“Kill a Boer, kill a farmer”
As a National Liberation Movement, Mbeki’s party, the
ANC, has long advocated violence against civilians. On 20 May 1983 it planted
the notorious Church Street bomb in a busy Pretoria thoroughfare, which killed
19 people, and injured 219. After De Klerk’s hand-over of power to the ANC in
1994, it supposedly espoused Western-style democracy, just like Mugabe pledged
to do in 1980.
However, official party ideology sees the
transition to universal suffrage as the beginning of a “National Democratic
Revolution” which must culminate in a crypto-communist “Social Revolution” which
will remove the propertied classes from the scene.
Armed with an equally noble array of other slogans,
such as “transformation”, “black empowerment”, “non-racialisation”, etc.,
Mbeki’s government has been putting pressure on business to hand over huge
chunks of equity to so-called black-empowerment groups run by a nomenklatura
closely connected to a nepotist administration. Robert Price from Oxford
University notes the growing prominence of race in South African politics and is
concerned about "the increased reliance on group rather than individually based
notions of rights and rewards." (1997 'Race and Reconciliation in the New SA'
Politics & Society 25(2): 149 -178.)
Recently, the Minister of Mines indicated that no
new mining licenses or renewal of existing licenses will be granted in future
unless the applicant has a “black empowerment” shareholding of 30%, after a
leaked report that suggested 50% caused a melt-down in mining stocks. Whereas
listed companies can use some of their muscle and international clout to fight
off government advances, individual farmers living out in rural areas with their
families and workers are easy game for intimidation, violent attacks and, of
course, murder and ethnic cleansing.
The genocidal slogan “Kill a Boer, kill a farmer”
has been chanted at more than one ANC meeting, especially when ANC Youth League
leader, Peter Mokaba, was still alive. At the latter’s funeral on 15 June 2002
after he had succumbed to what was presumed to be AIDS (but hotly denied by
party members), a crowd of party youth chanted the words “Kill a Boer, kill a
farmer” in front of Mbeki and just about his entire cabinet, an incident which
was later relayed on television. When consternation broke out among farmers and
the rest of the Afrikaans-speaking community, it took Mbeki four days to
grudingly admit that Boers, Afrikaners and farmers “were Africans and welcome to
stay in South Africa.” Mugabe as it happens, has the same reassuring message to
white Zimbabwean farmers after every farm attack.
This was all the more unconvincing in the light of
Mbeki’s famous statement that “in our situation, because of the colonialism of
a special type, the victory of the national liberation struggle did not result
in the departure of the foreign ruling class.”
In short, Mbeki considers Boers, Afrikaners and
other whites who have lived in South Africa for 350 years, sometimes in areas
where there was no black settlement of any kind, as “members of a foreign ruling
class.”
Language
discrimination
The new South African constitution,
adopted in 1996, provides for an unwieldy eleven official languages. During the
time of the negotiations, the ANC was in favour of only one language, English,
which would exclude South Africa’s other major language, Afrikaans. The
eleven-language policy was therefore seen as compromise.
Since taking power, the ANC has simply ignored the
South African constitution, and imposed its original wish for a unilingual
country. The country has only 3 million mother-tongue speakers of English, out
of a total population of 42 million. However, even Parliament has only English
signs, and apart from odd snippets in other languages printed on coins for
example, one would be hard pressed to see official evidence of any other
language. As the Kenyan scholar, Ali Mazrui, has remarked, “With the end of
political apartheid in South Africa, the English language has made the clearest
gains. Although South Africa has declared eleven official languages
(theoretically reducing English to one-eleventh of the official status), in
reality the new policy demotes Afrikaans – the historic rival to English in
South Africa.” (The Power of Babel – language and governance in the African
experience, 1998, p. 205)
Wherever possible, the Mbeki government has been
waging a campaign against Afrikaans. Its zealous Minister of Education, Kader
Asmal, has on more than one occasion threatened Afrikaans-language schools and
universities, forcing them to adopt English as a medium of instruction in
technical subjects like medicine and engineering, for example. In a supreme act
of ethnic domination and humiliation, he compelled the rural Afrikaans
University of Potchefstroom to appoint the current President of the ANC Youth
League, the organisation that first expounded the “Kill a Boer, kill a farmer”
philosophy, onto its Board. A bit like Eichmann being appointed to the Board of
the University of Tel Aviv.
