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A
passport is not a gagging instrument
Trevor
Ncube
December 15, 2005
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=259339&area=/insight/insight__comment_and_analysis/
When I woke up in
Johannesburg last Thursday morning, I was surprised to discover that the
Australian government had included my name on a list of more than 120
Zimbabweans barred from doing business with that country’s Reserve Bank
for allegedly aiding and abetting President Robert Mugabe’s government.
By the time I boarded the plane heading for my brother’s wedding in Bulawayo,
the Australians had already called to apologise for the error and I promptly
put the matter behind me. Being included on the Australian list never
bothered me for a moment. My sense was that it is the prerogative of the
Australians to decide who is allowed to visit their country and who is
not. On arrival at Bulawayo airport on Thursday afternoon I discovered
that I was on another list - this one comprising 17 Zimbabweans whose
passports had been invalidated and were due to be withdrawn. I was to
learn the following day that the instruction to withdraw and invalidate
my passport was made by Registrar General Tobaiwa Mudede in a letter dated
November 24 addressed to Chief Immigration Officer Elasto Mugwadi. Mugwadi
sent out a circular four days later to all ports of entry.
Being on two lists
of undesirables in one day is quite an experience! While the Australians
at least apologised for their faux pas, I still have not received an explanation
from the Zimbabwean authorities. Meanwhile, my lawyers have lodged an
urgent application at the Harare High Court challenging the illegal seizure
of my passport on several grounds. These include that the action is unlawful,
a violation of the rules of natural justice, and lacks procedural fairness.
The confiscation of the passport is also grossly unreasonable and irrational.
Assuming the impounding of the passport is based on things I have written
or said on what is happening in Zimbabwe, this action violates my freedom
of thought and expression. The fact that I find myself under "country
arrest" means that my constitutional right to freedom of movement has
been severely vitiated. I must hasten to add that the actual seizure of
my passport was effected by a youthful member of the Central Intelligence
Organisation (CIO) who identified himself to me. And because of internal
divisions within Mugabe’s spooks, many have been talking to me and my
colleagues.
The reasons for this
abuse of authority and heavy-handed action are beginning to emerge. I
think what is heartening in all this is the number of immigration officials
and CIO operatives who are appalled by this action and the obvious injustice
of it all. Apparently the Mediagate scandal uncovered by Dumisani Muleya
at the Zimbabwe Independent, one of my newspapers in Zimbabwe,
a few months ago is at the heart of the confiscation of my passport. In
a nutshell, the exposé revealed that the CIO had taken over three
privately owned newspapers, namely the Daily Mirror, the Sunday
Mirror and the Financial Gazette, leaving the Zimbabwe Independent
and the Standard as the only independent newspapers in the country.
It is now common cause that the founder of the Mirror group of newspapers,
Dr Ibbo Mandaza, has lost his business to the CIO after becoming indebted
to them and is in the courts at the moment to seek relief. The Mediagate
expose was a big blow to the CIO’s ability to continue to use public funds
to finance the Mirror newspapers. And this has put the director general
of the CIO, Brigadier Happyton Bonyongwe, the author of this media strategy,
in a pickle.
The Mediagate strategy
is part of the CIO’s broad plan code-named Project October whose two main
objectives are to ensure that the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) is severely weakened and that there should not be any privately
owned newspaper group in the country by 2010, thus ensuring the only voice
heard across the land is Mugabe’s. Zanu PF intends to postpone the presidential
election due in 2008 to 2010 through a constitutional amendment, which
is expected soon.
To all intents and
purposes, they have achieved the first objective as the MDC is hopelessly
divided and they are now working on the second. My continued ownership
of the Independent and Standard stands in the way of achieving the second
goal. Apart from being an autocratic approach to dealing with perceived
critics and instilling a climate of fear across the country, the confiscation
of my passport is thus expected to deliver on the second objective of
winning the hearts and minds of Zimbabweans through a sycophantic and
pliant media. My sources tell me that the thinking within the CIO now
is that I have a lot to lose by staying in the country without a passport
and that I will be forced to flee the country illegally. If I did I would
be termed a "fugitive", paving the way for a takeover of my businesses.
They would have killed two birds with one stone: settled their grudge
over the Mediagate story and muzzled the last private newspapers in the
country. With their mission accomplished, the CIO - who are effectively
running this country following the failure of civilian structures and
the deep divisions within the ruling party and the government over the
succession issue - would be well placed to play king makers and anoint
a candidate of their choice to succeed Mugabe.
