Back to Index

Zimbabwe story not black and white
Bram Posthumus, Radio Netherlands
April 26, 2007

http://www.radionetherlands.nl/currentaffairs/zim070426

Something needs to fundamentally change about the way in which Zimbabwe is reported. A return to journalistic principles is long overdue. This is a heartfelt plea from a Zimbabwean journalist and an open invitation to debate.

Zimbabwe is bad news. We get the statistics constantly hammered into us: world record inflation, the world's fastest shrinking economy, mass emigration to practically everywhere, the list is endless. Oh, and yes: it's all the fault of President Robert Mugabe. Therefore, he must go.

It's the kind of closed-minded journalism that does no one any favours. And it positively rankles with those who are attempting to try and do what journalists are supposed to be doing: finding the facts.

Basic principles
Charles Rukuni heads the city desk of Zimbabwe's reputable financial weekly, the Financial Gazette, lovingly referred to by Zimbabweans as Fingaz. Why does he think the reporting standards for Zimbabwe are so low?

"The biggest problem we face here is journalists not following the basic principles of their profession. They're not honest enough to tell an editor that a story is simply not there. But because journalists get paid in foreign currency, they end up writing what they think the editor wants, rather than explaining the facts on the ground."

Foreign currency is scarce in the country and a bit of money from abroad can make a huge difference. But that alone does not make for the lowering of journalistic standards when reporting this country. When we talk about closed-minded journalists, the minds that Rukuni is referring to belong to editors. "If you're writing a piece that does not seem to support the opposition or a civic or human rights group, you're immediately branded a Mugabe apologist," he says. As a consequence, a journalist writing for a foreign news outlet will do what is expected: bash Mugabe and tell the world that only bad news comes out of Zimbabwe.

Fanzines
Of course, you have publications that read like Robert Mugabe fanzines but these are either produced by the Zimbabwean Ministry of Information, which is simply doing its job, or by a vocal lunatic fringe that uses the race card to play the many strings of white guilt. Rukuni certainly does not agree with those who believe that Zimbabwe is only about Mugabe, misery and race.

And that appears to be the core belief about his country among the editors who decide what news is and what is not: "You cannot market any story about Zimbabwe if it says something positive. So you already have a particular angle to your story before you even talk to anybody."Why is Zimbabwe being reported through this black/white/misery lens? Apparently because of previous reporting-techniques by the major Western broadcasters. When the mostly white-owned farm invasions started in 2000, most of the reports were about the owners and their families who had lost everything they had toiled for. It was the easiest item to make. After all: they were articulate and spoke English; very convenient. But round the back of the invaded farms was the real story.

The people who were really targeted during the invasions were the tens of thousands of farm hands, who did not speak English but posed a serious and proven electoral risk to Robert Mugabe and his ruling ZANU-PF party.

Labourers
In 2000, president and party had done a most unusual thing: they had lost a poll, in this case a Constitutional Referendum. Repetition of this had to be prevented and so they set about removing the very people who were likely to vote for the opposition. Farm labourers went first. This was never about hitting the white people - it was about winning elections, which president and party duly did, in 2002 and 2005 respectively.

Operation "Murambatsvina" (Clean Out Trash), in which makeshift urban residential areas were razed to the ground, is another attempt to get rid of an opposition voting base, this time urban. It will probably work again.

The link with race was tangential at best but it became the focus of reporting because the Western media homed in on the (largely irrelevant) white farmers, giving the Mugabe government the perfect race card they wanted. And boy, have they used it. And boy, have the newsmakers everywhere fallen for the ruse.

Add to that the deeply acrimonious personal relationships between Robert Mugabe on the one hand and British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his then minister for Africa, former anti-apartheid activist Peter Hain, on the other - and you can see where this story is heading.

Fantasies
The situation in Zimbabwe is bad enough to also have to deal with the fantasies of commissioning editors and their strung-along stringers. The story is not black and white - it is not even about black and white. Sure, the British political establishment (Labour or Tory) is not going to change its opinion about Zimbabwe and neither will ZANU-PF change its views about Britain.

Their mutual mud-slinging is set to continue. Newsmakers should never have been drawn into this debilitating polarisation but they have an escape route: reporting the facts. Rukuni has some badly needed advice:

"If you report something and your story turns out to be false - and this has happened on many occasions - you are arming the government and reinforcing their idea that you tell lies about them. You also make the situation worse for those who fight for change in Zimbabwe."

And the remedy? "Simple,"says Rukuni. "Use the same principles that you use at home. Fact check. Find out what is fact and what is opinion. For instance, you have these reports like the one released by the International Crisis Group, which said that Mugabe had five months to leave office. That is not fact reporting, that's wishful thinking."

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP