As President Robert Mugabe began a four-day state visit to Cuba this week, rumours of a split between Zimbabwe’s war veterans and the ruling Zanu-PF party were getting louder.
The state-controlled Herald this week reported friction between some former fighters and a top Zanu-PF official, the much-feared Minister of Information Jonathan Moyo.
Members of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans’ Association threatened to demonstrate over Moyo’s decision not to renew the broadcasting licence of a private TV station, Joy TV. The association is a minority shareholder in Joy TV.
”If [the war veterans] want to be above the law and a law unto themselves, why do they bother to ask? What is their problem?” Moyo told the paper.
The independent Daily News — whose editor, Geoff Nyarota, is due to appear in court next Monday on charges of publishing false information — claimed war veterans, usually the government’s most loyal backers, had threatened to ”beat up” Moyo, calling him a ”sell-out.”
”We think he is an agent working to destroy the party from within. We will show him our true colours,” the newspaper quoted Endy Mhlanga, the association’s secretary general, as saying.
Signs of the looming showdown follow a story in The Standard last weekend that disgruntled war veterans were planning a breakaway from Zanu-PF to set up their own party. That report was immediately quashed by state media.
”War veterans and the public should remain united and continue to support their government led by President Robert Mugabe,” the association’s national chairperson Patrick Nyaruwata told the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation.
War veterans believe they played a major — and insufficiently rewarded — role in Mugabe’s disputed re-election four months ago, mainly through their invasions of white-owned farms.
Zimbabwe’s white farmers are meanwhile likely to sink deeper into pessimism as the government refuses to soften its stance on farm acquisitions.
The deadline for farmers to vacate their homesteads is getting closer. According to the Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU), about 2 900 white farmers will have to be out of their houses by August 10, under new regulations introduced in May.
”All farmers served with Section 8 orders should start preparing to vacate the farms they have been holding for the landowners to move in. The government has been very sensitive to the plight of farmers,” an editorial in The Herald read this week.
On Wednesday the American reporter ordered to leave Zimbabwe, Andrew Meldrum, won a court victory allowing him to stay on temporarily to appeal his deportation, despite being labelled a security risk by the government.
Meldrum, who writes for The Guardian and The Economist, had been given until 5pm on Wednesday to leave Zimbabwe. But the high court in Harare ruled that he could stay on until his appeal was heard in the Supreme Court.
The ruling came despite a strongly worded affidavit from the Minister of Home Affairs, John Nkomo, who said any extension of Meldrum’s 22-year long stay ”would be detrimental to the security of the state”.
Earlier, Meldrum’s wife Dolores said while he was ”hopeful” his deportation order would be stayed, he was prepared to leave in a hurry.
Meldrum was served with his deportation papers on Monday, minutes after being cleared of charges of publishing false information, thus escaping a two-year sentence.
He was the first reporter to be tried under the notorious Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, which makes it a crime to carry false news and says that all journalists have to be licensed by a government-appointed media commission.
The charges related to a story picked up by Meldrum from the Daily News. It alleged that an opposition supporter had been beheaded in front of her two daughters. The story was later proved to be a lie concocted by a man trying to get money out of the opposition party.
In his appeal, Meldrum (50) is to argue that the deportation order breaches his constitutional rights. If he fails, he will become the fourth foreign correspondent to be deported in the past 18 months.
Mercedes Sayagues, a former Mail & Guardian correspondent, and Joseph Winter of the BBC were forced to leave in February last year, while David Blair of Britain’s Daily Telegraph was denied a renewal of his work permit in June last year. Only two licensed foreign reporters — both employed by Agence France Presse — remain.
Meldrum’s case has aroused international interest and even Mugabe was forced to comment on it.
Arriving in Cuba earlier this week the president told journalists the matter ”was up to the courts and [we] as a government do not interfere”.
As the country’s economic and political crisis worsens, there’s a joke doing the rounds in Harare this week.
It goes like this: if Zimbabwe is a tunnel and you think you can see light at the end of it … then you’re looking down the wrong tunnel.