MEDIA STUDIES
Newspaper wars in Zimbabwe may prove dangerous
STEPHEN GLOVER
Robert Mugabe, who was in London this week, is a tyrant by any definition. The President of Zimbabwe's most recent act of tyranny was to announce the seizure of some 800 white-owned farms in Zimbabwe. He is not very popular at the Harare (for- merly Salisbury) Club where many whites still hang out. But he is no more popular with blacks, as I discovered when I was in Zimbabwe a couple of weeks ago. Over the past year there have been strikes, riots and demonstrations. No one has a good word to say for him.
Launching a new daily newspaper is a dif- ficult business at the best of times. To attempt such a thing at the moment in Zim- babwe might seem to verge on the suicidal. There is the possibility that Mr Mugabe may run you out of town, and there are severe economic problems. But a brave group of British and Zimbabwean investors is undeterred. Next February, Zimbabwe's first truly national newspaper, the Daily News, will hit the streets.
There is already a government-controlled newspaper sold throughout most of the country called the Herald. Its sister paper, the Chronicle, circulates around Bulawayo. The Herald sells some 140,000 — a big number in Africa. In Ian Smith's days it was known as the Rhodesian Herald. Mr Smith harried the paper, and his censors used to take a chisel to the metal type of articles they didn't like, which resulted in many white spaces. Mr Mugabe has gone one bet- ter. He runs the Herald through a trust.
The paper is not exactly slavish in its sup- port, but it knows where its bread is but- tered. There are frequently pictures of Mr Mugabe and his young wife, Grace, on the front page. During the recent troubles there has been a series of general strikes the paper clung to the official line. As the government is so unpopular, the Herald's readers are presumably tired of the paper's relentless propaganda. Its uninspiring appearance puts one in mind of stolid British provincial broadsheets of 20 years ago.
All this gives the Daily News a potential advantage. The new paper could scarcely be duller than the Herald, and its anti- government strictures will strike a chord in readers' hearts. But will Mr Mugabe put up with it? He has just about tolerated the sur- prisingly trenchant criticisms of two com- paratively low-selling weeklies, the Finan- cial Gazette and the Zimbabwean Indepen- dent, though the editor of the latter, Trevor Ncube, was once briefly clapped in jail. The question is whether Mr Mugabe and Chen Chentimgende, his hard-line minister of information, and, by the by, a former friend of our own Mo Mowlam, will be able to abide a daily paper that is a thorn in their sides.
One piece of Zimbabwean government spin-doctoring should be immediately knocked on the head. The people behind the Daily News have been accused of being `foreign devils'. It is true that British investors have put in 60 per cent of the money (about £2 million) and Zimbab- weans only 40 per cent. But on the ground this is overwhelmingly a Zimbabwean ven- ture: the only white face I saw in the paper's offices was that of Michael Stent, a former colleague of mine on the Indepen- dent, who is chief executive of the British parent company that has put in 60 per cent. Actually, it is not true to describe it as wholly British. The Irish newspaper mag- nate Tony O'Reilly has bought a 7 per cent stake in the parent company.
The editor designate of the Daily News, Geoffrey Nyarota, points out that for all his sins Mr Mugabe has never banned a news- paper. The constitution protects freedom of speech, and the surprisingly independent courts are supposed to guard the constitu- tion. So Mr Nyarota and his colleagues are hoping they will be left alone. They have already been granted a licence to trade, and they do have some friends in government. But Mr Mugabe looks to me as though he is on his last legs, and in this mood the old tyrant may be tempted to retaliate. We need to keep a friendly eye on the Daily News.
0 ne of the joys of reading the Times lies in the occasional articles written by its editor, my old friend Peter Stothard. Mr Stothard rarely, if ever, discloses his opin- ion on such humdrum subjects as European Monetary Union or the future of the monarchy. He leaves such unimportant matters to lesser writers such as William Rees-Mogg or Simon Jenkins. Mr Stothard will be found reflecting on some new book about Virgil, or perhaps assessing the life of the poet Ted Hughes. Occasionally he will stray into exotic foreign climes, and here again he gives us the benefit of his elevated thoughts. He often sounds more like a well- educated travelling vicar of the old school than a Murdoch newspaper editor. One's mind is inevitably thrown back to Oxford where the slightly melancholic figure of Mr Stothard could sometimes be glimpsed on the banks of the Cherwell, clad, as I recall, in some mysterious sort of kaftan, into whose capacious pockets he would regret- fully return his copy of the Aeneid after much private pondering.
How such a rarefied spirit could prosper at the modern Times, far less edit it, has long been a matter of wonder to me. His ability to set aside his own thoughts, and enter the vulgar hurly-burly of the paper that fate has chosen him to edit, is truly amazing. Take last Saturday's Times, a col- lector's item if ever there was one. Some- how my old friend had steeled himself to provide what the readers want. There, above the famous old masthead on the front page with its royal crest, were adver- tised the paper's special wares. A picture of a female boxer promised a titillating read inside; the face of the football writer Danny Baker (Gazza's mate) intimated deathless prose; Jemina Khan beckoned us inscrutably; and, most tasteful of all, a scantily dressed woman carrying a whip offered the 'highs and lows of erotica'. But wait! My old friend has not found room to promote the piece about Scarlet Women ('why redheads drive us wild'), or an article about Vinnie Jones (`thug of thugs'), or a little number about 'Bohemian nights'.
How on earth does he do it? If I did not know Mr Stothard, I might think that he was at the time of life — he is 47 — when thoughts can stray too much to ladies with whips and footballing clowns. But I know, of course, that his mind is roaming on some Attic plane, far removed from the increasingly seamy paper he just happens to run.
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