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Behind the Headlines with Wilf Mbanga
Lance Guma, SW Radio Africa
November 04, 2010

Interview broadcast 04 November 2010

Lance Guma: Good evening Zimbabwe and welcome to Behind the Headlines. This week we focus on the story that pretty much took everyone by surprise and this was the story in the state-owned media that the police had launched a manhunt for the editor of The Zimbabwean newspaper, Wilf Mbanga.

According to the reports they are accusing Mbanga and his publication of publishing a story after the 2008 elections which undermined president Robert Mugabe. Now the story involves the suspicious circumstances under which the late Zimbabwe Electoral Commission Director for Polling, Ignatius Mushangwe was murdered.

So what we've decided to do is to get Mr Mbanga on the programme and first of all I asked him why on earth the police would look for him when they know very much that he's in the United Kingdom?

Wilf Mbanga: I've been in the UK for the last six years. The police know that I live in the UK, I phone them from time to time including their senior assistant commissioner in charge of PR. I phone them to confirm stories, they know where I'm phoning from so why they should be launching a manhunt in Zimbabwe is ludicrous.

They know where to find me, if they want to find me, if they want to interview me they can phone me, they know my phone number, I'm quite willing to cooperate with them, I'm not a fugitive from justice. I know that this is just a cooked up charge, I've not committed any offence, I deny that I've committed any offence. In fact I deny that The Zimbabwean carried a story saying that Mugabe, Mnangagwa and Bonyongwe met to plot Mushangwe's death. I deny it. I challenge them to prove it.

Guma: Now this story - people want to understand why is it coming out now because this happened in 2008 so why on earth . . .

Mbanga: Why now?

Guma: Yes.

Mbanga: Exactly. That's my question as well but the thing is I think they are desperate. Remember in 2008 Emerson Mnangagwa announced that Mugabe had lost the election because of The Zimbabwean and SW Radio Africa. He accused us of having poisoned the minds of Zimbabweans so it could be a way of wanting to silence us before the planned elections for next year. It could be, I don't know, I'm just guessing.

Guma: Yah there has been a lot of speculation that with elections coming they probably might be finding a roundabout way of banning The Zimbabwean from being sold on the streets of Zimbabwe.

Mbanga: It could be but it's up to them. We will fight back, that's for sure.

Guma: Let's remind our listeners Mr Mbanga the story concerning Ignatius Mushangwe - what happened in terms of the way this was reported? What are the background details just so that people can remember?

Mbanga: What we reported was that Mushangwe had had a meeting with officials from ZEC, the ZRP, the CIO and the army at which he complained about the rigging of the elections and he was shouted down at that meeting and then next thing we heard that he had disappeared and the police were looking for him. Next thing his body was found in the mortuary in Norton. It was badly burnt and a post mortem revealed that he had been strangled first before they set his body on fire.

Now you know that in Zimbabwe you cannot just take a body to the mortuary and dump it there, they will need to know who has brought the body, there would have been a record of who took the body there. Those records do not seem to appear, somebody has destroyed those records, so it must be somebody who was powerful enough to destroy the records and to this day we also know that the military intelligence, we actually named the soldier who was responsible for Mushangwe's disappearance, nothing has happened, no warrant of arrest has been issued for this character and yet they issue warrant of arrest for me for reporting the facts.

Guma: It's interesting also in the story that you've done covering this development, you do raise a pertinent question that you are being victimised as merely a messenger and yet up to now, police have not investigated who killed Mushangwe.

Mbanga: Yah not only Mushangwe but also there were 200 other people who were murdered during the run-up and during the elections in 2008. Not a single warrant of arrest has been issued despite the fact that the murderers are well known, they are serving members of the security forces in Zimbabwe today.

Guma: So where does this leave us Mr Mbanga? The coming in of the coalition government had raised expectations among Zimbabweans that this would lead to an opening up of democratic space but clearly developments like this do not harbour well for the future?

