Zimbabwe’s new breed of newspaper owners a ‘coterie’ of ambitious, driven fortysomethings are defying all the odds. In just five years since the historic crash of the Zimbabwean dollar on 14 November 1997, Zimbabwe has experienced the birth of over half a dozen national newspapers. And just a couple of months ago Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ), publishers of Zimbabwe’s biggest private daily The Daily News, announced the imminent launch of two more titles: The Daily News on Sunday and The Business Daily News both weeklies.
Management at ANZ is mum on the figures involved, but speculation puts the investment at well over Z$2 billion (R300 million). This could be a vast under-estimation, given that the Zimbabwe dollar is not only highly over-valued but is also on an interminable slide. All we know, from the little ANZ chief executive Sam Nkomo could reveal, is that the project’s computerisation programme alone is pegged at Z$200 million (R30 million) again a very conservative figure. And to consider that the company’s flagship, which turned four in March, is yet to start posting profits!
The ANZ story is not isolated. In early June last year two new weeklies secretly made their way onto Zimbabwe’s streets. The Weekend Tribune and The Business Tribune, owned by the Media Africa Group, arrived on the scene unannounced, and, despite feeling the birth pangs common to new entrants, they’re not showing signs of throwing in the towel any time soon.
Also, late last year the Southern African Printing and Publishing company (SAPPHO) launched the country’s fourth national daily, The Daily Mirror. Its birth brought about the ‘relaunch’ of sister weekly The Zimbabwe Mirror, which was renamed Sunday Mirror. (Amongst the latter’s new features are improved coverage of SADC news, wider and regional circulation, and a broadsheet size).
Still on the private press, the respected Financial Gazette the oldest private weekly in the country was last year bought by a local company called Octadew (Pvt) Ltd from businessman and former politician Elias Rusike. (There’s been much speculation over whether the title will retain its cutting edge journalism given that new owner, Gideon Gono, is chief executive of the government-owned Jewel Bank and a ruling Zanu PF technocrat).
IT THIS frantic launching and acquisition of newspapers isn’t surprising in itself, then consider the following: inflation in the country is now officially pegged at 228 percent; adspend has drastically fallen since the closure of more than 1,000 companies in the past three years; more than three-quarters of the population live beyond the poverty datum line; and the cost of living has shot to stratospheric levels, rendering media consumption an absolute luxury for more than four-fifths of the population. Further, readership levels are at an all-time low, which has less to do with literacy than the cost of access.
In the past three years, circulation for major dailies has nose-dived, with the largest circulating Daily News dropping to less than 70,000 from about 120,000 in 2000. The state-owned Herald is within the same range, having fallen from around 130,000 in better years. (According to the Zimbabwe All Media Products Survey (ZAMPS) 2002, The Daily News commands a readership of 30.6 percent of the total reading population, followed by the Herald with 28.9 percent and the state-owned Chronicle with 13.7 percent see table).
Yet the ailing economy is only half the story. An equally formidable deterrent to publishing in Zimbabwe is the legal minefield. When the political stakes were upped following the formation of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the state responded by, amongst other measures, gagging the media. The policy vacuum that had dominated much of the late ’80s and mid ’90s gave way abruptly to frenzied lawmaking. The Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act and the Public Order and Security Act became turning points in the relationship between press and state in post-independence Zimbabwe. Since the promulgation of these laws, over a dozen journalists from the private press have been hauled before the courts.
Then there’s the issue of certain private newspapers being ‘banned’ from some areas of the country by ruling party supporters. The Daily News, for example, stopped circulating in several rural centres after vendors were soundly beaten, their copies confiscated and torched.
Added to which is a scenario where most senior journalists with the notable exception of the handful who have been lucky enough to be promoted to editors have either left the country to seek greener pastures, joined the lucrative PR sector, or taken up nondescript ‘research’ posts in the proliferating non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
Indeed, from the look of it, one would need to be brave or stupid (or both) to launch a privately owned paper in Zimbabwe.
SO WHAT is the secret of Zimbabwe’s defiantly expanding independent press? One way of answering the question is to look at media not just as a business but also as a source of political and cultural pedagogy. In this age of hyper-commercialisation there’s every reason to view the industry solely through the lens of profit potential, but the Zimbabwean case demands a different approach.
Some political context: In the heat of the fierce political contest pitching ruling Zanu PF against the opposition MDC, newspapers have unashamedly joined the fray. The private Daily News hardly veils its support for the MDC, while the state press has gone into overdrive behind the ruling party and government. During election time, the reportage often becomes so partisan a reader needs both papers to have a remote semblance of what might have transpired.
