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Hot on the press
Gordon Glyn-Jones, BBC Focus on Africa
January - March 2008

"We are told there are one million Zimbabweans abroad," says Mduduzi Mathuthu editor of The New Zimbabwe newspaper in the UK, recently launched off the back of a website of the same name. It is a title reminiscent of that other hopeful ideological flotilla, "the new South Africa" and perhaps a silent prayer for those in the Zimbabwean diaspora.

Mathuthu continues: "We launched it in the tabloid style because we felt this was something that Zimbabweans would find more accessible, politics doesn-t sell newspapers after all." The New Zimbabwe is certainly a different beast from their main rival, the more soberly named The Zimbabwean which was launched in the UK by Wilf Mbanga, a disillusioned and former editor of Zimbabwe-s now propaganda-saturated government paper The Herald. "We want to carry news that Zimbabweans are denied," says Mbanga. "We call ourselves a 'Voice for the Voiceless-; we want to speak about the issues that face the average man in the low income bracket."

The New Zimbabwe prints 20,000 copies, is distributed for free in the UK and is aimed predominantly at Zimbabweans living there. It survives on wholly private investment and advertising. Although carrying stories severely critical of the Mugabe regime, you are much more likely to find gossip involving a scantily clad Big Brother TV contestant on the front page than breaking news.

The Zimbabwean on the other hand only has a readership of 7,000 in the UK, but sells 13,000 papers in South Africa and 80,000 in Zimbabwe (albeit in Zimbabwean currency, which devalues at a capillary-popping rate). The Zimbabwean gets around draconian media legislations by being a foreign newspaper and therefore not subject to the same constitutional muzzles. All copies are imported from South Africa and sold mostly via street vendors. It is an ashamedly political paper, said to be based on sound journalistic principles.

However, scratch below the ideological surfaces of the two papers and you see just how much they reveal of the differing viewpoints and political jostling behind the scenes ahead of proposed elections next year. Having been around since the last elections, where Morgan Tsvangirai-s opposition party was seen to have a fighting chance, The Zimbabwean is unashamedly supportive of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). "We find ourselves largely in agreement with the opinions of the opposition," Mbanga says. "I think we should not be distracted. The MDC makes mistakes like any other political party, but we have been gentle with them. Our attention is focused on Zanu-PF."

However, although Mbanga supports the MDC, the fact is within the party over the last year or two a serious split has occurred, weakening their opposition to President Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party. Still, surely the logic of supporting any opposition is better than being in bed with such a corrupt regime?

After all, there are four newspapers in Zimbabwe: the state-run Herald; The Independent and The Standard - both owned by businessman Trevor Ncube - which are inconsequentially censorious of Mugabe and the Financial Gazette, allegedly part-owned by the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), Mugabe-s secret police. So, surely to have a paper that supports the opposition within a media no-man-s-land can only be healthy?

Not so, says Mathuthu, formerly a journalist at the Daily News, an MDC loyal paper in Harare which was literally blown out of existence by "shadowy forces" in 2001. "We saw the moral deficiencies of Mugabe, long before the land issue came to light, in the massacres in Matabeleland. And we have seen the same deficiencies in Tsvangirai post 2005, with people opposing the 'elite opposition- being beaten or killed.

"In terms of editorial we always take a middle of the road stance. The political party that we would put our back into is not yet in existence. Somewhere in between the MDC and Zanu-PF and other opposition elements, we believe will appear a coalition of opposition which some people are calling 'the third way.-"

During both interviews with the respective editors, what was revealed was a deep-seated mistrust for each other-s position. Mbanga suggested by implication that I should check out where Mathuthu was getting his funding, and that potentially The New Zimbabwe could be involved in consciously bolstering Zanu-PF-s image abroad. Although unable to reveal all of his backers, Mathuthu denied the claim: "Why would I want to buy a newspaper to influence people who have no impact on the electoral process? The idea is a ludicrous one."

Conversely, he roundly blamed much of the Zimbabwean situation on selective British interference and is convinced that UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has arbitrarily decided Tsvangirai is the future leader and accuses Mbanga of running not a newspaper, but a "purely political" entity. "I believe we have a role to play in the elections, but poisoning Zimbabweans like other papers do, by supporting the MDC in the way that they do is a reckless position. It-s a slippery slope to Armageddon," says Mathuthu. But when asked if he saw himself as the instrument of an imperialist thrust, Mbanga scoffed at the idea: "Our backers are from Holland and Switzerland, and have supported the anti-apartheid cause in the past. Why would they be financing an institution to reverse the liberation process?"

However, if the leaders of the last remaining Zimbabwean free press have such deep-seated mistrust for each others- positions, where does this leave the average Zimbabwean? Philip Chikiramakomo, the administrator of UK-based charity WeZimbabwe, said: "The papers are invaluable to the diaspora in as much as they give us news on what is happening at home. I do however wish they would be more rigorous on examining the opposition as much as they do the government."

The burning question in every Zimbabwean-s mind at the moment is - what is actually going to happen come the election? Perhaps the most valuable answer is that if there remains at least a modicum of real information transfer and dialogue of any sort, the task of creating a workable future can at least be put in the hands of more than one person. And if these mediums can prosper beyond the reach of violence and intimidation, at least the first steps to real self determination can begin, however long they take. More news and more opinions will hopefully mean more accountability and growth.

* Gordon Glyn-Jones is a Zimbabwean journalist based in London

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