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Crisis? What crisis?
David Beresford
April 04, 2007

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/david_beresford/2007/04/_some_years_ago_i.html

Some years ago I was detained in Zimbabwe by mistake. A security policeman ordered the arrest of three of us journalists and our pilot as we were tanking up our small plane at Harare, on a flight from northern Mozambique to Johannesburg. After a night in a police holding cell I was taken to see the police commissioner who said he had a problem: the security man who had ordered our arrest had gone on holiday, so he had not been able to find out why we had been detained. "But you must have done something," he said with all apparent seriousness. "You're in prison, aren't you?"

Another journalist who seemingly had a similar experience this week was Time magazine's southern Africa correspondent, Alexander Perry, who after four days in prison for operating without accreditation, was fined less than one US dollar. This after stories had circulated among the Johannesburg press corps about dire punishment awaiting those hacks caught operating in Zimbabwe without accreditation - 20 years in the notorious Chikurubi prison was one penalty mentioned.

Without wishing to detract from Perry's ordeal - four nights in a cell, not knowing what the future holds could not have been fun - it does bring home the realisation that in Zimbabwe one is dealing with a something of a Ruritania. Is it not time to take a step back and a longer look at the Zimbabwe issue?

For instance, is Zimbabwe in a state of crisis, "spiralling out of control" as is asserted in virtually every newspaper article spinning around the world via the net? Not, it seems, in the mind of President Robert Mugabe who is today reported to be visiting the far east.

Is there evidence of a spontaneous popular uprising in the making? Evidence for it is limited to 10 petrol bombs thrown so far. And, according to the leader of the opposition, Morgan Tsvangirai, they were thrown by agents of the Zimbabwean state security organ, the Central Intelligence Organisation, trying to stir up trouble for his Movement for Democratic Change.

So why the "crisis"? Because opposition leaders were beaten up? Horrendous behaviour to be sure, in what claims to be a democracy, but certainly, from appearances, the main recipient of the beating, Tsvangirai - in Johannesburg this week to see his doctor - looked set to get a clean bill of health.

What about that South African African Development Community (SADC) meeting where, by some media accounts, South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki was tasked with getting Mugabe to stand aside. In an interview with the Financial Times Mbeki said flatly:

"We would not ever support any proposition about regime change. So that is not an option for us, whatever other people might think in the rest of the world."

International news operates on a cyclical basis, whereby a story becomes fashionable through what is frequently nothing more than a coincidence of timing, the availability of television footage, or just some wishful thinking on the part of correspondents.

Now that the international media circus is seemingly moving on again from this part of the world, diplomats dealing with Zimbabwe, rather than devoting their energy to persuading Mugabe standing down, might encourage him to allow journalists access to the country to see for themselves what is happening in the African Ruritania.

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