Human Rights and Zimbabwe's Presidential Election: March 2002
A Special Report by the Research Unit
May, 2002

Chapter 2:  Rights of Information and Expression: The Media in the Presidential Election

The Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act          

Media accreditation to cover the election  

The press on the campaign trail      

Media advertising 

Broadcasting   

The Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act

‘Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes the freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.’ (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19)

‘Information is at the heart and is the cornerstone of democracy’ (Tendai Biti, MDC).[1]

‘We do need a new law to deal with the falsehoods, the false statements which are peddled internationally’ (Patrick Chinamasa, ZANU-PF).[2]

A raft of new acts changed the legislative framework for the Presidential Election, including the Broadcasting Services Act which had been gazetted in 2001, and contributed to Zimbabwe’s ranking by Freedom House as having an ‘unfree’ press. By late April 2002 television remained the monopoly of the state broadcaster (ZBCTV). However, external broadcasts from the UK, the Netherlands and the Voice of America – all described as ‘illegal’ by Zimbabwe’s information minister – provided alternatives to ZBC radio stations. As ever, those living in the border regions which ZBC signals have never reached, tuned into radio and/or TV from neighbouring states.

Although it was introduced as inaugurating ‘a socially just mass communication dispensation which proclaim and entrench [sic] communication rights of all our people’,[3] in late 2001 the Parliamentary Legal Committee found the original Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Bill to be ‘manifestly unconstitutional’ (under s 20 and s 18).[4] It had earlier been slammed by the independent media and the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries.[5] Returned with 36 amendments for a second reading, it was again found by the Parliamentary Legal Committee to be unconstitutional in form as well as in 20 specific provisions (only six of which were conceded by the Attorney-General). Chairing the Parliamentary Legal Committee, Eddison Zvogbo (ZANU-PF, Masvingo South) castigated the arbitrary (and therefore unconstitutional) character of many provisions and noted:[6]

‘The Bill in its original form was the most calculated and determined assault on our liberties guaranteed by the Constitution in the 20 years I served as Cabinet minister and as a member of the Cabinet Committee on Legislation for 16 of those years. What is worse, the Bill was badly drafted in that several provisions were obscure, vague, over-broad in scope, ill-conceived and dangerous… There is not a shadow of doubt that everyone, regardless of his nationality or place of residence, is entitled to freedom of expression while in Zimbabwe…

Freedom of expression is the same thing as “freedom of speech”. Ask yourself whether it is rational for a government in a democratic and free society to require registration, licences and ministerial certificates in order for people to speak. It is a sobering thought…

Is it intended to raid media houses from time to time under cover of “investigations”?…

Is it seriously suggested that setting up a spy agency to spy on Zimbabweans should be a lawful power of the Commission?… The only possible reason for [registration and licensing] is to impose control by government over mass media owners and their products…

There is, in our Constitution, protection of property as an entrenched right. The only extent to which we amend that is in respect of land taken for resettlement purposes. Other than that, you cannot just issue a certificate and go and seize people’s property… It is this king of policing that is unlawful … These burdens are an excessive intrusion into freedom of expression.’

They are also unconstitutional transgressions against journalists’ rights to freedom of expression and work.

The Zimbabwe Union of Journalists demonstrated outside Parliament as the revised bill was discussed. A week later, ZUJ secretary-general Basildon Peta was the first citizen to be charged under the Public Order and Security Act (s 24) and detained at Harare Central Police Station for having organised an illegal assembly. He was detained late on Monday 4 February through to 3am of the following day. His arrest was given top news billing by the BBC and front-page headlines by the UK newspaper for which he was the local correspondent.[7] It was reported on page 2 of The Daily News, but totally ignored by The Herald until after he had been freed at court on the Tuesday, where his lawyer had noted that professional organisations (of which ZUJ is one) do not require police approval for their gatherings[8] and the Attorney-General’s Office had declined to prosecute him. The Herald[9] then asserted ‘Peta lies’, ‘Peta’s story “pure fiction”’, giving prominence to the police denial that he had been detained overnight ‘in filthy cells’. Peta resigned to spare his paper, The Financial Gazette, any comeback and left to join his hastily-evacuated family in South Africa.

Zimbabwe later declared Tuwani Gumani, co-ordinator of the South African Journalists’ Association, a prohibited person and refused him entry into the country to discuss the position of Basildon Peta with the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists.[10]

ZANU-PF backbenchers did not, on the Information bill, ignore the Parliamentary Legal Committee’s negative report and pass the legislation anyway, as has been their wont in the past. An unnamed ZANU-PF MP was quoted as telling the press that the bill ‘contained dangerous intentions to discredit the government and our party. It is not a piece of law that can be passed by any humane government’.[11] Quite why the ZANU-PF MPs found their spines again was unclear. Only justice minister Patrick Chinamasa and his deputy, Paul Mangwana (both lawyers) reportedly supported the amended version from the government side. They were apparently unmoved by the journalists’ call for a total boycott of the ‘obnoxiously fascist’ legislation.[12] The Bill’s sponsor, Jonathan Moyo, was accused of seeking personal revenge on specific journalists and newspapers for their reporting of legal suits against him.[13]

As leader of the House, Chinamasa reached speedy accommodation with the Parliamentary Legal Committee. Notwithstanding Jonathan Moyo’s unhappiness, the third set of amendments removed the total ban on foreign ownership of Zimbabwe’s media while allowing only minority shareholding for foreigners. Existing investments were no longer affected. Police powers to seize equipment were removed. Under the restored previous system of accreditation, foreign journalists will be able to operate. Decisions of the Supreme and High Courts will not be subject to scrutiny by the Media Commission, which will now include representatives seconded from the media houses, and journalists.

The MDC, however, took careful heed of Jonathan Moyo’s view that ‘ingrained racism … is at the core of journalism … a whole white global network and front has been formed against the landless blacks and their struggle here’ and his ambition

‘to put on the run those sinister foreigners intent on subverting and squatting on our airwaves under the guise of freedom of expression and democracy… pirate broadcasters of an evil colonial empire motivated by the hope of fresh conquest and annexation of Zimbabwe in the twenty-first century’.[14]

MDC MPs condemned the bill as designed to muzzle independent publications and curtail the constitutional rights of Zimbabweans to information, and voted against its final form in accordance with the widely-expressed views of the journalists’ unions and civil society.[15] Journalists resolved to ignore the bill if it was enacted,[16] noting that until the Official Secrets Act was repealed, no other legislation would afford free access to state material. As one commentator put it:

‘Information that should be common knowledge in a democracy is treated as though it were of the highest national security concern, and yet it is evident that protecting the deliberations of the Cabinet or of local governments is inimical to principles of accountable government.’[17]

Unfortunately no-one took up Moyo’s perfectly valid concern presumably with the state-controlled media, which fit his otherwise unspecified description of

‘certain sections of the media which are used by unscrupulous politicians to foment ethnic tensions and divisions which threaten the unity, peace, stability and development of our country’.[18]

The Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Bill, more than anything else, galvanised international opinion against the Zimbabwe government in the run-up to the presidential poll. It was condemned very widely, including by the International Federation of Journalists, the Commonwealth Press Union, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Rapporteurs sans Frontieres.[19] The Southern African Journalists’ Federation threatened legal action against all the new laws which could hamper their work in Zimbabwe.[20] The Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) called on Robert Mugabe to condemn ‘the ongoing and intensifying victimisation of media practitioners and violations of media freedoms’.[21] MISA also appealed to the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, to hold Zimbabwe accountable under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and briefed the President of the Council of Europe on media violations in Zimbabwe. Before it was signed into law, the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Abid Hussain, reportedly wrote urging Robert Mugabe’s government to repeal the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act passed by Parliament.[22] One report suggested that the South Africans may have prevailed upon him privately not to sign it.[23]

SADC joined the EU, USA and Commonwealth in condemning this blatant attempt to control information.