At the moment the
defence forces commander, General Constantine Chiwenga, enjoys the support
of the security chiefs as a candidate to succeed Mugabe although he is
said to be concerned about the CIO newspaper ownership issue. Chiwenga
is currently locked in a multimillion dollar legal battle with the Mirror
papers over a false story written about him. He is said to have complained
to the CIO about their use of the media to damage reputations. As this
shows, the problem with CIO newspaper ownership is that it is calculated
to serve factional interests in Zanu PF and not the national good. This
is why it has created divisions in the Cabinet, the ruling party and the
government. The whole thing is about rigidly controlling the media, not
just to win hearts and minds, but specifically to influence the outcome
of the Mugabe succession struggle. The Zimbabwean government has increasingly
become a quasi-military dictatorship both in form and style. Currently
seven members of Mugabe’s Cabinet are former military or intelligence
strongmen. Of the 31 key government institutions or parastatals, 13 are
headed by former military or intelligence officers. These include the
National Parks, Prison Services, the Grain Marketing Board and the CIO
itself. Government bureaucracy, including electoral supervision, is now
run by the army. We have even seen the military being deployed to implement
command agriculture - Operation Maguta - to deal with food shortages.
It is no surprise then that it was the CIO, headed by a military man,
that hatched the infamous Operation Murambatsvina that destroyed the homes
and businesses of thousands of Zimbabweans. The United Nations report
on this dastardly act estimated that 700 000 people had been left homeless.
This was a military-style
pre-emptive strike intended to flush out opposition supporters from the
urban slums of Zimbabwe. The preponderance of the military and the abuse
of state intelligence structures is a growing cancer in the politics of
Zimbabwe. It has led to securocracy - control by state security agencies
- taking root in the country, something politically dangerous and a source
of future instability.
It must be pointed
out that the two men at the centre of the seizure of my passport, Mugwadi
and Mudede, work in cahoots with the military and intelligence structures
that meet every week under the auspices of the Joint Operations Committee
(JOC) to discuss security issues. Bonyongwe, whose media department compiled
the list of 17 names, is a rising star in this gang. He has become even
more powerful against the backdrop of the succession squabbles in the
ruling party. While I have not officially been given the reasons for the
seizure of my passport, there is speculation that the list of 17, believed
to be a prelude to a longer list of 64, which Mugabe ordered to be drawn
up at his party’s recent conference, is perhaps the first salvo in implementing
the provisions of Constitutional Amendment No 17, which gives the government
the right to seize the passports of people it perceives as "threatening
the interests of the state". The problem is that currently there is no
enabling legislation to implement this Orwellian provision. But then laws
are not usually allowed to stand in the way of Mugabe’s grand political
designs.
There is evidence
already that the seizure of my passport has had the desired results across
the country and on Zimbabweans living abroad. Many in and outside the
country will be terrified to speak out against current abuses for fear
of losing their passports. Many now fear coming home to their loved ones
because there is no guarantee that they will not lose their passports
on arriving home. While terribly inconvenienced by the seizure of my passport
I am not at all intimidated. I will always exercise my birthright to speak
out against misrule and injustice. A passport cannot be used as a gagging
instrument. I shall not be silenced by a regime whose leadership and policy
failures have reduced Zimbabwe to a wasteland and that wants to blame
everybody but itself for the colossal disaster it has caused through corrupt
and incompetent rule.
The list of people
whose passports have been invalidated by the ZImbabwean government includes:
The former owner of the banned Daily News and owner of the Econet cellphone
company, Strive Masiyiwa; former Daily News editor-in-chief Geoff Nyarota
; his successor, Nqobile Nyathi ;journalists Basildon Peta and Lloyd Mudiwa
are also on the list ; former Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation journalist
Caroline Gombakomba ; freelance journalist Bernard Mandizvidza ; media
lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa ; human-rights lawyer Gabriel Shumba ; lawyer Brian
Kagoro ; civic activist Raymond Majongwe ; opposition Movement for Democratic
Change’s former MP Tafadzwa Musekiwa ; the party’s Brussels representative,
Grace Kwinjeh ; journalist Lionel Saungweme ; Noble Sibanda, a spokesperson
for the United Network of Detained Zimbabweans ; National Constitutional
Assembly chairperson Dr Lovemore Madhuku ; MDC politicians Morgan Tsvangirai,
Paul Temba Nyathi, Fletcher Dulini-Ncube, Welshman Ncube; and Roman Catholic
archbishop Pius Ncube.
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