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Does Zimbabwe have the press it deserves?
Njabulo Ncube, Financial Gazette
April 29, 2004

http://www.fingaz.co.zw/fingaz/2004/April/April29/5288.shtml

Bulawayo - With access to information and the right to free expression now increasingly considered key to the building of democracy, media workers the world over celebrate World Press Freedom Day on May 3.

Zimbabweans, currently engrossed in a debate on socio-economic and political problems besetting the country, are also wondering if the media they have is the media they deserve.

This comes against a back-cloth of what are widely viewed by government critics as repressive media laws. These include the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) and the Public Order and Security Act.

The laws have raised a hue and cry from the country's fragmented media industry and human rights groups, who say the regulations have imposed new limitations and controls on journalists.

The critics argue that restrictions imposed by these new rules should have been swept away with the rubble of the colonial Ian Smith regime.

Already, the draconian AIPPA, crafted by Professor Jonathan Moyo, the Minister of Information and Publicity in the Office of the President, has claimed the scalp of the country's hugely popular independent daily tabloid, The Daily News, which was closed in September last year, throwing nearly 200 journalists and other media workers onto the streets.

The newspaper, owned by self-exiled Zimbabwean businessman Strive Masiyiwa, was closed down after the Supreme Court ruled that it had broken the law by operating without a licence as required under AIPPA.

The situation has not been helped by the fact that a full bench of the country's highest court has since thrown out an application by the Independent Journalists' Association of Zimbabwe (IJAZ) challenging AIPPA, while numerous other court actions by the Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ) have met with little success, much to the displeasure of media workers.

As the country marks World Press Freedom Day, whose theme this year is "Restore my right to hear and be heard", the question journalists, media workers and publishers will be asking themselves is: where to after this?

But is it true, as argued by critics, that the ZANU PF government, in power for 24 years, does not tolerate criticism?

Media experts, representatives of journalists' unions and political commentators who spoke to The Financial Gazette this week were unanimous President Robert Mugabe's beleaguered regime was wary of media pluralism.

They said the government would continue its campaign to "fight the enemy in the media", a declaration made by officials from the Department of Information and Publicity when they met editors from the Zimpapers group in Harare recently.

Lovemore Maduku, chairperson of the National Constitutional Assembly, said Zimbabweans deserved a better media than that on the ground. He said contrary to the official position, there was no press freedom in Zimbabwe.

"We are not enjoying media diversity. We do not have an independent daily to compete with state dailies. The independent weeklies that are operating are not sufficient.

"At the state newspapers, there is also a lot of interference by the government," said Maduku, a lawyer by profession. "We are not happy with AIPPA. It is squarely responsible for this bad state of the media in our country."

Stanford Moyo, a lawyer with a Harare firm who represented IJAZ in its failed Supreme Court case challenging AIPPA, said it was scandalous that journalists in Zimbabwe had been denied the right to elect their own media controlling bodies.

Moyo, addressing journalists and lawyers at a Media Lawyers Network annual conference in Masvingo, said the Media and Information Commission (MIC),which licenses journalists, comprised state-appointed commissioners and was only answerable to Minister Moyo.

"Other professions in this country enjoy the democratic right to elect their own controlling bodies, but not journalists in Zimbabwe. The MIC is not elected. Journalism is no longer a profession any more as its practice is now under the control of central government," he said.

"The laws that have been put in place are heavily loaded against journalists. I am not surprised that many journalists have left the country to do menial jobs in the diaspora.

"We are a country that oppresses journalists. Zimbabwe does not respect freedom of the press and expression."

The government loathes a critical stand from the media because it alleges the country's independent papers are sponsored and manipulated by Western governments, particularly Britain and the United States, which have accused President Robert Mugabe's government of human rights abuses.

The government denies the charge and says the independent papers are being used by the two Western powers to try and effect regime change in Zimbabwe.

Relations between Zimbabwe and Britain, the former colonial master which ZANU PF accuses of refusing to atone for its colonial sins, became frosty after Harare seized white commercial farming land to resettle landless black peasants.

The rift widened following a hotly disputed presidential election in 2002, won by President Mugabe and subsequently challenged in court by the opposition.

"The media in Zimbabwe is being used as an extension of foreign policy by Western powers through promotion of hatred, contempt, internal strife and implied political disaster. There is serious polarisation that has resulted in decay in ethics, professionalism and responsibility.

"The media in Zimbabwe confuses freedom of expression and media freedom. Freedom of expression can be unlimited but media freedom cannot be unlimited," said the MIC.

"Certain sections of the media in Zimbabwe are being used to demonise nationalist and pan-Africanist political parties that went through the liberation struggle to restore independence in Zimbabwe. And this is done through calculated propaganda based on the theoretical principles of liberal democracy and human rights.

"These do not defend the national interests just like what CNN (Cable News Network) would do to American national interests or what BBC (the British Broadcasting Corporation) would do to the British national interests," it said.

John Makumbe, a political analyst and a critic of the government who teaches political science at the University of Zimbabwe, bemoaned the crisis in the local media.

"We certainly do not have the media we deserve," said Makumbe. "We are now stuck following the closure of The Daily News. We have to wait for the weeklies - The Financial Gazette, The Independent and The Standard - to get to know what is happening in the country. We cannot rely on the state media because most of the time, it contains nothing for the readers," said Makumbe, who is also chairperson of Transparency International Zimbabwe, an anti-corruption watchdog.

Makumbe said the independent weeklies needed to be complemented by at least one independent daily in exposing graft in both the government and the private sector.

"The weeklies are not enough. It is a shame and scandalous that small countries such as Botswana have up to eight independent papers," Makumbe said.

"When the question of the state of the media in Zimbabwe is asked, the obvious and immediate picture that comes into mind is the closure of The Daily News, the paper that came onto the scene in 1998," said Matthew Takaona, president of the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ).

"As one goes further, the news content found in the state-run media organisations like The Herald, New Ziana and the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) are bound to come to mind," said Takaona, arbitrarily dismissed as news editor of The Sunday Mail by the government about two months ago for allegedly addressing troubled journalists at The Daily News.

"After the closure of The Daily News, the media pluralism we have in this country is now infinitesimal," added Takaona.

Takaona said the ZBC's monopoly was a great source of frustration to the citizens of Zimbabwe.
"We cannot, as a people who are independent and free, be condemned to a situation of listening to one opinion every minute of our life and have no alternative. We cannot be condemned to watching vulgar dances despite calls by the public, whom it (ZBC) should be serving, to stop those dances. The state media is abusing the public and they (government) get away with it," he said.

The ZUJ boss said fear had also become one of the worst enemies of press freedom in Zimbabwe. Fear could also explain the atrocious content in the media, he said. Even AIPPA itself had instilled fear in that journalists were now afraid to be associated with editorial material that appeared to be against the persuasions of the MIC.

"There is the fear that if you are found to be in such a position, then you may lose your registration or it may not be renewed after 12 months, effectively ending your job as a journalist in Zimbabwe. AIPPA has caused the collapse of the media in Zimbabwe," said Takaona.

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