It had been suggested (as had happened to the original Public Order and Security Act) that the State President might not sign the watered-down act that Parliament finally passed, but it was brought into effect on 15 March 2002 – two days after Robert Mugabe was declared the winner of the Presidential election, but before he was actually sworn into office two days afterwards. The independent press commented:

 ‘The Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, signed into law by President Mugabe … reeks of the intolerance and xenophobia that has characterised this administration for many years now’.[24]

In the month following, this Act was used extensively against editors and journalists.

Media Accreditation to cover the Election

Government’s policy on accreditation was revealed as being ‘restricted to those organisations considered not to have taken a biased position over land reform’.[25] Journalists were charged the same as observers and monitors to cover the election – Z$1 000 for locals and theoretically US$100-300 for foreign correspondents. In practice only state-owned broadcasters in Africa were accredited.[26] Only the South African Broadcasting Corporation and E-TV were allowed in as tele-journalists. The government ban on the BBC reporting directly from Zimbabwe remained, but the BBC’s Channel 4 was permitted three locally-based reporters.[27] Notwithstanding accreditation, the BBC’s Channel 4 team was admitted to the Presidential rally at Sezhube stadium, Umzingwane, only after harassment by ZANU-PF youths and intervention by a senior member of the President’s Office.[28]

After the BBC and various British reporters had been refused permission to report directly from Zimbabwe, the UK’s prime minister Tony Blair reportedly demanded, on his visit to Nigeria, that British media be allowed to cover the Zimbabwean Presidential Election freely.[29] Nigeria’s President Obasanjo reportedly responded that he had already told his Zimbabwe counterpart personally that the foreign media and observers had to be admitted, and political violence stopped, or the whole world would object.

By 8 March, a total of 580 foreign journalists had reportedly been accredited by the ESC to cover the election, but only 280 locals.[30] Those most frequently rejected were from the UK (19), South Africa (12), the Netherlands (11), USA (10), Australia (7), Denmark (6), Canada (5). Among other journalists refused visas were those from Germany, Norway, Sweden, the USA’s New York Times and Washington Post, two from Rapporteurs sans Frontieres, and journalists from South Africa’s privately-owned newspapers.[31] The debarred South Africans complained to their foreign affairs bureaucracy that Zimbabwe had reneged on Robert Mugabe’s specific promise to the SADC leaders’ January 2002 meeting in Blantyre.[32] One Ugandan editor of a Botswana journal was detained after allegedly entering Zimbabwe illegally through its border with Mocambique.[33]

Representatives of Ghana’s Private Newspaper Publishers Association handed a petition castigating attacks on Zimbabwe’s independent media to our High Commissioner in Accra, for onward transmission to Robert Mugabe.[34]

While foreign and independent local reporters were banned from many of Robert Mugabe’s late campaign rallies,[35] the state-controlled media were not permitted into some of Morgan Tsvangirai’s rallies.

The press on the campaign trail

The Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe drew attention to the respective biases of the state-controlled and independent media, particularly with respect to political violence.[36]

Slightly over a year after its brand new Harare press had been blown up, on the night of 11-12 February 2002, in Bulawayo, petrol bombs were thrown at both the Daily News local office and Daily Print, an independent company. No injury or damage, other than broken windows, was reported.

In Parliament, justice minister Patrick Chinamasa referred to ‘sources of information like the Daily News that are now being used as terrorist manuals’.[37] Two MPs (Shadreck Chipanga and Didymus Mutasa) were accused in Parliament of ‘banning’ The Daily News (Zimbabwe’s most widely-read daily newspaper) from Rusape, Nyazura and other parts of their Manicaland constituencies.[38]

Independent publications were ‘banned’ from numerous parts of the country, including Bindura, Masvingo, Kariba and Karoi, by ZANU-PF activists.[39] Copies of The Daily News, Financial Gazette, Zimbabwe Independent and The Standard were regularly torn or burned and their vendors assaulted by ZANU-PF youth and ‘war veterans’.

