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Horror story that seems to have no end
The Sunday Tribune (SA)
May 11, 2008

http://zwnews.com/issuefull.cfm?ArticleID=18754

Harare - It feels as if this story will never end. That we will never sleep again, that the tension will never ease, that the cruelty will know no bounds. That evil will prevail. The communication problems are so bad that it feels as if we will never get the story out and never get it right either. In communal areas telecommunications are as they were in the former Southern Rhodesia. And that is where most of the violence is happening. So how do we get information? With the utmost difficulty. Are we exaggerating? No we are not. That is, those of us who are accountable and write for mainstream media. Do we get information wrong? Yes, sometimes. The police won't speak to us, except, occasionally if they answer the landlines at Police General Headquarters in Harare. Then they deny everything, or say they don't have any information, but mostly they are unavailable. Their cellphones? Occasionally we might get through if we hit redial 25 times and the call stays live for longer than 10 seconds. Police won't, or can't, confirm or deny anything on their cellphones or landlines. Hospital phones go unanswered, too, or staff won't say anything, or there is no one available, or if there is, they certainly don't want to speak to journalists. The informal network of information between the rural areas and towns is largely broken, as there are so few buses travelling and because it is too expensive for people to go "kumusha" (home).

Rather like the Stasi in the old German Democratic Republic, there is an enormous network of informers countrywide. Many are not evil, just doing something, anything, to earn a little. So we have to be careful when we look for the evidence we need, and we ask questions carefully, nonchalantly, as if we are not really interested. We will stop at a roadside shop, looking for a cold drink. Stupid, really, since there is nothing in any of these shops. Nothing to sell. Nothing to buy. Mostly the roadblocks are just that, a time-wasting stop, where the police couldn't care less who we are or what we are doing and wave us through. But just in case, we have to be ready with a bunch of half-truths. We get caught because we are at the wrong place at the wrong time, not because the CIO are smart. If they wanted to, they could catch all of us all the time. Somebody at the top decides it is time to catch the journalists, so there is a spurt. Like last Monday, when they went around from lodge to lodge looking for journalists. They had two names. Derek Watts (Carte Blanche) and Kate Adie, (BBC). Both had been in Harare about 2002 or 2003 as we recall. Sometimes journalists get caught because they relax, lulled into forgetting that Zimbabwe is, more or less a police state. At first glance it looks okay. Nice, even. Orderly. Not nearly as dirty as Johannesburg. Polite people, not starving. Well-spoken. Police quite smart. Army, too, although a lot are hitch-hiking these days. No guns going off, no bombs, no sharp shooters, no military parades, no military aircraft and the only choppers are those flying President Robert Mugabe around, or the smaller one carrying super-rich Billy Rautenbach. So no frightening overhead noise.

No one is having fun. Not even the people in the restaurants. Not even children at birthday parties. There is an agonising limbo. And we reporters are struggling to tell this story when the action happens so far from town. We also depend on unnamed heroes and heroines. Every night we know that people are being assaulted, or tortured or beaten. We don't really expect many fatalities, because Zanu PF learned the hard way that body counts are bad for business. We more or less know who is doing the violence, as the victims we visit can usually name their assailants. We know the weapons - logs, poles, metal from dismantled windmills, planks, rope, bicycle chains, nails, everyday objects. Huts are burned down. I interviewed someone who was in his house and 35 of his neighbours' houses were also burned during a few hours before midnight 10 days ago in one village north-east of Harare. On Tuesday I got an SMS about what sounded like a massacre. Eleven dead. At first I sigh. Oh God. What to do? Who to call? They won't all be lying in some field waiting for me to inspect their bodies and pick over their wounds to discover how they died. They will be scattered. Maybe picked up by cops. Maybe picked up by relatives. Maybe under a tree, a small heap hidden by tall grass. So far I can only name six and that is thanks to contacts and heroic sources and some hearsay which, on examination, I now know was true all the time. There won't be political funerals. Most will be buried quickly and quietly among the huts in the bush, because people are poor and fearful. So what should I say about the 11 dead? Say six dead, but reports of five more?

The tension will get worse, so will shopping, finding stuff to keep one going, fuel, the internet, electricity and water cuts and enough batteries to keep everything else going. Colleagues come in from London, Los Angeles, Brussels, Toronto and Melbourne. Some have been coming in and out for years without accreditation. They get the story going again as they report Zimbabwe with fresh eyes. Where are South African journalists? What happened since the end of apartheid? Did all the heroes become managing directors? Thanks e.TV for trying. Thanks to the few who did come. Is this generation of South African journalists flaky or leaderless? Or worried about legality when it never bothered them during the apartheid era? Never worried them when foreign journalists sneaked in to South Africa to make documentaries about Steve Biko. Actually, folks, you don't need accreditation any longer, as of January 11, its not a crime to be a journalist, even if you are foreign. So why don't you come up north and tell the story? Please.

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