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When truth is the enemy
Fiona Forde, The Star (SA)
April 05, 2008

http://www.zwnews.com/issuefull.cfm?ArticleID=18530

The clampdown on the foreign media shows there's still a lot of fight left in Mugabe.

It started at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. A text message arrived to say a woman had been arrested in the lobby of Harare's Meikles Hotel, where I was staying. Within minutes, the hotel confirmed it. The Canadian television reporter had been standing outside Meikles when she spotted a group of riot police gathered on the opposite side of the street. She pointed her camera in their direction. They gave chase. She darted for the hotel. They caught up with her in the lobby and carted her away. That's when the frantic text-messaging started. Throughout the city, word got round - they were on to us all. And there were many of us illegal scribes all over Zimbabwe, as the country braced for the results of last Saturday's presidential poll between Robert Mugabe, Simba Makoni and Morgan Tsvangirai.

This week, Meikles alone has hosted more unwanted visitors than Mugabe would care to contemplate, if not as paying guests then as frequent visitors milling in the foyer, sipping coffee with the diplomats, each of us grasping on to every last straw of information to try to piece together the puzzle that the election aftermath had become. The texting continued. "I'm okay." "I'm lying low." ." "Have you heard anything else?" And a flurry of other brief communications to a similar effect was to follow. Within 40 minutes or so, the hotel manager phoned to say the woman had been released. She was one of the lucky ones, it transpired. She had accreditation. Within half an hour, the phone was buzzing again. "The CIO [Central Intelligence Organisation] are at the York Lodge" - a sprawling guesthouse on the outskirts of the city and a longtime favourite for the hundreds of journalists who have passed this way before.

A friend of mine, an NGO worker, was staying there. For an hour or so he kept me updated, until we lost contact shortly after 6 o'clock. The lodge had been raided and the guests had fled. Throughout the night, not a whisper was heard from them. All the text messages went unanswered. But the phone kept hissing. Barry Bearak, the Joburg-based correspondent for The New York Times, had been arrested. Minutes later, another reporter was picked up - this time Briton Stephen Bevan, a reporter for The Sunday Telegraph. Yesterday, the authorities charged them for "practising without accreditation" but promised to release them "soon after screening". Dileepan Sivapathasundaram, an American who works for the US National Democratic Institute (NDI), came next. He was picked up as he attempted to board his evening flight to Joburg and detained at an unknown location throughout yesterday.

Yesterday morning, former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, the NDI chair, demanded to know his whereabouts as she called for his release. Two more Americans who worked for the National Endowment of Democracy had met a similar fate that evening. They were released later that night. But the phone kept buzzing. A Spanish friend, one of the few European journalists who was accredited, had driven to the outskirts of Harare in the early afternoon with a local man, an NGO worker who earned a few extra US dollars ferrying my friend around. They had gone to catch a glimpse of Mugabe's sprawling estate. The Zimbabwean was arrested soon after he dropped my friend off at the hotel. He was also released later that night. Meanwhile, the Meikles Hotel was being raided - something that escaped my attention until later in the night. While I was holed up on the ninth floor, members of the country's secret service were raiding rooms that had been rented by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) on the sixth floor. No one was arrested and nothing was taken.

It was around then that the phones went dead in Zimbabwe. And there wasn't a whisper from the crew at York Lodge, among them foreign journalists and activists who had escaped the raid and gone into hiding. No amount of texting would raise a response. And still not a whisper by yesterday morning. It all unfolded as the country was entering its sixth day without knowing who was stepping into State House. There was movement behind the scenes on Thursday, and the tension had begun to mount. By the afternoon it was palpable. Something was afoot, but nobody knew what. In the absence of any credible information, the rumour mill kicked into action. A coup d'etat with the announcement of a rigged vote. A military clampdown. A state of emergency. In essence, it was a scare tactic, and a carefully planned one at that.

In the run-up to the election, the notorious Minister for Information, George Charamba, had made it clear that the Western media weren't welcome. But, that didn't stop Charamba extending an invitation for the foreign media to come. US$1 700 was the asking price for full accreditation (compared to US$150 for the Southern African Development Community region). They all applied. Less than a handful passed the test. It's like the Bible, Charamba said. There are only a chosen few. It didn't stop them flocking to Zimbabwe in recent weeks to cover the controversial poll. In recent days, more and more familiar faces and names showed up on the Harare beat as the aftermath of the vote became an even bigger story than the campaign itself. The end of Mugabe's rule was nigh, and it was too good a story to miss. The enemy - as he likes to call the West - was in his midst throughout this week, but Mugabe didn't appear to be doing much about it.

Reports of the election aftermath were beamed into homes all over the world by international media. Speculation about what Mugabe might do next was filling newspaper columns all over the world. Hardly an hour went by when news about Zimbabwe's tortuous wait was not covered on radio. Internet sites were in full swing. And most of the information was being fed by unaccredited journalists moving freely throughout the country this week. To add to the irony, Charamba gave an interview to CNN on Monday in a desperate bid to dismiss reports that his boss was about to step down. It was one of the TV stations he had banned from the country. Yet when it came to spreading the word to the world, it was to them he turned. You couldn't make it up if you tried: the president's man reporting live on a banned TV station that was being carried live in his own country.

For years the world has watched Mugabe take wobbly steps in the wrong direction as his people flocked into our own backyards to seek shelter from his brutal regime. Many a time have world leaders thrown their hands up in the air in despair. Mugabe had become a force to be dealt with, but nobody knew how. Just like nobody had any idea this week how the man from Matibiri might play this election game. As he carefully managed the results this week, he was also carefully managing emotions. There was a limit to the number of times the MDC could speak out and claim a victory. They took to the stage on Sunday, claiming they had won the vote. They repeated their message on Monday. They wheeled out Tsvangirai on Tuesday. They reiterated his message on Wednesday, hoping to force the hand of the state-run electoral commission. But Mugabe must have been casting that characteristic wry smile of his in the wings. There was no more the MDC could announce.

By Thursday, they had nothing left to say. The show was Mugabe's now. And whatever he chooses to do next, he does without the intense gaze of the hundreds of observers who were there earlier in the week. Some journalists have begun to leave, too, promising to return for the expected second round. Zimbabweans continue to go about their business. It has been a week now, and life must go on. It's hard to find anyone to tell you they didn't vote for change. But it's equally hard to find anyone who will tell you they are prepared to do anything about it if they don't get it. The old man couldn't have played his cards better. For six days, the Meikles Hotel has been the epicentre of this race. It has been a meeting point for diplomats, media, civil society groups, NGOs and the like. It was where the MDC hosted its press conferences. It was where word went around like wildfire. Mugabe was staying silent, so everyone else spoke in his name.

Text messages ripped through this hotel every other second. A different version of the same story would follow seconds later. Other versions would appear within minutes. Different talking heads confirmed their own versions of events, every one of them highly credible. Yet none of them based on fact. Mugabe has done it again. He has pulled the wool over our eyes. He allowed us to write the stories, to remake the history of this country. Zimbabwe according to the world. All the while he was looking on. But, at the 11th hour, he decided to pounce, to send a chill up our spines. The real story is about to land. And it's according to him now, and not us.

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