Harassment of journalists continued. Three locals from independent presses – Foster Dongozi, Rhoda Mashavave and Cornelius Nduna – had been detained for demonstrating against the Access to Information bill outside Parliament. Those belonging to independent presses reported uphill battles in obtaining figures for polling, particularly in the very tense rural areas where most polling stations were staffed by people from the defence and home affairs ministries, including the CIO. The Daily News’ Chris Gande was refused entry to the Presidential rally at Sezhube stadium, Umzingwane.

Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC were subjected by the state-controlled media to what Zimbabweans call ‘decampaigning’ on so massive a scale that it was not even vaguely credible. He was accused of selling Zimbabwe to the British and/or the former Rhodesians; of fomenting war; of planning to name David Coltart as his Vice-President; of privately admitting defeat a month before polling;[40] of being irredeemably power-hungry while simultaneously ‘sinking into political oblivion’;[41] of threatening the country with starvation should he lose the election; of confirming suspicions that members of his party were hoarding food and deliberately causing shortages for political gains;[42] and of planning to assassinate Robert Mugabe.[43] New political commentators from the small parties not contesting the Presidential Election, were found by The Herald to say, apparently independently of ZANU-PF, that ‘it would be a tragedy and betrayal of the liberation struggle if the MDC won’.[44] The MDC was reported in The Herald[45] to have admitted that the poll would be free and fair – on the basis of selectively-quoted emails whose authors did not appear to have been consulted regarding their publication. Quite how the state-controlled press obtained private emails from individuals it described as whites speaking on behalf of the MDC, remains unknown.

ZimPapers’ titles also reported violations of electoral law and process by MDC participants, but not similar behaviour by ZANU-PF members and supporters. Reportage of such incidents and arrests was more balanced in the independent media. But some of the ‘news’ they published, ostensibly from ZANU-PF insider sources, clearly had the capacity to cause considerable infighting in that party, and may have been deliberately planted in order to do so. The state-controlled press also repeatedly made assertions about specific ZANU-PF leaders (notably Eddison Zvogbo) and their alleged campaigning which turned out to be inaccurate.

The ZimPapers titles reported the election campaign and polling in ways that could be expected, even if they were not actually designed, to whip up anti-white sentiment among ZANU-PF supporters.

‘The weekend activities demonstrate once again that the majority of whites are racists … What has changed so dramatically to see white people not only standing in long queues to vote but trying to coerce other people into voting for the opposition MDC?’[46]

They gave prominence to reports of alleged attempts to vote twice by whites (even while providing figures which showed the vast majority of the 350 accused to have been black); allegations of whites seeking illegally to subvert electoral choice by bribery of various kinds; white financial, logistic, and resource support for the MDC; and white ‘infiltration’ of Zimbabwe from South Africa allegedly to ‘disturb’ vote counting.

Four days out from voting, The Herald had a banner headline ‘MDC plans war’. The following day it noted

‘The talk of a civil war in Zimbabwe following the country’s presidential poll is being carelessly bandied about to create tension and fear among citizens.

The impression being created is that Zimbabweans will reject the results of the election if it is not seen as free and fair, meaning if the MDC loses.

This is absolute nonsense and those wishing for this to happen should be told in no uncertain terms that the country’s security forces rank among the best in the world and are capable of dealing with any miscreants who think they can ignite a civil conflict’.[47]

The state-controlled media recurrently quoted ‘black’ international observer teams as commenting favourably on the electoral process ahead of the poll and ‘white’ Commonwealth countries as allegedly making statements biased against Robert Mugabe. For example, Sam Motsuenyane, heading the South African Observer Mission, was quoted[48] as saying:

‘Our general assessment is that while the situation is far from ideal, we believe that conditions prevail for the elections to be held that can reflect the true will of the people… Even at this stage of the campaign, we believe that more can be done, especially by the leaders of the political parties in moderating their utterances and focussing the people on issues that are in the national interest.’

But The Herald continued, without quoting, that Motsuenyane had said ‘the overall picture … reflected a complex national situation’; ‘SAOM had observed isolated cases of violence and received numerous reports of intimidation involving all the major political parties’; that SAOM ‘disputed reports … that the MDC rally scheduled … in Marondera … was called off because of violence’.

