Zimbabwean newspaper owner Trevor Ncube — publisher of the Standard and the Zimbabwe Independent in that country and the Mail & Guardian in South Africa — will contest the stripping of his citizenship in a High Court application once a date is allocated.
Zimbabwean authorities announced their decision to strip Ncube of his Zimbabwean citizenship in late December because, they say, he is a Zambian citizen by descent.
Ncube will ask the court to direct the home affairs minister to confirm that he is a citizen of Zimbabwe and order the country’s registrar general to renew his passport within three days of a court order being granted.
The government has refused to renew Ncube’s passport and declared, by fax to his office, that he is no longer a citizen. The grounds are that Ncube’s father was born in Zambia.
Ncube will tell the court that the decision to withdraw his passport (and therefore his citizenship) is unlawful as well as procedurally and substantively unfair. Ncube will argue in court that his citizenship is a birthright and that his freedom of movement is being curtailed. In his affidavit, Ncube argues that: ”I owe allegiance to Zimbabwe. My country Zimbabwe reciprocates my allegiance by providing me with protection. My passport is evidence of the protection I enjoy from my country.”
While the Zimbabwean Constitution gives the government wide powers over citizenship, it states that ”… no [national law] shall provide for cessation, or deprivation of any person of citizenship of Zimbabwe where such person is a citizen thereof by birth except on the grounds that he is or has become citizen of some other country”.
Mathew Takaona, the president of the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists, told the M&G his union is ”deeply concerned” by the latest development to strip Ncube of his Zimbabwean nationality, which he thinks is likely to create ”unnecessary tension between the government and the media again”.
”The negative publicity that the government continues to complain about won’t stop, it’s making matters worse,” he said.
Insiders within the government contend that the matter is ”political”, and say that unnamed senior government officials are pushing for the withdrawal of Ncube’s citizenship to pave the way for the government to seize control of his two publications.
Ncube spoke to the M&G about the possibility of Zimbabwe revoking his citizenship.
When were you informed that your citizenship had been stripped?
My citizenship has not been stripped. There is an attempt by (Registrar General) Tobaiwa Mudede to take away my citizenship.
What happened is my passport was full and I needed a new passport. In October when I travelled to Zimbabwe, I put in an urgent application for a passport at which point they said to me in the application process that I had not completed my citizenship status, but that is not actually true.
I am not a Zambian; I was born in Zimbabwe, but there is a law in Zimbabwe that says if your father was born somewhere else you are required to renounce that citizenship. So I went through that process and I got a certificate stating that I am a Zimbabwean citizen. But what Mudede’s office is saying is that I didn’t physically go to the Zambian embassy to renounce my Zambian citizenship.
Before I got the certificate (of citizenship), I took an oath before a citizenship officer at the registrar general’s office. That was three years ago. Now they want me to do the same thing again. At the end of the day one is puzzled and I don’t understand what is going on, and that’s when conspiracy theories set in. We also bear in mind that it is exactly a year after Mudede took away my passport and was forced by the courts to give it back. What is he trying to achieve? Is he acting on his own or is there somebody nudging him to do certain things.
What is the bigger picture — what do you think the government is trying to achieve?
As a media owner in Zimbabwe you have to be a Zimbabwean citizen. If you are not, you cannot own more than 40% of a media company. Is what they are doing connected to my ownership of the two newspapers? It is a bit difficult to discount that completely. I am being victimised because I am seen as a stumbling block because of the two independent newspapers that I own in Zimbabwe. They are the only two independent newspapers that continue to survive.
Is Mudede being used as an instrument by people in Robert Mugabe’s regime to eliminate me and the two newspapers and drive me out of the country?
You’ve said that you will fight this case in the courts. Do you believe that you stand a fair chance given the packing of the judiciary and the flimsy remnants of the rule of law?
I don’t want to judge what the courts will say. I still have tremendous confidence in the judicial system in Zimbabwe. There have been questionable decisions here and there before, but I would not have approached the courts if I doubted their ability to handle this matter. As far as the Constitution is concerned I am a Zimbabwean. The law that Robert Mugabe and Jonathan Moyo introduced to disenfranchise people of Zambian, Malawian and Mozambican parentage is an illegitimate and unconstitutional law and that is the law that Mudede is trying to use.
What does it mean in practice? You were born in Zimbabwe, grew up there and many of your family members still live there.