Mbanga: No, ZANU PF does not share power, it has never wanted to share power from day one, it was merely a marriage of inconvenience for them and Mugabe has been quite clear about it right from day one. He's never wanted this arrangement. He said he was embarrassed by the results of the elections and he was forced into this marriage and you've noticed only since 2008 they've started calling Mugabe head of state and government and commander-in-chief of the defense forces and so on to show that he is the sole ruler of Zimbabwe - the other people don't matter.

MDC has virtually been sidelined in the government of Zimbabwe today.
You only have to read the Herald to see how they portray the MDC ministers, they treat them like dirt. You have civil servants who denounce ministers including the prime minister and they survive. Can you imagine if a Zimbabwean civil servant denouncing a ZANU PF MP? He wouldn't survive one minute so it just shows ZANU PF went into this arrangement to save themselves. Now that they have been saved they feel that they don't need MDC anymore and they are now going out (a) to destroy MDC and to go back, roll back the carpet, roll back the steps towards democracy.

Guma: Do you think the MDC have been naive? Do you think they are aware that this is what ZANU PF is planning because people think sometimes they're too good to be in politics in terms of being innocently naive at times? What's your assessment?

Mbanga: Well you see the problem with MDC people is that they are nice guys, they are decent people and in politics, particularly in Zimbabwe, it's the sport of thugs. You only have to look at the characters in ZANU PF, it's full of murderers, thieves and so on and they are dealing with decent law-abiding citizens on the other hand and then so you find that MDC is back-footed the whole time because they are trying to play according to the rules.

They certainly believed in the GPA and they've honoured the letter and the spirit of the GPA and ZANU PF has breached the terms of that agreement, they don't care for it and that's the problem we have in Zimbabwe today.

Guma: Where does this leave us as journalists because I've tended to notice Mr Mbanga over time, media houses that are very critical, that pinpoint to human rights abuses, you have certain quarters that will accuse you of being too negative all the time, you are not giving this coalition government a chance and that sort of thing. This has been happening over quite a long period and every Zimbabwean journalist wants to see progress in Zimbabwe but how do you approach a crisis like this?

Mbanga: Well the problem is we have, our job is just to tell the story as we see it. If it's negative it's up to the people of Zimbabwe, the government and everybody else to fix it. What we need to do, I mean what we do is simply to mirror what is going on in our society and if people think what we are portraying in the newspapers is negative, well that's the reality.

That is what is happening and we want Zimbabwe to be the best country in the world, we want Zimbabwe to solve its problems, we want Zimbabwe to be a peaceful country - that's what we are all aiming for and we've got the enemies of peace murdering people. People are being murdered to this day, people are still being arrested on trumped up charges and so on. We don't want that sort of thing. If they don't want negative publicity they should stop doing all these negative things.

Guma: And just going slightly to another issue, we've been in this boat for quite some time, the unending Zimbabwean crisis, is there any particular reason why it's taking so much time to be resolved because it never seems to end, it never looks like Mugabe is going anywhere, the discovery of the diamonds has in a sense even empowered the regime, they have more resources to remain where they are - is it ever going to end?

Mbanga: Well the thing is ZANU PF doesn't want to end their rule of Zimbabwe and they will make sure that they stay in power by hook or by crook and as you say, the discovery of the diamonds is the one that helps them to fund, to weld their machine and so they are going to fight to stay in power because they know that if they lose power they could actually end up at the Hague or they could end up in a Zimbabwean prison for all the criminal activities they've been involved in over the years. They've been involved in murder, they've been involved in looting from the state coffers, they've been involved in all sorts of crime and they are terrified, they are terrified people that's the facts of the matter.

Guma: Final question for you Mr Mbanga - predictions for the future - the coming elections - what do you foresee happening?

Mbanga: Well there's no way Mugabe can win that election, there's no way he can win free and fair elections, he has to resort to rigging and the rigging has already started.

Guma: Well that was Wilf Mbanga the editor of The Zimbabwean newspaper joining us on the programme. Mr Mbanga thank you so much for your time.

Mbanga: You are welcome, thank you very much for having me.

Feedback can be sent to lance@swradioafrica.com or http://twitter.com/lanceguma

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