After the results of the Mass Public Opinion Institute’s survey were released, the Sunday Mail railled vigorously against ‘the attempt to manipulate public opinion through the aggressive and irresponsible use of the media’. It alleged, of Target Research’s August-September 2001 findings on behalf of the Financial Gazette,

‘it has now emerged from the manager of the project that the survey result as finalised, and before the white sponsors doctored it, indicated that President Mugabe was leading Tsvangirai by 52%’.

The Financial Gazette sued.[49]

The same edition of the Sunday Mail[50] reproduced an article by Ibbo Mandaza, originally published in his Zimbabwe Mirror, which estimated that Robert Mugabe would get 2,38 million votes compared to Morgan Tsvangirai’s 1,93 million, and alleged also that

‘Tony Leon of the white-supremacist party of South Africa has bankrolled a survey which is currently under way and whose results will be published soon, indicating that Mr Tsvangirai is leading’.

A week later, the Sunday Mail claimed (without even pretending to have sourced this claim) that ‘Four weeks ago, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office projected that 60% of the vote will go to President Robert Mugabe and 40% to Mr Tsvangirai’. It carefully did not note Tony Blair’s remarks the previous day at CHOGM that the British expected a massive victory for Morgan Tsvangirai, instead claiming Blair’s

‘actions [at CHOGM] are indicative of a man who now knows that President Mugabe is set to win the Presidential Election comfortably and wants to cajole the Commonwealth leaders not to accept the results’.[51]

Although there exist legal regulations governing political advertising on t-shirts, it was – somewhat surprisingly – the Sunday Mail[52] which carried a ZIANA report noting that

‘Some messages printed on the campaign t-shirts are moving from the usual style of persuasive messages to antagonising and insulting opponents. “Tsvangison is a sell-out, Zimbabwe will never be a colony again” screams a message printed on a t-shirt worn by a teenager in Highfield, Harare. The teenager said he was now afraid to wear his party t-shirt in public’.

Most unusually, on the second day of polling (10 March 2002) the Sunday Mail gave no preliminary figures at all for the polling, while headlining an interview with Jonathan Moyo, ‘After ZANU-PF poll victory, what’s next?’ The Herald blazoned across its edition on the third, unscheduled Monday of voting ‘Mugabe leads in poll’, followed, the following day, by ‘Counting starts’. Its Monday headline was effectively an attempt to influence choice while voting was still in progress, but there were no reports of disciplinary action against it for this breach of media ethics. Nor were the Nigerians and Japanese reported as having objected to The Herald’s attribution to them of endorsement of the voting as free and fair before it had finished, when all they had said was that voting had generally been very peaceful at the few polling stations they had visited but they had heard of ‘skirmishes’ elsewhere.[53]

After the election, The Herald failed to report the suspension of Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth’s councils and the resolutions of the Joint Parliamentary Assembly of the ACP-EU countries, in Cape Town. Instead, after such major scoops had been broken by the Daily News, The Herald attempted to play down, if not actually deny, their significance.

In contrast, the independent presses played up overseas reports that did Robert Mugabe’s public image little credit (for example, his alleged transfer of tens of millions of US dollars from Europe to Asia as Switzerland and the Channel Islands started investigating his assets in those countries). International moves were reported in greater detail and more accurately by the independent media than ZimPapers’ publications.

Media advertising

State-controlled Zimbabwe Newspapers titles published only ZANU-PF advertisements, although they did accept advertisements criticising the legislation, including the Information bill, from civil society organisations such as the Legal Resources Foundation (LRF) and the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA). Independent titles published campaign advertisements from all parties.

ZANU-PF kicked off its presidential campaign with a series of chilling advertisements in the state-controlled and some independent media,[54] which were clearly intended to remind voters that ZANU-PF was in the war business and had been since before Independence. To any Zimbabwean old enough to remember, these were chilling reminders of ZANU’s 1980 promise to return to guerrilla war if they lost that election.

