Zimbabwe
From American Gulag
Journalistic Coverage of Zimbabwe: 1980 - 2008
Contents |
[edit] Introduction
“Of course I was disillusioned with the corruption and the massacre of the Ndebele,” Elaine Windrich, a former advisor to Robert Mugabe’s Ministry of Information, told me. “But I genuinely believed in what Mugabe said when he first came to power.” And indeed she had, accepting a position in Mugabe’s administration upon arriving in the newly-independent nation of Zimbabwe in 1980. Windrich, now a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, had been just one of many international academics and journalists with optimistic visions for the future of Zimbabwe. Prior to the election, throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the world watched uneasily as the then-Rhodesia degenerated into a civil war between white-minority settlers and Africans. Consequently, when a peace agreement was finally reached in 1979, followed by a successful democratic election and a landslide victory for the black majority, most of the world rejoiced. The current state of Zimbabwe today, however, with its widespread unemployment, repression of civil rights, and stratospheric inflation rates, looks nothing like what Windrich and others had hoped for. At some point between then and now, the nation of Zimbabwe under Mugabe took a surprising turn for the worse.
But how much of a surprise was it? “You have the jewel of Africa in your hands,” President Machel of Mozambique and President Nyerere of Tanzania told Mugabe upon his election. Jewel of Africa in NY Review of BooksAnd yet, as early as 1982, journalists were reporting assaults, murders and political conspiracies. While academics and world leaders lauded Zimbabwe as the potential success story of Africa, journalists were secretly collecting stories from activist priests and jumping into dark cars at night to gather affidavits from victims of government violence. Sure, Mugabe instituted social and agricultural programs that were initially seen as societal improvements. He increased the minimum wage, opened civil service positions to African applicants and made primary education and healthcare widely available. And, upon arrival, journalists were as optimistic as everyone else. However, after only a year or two, reports citing human rights abuses and political violence appeared in several major news publications.
Two steps ahead of the international community, journalists saw the grim future of Zimbabwe. Although most international observers were surprised by the downturn Zimbabwe took in the 1990s, traces of what was to come can be found in media coverage dating back to 1982. As one journalist for the Daily Telegraph recalls, in reference to Robert Mugabe, “Even then I thought he would be there for the long haul; I thought he was going to fight and do whatever it took to stay in power.”
[edit] Colonial Occupation to Democracy: Mugabe Emerges as Leader
Founded in 1890, the nation of Zimbabwe began as “Rhodesia,” named for British entrepreneur and businessman, Cecil Rhodes. The Berlin Conference of 1884 had allocated certain portions of the African continent to the British Empire, and Rhodes led a group of white settlers to the region in search of gold, land and labor. Though the occupation of the land was officially declared in the name of the Queen, Rhodes agreed to finance the venture in exchange for administrative control. The British government, tired of expensive and perilous adventures in African exploration, handed the reins of administration over to Rhodes’ British South African Company.
Without the oversight and bureaucracy of a national government, Rhodes moved quickly to take charge of the region. Persuading the Ndebele king, Lobengula, to sign a mining agreement, Rhodes’ company gained the right to occupy Mashonaland and exercise ultimate authority. From there, the white settlers established laws and administrative structures that directly benefited themselves and suppressed the black native populations. Justifying their actions with claims of the “right of conquest,” the settlers maintained that they were benefiting the Africans, who needed law and order to avert tribal warfare. A series of laws in the 1920s and 1930s further entrenched these social inequalities. The Land Apportionment Act of 1930 removed sections of the black population from critical farming lands, designated those patches of land “white areas,” and relocated the Africans to more infertile patches that were undesired by the settlers.
Predictably, this extreme system of minority rule was unsustainable. The British government, neighboring African countries and the native black population began to push for greater African participation and equality. And once the gates were open, there was no closing them. The National Democratic Party (NDP) was formed in 1960 by African intellectuals such as Ndabaningi Sithole and future-President, Robert Mugabe. When Ian Smith, leader of the ruling Rhodesian Front (RF) unilaterally declared Rhodesia independent from Britain in 1965, black nationalists took to the street with protests and rallies. Confrontations grew increasingly violent, until black guerrillas were fighting white rule from bases in neighboring Mozambique and Zambia. By 1979, the Rhodesians were running out of money and manpower and both sides were running low on international credibility, leading to the British-brokered Lancaster House Agreement.