It is against this background that the new media players, promising a ‘middle-of-the-road’ or ‘unbiased’ view, are rapidly launching. The Daily Mirror claims its mission is to close the ‘unnecessary’ polarities in political and journalistic circles, while both the Weekend Tribune and Business Tribune see themselves as champions of black empowerment and pan-Africanism. There are promises from the ANZ chiefs that (perhaps quite unlike The Daily News) their new products will be ‘independent’. In all cases, time will tell.
But who’s behind these new players? Not much of a secret. The Media Africa Group is owned by businessman Mutumwa Mawere, a vociferous proponent of black empowerment and a member of the Zanu PF’s reformist Young Turks. Mawere’s Tribune newspapers tread the cautious path that is ‘middle- of-the-road’ and often avoid the hot political issues. Still, while the Business Tribune is more comfortable with business stories and the Weekend Tribune with entertainment and lighter issues, one cannot ignore the political dimensions the papers occasionally assume. For example, it was the Business Tribune that was granted the rare interview by armed forces chief Vitalis Zvinavashe when the Mugabe ‘succession plot’ thickened. Zvinavashe allegedly supports the candidature of Emmerson Mnangagwa, who is Mawere’s political godfather. In this complex web of political comradeships, alliances and counter-alliances ahead of a possible presidential vacancy, it may be less difficult to imagine why some papers are still on the market despite the litany of deterrents discussed above. As they say, the whole thing could be a case of people looking after themselves.
The Daily Mirror boss, Dr. Ibbo Mandaza, is also an active observer on the political chessboard. An ambitious former top civil servant who fancies himself as a nationalist, Mandaza belongs to a strand of reformists within the ruling party. In broad, rough terms, his agenda for the two publications he owns is to ‘defend’ the country from ‘neo-colonialism’ and to identify and safeguard the ‘national’ interest. So in a highly polarised context where patriotism has almost become synonymous with the ruling party, his papers are largely viewed as pro-Zanu PF. And, like their Tribune counterparts, the Mirror papers are doing rather badly on the shrinking market. But Mandaza will not let the business dimension define his media ’empire’. Which explains why he won’t have his papers off the streets. To his credit, and to Mawere’s as well, both newspaper groups have introduced a refreshing and rather analytical dimension to the coverage of news in Zimbabwe, especially in a context where journalism has been spinning out of control in a partisan frenzy.
Lastly, there is speculation that ANZ chairman, Strive Masiyiwa, is an opposition MDC man. Which could explain his decision to leave Zimbabwe and settle in South Africa for fear of his security. Masiyiwa, an astute businessman who owns the multinational cellular phone giant Econet Wireless, was touted as a possible candidate for top cabinet posting in Morgan Tsvangirai’s government had the March 2002 election gone his way. Masiyiwa bought The Daily News at a time the paper was in dire financial straits, and, under its founding editor Geoffrey Nyarota, it drastically increased circulation to over 120,000 ahead of the June 2000 parliamentary election. It then captured the general mood in the urban areas where the opposition still holds a stranglehold. But by the time Nyarota was fired in December last year, the paper’s fortunes were somewhat dwindling, with regular incidents of worker unrest, two occasions of ‘false’ stories and the continuous harassment of journalists by state agents. These difficulties notwithstanding, The Daily News remains a highly regarded paper with a significant following, although, like both the Mirror and Tribune newspapers, it is yet to realise a profit. Again, like his business-cum-politician counterparts Mandaza and Mawere, Masiyiwa is not only willing to subsidise the daily he is ready to launch even more publications.
So, after all, it is possible to bypass advertising and circulation revenue as a method of financing modern private media. The Zimbabwean case shows that a combination of alternative financing (especially cross-subsidisation) and clearly-defined political agendas can keep a publication on the streets. And Zimbabwe is not alone. Remember Malawi had a shocking upsurge of up to 21 daily newspapers in the run-up to the watershed presidential election in 1994 that saw the Ngwazi Kamuzu Banda vacate the seat of power with much ignominy. The bulk of these papers now rest in their cemeteries.
Whether the same fate awaits the mushrooming press in post-Mugabe Zimbabwe is hard to tell. For now, the behind-the-scenes jostling for power is likely to intensify after Mugabe’s indication in April that he may retire amid mounting local, regional and international pressure and no doubt Zimbabwe’s diverse press remains an active player in the political goings-on.
Wallace Chuma is a PhD student in Media Studies at Wits. He is formerly editor of the Zimbabwe Mirror and Deputy Chairperson of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) (Zimbabwe).