Elsewhere in the civil service, Afrikaans has been
eradicated, in some instances by means of death threats to those who tried to
continue employing the language in writing or in conversation at
work.
The point about language discrimination is that it
may function as an early-warning system against ethnic conflict. According to
the American expert on ethnicity, Ted Gurr, “the language and lifeways of a
minority in a society with a dominant, culturally distinct majority are
inevitably under pressure. Of the 275 groups included in my survey [on
minorities at risk], about half speak a common language different from that of
the majority. […] For all these linguistically distinct groups, and especially
those who speak a single language, its preservation is one of the keys to
maintaining the collectivity’s viability as a social entity.” Other
experts have contended that in over half of all ethnic conflicts some form of
language issue lies at the root of the problem.
The hostility of the Mbeki government towards
Afrikaans does not portend well for the future, and South Africa is entering a
rather grave period in its history. Instead of democratising, the country is
fast sinking into the quagmire of racial and linguistic polarisation, with the
potential of further sliding into ethnic cleansing and even
genocide.
Scenarios of what may lie beyond
“National Liberation”:
Rwandan-style
genocide
Over the past twenty years, the African
continent has seen at least two major genocides in which more than a million
people died in each instance. In 1985 under Mengistu Haile Miriam ethnic
minorities in Ethiopia were herded into camps where they were either killed or
died of starvation and disease.
The so-called “food gap” monitored by United
Nations officials in Harare, Zimbabwe currently stands at 70% in that country.
During the Ethiopian famine caused by Mengistu in the mid-eighties, the food gap
stood at only 10% in that country. The outlook for Zimbabwe’s population is
therefore severe. Many of the hungry will flee to South Africa, thereby adding
to tensions in the latter country. According to the SA Minister of Home
Affairs, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, there are already between 2 and 4 million illegal
immigrants from Zimbabwe in South Africa, which means that up to 40% of
Zimbabwean citizens may already be living South of their own
border.
The most recent genocide in Africa started on 6
April 1994, when Rwanda’s Interhamwe consisting of Hutu extremists went on the
rampage and killed more than a million members of the Tutsi minority, using
appeals on the public radio to spur their followers on.
Mbeki and his party have effective control over
South Africa’s sophisticated public television and radio network and is
reinforcing that control by means of new legislation. Increasingly, the
remaining white journalists at the South African Broadcast Corporation are only
allowed to translate items written by black journalists sympathetic to the
régime, and may not contribute any editorial content themselves. In terms of
the ideology of “transformation”, or replacing whites with blacks, Mbeki has
also taken control of the South African Defence Force command structure. The
majority of soldiers now come from previous “liberation armies” trained by the
former East Germany and Soviet Union, such as Umkhonto we Sizwe and APLA
(Azanian People's Liberation Army), who are known for such military exploits as
spraying members of a church congregation at prayer with AK-47 machine gun
fire.
Using the public radio and TV, and backed up by its
liberation army, on which billions of dollars in new armaments are being spent,
any leader with less than benign intent could therefore easily incite the entire
black population to go out and avenge themselves on their white counterparts,
driving them off their land, out of their houses, where unsuspecting members of
a white minority could face a nasty end, similar to those of the
Tutsis.
The phrase “Kill a Boer, kill a farmer” might be
broadcast to millions of people, accompanied by suitable images of evil whites.
Hordes of “war veterans” were thus incited by Mugabe to drive white land-owners
off their property and to slaughter them.
Over the past few months, Mbeki has been issuing a
steady stream of presidential pardons for convicted murderers, rapists and other
violent offenders who are being released from prison. The release of over 600
such individuals in South Africa has fanned fears that these thugs might be used
to play the same role as Zimbabwe’s “war veterans” to invade farms and other
properties.
