Publish and be threatened, bombed, beaten up and tortured
STEPHEN G LOV R
The Daily News of Zimbabwe is the most successful newspaper to have appeared in Africa over the last couple of decades. You might say that in a continent famous for bad news it has been a beacon of light. Launched in March 1999, it initially encountered terrible distribution and technical problems. Circulation slumped to below 30,000 and the money ran out. A Soros foundation stepped in to save it from closure. Local investors then chipped in more money — at least half of the original shareholders came from outside Zimbabwe — and around the beginning of last year the paper began to turn the corner.
Probably the main reason was the impending general election and the growing public dissatisfaction with the corrupt tyrant Robert Mugabe. Politics really do sell newspapers, at any rate in a one-party state. As the only independent daily in the country, the Daily News became a rallying point for many people fed up with Mugabe's grim and incompetent regime. By the time the election took place last June, it was selling 120,000 copies on a good day, about twice the government-controlled Herald. In a country where by no means everyone can afford a newspaper, and where there are still many who can't read, that is an enormous circulation. Five or six people are, on average, reading every copy.
Last Sunday morning some saboteurs broke into the Daily News's printing works in southern Harare, and expertly planted a device. This came after threats against the paper from the 'war veterans' — Mugabe's thugs — and the minister of information. The explosion and resulting fire completely destroyed the main press and slightly damaged the other. The intention of the bombers was to put the paper out of business, and they nearly succeeded. Its management has found temporary printing facilities in Harare, and every day this week has been printing nearly 70,000 copies a night, all of which are being sold. This compares with a print run of 100,000 copies a day before the bombing. Pagination has been reduced, and with it advertising revenue. The future of the paper, which was just starting to make a profit, must be in some doubt. The only cause for joy is that the extra copies which the Herald has been pumping out have not been finding buyers.
This attack by the Zimbabwean government is the most deadly but not the first.
Last April a bomb was placed in a shop near the editorial offices of the Daily News in central Harare. Fortunately it caused little damage. In July an assassin who had been hired by Zimbabwean intelligence services to kill Geoffrey Nyarota, the newspaper's founding editor, got cold feet when he encountered the redoubtable Mr Nyarota in a lift. The deputy editor was beaten up by police last December and again on Tuesday of last week, after the war veterans had demonstrated outside the paper's offices and the nearby British High Commission. On other occasions, reporters and cameramen have been harassed or arrested by police. Journalists working on other independent newspapers have also suffered. Most infamously, Mark Chavunduka and Ray Choto, two journalists on the Sunday Standard, were kidnapped and tortured for several days by government security agents in 1998.
The worst danger for those of us who work in Fleet Street is probably a complaining letter from a politician or, at worst, a libel writ. We spend our time working ourselves up into a tremendous lather over issues which seem momentous to us but can seem rather trivial to those in less favoured climes. Huge mock battles are staged over what are quite often insignificant pieces of territory. In Zimbabwe it is very different. Mugabe's regime, which for all its sins once respected the rule of law, is becoming increasingly oppressive, bumping off and locking up its enemies on an ever greater scale. God knows where it will all end. The journalists of the Daily News are on the front line. They really do speak for truth and freedom, and the price they are paying is to have their lives threatened. Now it seems that their newspaper may be put out of business.
This column has always had a soft spot for the Daily News, which was in part the brainchild of an old colleague of mine called Mike Stent. I wrote about it here even before its launch, never dreaming that it would enjoy the success it has, or be such a force for good. But I think I would feel the same about it even if I had never clapped eyes on its offices or met its editor. The question now is how the paper will raise the money to buy a second-hand press to replace the one that has been ruined. No such press is available in Zimbabwe. Insurance polices will cover some of the costs, but they will be paid out in Zimbabwean dollars, a joke currency thanks to Mugabe's insane economic policies. For the moment I will go no further than ask any owner of a superannuated press to contact me or, better still, Geoffrey Nyarota at the Daily News. But the time may come when readers are asked to dig into their pockets to help save a newspaper which a tyrannical government is trying to destroy.
How very far these considerations seem from the heated question of Rosie Boycott's long-awaited pay-off, estimated at £250,000, as editor of the Daily Express. That could buy a considerable portion of a second-hand press for the Daily News.
Ms Boycott's departure on Thursday of last week, and that of her deputy, Chris Blackhurst, came none too soon. Ever since Richard Desmond acquired Express Newspapers on 22 November, there had been a kind of phoney war during which nothing much changed. A lot of time was taken up with negotiating pay-offs. One or two noble souls, such as the political editor Tony Bevins, jumped without being obviously attached to a parachute. The first significant editorial innovation finally came on Tuesday of this week, when a celebrityfilled insert called OK Express! appeared for the first time. It didn't seem to me particularly brilliant, though others may take a different view.
The question is whether Mr Desmond and his new acting editor Chris Williams — by all accounts a pleasant and able man — have any kind of new vision for the paper beyond offering more sugary pieces about celebrities. I'm not convinced they have. Nor is it at all certain that Mr Desmond has the financial resources to retain the Daily and Sunday Express, though I have no doubt that he would like to. But at any rate we should now see what, if anything, they have up their sleeves. This story isn't over yet.
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