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State of the Media Report December 2002
Media Institute of Southern Africa - Zimbabwe Chapter (MISA-Zimbabwe)
December 17, 2002

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View the media violation statistics for 2002

Introduction
Zimbabwe is presently suspended somewhere between the complete repression of the private media and half hearted "attempts" to be seen to be adhering to democratic principles and regulating "within the law".

Although the year 2000 is largely seen as the turning point or watershed in the post independence history of Zimbabwe, 2002 provided a new set of challenges that have literally torn Zimbabwe apart. Not only is the country faced with seemingly insurmountable economic and political problems, specific to issues of media freedoms, the environment has deteriorated even further.

2002 saw the enactment of AIPPA¹, an all inclusive media and freedom of expression law that however does not carry the fundamental ingredients of an Access to Information law. Many laws that deal with issues of broadcasting and public order were enacted, some in 2001, but the effects of such became more apparent and operational in 2002. These include the Broadcasting Services Act, ZBC² Commercialization Act and the Public Order and Security Act (POSA).

Media workers including journalists, photographers, vendors, camerapersons, drivers have been beaten, arrested and intimidated on many occasions, in the course of duty. The political polarization prevailing has manifested itself in the treatment that the media gets from various sectors of the Zimbabwe society. Newspapers have been labeled and are treated different by politicians from opposing parties. The worst developments however are the attempts to legalize repression of the media through the enactment of blatantly unconstitutional laws. These laws, mentioned above, have thus been used to arrest, intimidate and harass journalists and media workers. Although state media journalists have not been spared the harassment and beatings, all arrests that have been carried out by the police in 2002 were on private media journalists. The impression created has therefore been that the new laws are for the private media and others who are seen as belonging to the "opposition" and not for the rest of the media or society at large. The courts have either dismissed many cases involving journalists or the state has not bothered to make a follow up on the arrests. 2002 therefore registered an unprecedented number of arrests on media workers.

Whereas the government has extended its stranglehold of the private media through the enactment of such laws as AIPPA and POSA, the state owned media has equally remained under the grip of the Department of Information and Publicity in the President’s Office. It is not known in the public sphere how the public media is being run but it is public knowledge as to who is running it and the reporting says it all.

One drawback to all the media and qausi-media laws is their total lack of the inclusion of developmental aspects and needs of the people of Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe like many third world countries is still media thin and apart from the drought of rain in 2002, there is an ever-present drought of information. The laws enacted are politically correct to their originators but visibly lack a vision on the direction the Zimbabwe’s media is taking in terms of economic empowerment, new information and communication technologies and the general use of the media for developmental purposes. This is amply demonstrated in the telecommunications sector, where an aspiring fixed telephone operator was only licensed in December after protracted uncertainty and indeed the delays in the licensing of private broadcasters has no explanation apart from political considerations. Zimbabwe is thus lagging behind the region and indeed the rest of the world as far as the promulgation of development oriented communication legislation and the development of ICT’s³ that can be used in, for example, educational programmes is concerned.

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