Ethnic cleansing of farmers
On the other hand, there may be “only” ethnic
cleansing of Afrikaner farmers which may cause the deaths of millions of people
through starvation as agriculture collapses, and famine ensues as is happening
in Zimbabwe right now. In a recent statement South African Director General of
Land Affairs declared that:
"We do have a target of redistributing 30% of
all agricultural land in the country by the year 2015." Gilingwe
Mayende, Business Report, 15 September 2002
The salient element here is that South Africa is
classed as a semi-arid country in which only 8% of all land is arable, with a
further 7% suitable for grazing. Farming in South Africa is dominated by ethnic
Afrikaners who over the centuries have developed ways of utilising land that in
other countries would be considered worthless, such as sheep farming in the
Karoo which resembles the Arizona desert. Depending on which 30% of the land
the Director General is talking about, this may result in driving all Afrikaners
off the land, and stopping commercial farming altogether.
Currently, about 30 000 commercial farmers with a
shrinking pool of labour as government has made it hazardous to employ farm
labourers without giving them rights as tenants - sometimes in perpetuity -
produce food for 46 million people in South Africa. Ethnically cleansing those
30 000 farmers will add many millions more to the 15 million people already
facing starvation in Southern Africa, mostly as a result of Mugabe’s own policy
of disrupting commercial farming by whites.
The South African Constitution guarantees property
rights. However, as in Zimbabwe, this is is subject to other principles, such
as “land reform”:
According to Gilingwe Mayende,
Director-General of Land Affairs, South Africa, on 13 September 2002:
"Property rights are protected by our constitution, but the constitution
says these property rights must be balanced against the public interest and the
nation's commitment to land reform."
Civil war
Mbeki is making a serious miscalculation in assuming
easy domination and ultimate expulsion of minority groups, as achieved by
Zimbabwe's Mugabe and Uganda's Idi Amin. Minority groups are far more numerous
in South Africa, organised as well as armed with more than two million licensed
small arms in the country. Current population numbers for the country are:
Presumably, non-black minorities will not
indefinitely adopt a friendly attitude to being driven off the land and out of
South Africa, as seems to be Mbeki’s intent. In Zimbabwe white farmers called
each other on two-way radios and urged neighbours to “stay calm and not to
provoke anyone”. This remarkable display of self-control did not prevent many
from suffering a dreaded end, sadly.
Since Independence in 1980, almost 300 000 whites
have left Zimbabwe for other countries, mainly South Africa, and only a few
thousand are left after this latest bout of ethnic cleansing. A persecuted
white in that country may still cross the border at Beit Bridge and arrive in a
country with a functioning economy, fully-stocked supermarket shelves, fuel at
the pump, etc. He may also still buy a ticket on the next available flight to
England or Australia. Once ethnic cleansing starts in South Africa, and some
people believe it has already started, there will be no way out as the two
countries to the North, Zimbabwe and Namibia are controlled by anti-minority
Presidents-for-life such as Mugabe and Nujoma who will not allow the quarry to
escape through their countries.
Either South Africa's non-black minorities will
accept having their assets confiscated without resistance like their Zimbabwean
counterparts, or they will fight, thereby triggering a civil and racial war that
may ultimately engulf the entire sub-continent as Nujoma and Mugabe may be
itching to enter the fray. Current newspaper reports of so-called “right-wing
plots”, discovery of arms caches and so on in South Africa are not indicative of
the presence of neo-Nazi or ultra-nationalist ideology among Afrikaners or white
farmers; rather such incidents point to defensive attempts to mobilise after
years of farm murders and extreme violence experienced by rural communities, to
which the Mbeki government has been turning a blind eye.
The result of a civil war in South Africa will
probably be a partition along racial and cultural lines, in which those of
African and European or other descent may still trade with each other, but will
live in separate territorial enclaves. Again, Ted Gurr lists South Africa as
one of the countries that is a "candidate for political fragmentation at the
onset of the twenty-first century." (Peoples versus States, 2000, p.
82)
Can conflict be
stopped?
Mbeki’s double game is becoming less and less
credible. While courting international investors, making pro-democracy
statements and propagating NEPAD, government spokesmen inside the country are
clearly advocating “land reform”, a Mugabean euphemism for forcing productive
commercial farmers off the land and replacing them with people whose interest in
farming is, at best, academic. A recent article in the liberal South African
Sunday Times focused on how available land held through the traditional communal
system in the Eastern Cape was being tilled by aged black women only, with their
children and grandchildren preferring to live in squatter camps on the outskirts
of towns and cities, finding farming unattractive. Since the days of
traditional subsistence farming in South Africa, the black population has grown
from about 2 million to 32 million, making it impossible for everyone to “live
off the land”. The massive migration to cities underscores this quite
spectacularly.
