Zanu-PF is ready to use brute force again to control the media

REPEAT LOOMING: Victims of Zimbabwe’s post-election violence camp outside the US embassy in Harare in 2008. Since President Robert Mugabe announced that elections will be held next year, fears of violence are escalating. Journalists are already being targeted Picture: REUTERS

‘Since Zanu-PF’s power started to wane in the 1990s, it has seen the independent media as its enemy’

Despite having an arsenal of anti-press laws at their disposal, Zanu-PF loyalists – desperate to keep their snouts in the feeding trough – have resorted to using brute force to silence the independent media. This is nothing new. The tempo rises noticeably whenever an election looms. A fundamental tenet of Zanu-PF’s election strategy is to silence any dissenting voices – no matter what. Tactics used in the past have included burning,

Bombing, murdering, arresting, banning and terrorising.

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Since its power began to wane in the late 1990s, Zanu-PF has seen the independent media as its enemy. In 1998, the establishment of the country’s first independent national daily, The Daily News, with its exposure of misgovernance and corruption, and the paper’s huge public appeal, rattled the cage severely.

Then Zanu-PF lost the 1999 constitutional referendum and faced the spectre of electoral defeat at the general elections in 2000 by the newly formed Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The battle lines were drawn. An onslaught against the media was unleashed that has worsened with each passing year.

Key to this onslaught is the draconian and mis-named Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act – AIPPA – that demands the registration and licensing by the state-controlled Media and Information Commission of all newspapers, media outlets and journalists.

In its first two years, the MIC closed down five independent newspapers. Hundreds of journalists were arrested and beaten – not one conviction was secured. The authorities, desperate to maintain the news blackout, resorted to the catch-all “criminal nuisance” charge in some cases; and even invented the ludicrous charge of “committing journalism”.

The 2008 general and presidential elections, which Mugabe and Zanu-PF lost to the MDC and Morgan Tsvangirai, made the previous decade’s media repression look like a grandmothers’ tea party.

One Zimbabwean analyst said, during the election period, that ZBC/TV would have “made Goebbels proud”. And yet chief executive Henry Muradzikwa and seven top executives were fired for not being enthusiastic enough about Mugabe and allowing a few MDC election adverts to slip through.

So it is not only independent journalists who operate in a constant climate of threats and fear. State editors and reporters, too, live in constant terror of the chop – and worse.

Before, during and after both 2008 polls, the state-controlled media went into overdrive – its ham-fisted spin and sickeningly blatant deception would have been laughable had it not been so tragic.

And if early indications are anything to go by, the 2011 election will see similar, if not worse, horror. These pre-emptive strikes against independent journalists are the first, familiar, salvo.

Lined up against the formidable state media empire – which includes a total monopoly of radio and television, two national dailies, two national Sundays, several urban and rural weeklies, the national news agency Ziana and the Zimbabwe Information Service, with correspondents in the country’s 52 districts, is a tiny array of independent voices.

These comprise one local weekly, The Independent, one local Sunday, The Standard, as well as The Zimbabwean and its Sunday sister – trucked in from South Africa because of the restrictive government licensing requirements. And the Sunday Times. On the broadcasting front, there is the London-based SW Radio Africa, South Africa-based Voice of the People and the US-based VOA Studio 7.

And still Zanu-PF fails to control the hearts and minds of Zimbabweans – even rural Zimbabweans, whose levels of literacy and political sophistication surpass those of most other Africans. The widespread hunger for news is evidence that the state media has totally lost all credibility.

During the weeks leading up to the March 2008 elections and their horrific aftermath, circulation of The Zimbabwean soared to 200 000 a week and such was the demand for news that The Zimbabwean on Sunday was added to the stable. Distribution of this title peaked at 100 000 before the truck carrying 60 000 copies of the Africa Day (May 25) issue was torched by eight CIO operatives from Masvingo, brandishing new AK-47 rifles. A few days earlier Mugabe’s election agent, Emmerson Mnangagwa, had publicly blamed The Zimbabwean and SW Radio Africa for Mugabe’s humiliation at the polls.

The Zimbabwean reported last week that three freelance journalists in Mutare were set upon by thugs who demanded to know why they were reporting “bad things about the president”. Also, two reporters for The Independent were summoned by the police to reveal their sources.

And the week before, ZBC and ZTV carried announcements from the police spokesman, Andrew Phiri, that a warrant had been obtained for my arrest and that the ZRP were on a “manhunt for Mbanga – believed to reside in the UK”. My telephone number and e-mail address are published.

I have made no secret of the fact that I am in self-imposed exile in the UK! Phiri has subsequently stated that the ZRP has asked Interpol to assist in apprehending Mbanga.

In the formation of the Global Political Agreement that paved the way for the government of National Unity two years ago, the MDC was conned into agreeing to ask foreign governments to ban independent Zimbabwean radio stations broadcasting from their shores. Thankfully, none have done so. A year ago, the Minister of Media, Charles Ndlovu, set up an “independent” broadcasting authority stuffed with former soldiers. Yet not a single licence has been issued.

And so we are bracing ourselves – for whatever they throw at us. There will obviously be casualties. This is just another hazard of working as a Zimbabwean journalist, our so-called president wants to kill us.

I’m sure many world leaders would like to murder journalists who snap at their heels daily, exposing their weaknesses, holding them accountable, bringing their dark secrets and craven self-serving into the light, but they don’t actually send out armed thugs on government pay to thrash, maim and kill them.

Mbanga has been the editor of The Zimbabwean and its Sunday sister, since 2005. The papers circulate in Southern Africa and Zimbabwe as well as in the UK. See: www.thezimbabwean.co.uk