‘PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 2002 – THE THIRD CHIMURENGA’

‘PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 2002 – HONDO YEMINDA’

Perhaps as result of horrified public and international reaction, these particular advertisements were rapidly withdrawn. They were replaced with marginally less offensive attacks on the MDC as an alleged puppet of overseas interests, some of which were arguably defamatory of particular individuals. It is unlikely that any would motivate Australia, Canada, the European Union and its member states, New Zealand, the UK or the USA to resume future financial assistance to a government controlled by a party so vilifying them.

At no stage did any ZANU-PF public advertisement attempt to promote the party’s policies except ‘hondo yeminda’ and ‘fast-track resettlement’. Their advertisements by mid-February tried to persuade people

‘He has done all these things for you – giving land back to the people, controlling prices of basic commodities, jobs and wealth from the land, building a million new houses, controlling the killer disease HIV-AIDS, building infrastructure, rural electrification, indigenisation, national unity, our president says no to violence, giving real power to women – and he still has more to do’ (sic).

Perhaps deferring to the President’s increasing use of the royal plural, these ads somewhat ambiguously urged people ‘On March 9 and 10 vote for the people: vote for maturity, experience and wisdom’ – without ever naming the person in whom these attributes were supposed to reside.

MDC advertising, in contrast to ZANU-PF’s, was restricted exclusively to the independent presses. (It was unclear whether this was a result of MDC advertising being unacceptable to the state-controlled media, or a party policy not to advertise in those media.) MDC advertising seriously attempted to address the issues of concern to everyone in comprehensible language and to compress relevant policy information. It criticised ZANU-PF only on policy issues, not the personalised basis of the ZANU-PF attacks on Morgan Tsvangirai and other leaders.

Broadcasting

Although 28 February 2002 was set by government as the deadline for registration under the Broadcasting Services Act, no licences had been issued by the dates of the election (or, indeed, two months afterwards), except to DSTV. ZTV later withdrew facilities from Joy TV.

The Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation applied its ‘10 Golden Rules’ to all political advertising and retained the right to edit any material submitted. The net result was a persistent imbalance in favour of ZANU-PF. The Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe detailed this imbalance: 94% of TV and 86% of radio news bulletins were devoted to promoting ZANU-PF, together with 84% of election campaign stories. And the content of the remainder was always negatively-slanted against the main opposition candidate, with the minor contenders almost completely ignored, especially by ZBC radio stations. (It was therefore very interesting that in rural constituencies starved of information on them, the three minor candidates polled a surprising number of votes.) The Herald itself admitted that the election observers would ‘be forced to conclude that the official media … made little effort at balance’ – but consoled itself that neither did the other media.[55]

Following their repeatedly biased reporting, ZTV was refused entry to an MDC rally in Chinhoyi. ZANU-PF minister Ignatius Chombo reportedly said this was because only a few people had turned up and the MDC didn’t want the nation to see that. He accused white farmers of paying their workers Z$5 000 to attend the rally, hiring thugs to disrupt it and stone vehicles after the rally, and mounting roadblocks which were blamed on ZANU-PF to tarnish its image.[56] This stoning outside Banket was the second in three days in which South African observers or their vehicles had been injured by ruling party violence, and they were not impressed by the (contradictory) state-controlled media line that the stoning had been incited by a South African observer from their Democratic Party, Errol Moorcroft, allegedly chanting MDC slogans.

One entertainment column noted that, both before and after the election, ZBC and ZTV required what it called ‘ZANU-PF propaganda songs’ to be played at regular intervals as specified on ‘continuity sheets’. Of one such video album, it further noted,

‘Part of the footage of Hondo yeMinda in particular incites racism and promotes violence. After the Presidential Election two weeks ago, we all thought we would be reprieved from some of the gory scenes on that footage, but how wrong we were!’[57]