Lancaster House Conference Report
The agreement mandated that democratic elections be held in 1980. Mugabe, former guerilla fighter and political prisoner of Ian’s Smith’s regime, was the leading candidate of the Zimbabwean African Nationalist Union, the political party dominated by the ethnic Shonas. Joshua Nkomo, considered by many to be the father of Zimbabwean nationalism, led the smaller Zimbabwean African People’s Union, comprised mostly of the minority Ndebeles. The white party was automatically allotted 20 parliamentary seats; ZANU won 57 of the remaining 80 seats, appointing Mugabe prime minister. 28 years later, he’s still in power.
[edit] Curfews and Road-checks: Reporting in Matabeleland
(Bulawayo, major city of Matabeleland)
On July 5, 1982, the New York Times and the Washington Post reported that six tourists were being held hostage by “guerilla followers” of Joshua Nkomo. The leader of ZAPU had originally joined in a coalition government but had since been dismissed on dubious charges of sabotage. The six tourists – all men, as the women had been released -- were reportedly taken off a tour bus after it was forced to stop at a roadblock in Matabeleland, Nkomo’s political stronghold. The kidnappers issued a ransom note calling for the release of two jailed ZAPU party members but their request was ignored by Mugabe’s administration. The tourists’ dead bodies were discovered later that summer by a motorist.
The political nature of the murders and the symbolic choice of Western targets drew significant media attention to the area. An insurgency had been stirring in the Ndebele-dominated region by rebels angered at their lack of governmental representation. The kidnapping, however, brought the struggle to new proportions, triggering both international attention and government reprisal. Andrew Meldrum, a reporter covering Zimbabwe for Agence France-Press (AFP), remembers the moment in his memoir: he writes, “Suddenly their opposition could no longer be ignored.”
Meldrum, like Elaine Windrich, had arrived in Zimbabwe in 1980 amid joyous celebrations and political promises. “I thought Mugabe’s electoral victory was an expression of the people,” Meldrum recalled. “I was optimistic that Zimbabwe would succeed in providing a better life for all its people.”
In this early era, foreign journalists were just as positive about Zimbabwe’s potential as the rest of the world. The difference came soon after when Mugabe’s regime violently cracked down on the murmurs of insurgency, displaying the intolerance that would come to characterize the government.
The imposition of an official dusk-to-dawn curfew in the area coincided with an influx of international journalists. Meldrum was one of many to travel to the region. “I went down to Matabeleland to write about the kidnappings,” Meldrum writes in Where We Have Hope, “but I also wanted to write about the rivalries between Mugabe’s Zanu-PF and Nkomo’s Zapu and the growing divisions between the Shona and Ndebele peoples.” Sitting in a Catholic church, Meldrum heard countless tales of families being shot, children being burned in huts, and young men being abducted from their villages. It quickly became clear that Mugabe’s regime was not just looking to quiet rebels; it was looking to silence opposition.
Yet, the world was not ready to hear this. Though Meldrum’s reports contained numerous witness statements and testimonies, they were challenged by friends, readers and the Zimbabwean government. The international community, especially, was reluctant to condemn Mugabe’s government so quickly following the start of independence. “Some of my editors, especially left-wing editors, were not comfortable with my reports critical of the Mugabe regime,” said Meldrum. Editors and other sympathizers were clinging to the social and agricultural policies that Mugabe was implementing, clinging to the promises he had made upon inauguration. The journalists, though they tried to cover these positive stories as well, could not ignore the clear violations occurring.
