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President Mugabe's 'War Cabinet' on the warpath
Nyasha Nyakunu, MISA-Zimbabwe
Extracted from the Monthly Media Alerts Digest - October 2004
November 02, 2004

The month of October perhaps ranks as having been the most eventful so far this year, albeit for all the wrong reasons.

Far from conforming to the dictates of democratic practice, the Zimbabwean government seemed to have been more than determined in exposing its recalcitrant and intransigent nature where it concerns issues pertaining to basic freedoms.

The government’s actions during this month defied the logic of its diplomatic offensive blaming its shattered human rights record on Western imperialist forces working in cahoots with sell-out opposition parties, journalists and foreign organisations to demonise the "popularly elected" government.

As the denials reached fever pitch, events on the ground, however, demonstrate that the government is loathe to giving up its control of the free flow of information.

During the month of October alone, photo-journalists going about their normal duties were arrested and detained only to be released without charge.

Bornwell Chakaodza, the editor of the Standard received a threatening letter from the state controlled Media and Information Commission (MIC) over the publication of an allegedly "offensive" front-page picture of President Robert Mugabe.

The photograph headlined, Smartening Up, was taken at the Harare Agricultural Show in August and captured the Zimbabwean leader hitching up his trousers. The MIC is demanding a negative of the picture.

Members of the WOZA pressure group on a 440 km march from Harare to Bulawayo to protest against the proposed NGO Bill, were rounded up and detained in police cells in Chegutu and Selous some 100km from the capital.

The female members of the organisation were released without charges only to be re-arrested outside Parliament Building and thrown into police cells at Harare Central Prison.

As if that was not enough, the opposition MDC was likened to the terrorist organisation, Al Qaeda by the Minister of Justice Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Patrick Chinamasa.

Chinamasa boisterously told parliament that the MDC would not be allowed access to the state-media ahead of the 2005 parliamentary elections.

To demonstrate its belief in might is right, two Air Force of Zimbabwe fighter planes were deployed over the capital’s skies minutes before judgment was passed in the treason trial of MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

Zimbabwe’s military arsenal was on display as heavily armed police cordoned off the precincts of the High Court ahead of the judgment.

President Mugabe’s "War Cabinet" was definitely on the warpath. Judge President Justice Paddington Garwe acquitted Tsvangirai of the treason charges.

Meanwhile, photojournalist Desmond Kwande of the Daily Mirror, previously arrested and released without charge during the demonstrations by the WOZA group, was again arrested and detained by the police.

The police were apparently angered by his taking of pictures of uniformed forces barricading the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, a stone’s throw from the High Court just after Tsvangirai’s acquittal.

The Daily Mirror’s assistant editor Tichaona Chifamba was also arrested after he sought clarity on the nature of the offence committed by Kwande.

They were both charged under the Miscellaneous Offences Act and made to pay admission of guilty fines of $25 000 each.

All these wanton arrests and harassments speak volumes about Zimbabwe’s commitment to the SADC Guidelines and Principles Governing Democratic Elections.

Bills, which are not only a far cry from the SADC Principles, but designed to curtail basic freedoms, are being brought before parliament ahead of the 2005 parliamentary elections.

These Bills include the Non-Governmental Organisations Bill, the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Bill and the Electoral Amendment Bill.

Ironically, the government says these bills are in line with the spirit and letter of the SADC Principles.

While the SADC principles espouse political tolerance, equal opportunity for all political parties to access the state media and freedom of association, among other principles, the Bills in question seek to achieve the opposite.

By restricting the activities of NGOs, banning foreign funding and heavily penalising NGOs in their work, the proposed law goes beyond acceptable democratic principles and criminalises the noble work of civic society organisations.

The Bill which seeks to amend the widely condemned Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) will provide a penalty fine and an imprisonment term for those journalists found practicing without accreditation.

This amounts to criminalising the practice of journalism in breach of the constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression. Does one need a licence to exercise a constitutionally guaranteed right?

The Electoral Amendment Bill, will for instance, only allow Zimbabweans domiciled in the country to vote in the parliamentary elections scheduled for March next year. The SADC Principles, on the other hand, enunciate full participation of citizens in the political process.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), which was due in, the country on 24 October 2004 at the invitation of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) was declared persona non-grata.

The government barred the Cosatu five-day fact finding mission to Zimbabwe saying its mission was "political".

Besides meeting with various civic society organisations, the delegation also wanted to find out government’s position on the NGO Bill, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission Bill and the Electoral Amendment Bill.

A 12-member Cosatu delegation defied the government and flew to Harare a day later, on 26 October 2004.

The government, was, however in a fighting mood despite a High Court order barring the deportation.

It went ahead and threw out the delegation after driving them some 500km to the Beitbridge Border Post where immigration officials showed them the way across the Limpopo River into South Africa.

The mind boggles as to why the ruling Zanu PF government would make heavy weather of the COSATU visit when it has always insisted and maintained that it has nothing to hide.

The government knows that its actions are the very antithesis of democratic practice, which expose the fallacy, and hypocrisy of its wafer-thin claims to good governance, accountability and transparency.

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