Citizenship is a birthright. Nobody can take away your citizenship. My father might have been born in Zambia, but I don’t feel Zambian, I don’t feel South African. I feel very Zimbabwean …
Certain people in government have used their position of influence to strip me of my birthright and until I decide what to do I am going to be stateless until I apply for the citizenship of another country. You should remember that applying is dependent on whether that country will accept you. I wasn’t born in South Africa or Zambia. These countries have their laws on who they accept as citizens.
The question you are asking me is what I don’t wish to contemplate because first and foremost I am a Zimbabwean, I think Zimbabwean, I sleep Zimbabwean, I speak Zimbabwean. I am a Zimbabwean through and through.
Is this a sequel to the seizure of your passport in 2005?
When my passport was seized I was on the list of people considered undesirable. That thinking that I am an undesirable person continues. They are using this to complete their agenda to make me enemy number one and eliminate me so that the Zimbabwean government does not ever have to contemplate dealing with me. Once they have struck me off as a Zimbabwean, then I don’t exist as far as they are concerned, and then they can move and do whatever they please with my businesses.
Excerpts from Ncube’s founding affidavit
11.9 I must point out that I have never applied for Zambian citizenship. I have only been to Zambia three times, once on holiday and twice on business. The holiday visit was when I went on Christmas holiday in Victoria Falls in 2001 and took advantage of this and went across to Livingstone town.
11.10 On October 25 2006 I went to the Zambian embassy and paid and completed the necessary form, renouncing ”my Zambian citizenship”.
11.11 The following day I went back to the Zambian embassy to receive documents confirming that I had ”renounced my Zambian citizenship”.
11.12 I had also been told by Mr Chinembiri at the citizenship office that once I had gone through this process I should then submit a letter requesting urgent restoration of my Zimbabwean citizenship, which I did. I was told that this could all be done on October 26 2006 to enable me to submit my passport application and then travel back to Johannesburg.
11.13 Indeed on the morning of October 26 2006 I submitted my passport application together with supporting documents from the Zambian embassy that I had renounced ”my Zambian citizenship” and the letter requesting urgent ”restoration” of my citizenship.
11.14 Mr Chinembiri took these documents to Mrs Nyamunda and asked me to wait. He came out of the office in about 45 minutes and asked me to follow him to his office.
11.15 In his office he told me that my request for an urgent request for restoration of citizenship had failed and the First Respondent was the only person that could help. I pointed out that I had called the First Respondent’s office countless time since I had arrived in Harare a week earlier and he had not returned any of my calls. Mr Chinembiri who appeared visibly disappointed that he could not help gave me back the passport application forms and the letter requesting urgent restoration of my citizenship. He then said I would now have to wait for the normal process of ”restoration” of citizenship, which took two years.
11.16 On or about October 31 2006 I called the First Respondent’s office from my Johannesburg office to seek clarity on this matter. His secretary told my secretary that I should send him a fax on November 1 2006.
11.17 I received an undated fax from the First Respondent which had been faxed to my Cape Town office telling me that I was no longer a Zimbabwean citizen and I should surrender my passport.
So, who is Zimbabwean?
In 2002, at the height of the struggle to unseat the Mugabe government, the cornered president, in a moment of pique, railed against ”totemless aliens”, a term used to describe foreigners in Zimbabwe, the majority of whom are urban Zimbabweans of Malawian, Mozambican and Zambian origins who were seen as supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change.
Rumours, hitherto suppressed, began to swirl about Mugabe’s supposed Mozambican parentage. The rumours were laid to rest somewhat when the late nationalist and Mugabe’s long-time political opponent, James Chikerema — Mugabe’s maternal uncle — came out in an interview with the now-banned Daily News saying that Mugabe’s father was, in fact, Zimbabwean.
Nation and nationality in Zimbabwe are always conveniently and selectively used. The parents of Zimbabwe’s most famous soccer export, Benjani Mwaruwaru of English Premiership side Portsmouth, are from Malawi. Another of the best soccer talents ever to come out of Zimbabwe, Moses Chunga, is also of Malawian ancestry.
The prominence of so-called foreigners is not limited to the soccer fields as one of Zimbabwe’s most famous sons, the late finance minister Bernard Chidzero — who, in 1991, was beaten to the post of United Nations secretary general by Boutros Boutros Ghali — was also of Malawian ancestry. All these men have been hailed by the Mugabe government as Zimbabwean heroes. Chidzero is even buried at the national shrine, the Heroes’ Acre.