In one notable editorial struggle, Donald Trelford, editor of The (London) Observer, encountered the obstacles in Zimbabwe that were meant to keep ordinary Zimbabweans from communicating with foreign journalists. After ditching his official guide and following strangers into the forbidden curfew area, Trelford received affidavits and statements from victims of the government violence. T.R. “Tiny” Rowland, the owner of Trelford’s paper, had business interests in Zimbabwe and did everything he could to discredit Trelford following publication. In retrospect, it is clear that Trelford was onto several important themes: political conspiracy, indiscriminate violence and the suppression of a free press.
Trelford's Defense on NewZimbabwe.com
Most of the other journalists reporting from Bulawayo echoed Trelford’s and Meldrum’s concerns. The New York Times’ Alan Cowell cited estimates of hundreds of civilian deaths at the hands of government forces in Matabeleland in February 1983. “Hundreds Reported Killed in Attacks by Zimbabwean Troops,” read the headline in The Washington Post from the same month.
The reporters also identified underlying factors of the regime that would figure prominently in later events. In an article dated February 19, 1983, Alan Cowell noted Mugabe’s refusal to recognize claims of political equality made by his opponents. He reported that while Joshua Nkomo had no interest in waging a civil war, the present political divisions and unequal balance of power held “dangers of a widening conflict.” Jay Ross, in the Washington Post, wrote that the Matabeleland violence seemed destined to “leave permanent scars in the century-old tribal feud between Mugabe’s Shona majority and the Ndebeles.” Reporting at a time when academics like Jeffrey Davidow from Harvard University were publishing journal articles entitled “Zimbabwe is a Success,” international reporters were working to convey a more candid portrayal.
This is not to say that journalistic coverage in the early 1980s was faultless. The coverage tended to paint the struggles in Zimbabwe as typical African conflicts of a tribal and ethnic nature. Many of the articles discussed at length the Shona-Ndebele ethnic divide, attributing present violence to century-old tensions. Though these ethnic divisions certainly played a role in the conflict, they were not the whole story. Coverage like this relieved Mugabe of some of the blame. Nkomo was no saintly figure, but his dismissal from the government based on the discovery of an arms cache with no tangible link to Nkomo was illegitimate. Mugabe’s rhetoric prior to the 1980 election had emphasized the ideal of a one-party state; his pursuit of this ideal had less to do with age-old ethnic tensions and more with Mugabe’s singular desire for control.
Interview with Joshua Nkomo in Exile, 1983
[edit] Referendums and Expulsion: Reporting on Land Seizures in 2000
If the first wave of journalists to Zimbabwe in 1980 ushered in Mugabe’s first victory, then a second wave of journalists in 2000 ushered in his first defeat. After 20 years of unbroken rule, Mugabe organized a constitutional commission and proposed several reforms to strengthen his already dominant executive powers. One section of the proposed reform would have permitted the government to seize farmlands, requiring Britain to pay compensation to the former owners. The Lancaster House Agreement, established in 1979, had mandated that farmland only be sold on a “willing seller, willing buyer” basis. Mugabe’s reform held that the financial burden of redistribution should fall on the British as the original imperial power.
In his book, Degrees in Violence, journalist David Blair recalls the aggressive and unbalanced nature of the Yes and No campaigns in the days leading up to the national referendum. “To call this referendum a David and Goliath contest does not go nearly far enough,” he writes. “It was a fight between an elephant and a mouse.”
Yet, the manpower behind Mugabe’s Vote Yes campaign was not enough to generate the support he needed. As Blair points out, “No one was casting their vote in response to the question on the ballot paper.” Instead, the people of Zimbabwe turned the vote into a referendum on Mugabe himself – one that he lost.
What followed the defeat was a whirlwind of grossly illegal activity. And once again, as in 1983, the journalists acted as the whistle-blowers in a lawless state. On April 6, The Independent reported “a wave of fresh violence,” as members of the political opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change, were attacked and assaulted in their homes. On April 13, Blair reported a surge of land seizures by the government: “Black squatters armed with AK-47 automatic rifles have fired on white farmers in Zimbabwe.”
