs that he is determined to punish anyone who criticises his army’s performance in the Democratic Republic of Congo or challenges his arthritic grip on power.
Four journalists from the weekly Zimbabwe Mirror were arrested on Monday. Editor Ibbo Mandaza and reporter Grace Kwinjeh appeared in court on Tuesday on charges of spreading alarm and despondency under the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act. They were released on bail. The two other journalists were released unconditionally. This follows a spate of stories carried by the newpaper on the army’s role in Congo.
The arrests have been linked to threats made by Mugabe in a televised address last weekend. Claiming there was a plot by British agents to destabilise his regime, he warned of “stern measures” against the media and said that newspapers publishing stories he deemed to be untrue forfeited their right to the protection of the law.
This was his first public comment on the military’s abduction and torture last month of two journalists from the independent newspaper, The Standard.
In his address, Mugabe fuelled a growing constitutional crisis by blasting the judiciary which had asked him for assurances that he would uphold the rule of law following his government’s rejection of high court orders for the release of The Standard’s journalists. Describing the calls from four judges, three from the Supreme Court for a public statement as “an outrageous and deliberate act of judicial impudence”, he told them to resign if they wanted to take on political issues.
Although the target of Mugabe’s wrath appeared at first to be The Standard’s white proprietors, this week’s round-up at the Zimbabwe Mirror suggests he could be casting his net wider.
Mandaza is a former senior state official with close ties to the ruling Zanu-PF party. He has strongly criticised The Standard’s story about an alleged foiled coup by army officers. But in a significant disclosure, his paper said last week that the army top brass was solely responsible for the detention and torture of The Standard’s journalists.
The Zimbabwe Mirror has in the past carried stories on Cabinet opposition to the Congo war and the return from the battlefront of a soldier’s body without a head. The report infuriated the Ministry of Defence, which exhumed the soldier’s remains in a bid to prove the story false, and led to this week’s charges.
The Zimbabwe Mirror’s lawyer said he would appeal to the Supreme Court to test whether the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act, due for repeal this year, was consistent with the right to freedom of expression enshrined in the Constitution.
Reflecting the new hard line, Minister of Information Chen Chimutengwende last week said newspapers benefiting from donor support or foreign investment would not be allowed to establish themselves in future.
Zimbabwe was already saturated with newspapers and didn’t need any more, he ruled at a meeting of a special task force the government has set up to polish its battered image.
Mugabe’s obsession with criticism of the military reflects his concern about his fading public image. The army is one of his few remaining pillars of support in a society where other props have been rapidly collapsing.
While journalists may currently find themselves in the frontline, speculation is mounting that his offensive will soon extend to other critics such as the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions and National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), which have been outspoken about the cost of the war effort.
The NCA – a civil society forum geared to reform the country’s autocratic Constitution – said, faced with growing resistance, Mugabe was increasingly resorting to coercion as a means of containing his critics.
It warned Mugabe that military intervention in civil society today could lead to military control of the presidency tomorrow. But he was probably not listening.