Following the police confiscation of their equipment and the State’s refusal to license Capital Radio in 2000 (Cheater 2001b:9), Gerry Jackson and her team set up a shortwave station in London[58] to broadcast to Zimbabwe. Minister of Information and Publicity Jonathan Moyo reportedly called on the European Union to pressurise both the United Kingdom and the Netherlands[59] to ‘clearly and unequivocally condemn’ and ‘immediately stop illegal broadcasts in the country on behalf of the MDC’.[60] The British High Commission in Harare denied that the station in London was illegal in terms of UK law and that it was funded either by the UK government or the Westminster Foundation. SW Radio Africa was an essential source of up-to-date detailed information, phoned in by ordinary Zimbabweans, on what was happening in different areas at different stages of the election process. But it broadcast only from 6-9pm and, until shortly after the election, lunch-hour, so for many of those in polling queues at 10pm on Sunday 10 March 2002, the BBC World Service – not ZBC – provided information on the outcome of the MDC’s court application for an extension.

Over these offshore broadcasters, SADC’s chair, Bakili Muluzi of Malawi, reportedly[61]

‘wrote to the British and Netherlands prime ministers expressing the body’s disappointment over their governments’ failure to stop the anti-Zimbabwe and pro-opposition advertisements being broadcast from their territories…

“It is deeply regretted that the above complaints and appeals notwithstanding, the hostile broadcasts have continued unabated.

It is in this regard that I now write, as chairman of SADC, to reiterate our disappointment and once, [sic] again appeal that the Government of the United Kingdom take action to bring that hostile activity to an end.”

A similar letter was sent to the Prime Minister of Netherlands [sic].

“I wish to underline the strong sentiments within SADC, that the hostile broadcasts not only constitute gross interference in the internal affairs of a SADC member state, but also undermine the spirit of friendship and co-operation envisaged in the ACP-EU partnership agreement.

Furthermore we believe that such interference creates an uneven political field in Zimbabwe, particularly in view of the forthcoming Presidential election, and does not help promote an atmosphere conducive to a healthy democracy”’ .

The publication of such sentiments was perhaps unwise. If indeed the President of Malawi holds such views about broadcasting of alternative views and democratic functioning, it bodes ill for his own country’s citizens as well as the region. It certainly verged on, if not over, the ‘interference in the internal affairs of a SADC member state’ of which he himself accused others. And it was unequivocally politically partisan, a fact which Zimbabwean voters were unlikely to forget.

Gross impatience with SADC, in particular its foreign ministers, was editorialised by The Standard (3 February 2002).

‘It is a sad fact that every democratic-minded and peace-loving Zimbabwean believes our SADC brothers and sisters have let us down when it mattered most. While the rest of the international community, particularly the European Union and the United States, is taking steps to ensure that Zimbabwe conducts its Presidential Election in a democratic fashion, SADC has decided to look the other way and let Zimbabweans bear the brunt of both state-orchestrated violence and a flawed electoral process…

History has shown that the ZANU-PF government falls short when it comes to administering elections where there is a real chance of it losing. The 1990 and 2000 general elections bear testimony to this. Faced with defeat in 2000, ZANU-PF decided to take a shortcut to victory by embarking on an orgy of terror to cow people into voting for it…

The same pattern emerged during the campaign for the March 9/10 Presidential Election in which short of a massive fraud, 78-year-old President Robert Mugabe is expected to lose soundly…

Last week Malawian foreign affairs minister and SADC Zimbabwe Task Force chair, Lilian Patel, was here to lend legitimacy to a shamelessly flawed electoral process…

Many SADC leaders regard their organisation as a mutual support group. Their commitment to the democratic values set out in the SADC protocol is paper thin. And they have chosen to ignore the electoral principles laid down by their parliamentarians as recently as last year.

Admittedly South Africa and Botswana are inclined towards a more robust policy on Zimbabwe. And Mocambique is becoming increasingly disenchanted with its former allies in Harare.

But SADC is not an organisation we can look to for principled leadership… SADC has so far ignored violations of laid-down procedures in the land acquisition process, turned a blind eye to orchestrated political violence – pretending that both parties are equally guilty – and collaborated with ZANU-PF in the facile pretence that the media is responsible for Zimbabwe’s poor image.’

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