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Zim artists turn to the screen to escape Mugabe's censorship
Tafirei Shumba, ZimOnline
September 04, 2007

http://www.zimonline.co.za/Article.aspx?ArticleId=1948

HARARE - Banned artists critical of President Mugabe are taking creativity to new levels outsmarting the Harare regime known for brutality against dissenting voices.

Sharp-tongued artists are forbidden on the banal and sole state television and radio while public theatrical plays and drama, criticising Mugabe and his henchmen, are banned by the state.

But defiant actors, irked by government censorship, are taking their hard-hitting works up the silver screen in a bid to reach out to a wider international audience out of Mugabe's reach.

Banned in Zimbabwe in 2004 on suspicion it lampooned Mugabe, an 83-years-old despot in power for 27 straight years, the political theatrical satire, Super Patriots and Morons, has been adapted for film.

Zimbabwe's first post-independence political play, to be banned and subsequently adapted for a full-length feature film, Super Patriots and Morons was shot on location in Harare this year away from the media spotlight.

The movie went quietly into post-production for fear police and state security agents would disrupt filming and possibly arrest the cast and crew.

A paranoid police and brutal Gestapo-style Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) state security, that reports directly to Mugabe, reacts swiftly on public or civic gatherings that are not sanctioned by police and shooting a movie that clearly puts Mugabe against the wall would attract serious trouble.

The movie premiered quietly in Harare last Thursday.

Much to the chagrin of state agents, the stage play version of the film is a 2007 nominee of Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award and continues receiving standing ovations and international accolades.

The film is typical satire showcasing poetic license of the highest order through the use of irony, ridicule, exaggeration and humour to expose and criticise Mugabe's autocracy and the way he has brought Zimbabwe to its knees.

While humorous and caricaturing Mugabe, the real story behind Super Patriots and Morons is not a joke but a sad reflection of the state of the nation: human rights abuses, the murder of Mugabe's opposition activists, economic meltdown, unemployment, starvation, lawlessness, corruption and endless shortages of virtually all basic necessities.

As it captures the agony and mood of the people, the movie zeroes in on how the ordinary citizens could engage the rogue regime and reclaim the right to good governance.

But the movie producer Daves Guzha, who also plays the lead role as state president, speaks seemingly with tongue-in-cheek denying the film is about Zimbabwe's geriatric ruler but misrule in repressive societies.

"The movie is inspired, yes, by events unfolding in Zimbabwe but can't be said to be targeting Mugabe personally. But people would naturally interpret the movie in different ways," Guzha told ZimOnline.

Guzha said the ban on the stage play version of Super Patriots and Morons and the local and international goodwill the play had received also influenced him to develop the satire into a movie.

In repressive societies, as the heat burns and the environment becomes sensitive and dangerous, courageous artists emerge with rich tapestries of creative work and actors are particularly giving Mugabe headaches.

Cont Mhlanga, a celebrated playwright, director and producer, returned from Zimbabwe's war of liberation at independence in 1980 and has since then never given the Harare regime any respite with his provocative plays.

Government brands Mhlanga a traitor and sellout, but like a growing list of courageous actors, Mhlanga has vowed Mugabe will not succeed in silencing art regardless of state intimidation.

Mhlanga's plays have already been in trouble with the state including The Good President, a theatrical play that takes shots directly at Mugabe.

The play was banned in June after armed police stormed Bulawayo Theatre during performance and ordered the audience out in Zimbabwe's second largest city in the southern region where Mugabe murdered at least 20 000 civilians in the 1980s in a war of attrition against the mainly Ndebele ethnic opposition.

"The reason why I use theatre is because I can't access Mugabe. If I would access the president today I would tell him he would not lose anything by not being president of Zimbabwe anymore," Mhlanga told ZimOnline.

"Yes, as an artist and Zimbabwean, I am saying Mugabe must go. He has done his contribution. He will not carry the liberation struggle process of democracy alone for 147 years, why? And I am not going to America, to Britain, to the opposition to tell them Mugabe must go."

Both Guzha and Mhlanga are engaged in a legal battle with the state to have the ban on their productions lifted.

Among some of the theatrical events and plays banned or stopped by the state in recent times are:

December 2006 - police in Chitungwiza, Harare, stop a theatrical festival on human rights. A young theatre producer Daniel Maphosa is intimidated.

May 2007 - police in Harare stop a theatrical festival on human rights, governance and democracy.

February 2007 - police in Bulawayo stop staging of a play advocating freedom of expression What They Said What They Got.

June 2007 - police in Bulawayo confront producer Cont Mhlanga and order people watching The Good President to disperse immediately. - ZimOnline

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