Mr Mugabe is fixing the election by gagging the press and London is doing nothing about it
STEPHEN GLOVER
Robert Mugabe is nearly there. While the world sleeps, he is putting the final pieces in place to fix the Zimbabwean presidential elections, which must take place before 17 March. By the time you read this, the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Bill will probably have been passed by parliament. Its purpose is to intimidate or shut down the home-grown independent press — the Daily News being by far the most important newspaper — and to make it practically impossible for foreign news organisations to cover the elections.
For at least a year Mugabe has succeeded in keeping out most foreign journalists far more effectively than did apartheid South Africa, or indeed Rhodesia under Ian Smith. A few slip in as tourists, as I did last week on behalf of the Daily Mad, but it can be a bit hairy. The BBC hasn't had a correspondent in the country for many months: it either reports from South Africa or, as on BBC1's Ten O'Clock News on Tuesday evening, has someone in London talking to film. There is a brave band of local stringers, most of them Zimbabwean, reporting news under the watchful eye of Jonathan Mayo, the sinister information minister, who probably taps their phones and certainly reads their articles on the Internet.
As a result of all this, Mugabe's worst crimes have not received as wide a coverage as they should have, The world knows that awful things are going on in Zimbabwe, but is probably unaware of how awful they are. I hadn't realised, until I was in the country last week, that between SO and 90 per cent of white-owned farms have already been confiscated, or scheduled for confiscation, and that some blacks are already dying of starvation. Nor had I grasped how widespread Mugabe's reign of terror is. He and Moyo have grasped the simple truth that by banning foreign camera teams and journalists they can dramatically reduce the amount of had coverage they receive. Now they are tightening the final screw in the hope that we will know even less about what is really going on. Once the new media Bill becomes law, all journalists in Zimbabwe will be required to have a oneyear renewable accreditation from the government, which means they can easily be silenced. Non-Zimbabwean citizens will not be allowed to work as journalists.
The independent local press will also face draconian new laws. Hitherto it has been remarkably outspoken, though not without
paying a price. Nearly a year ago the Daily News's presses were bombed by saboteurs. The offices of Geoffrey Nyarota, the paper's indomitable editor, have also been bombed, and he was arrested, and briefly detained, before Christmas. Several Daily News journalists have been attacked, and its street vendors are regularly beaten up. The courage of these people is terribly moving for a spoilt Western journalist such as myself. They really do live in fear of their lives. For hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of Zimbabweans, the Daily News carries their hopes of freedom. Mr Nyarota and his staff have taken everything that has been thrown at them, and not a single issue has been missed, but the new media Bill threatens the paper's survival. It will have to seek registration from the government — which may well be refused — and its journalists will be required to have the same renewable accreditation as local stringers. Mr Nyarota says that he will challenge these new rules and continue publishing come what may, but there is undoubtedly a danger that the paper will be closed down in the next few weeks.
With these swingeing new measures against the media, Mugabe is well on the way to securing victory in March. He will not, of course, allow international monitors to observe the proceedings. He would definitely lose a free and open election: the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) got more registered votes at the parliamentary elections in June 2000 than Mugabe's Zanu-PF, but secured only 56 seats to Zanu-PF's 94, mostly because Mugabe nominates 30 MPs. Things have deteriorated since then, with the economy in ruins and starvation looming, and it is a certain bet that in a fair fight he would lose to the MDC's leader, Morgan Tsvangirai. But Mugabe is doing his damnedest to ensure there isn't going to be a fair fight.
In a strange way, his clampdown on the Western media has helped the British government. Let's face it: if there had been more horrible pictures and reportage on our television screens, there would have been more pressure on the government to do something. I certainly don't advocate a Kosovo-like campaign, but the government could and should have introduced 'smart sanctions' aimed at restricting the foreign travel of Mugabe, his cronies and their children, and freezing their foreign bank accounts, which are bulging with looted money. The United States Congress has just approved the Democracy Bill, which contains similar measures, but Britain, the European Union and the Commonwealth have been dragging their feet. Why are we so reluctant to act? If Jack Straw believes that Zimbabwean whites -whom as an old Leftie he may not like — are suffering more than Zimbabwean blacks, he is very much mistaken. On Tuesday our narcoleptic Foreign Secretary said in the Commons that the British government would press for Zimbabwe's suspension from the Commonwealth in March 'if the situation in Zimbabwe continues to deteriorate'. In March! Big deal! By then the election will have taken place, and it will be too late to do anything.
My starting point is this. Mugabe is not — at least, not yet — a raving lunatic and bloodthirsty tyrant like Idi Amin or Emperor Bokassa of the Central African Republic, who kept human heads in his fridge. He still cares what the international community thinks; he is still susceptible to pressure; and he certainly doesn't want to have his foreign bank accounts frozen and his foreign travel — including those trips to London and Paris
with his pretty young wife, Grace curtailed. So there is much that Western governments could do — though they have left things appallingly late. As for the media, we too have a vital role to play. Why else would Mugabe try to keep us out? A lot of difficult decisions have to be taken about how to cover events over the next few weeks, but we surely cannot simply watch the spectacle from afar. There are competent camera crews in Zimbabwe, and lots of brave journalists, prepared to take risks and produce pictures and copy for the Western media. Going in as a tourist may be dangerous, and will probably become more so, but it is an option. What happens in Zimbabwe will be one of the biggest international stories of the year, and one way or another newspapers and media organisations are going to have to work out how they will do it justice.
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