Working as a journalist in Zimbabwe today is something of a challenge, it might euphemistically be said. Zimbabwean editors have to tip-toe their way through a legislative minefield designed to cause them and their publications as much harm as possible.
The misnamed Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, passed after President Robert Mugabe’s disputed re-election in 2002 — ostensibly to stop the media “lying” about him — has transformed the practice of journalism into a criminal enterprise by specifying a wide range of offences that any self-respecting newspaper would have difficulty avoiding. Causing public disaffection towards the president is just one.
Looking out for unwary offenders is a media and information commission, which is the chief weapon of Mugabe’s menacing Minister of Information, Professor Jonathan Moyo.
He appoints all seven members of the commission, which is headed by a state newspaper columnist, Dr Tafataona Mahoso, who laments the fall of the Iron Curtain and makes no secret of his hostility towards the independent media. Other members include former state-media editors and journalism lecturers at state institutions. The commission is responsible for licensing journalists.
The state lost several high-profile court cases under the Act in 2002, but won its first significant scalp last year when it closed the Daily News, the country’s only independent daily, for operating without a licence. The Supreme Court, which is widely seen as sympathetic to the executive, has declined to hear the Daily News‘s appeal against the constitutionality of Mugabe’s media legislation, but a lower court has ruled that the media commission is improperly constituted and its members biased. The government has ignored the court’s ruling that the paper should be allowed to resume publication.
The closure of the Daily News should not be seen in isolation. Since Mugabe lost the 2000 referendum on a new Constitution that would have legitimised his dictatorship and came within a whisker of losing the subsequent parliamentary election, he has embarked on a campaign of vengeance against political opponents. While commercial farmers and their workers were previously the main victims of his wrath, more recently lawyers and civic activists have been in the firing line.
At the same time the government has been anxious to manage the message. It accuses the independent press of tarnishing the government’s reputation and “demonising” Mugabe. Inevitably, newspapers that have exposed the ruling Zanu-PF’s career of misrule and violence have been threatened with closure.
The question we are most commonly asked is whether this has led to a degree of self-censorship. While we are obviously keen to avoid giving hostages to fortune, we cannot at the same time be any less bold than our readers. Mugabe holds no terrors for a younger generation of Zimbabweans who are quite clear as to how he has pauperised the nation while enriching his followers. Mugabe has lost every single electoral contest he has fought in the capital since 1996. His blandishments about sovereignty and land have no purchase here.
So editors have a duty, not only to tell it like it is, but to recognise the popular imperatives around them. None of our readers are saying: “Please don’t be so critical of the president.” And Mugabe certainly doesn’t mince his words when referring to us. Nor is this an equal battle.
In addition to an energetic propaganda department in the office of the president, Zimbabwe has a powerful state media, which runs a stable of long-established newspapers and enjoys a monopoly of broadcasting. The country is thus treated to a steady torrent of invective against civic activists and outspoken journalists. We are accused of working with the British and Americans to unseat Mugabe. We are the targets of hate speech and personal vilification in the columns of newspapers like the Herald and the Sunday Mail that are mouthpieces of Mugabe and Moyo.
These same papers have misled the country into believing 300 000 people have been resettled under the badly managed land reform programme when the president’s own audit revealed only 134 000. They have downplayed the seriousness of the food crisis Zimbabwe is facing and misrepresented the views of senior United Nations officials and diplomats based in Harare. None of this has raised objections from the media commission.
While civil society in South Africa has provided important moral support for the struggle for democracy north of the Limpopo, there is not always a full understanding of the issues at play. Some South African editors for instance cannot understand why those of us working in the independent media are reluctant to get into bed with hate-mongering state publicists, closely allied to Mugabe’s intelligence network, masquerading as journalists. South African editors have even collaborated with government journalists in Zimbabwe to form a rival editors’ forum to the one already in existence because they feel our scope is too narrow. In fact we have repeatedly said our door is open to all editors who subscribe to the principles of a free press.
But the most disappointing aspect of South African attitudes to Zimbabwe is the notion that Mugabe should be indulged to render him more amenable to dialogue. Behind this convenient smokescreen the steady subversion of the rule of law and erosion of democratic institutions has intensified. Lawyers have been assaulted in police stations when visiting their clients, trade unionists have been arrested for exercising their right to freedom of expression, and women have been jailed for protesting the soaring cost of living.
South African President Thabo Mbeki’s quiet diplomacy is so quiet as to be inaudible. When he does find his voice, as on the ANC Today website, it is to express sympathy with Mugabe’s predicament and claim Zanu-PF has been unfairly treated by its critics whose attachment to human rights values he deplores.
With the closure of the Daily News, independent weeklies now carry a heavier burden in getting news to the public that the government media won’t publish. Whatever Mugabe may throw at us, the Zimbabwean media — at least that part of it still operating freely — remains committed to the struggle for democratic rights. We have a very clear obligation to the majority of Zimbabweans who want to see change. Democracy can’t function in the absence of an informed electorate. And without accountability the government can do what it likes.
Mugabe has the armed forces, a suborned police and a compliant judiciary. We have the one thing we know he cannot suppress: an idea whose time has come.
Iden Wetherell is editor of the Zimbabwe Independent and chairperson of the Zimbabwe National Editors Forum.