Media will weather intimidation storm

By Dumisani Muleya

I had started my Monday morning work in a good frame of mind and a happy disposition as I was going to welcome from Joburg a longtime friend, Relibile Manala, with whom I went to high school. 

The weather was also sunny; clear as the azure sky of a deep blue summer, keeping me cheerful. So I expected an auspicious welcome for Manala in Harare, which he had last visited 15 years ago before his uncle died. A few months ago I had been a guest at his beautiful wedding in Mahikeng where we had lots of fun.

We had been planning his visit for some weeks and everything seemed to be going well until the Monday afternoon he arrived at my office in central Harare, next to the Zanu PF headquarters.

The situation changed dramatically. I was informed by Loud Ramakgapola, human resources manager of Alpha Media – publishers of the weekly Zimbabwe Independent which I edit, the daily NewsDay and the Sunday weekly Standard newspapers – that the police were looking for us.

Alpha Media is owned by Mail & Guardian proprietor Trevor Ncube, a veteran Zimbabwean journalist and now the country’s biggest individual media mogul.

The police, Ramakgapola told me, wanted to see our chief reporter, Owen Gagare, a company representative who usually in such cases is our internal lawyer, Nqobile Ndlovu, and myself, in connection with an army story we had been running for the previous two weeks.

The story was basically about disclosures by Housing Minister Giles Mutsekwa, a former army major and MDC-T secretary for defence and security, that he had been secretly meeting with Zimbabwe Defence Forces chiefs – including commander General Constantine Chiwenga, Zimbabwe National Army chief of staff (responsible for general staff) Major-General Martin Chedondo and chief of staff (quartermaster) Major-General Douglas Nyikayaramba – to discuss electoral politics and the political scenario after elections.

Mutsekwa also told us he was in the process of arranging a meeting with chief of staff (administration) Major-General Trust Mugoba.

He said he had also met Police Commissioner-General Augustine Chihuri. All this was on record.

The common denominator among Chiwenga, Chihuri, Chedondo, Nyikayaramba and Mugoba, besides being soldiers, is that they are military hardliners who have vowed to back President Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF to the hilt, come what may.

They have repeatedly said in public that they would not accept Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai as Zimbabwean president even if he won the elections. Some of them say they would rather resign if he takes over, while others have been insinuating a coup.

This is the single biggest threat to Zimbabwe’s transition from dictatorship to democracy. So Mutsekwa said he was talking to the security service chiefs to manage the volatile and fragile political transition, especially if Tsvangirai won.

So after writing the story, we thought it was fairly straightforward stuff, nothing to sweat about even in a country where writing about the security forces, never mind the content, is deemed potentially treasonous by definition.

When it comes to such things, in Zimbabwe a journalist is guilty until proven innocent, not the other way around.

Of course, in terms of the constitution and the law, you are innocent until proven guilty, but Mugabe’s henchmen see the constitution as theoretical nonsense. That is why they brazenly violate the laws through partisan political activities and remarks without qualms.

So Ramakgapola said he had a message for me from Detective Assistant Inspector John Peter Mudyirwa. He had left his number and wanted to see us as soon as possible, but preferably on Tuesday at 8am at Harare central police station.

I immediately called Mudyirwa and introduced myself. After a few seconds of pleasantries, he confirmed that the police were looking for us and we must report at the station at 8am on Tuesday without fail.

Although I had been arrested a number of times before in connection with my journalistic work, from that moment my mood sank as I started worrying about what lay ahead. No matter how experienced you are, it’s always nerve-racking to visit a Zimbabwean police station.

Who would want to be detained at a police station where dingy and stinking cells designed to hold six inmates are packed with more than 30 detainees sharing a single toilet flushed from the outside whenever the guard on duty feels like doing so?

My previous experiences there had been chilling, although I have always maintained a brave face. After an uneasy night, I woke up early, headed to work and joined colleagues to go and face the police.

Mudyirwa had already hinted that we would be charged under the repressive Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act. After rushing through early-morning Harare traffic jams to make it on time, we arrived and came out of the car ready for interrogation.

