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Foreign journalists do nothing for cause
Bheki Makhubu
May 28, 2004

*This letter was first published in The Star newspaper

http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=225&fArticleId=2092540

At the end of e.tv's Sky News interview with Robert Mugabe on May 25, Third Degree host Debora Patta asked viewers to say whether the Zimbabwean leader was convincing about what he had said about his country.

What an irrelevant question. The interview itself, and the question by Patta, was a final betrayal of journalists from Zimbabwe. Particularly those who have fallen victim to the tyranny of the man who has run roughshod over the media in recent years.

Although I am not a Zimbabwean, I can tell you now that the questions in the interview from the British gentleman lacked any form of deep understanding of what exactly is going on in Zimbabwe.

I was shocked to hear a First World journalist ask a silly question like "There are rumours that you are corrupt, Mr President", or words to that effect. A rumour? What exactly did he expect for an answer?

When he asked Mugabe about the report on Zimbabwe's food shortage, Southern Africa's longest-reigning leader went to town on the issue, and it soon became clear that the Sky News man was out of his depth. The interviewer actually found Mugabe friendly and easy to talk to. A nice guy.

The net effect of an interview of this kind, in a climate of extreme hostility towards local writers, is that it creates an even greater rift between local journalists and the country's leadership.

To that extent, at least, I have first-hand knowledge from experiences in Swaziland.

What happens is that the leadership, quite satisfied with a good interview with international journalists, turns to local writers critical of government and says they don't know what they are doing.

Swaziland has many problems. The constitution is one, while the rule of law has been seriously compromised.

Our parliament is a sorry mess, despite that more people went to vote than at any other time in recent history. There is also the matter of a whole community of people displaced despite a court order to the effect that they must be returned to their homes.

These are issues that are relevant to Swazis in their everyday lives today. But the international media, particularly South African, while claiming to be helping in bringing democracy to Swaziland, ignores these matters and writes about Swaziland only when King Mswati III is involved in some juicy sex story.

I don't know what really happened before the Mugabe interview. But I can safely say that it is pretty much what always happens when journalists from leading television networks and newspapers come into a Third World dictatorship to interview the leader.

They almost completely ignore the local journalists, yet that is where they can get a clear perspective of what is going on and prepare for an interview with rock solid facts.

In 1997 I pointed out to some journalists at the Washington Post that this behaviour was neither helping Third World countries nor their fellow journalists in Africa. They simply walk into a country, ignored the local players and go on to have sunshine interviews with the leadership, without the proper facts to back up the questions

This shows a lack of interest by the international media in the affairs of the countries they report on.

While they have Africa and foreign editors, in most cases they are no different from the white experts on African affairs who were predominant during colonial times, but knew very little about the continent or the country they gave "expert" knowledge on.

Bheki Makhubu
Mbabane, Swaziland

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