Throughout the rest of the year, headlines marked the injustices of Mugabe’s regime and the chaos that ensued. “Mugabe changes law to grab land,” read the Sydney Morning Herald, on April 8. “Zimbabwe on road to ruination?” asked Holger Jensen of the Washington Times, later that month. The reporting focused on land seizures by thugs armed and empowered by government authorities. The thugs called themselves “war veterans” but were often not old enough to have served in the war. They raided farms, set up tents on the land, destroyed productive crops, and assaulted, harassed and sometimes murdered the farmers left.
Journalists could not stop the violence, but they could portray its brutality. “The success was that we implanted in people’s minds the notion that Mugabe was, first, determined to stay in power, and, second, didn’t care about the consequences in terms of economic collapse and the suffering of the people,” David Blair recalls. The government retaliated by railing against foreign journalists. “Mugabe was and is a power-hungry leader heedless of the consequences of staying in power,” Blair explained. “We said this then, and now it is deeply embedded in Mugabe’s global image.”
Still, Blair admits journalistic coverage was not without its flaws. “Did you get it right?” I asked. “Broadly we did,” he answered. He concedes the primary focus of the coverage was on the suffering of white farmers – not the fate of the black majority. The blatant violation of white farmers’ rights was an attractive feature story. European and American readers identified more easily with scared white farmers than with poor black Zimbabweans.
Journalists called attention to the Zimbabwean national crises but only alerted the world to a portion of the problem. When white farmlands were seized, the multitude of black workers employed on the farms would also lose their jobs. White farmers had an easier time resettling, but it was the black population that would be stuck in Zimbabwe, without livelihoods or homes. In incendiary speeches, Mugabe claimed he was fighting white imperialists – what the journalists missed was that Mugabe was turning his own Africans against each other.
BBC Article: "Zimbabwe admits 'errors' on land"
[edit] Prison Cells and Morgan Tsvangirai: Reporting on the 2008 Elections
On March 29, 2008, Zimbabwe hit another turbulent milestone with its presidential and parliamentary elections. Mugabe’s team had been too confident, underestimating the population’s desire for change. Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, campaigned hard and tallies posted on the doors of individual polling stations on the evening of March 29 proved it.
New York Times reporter Barry Bearak was covering the political violence in the aftermath of the election, the results of which Mugabe has denied, when he was surprised at his hotel lodge by a swarm of police. “We didn’t have a sense that they were reading our stories,” Bearak told me, weeks after being arrested for “committing journalism.” Though Zimbabwe has a history of arresting and deporting foreign journalists who write unfavorable stories, Bearak had hoped he would not be one of the “unlucky few” to get picked up. The practicalities of filing several stories a day prevented him from taking certain precautions. However, the burden of responsibility he felt to report on the situation, as one of the few international journalists in Harare, outweighed the tangible concerns of imprisonment.
As the conflict continues, reports indicate that the government has violently suppressed all political opposition. The high courts refuse to announce official election results and a run-off election has been delayed, most recently, until late June. “New Signs of Mugabe Crackdown in Zimbabwe,” read the New York Times on April 4. The article described the security raids and police restrictions that are now occurring in major cities. Over fifty MDC supporters have been assaulted by the police. In early June, Morgan Tsvangirai, who unquestionably beat Mugabe in the election, was detained by the police and prevented from campaigning.
It is too early to tell if current coverage is aptly portraying the post-election disorder and Mugabe’s death-grasp on the presidency. But, traces of early reporting in 1982 and later in 2000 can be seen in the precarious state that Zimbabwe finds itself in now. The threads of intolerance and violent suppression weave throughout.
As it stands now, the results of the March 29 elections remain undeclared. Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa, continues to practice his “quiet” diplomacy. The United Nations Security Council has issued statements condemning the political violence and urging Mugabe’s party to heed the election results. International monitors have reported on the government’s efforts of ballot-stuffing and electoral fraud. And foreign journalists continue to sneak into the country, posing as tourists and carrying fake passports, in order to report on the political violence and street protests.
I asked David Blair, as someone who had been there, how a leader so corrupt and unconcerned with general welfare could still be ruling a nation after 28 years. “The brutal truth is that repression works,” he replied simply. “It worked then and it’s working now.”
Bush, Blair, Mugabe, and Tsvangirai Break It Down
