Night visits to my home by threatening men in vans with blacked out windows. Attacks vilifying me in the state press as a “terrorist”, an “agent of imperialism” and “a liar”. Threats by phone, e-mail and conversations with “friends”, in which I was told that I would not be safe in this country.
These were all signs of the antipathy of President Robert Mugabe’s government to a journalist chronicling the decline of his long and torrid rule.
Over the past year I have been harassed, arrested, thrown in jail, put on trial, acquitted and finally — last weekend — deported from Zimbabwe.
For those 12 months I continued to live and work there, to write about the country’s political crisis, the economic meltdown that has turned one of Africa’s most prosperous economies into one of its poorest, and the abuses of human rights and other democratic freedoms.
In short, I watched how the regime transformed a functioning democracy into a police state.
I first arrived in Zimbabwe in 1980 when the country won its independence and majority rule. I was a young journalist full of enthusiasm for Mugabe’s new order, his policy of racial reconciliation, his socialist measures to improve the education, health and standard of living of black Zimbabweans. It was a heady time, when the entire country was infused with irrepressible optimism.
Sadly, honeymoons never last, and by 1982 I found myself uncovering and reporting on the horrific mass killing of Zimbabwean civilians by the army’s Fifth Brigade, Mugabe’s praetorian guard.
The chain of command led directly to Mugabe. It was a contradiction of all the country’s positive developments. It was clear that the killing was part of Mugabe’s drive to stamp out the opposition party, Joshua Nkomo’s Zapu.
By ejecting Nkomo from his Cabinet and arresting army generals allied to Nkomo and charging them with treason, Mugabe caused a small-scale rebellion of soldiers who supported them.
Then the Fifth Brigade rolled into southern Zimbabwe, Matabeleland, and began the wholesale slaughter of thousands of the rural Ndebele people, the minority ethnic group that forms about 20% of the country’s population.
It became apparent that the violence was part of Mugabe’s drive to consolidate his power. It continued until December 1987, when a broken Nkomo agreed to allow his party to be swallowed by Mugabe’s Zanu-PF. The creation of a one-party state, Mugabe’s stated goal, was within his grasp.
Somehow Mugabe managed to emerge from the horrors of Matabeleland with his reputation relatively unscathed. No longer an untarnished hero, to be sure, but he remained a plausible leader. The lot of the majority of Zimbabweans continued to improve.
Zimbabwe remained a beacon beaming the light of hope on South Africa’s dark system of minority rule. Anti-apartheid activists of all colours flocked there and insisted that its democracy pointed the way for South Africa’s future. It also became a hive of South African spies carrying out assassinations and terror bombings. It was an engrossing place to work as a journalist.
When Nelson Mandela was freed, Zimbabwe was the first country he visited, underlining the crucial role it had played in the struggle against apartheid. But South Africa’s progress was not entirely good news for Mugabe. The international community ceased to see him as the lesser of two evils, compared to apartheid. A wave of democracy swept across Southern Africa in which Malawi’s Hastings Banda and Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda were toppled by overwhelming votes.
When Mugabe proposed to declare Zimbabwe a one-party state, members of his own party’s central committee blocked it, saying that they would be going against the democratic tide.
Compared to the glowing magnanimity of Mandela, Mugabe appeared bitter and spiteful. A turning point came in August 1996 when, while opening the Zimbabwe International Book Fair, he spewed out a hate-filled tirade against gays.
I remember scribbling down his furious words describing gays as “worse than pigs and dogs” and suggesting that homosexuality was akin to having sex with the dead. From that point on Mugabe’s international image began its decline to despot.
This should not paint a picture that everything has been negative in Zimbabwe. My experience there has been overwhelmingly positive. Friends who are doctors, teachers, artists and lawyers bound together to create a community always encouraging fairness and democracy.
But by 2000 the opposition to Mugabe’s rule had grown so great that the churches, women’s groups, human rights defenders and lawyers groups pressed for a new Constitution.
Mugabe agreed, but, wily as ever, he created a document that increased his power rather than reduced it. His draft Constitution was presented to the country in a referendum in February 2000. Despite saturation coverage in the state media, the voters rejected it. It was a stinging slap in the face.
Two weeks later the first invasions of white-owned farms began. Mugabe was fighting back. The invasions were illegal, but the police were ordered not to take any action against them. It was the beginning of the transformation of the police into a political entity that simply carries out its master’s bidding.
In June 2000 came the parliamentary elections. The opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), had already won widespread popularity and campaigned despite a programme of violence in which more than 200 people, virtually all MDC supporters, were killed. It narrowly lost the elections, which all credible international observer teams said were neither free nor fair.
In addition to the often ugly political developments in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, he has tragically failed to give effective leadership in the two huge social challenges facing the country, Aids and famine.
Aids spread so rapidly that a few years ago Zimbabwe had the world’s highest HIV infection rate: 35% of the adult population. Shying away from effective public education, the government created an Aids fund and then allowed Mugabe’s cronies to loot it.
After Mugabe’s seizures of white-owned farms little was done to keep the land cultivated. It was no surprise when famine gripped the country. Even when more than half the population was forced to depend on international food relief, Mugabe could not resist trying to starve areas that supported the opposition.
Repression of the press began in 2000. Shortly before the parliamentary elections, immigration officers served deportation orders on BBC correspondent Joe Winter. He won a court order giving him a week to pack and wind up his affairs.
But that night government thugs went to his house, ransacked it and terrorised him, his wife and young daughter. Winter left the country and within days the government deported the legendary South American journalist Mercedes Sayagues.
A few months later The Daily Telegraph‘s correspondent, David Blair, was forced to leave. I became the last foreign journalist in the country.
The determination of the Zimbabwean press, particularly the reporters on the privately owned Daily News, the Zimbabwe Independent and The Standard, inspired me with their commitment to exposing corruption, beatings, torture, murder and other unsavoury aspects of Mugabe’s rule.
The printing press of the Daily News was blown up; Standard editor Mark Chavunduka and reporter Ray Choto were abducted by army officers and viciously tortured. Yet Zimbabwe’s journalists refused to be deterred from writing about events as they happened.
Systematic human rights abuses, the thwarting of democracy, corruption — these are the issues any journalist is obliged to cover. And that led to my arrest and imprisonment last year.
After my trial and acquittal, and the government’s failed attempt to deport me, I returned to my work. The steady drivel of articles vilifying me in the state press did not get me down, largely because of the hearty support and encouragement I received from people of all colours and walks of life when I walked on the street.
That support, and phone calls and e-mails from fellow Zimbabwean journalists, helped me to shrug off the government’s threats.
But last Friday I was abducted and thrown out of the country, despite a court order to halt the action.
When all is said and done, I still blame Ian Smith for Zimbabwe’s troubles today. He ran a system that deprived the majority of their rights and dignity. The Rhodesian regime was so violent that only violence could unseat it. Only the most ruthless could overthrow Smith’s system, and that was Robert Mugabe.
Violence begets violence and we can see now that Mugabe only values his own power and will use any force to maintain it.
I am angry at how Mugabe has subverted Zimbabwe’s democracy and reduced people to misery. I am appalled that the police kidnapped the opposition MP Job Sikhala a few months ago and tortured him with electric shocks.
I am furious that the regime has targeted ordinary citizens such as Raphinos Madzokere, who has been hospitalised twice for torture, has seen his home destroyed and now lives on the run with his wife and three children.
I am determined to continue reporting on these abuses in the hope that they will stop, and to help bring the perpetrators to justice.
I am confident that the people of Zimbabwe will succeed in restoring the country’s democracy and basic freedoms, and will rebuild the economy to prosperity. — Â