NEW ORDER IN ZIMBABWE

Dhiren Bhagat investigates what

press freedom means to Mr Mugabe's government

The Heads of State or Government reaffir- med the need further to intensify co- operation among non-aligned and other de- veloping countries in the field of information and the mass media so as to establish the New International Information and Commu- nication Order on the basis of the free and balanced flow of information. They noted with satisfaction the progress achieved in this field. . . .

(Article III of the Draft Political Declaration of the eighth Non-Aligned Movement Summit.)

Harare If a free press means freebies for all, stran- gers to the New Information Order were certainly given a free introductory lesson last week. While the visiting foreign minis- ters were busy accrediting themselves at their hotels and the officials were putting the last touches to the Draft Political De- claration, the Central Intelligence Organi- sation (CIO) of the government of Zim- babwe decided to enter the NAM press centre and pick up Jan Raath, the Harare- based stringer for two British newspapers, the Times and the Observer. Visiting jour- nalists like myself may have been surpri- sed: for the Harare hacks it was merely the most blatant of a series of threats and inti- midations they have faced at the hands of the government.

Consider the sequence of events last month leading up to the Harare summit: On 1 August the minister for information, Mr Nathan Shamuyarira, in a meeting at Mbare warned Zanu (PF) publicity and in- formation officers against the 'spies of the imperialist press' who would be visiting Zimbabwe to cover the summit.

On 15 August the minister, addressing the Commonwealth Press Club at Harare, said that Zimbabwe, of course, had a free press, and journalists writing for foreign papers were free to write what they wan- ted, then added helpfully, 'But we have one of the best clipping services and we will be talking to you afterwards.'

On 18 August, addressing a meeting of Harare-based journalists at the NAM press centre, Mr Shamuyarira warned them against befriending the 'spies' who would be visiting, adding, 'Of course we cannot act against you when the guests are here, but we will do it afterwards.' (The minister laughed, the others turned cold.) To appreciate the irony of the situation one has only to recall the spate of books on the media that appeared some years ago, soon after Zimbabwe's independence. None but Ourselves: Masses vs. Media in the Making of Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe Pu- blishing House, 1982) was a large book full of pictures and bits of text which derived its title from Bob Marley's 'Redemption Song': 'Emancipate yourselves from men- tal slavery/None but ourselves can free our minds.' Elaine Windrich's The Mass Media in the Struggle for Zimbabwe (Mambo Press, 1981) was a more scholarly effort laced with footnotes and divided into chapters with titles like 'The Ministry of Information: the machinery and techni- ques of control'. Mr Nathan Shamuyarira, then recently appointed minister of in- formation, wrote the forward: 'What clear- ly emerges from this account of govern- ment manipulation of the media is that the press, although initially intimidated and

`I'm very lucky — when I was a spy in Russia, there weren't any peace talks.' harassed into conformity by a ministry of information dominated by Rhodesian Front racists and their South African allies, came around to serving as an apologist for the Smith regime and a willing purveyor of the propaganda devised by officials of the ministry of information.'

Well, well. Five years on one can say without hesitation that Mr Shamuyarira has learnt a lot from Ms Windrich's excel- lent study. Soon after independence the government created the Mass Media Trust which used a Nigerian grant to buy up the South African owned Argus Press's 40 per cent holding in Zimbabwe Newspapers (1980). This company in turn owns and runs the four principal newspapers in the country: the Herald (circulation 131,000) and the Sunday Mail (148,000) in Harare; the Chronicle (64,000) and the Sunday News (53,000) in Bulawayo. In addition it owns two smaller papers, the Manica Post (10,000) and the recently floated vernacu- lar broadsheet Kwayedza (19,000).

Mr Shamuyarira's appointed trustees and editors ensure that these papers put out 'free and balanced' news: if an editor steps out of line, as the Sunday Mail's Willie Musarurwa was considered to have last year, he is promptly replaced. Yet it would be wrong to suggest the press is entirely unfree. The Financial Gazette (cir- culation 16,000) is a weekly tabloid printed on pink paper which is frequently critical of government policy. Its editor, Clive Wilson — who along with two others owns the paper — says he and his colleagues have never been pressured or intimidated by the MoI or any other government body.

Even so, he has problems getting uncen- sored news from the outside world. All news agency reports like Reuters must go through Ziana, the government-owned news agency, which pulls out offending paragraphs with an erratic competence. 'In some cases they send us the bits they are supposed to censor and keep the bits we're meant to have,' Clive Wilson says with a gentle smile. 'Then they telephone us and suggest a swop. It's usually unkind refer- ences to the Eastern bloc countries, to North Korea, stuff like that.'

Foreign journalists have other problems. In 1983, when the repression in Matabele- land reached its height, reporters filing abroad found the atmosphere at their watering hole, the Quill Club, grew un- pleasant. 'The last thing you wanted at the end of a hard day was an argument with a Zanu (PF) toady who demanded a justi- fication for your atrocity stories.' So every- one moved out, initially to the Eros Tavern and then in November 1984 to Sandro's, a pleasant restaurant club opened by a laco- nic Sardinian master chef who used to sell Boeings.

On the wall of the bar at Sandro's hangs a framed billboard of the Herald of 5 June 1984: FOREIGN NEWSMEN WARNED. Be- neath the billboard, some joker has scrawled on the wall: 'That means you.' Last week, after Raath had been detai- ned by the CIO, there was little levity at the bar. All through lunch worried hacks speculated on the reasons why Jan's time had come. A common idea was that Comrade Enos Nkala, the minister of home affairs, suspected Raath of helping either Amnesty International or the York- based Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. Both bodies have recently publish- ed reports of human rights violations in this country, focusing in particular on the treatment of detainees at Stops Camp at Bulawayo. (Raath used to share an office with one of the lawyers who helped with the latter report.) Through the Amnesty International re- port Torture in Zimbabwe was published last November it has only recently become a hot topic in Zimbabwe. In a ministerial statement before the Zimbabwe Assembly on 20 August the minister of state (securi- ty) declared Amnesty was the 'nation's enemy': Comrade Nkala threatened Am- nesty informers with jail. (Ironically Comrade Robert Mugabe has publicly and approvingly — quoted Amnesty Inter- national's findings on South Africa in the period since the report was published.) That Amnesty was Zanu (PF)'s greatest ally during UDI is now quietly forgotten.

Another theory has it that Raath was detained because of an article he wrote for the Times on 18 July this year entitled `The Eternal Emergency', in which he spoke of the state of emergency that was declared in 1965, only days before UDI, and which has never since been lifted. `Smith built up an arsenal of oppressive laws: Mugabe keeps them — and his police are just as adept at torture' read the caption accompanying the article.

At a New Information Order seminar at the Mandel training centre a week before the 'imperialist spies' came in to Harare there was great concern about what we would do while here, much talk about how we would be restrained from 'distorting the priorities of non-alignment'.

To an extent I sympathise with these concerns: the latest joke at Sandro's is typi- cal of the cynicism of most Western hacks.

Q: How do you describe a turd on a loo seat?

A: A non-aligned movement.

But the solution cannot lie in detentions and arrests, in intimidation and news blackouts. As I was writing this, Iran's Pre- sident Khomeini mysteriously vanished from our television screens in the middle of his speech at the NAM plenary session, just at the point when he began to ask for Iraq's expulsion from the movement. The spokesman of the Iranian foreign ministry, Murteza Sarmadi, has just told me that when he complained about this to the Zim- babwean authorities he was initially infor- med the secretary general of NAM had ordered the black-out. Nothing new about that; it sounds like a familiar information order to me.