We walked into the drab building, passed through a crowded reception and started a meandering walk down foul-smelling corridors and past indifferent staff, until we got to office number 86/88 where we were wanted.

After being shuttled from one office to another, we settled at number 86, but still it was difficult to locate Mudyirwa, because his name was wrongly spelt for us.

Eventually he came and greeted us – but wasted no time in starting the process to charge us under the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act, section 31, which deals with “publishing or communicating false statements prejudicial to the state”.

The charge was because we had published or communicated a statement which was “wholly or materially false with the intention or realising that there is a real risk or possibility of undermining public confidence in Zimbabwe Defence Forces”.

If convicted we could be jailed for 20 years.

It all sounded ridiculous, yet it was clear that we were potentially in serious trouble because of the threats that had been made against us by security chiefs and government spokesmen.

As the police started asking us to read the charges and answer probing questions, and began getting us profiled, it dawned on me that the point of this official summons was not to ask us to help them understand the story; it was to intimidate us.

Absurd questions were asked, but we initially chose to be polite and co-operate while sticking to deliberate irrelevance until we detected growing hostility, pressure and subtle bullying.

Most of their questions to us were strikingly pointless.

The situation almost deteriorated into confrontation when the police demanded our bank account details. We wanted to know why bank accounts were relevant to an army story.

All the time I kept thinking about how the government’s treatment of us was petty and vindictive, and that this was evidence – if ever more was needed – that Zimbabwe was an Orwellian dystopia.

Media tyranny remains entrenched in Zimbabwe.

Government officials have a deep-seated attitude and an enduring policy of control of society by trying to block the free flow of information, purveying propaganda, surveillance, harassment and arrest of civil society dissenters and journalists. Our arrest this week is part of an ongoing broad crackdown on civil society leaders, human rights and political activists, judges, lawyers, and any other dissenters, particularly now before the general elections.

Press freedom in Zimbabwe remains restricted as reforms to liberalise the legal and regulatory environment after years of authoritarian abuses have largely been stalled by Mugabe and his Zanu-PF hardliners despite the coalition government that includes the two MDC parties.

Harassment of journalists, particularly those who work for the private media, remains commonplace.

Even though Zimbabwe’s constitution – which might be replaced by the new one by next week – has provisions for freedom of expression, including “press freedom” after amendment number 19, a draconian legal framework continues to constrain citizens and journalists from freely expressing themselves.

There is still an array of laws that inhibit media freedom.

Some of these statutes include the Information and Protection of Privacy Act, the Official Secrets Act, the Public Order and Security Act and the catch-all Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act, under which we were charged on Tuesday.

Media companies and their journalists are required to register under Information and Protection of Privacy Act, which gives the information minister – a redundant portfolio in reasonably free and democratic societies, typical of the Soviet era – sweeping powers to decide which publications could operate legally and who is able to work as a journalist although the registration and accreditation is done by the statutory Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC).

To its credit, the ZMC has licensed more than 50 publications since 2009, including two radio stations aligned to Zanu-PF.

However, the ZMC has been fighting to close down foreign publications circulating in Zimbabwe, mainly the South African Sunday Times and the Mail & Guardian – showing that the more things change, the more they remain the same.

At the same time, it’s worth noting that Zimbabwe is not like Belarus, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Turkmenistan, or Uzbekistan where the private media are either non-existent or barely able to operate.

While the Zimbabwean government controls the biggest media house and virtually all broadcasting stations, there is a small but vibrant private media that have refused to act as mouthpieces for the Mugabe regime, insisting on being public watchdogs.

For all their shortcomings, which include being partisan and sometimes reckless in their reportage, private media journalists in Zimbabwe have fought for press freedom in a state where dissent is ruthlessly crushed through harassment, intimidation, arrests and detention, among other forms of repression.

This, coupled with political struggles for change, has ensured that there is hope ahead for Zimbabwe.

Dumisani Muleya is editor of the weekly Zimbabwe Independent in Harare. This article was originally published in the South African Sunday Independent newspaper.