The aggressive “land reform” moves currently
planned for South Africa by Mbeki, as well as the continuation or escalation of
farm murders – being a farmer in South Africa is already the most dangerous
profession in the world – will engulf the country in a spiral of violence that
will inevitably lead to one of the three outcomes: genocide, ethnic cleansing,
civil war, or a combination of two or more of these.
Clearly, Mbeki, Mugabe and other radical
Africanists must be stopped from bringing further catastrophe to Southern
Africa. Fifteen million people are already facing starvation, and without South
African infrastructure to channel aid to them, not only will they perish, but
millions more will be placed at risk. More effective sanctions must be imposed
on Zimbabwe to force Mugabe out, and South Africa must be threatened with
sanctions as well if she continues her overt and covert support for his régime.
Amnesty International’s campaign against Mugabe is therefore a worthy one to
support.
Given the failure of a simple
one-man-one-vote-system to address South Africa’s ethnic and racial tensions,
which have steadily worsened under Mbeki, as well as his government’s disregard
for property and language rights enshrined in the Constitution, the
international community will have to press for a devolution of power to allay
minority fears of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Under the triumvirate of ex-communists turned
National Liberationists, Mbeki, Mugabe and Nujoma, Southern Africa is already
courting disaster as the Zimbabwean economy collapses, famine takes hold and
ethnic tension rises.
The writing is on the wall in Southern Africa. The
world must act now to prevent another African tragedy that so many will mourn
after the fact, as in Rwanda, Ethiopia and elsewhere.
Reply
 |
|
|
Mandela prejudges
alleged "Boer coup plotters" guilty -- can they still get a fair trial after
such prejudiced publicity?
- Mr Nelson
Mandela, an international media icon, should be the one legally-trained South
African who must be fully aware that anything said by this Nobel peace
laureate is blindly accepted as Wisdom and Truth spoken practically by the Lord
himself.
- As a lawyer
instead of an international saint, Mr Mandela clearly must also have been aware
that in most countries claiming the rule of law, for instance South Africa, all
people have to be treated as innocent until found guilty by a court of law.
After
Mandela's pronouncements were widely published by strangely uncritical news
media this week -- how can any of these arrested Boers still get a fair,
unprejudiced court hearing anywhere -- inside or outside South
Africa?
How can any
judge or magistrate remain uninfluenced by this public pronouncement by the
world's best known personality and international news media icon, Nobel Peace
Laureate Nelson Mandela?
- We don't
think any of these Boers can ever expect a fair trial -- anywhere. And if they
hadn't been plotting anything violent before, Mandela's actions have now added a
lot of fuel to the fires of Boer anger.
Human rights
clearly do not apply to Afrikaners or Boers in South Africa. When members from
this minority get arrested under clearly trumped-up charges, the police are not
questioned by the news media when they publish "documents of proof" -- and the
country's totally uncritical news media do not question the invective language
use by the police and politicians in regards to these Boers.
I questioned
the police official who described three empty mortar shells, saved as tourist
trinkets, and an old army truck with two hunting rifles and three bottles of
emergency petrol as "loaded with an arsenal of weapons including petrol
bombs..." the colleagues at the press conference laughed at me quite nervously
- as if my questioning the use of the word "arsenal" should be
unusual.
Neither dids
the news media question the South African police when they published photographs
and press statements naming and shaming Boer community
leaders in such language that it has become clear to everyone that these Boers
are getting their trial through the news media -- that the police
and the press have already judged them guilty of plotting what sounds like a
rather silly adventure -- long before these Boers had even been arrested or
questioned, long before all the police evidence examined in a law court, and the
witnesses cross-examined by qualified judges and magistrates.
Even Mandela
got better treatment under the apartheid regime -- although the farm he had been
arrested at, indeed did have a massive arsenal of useable weapons, in fact it
was such a huge, lethal arsenal that they could have destroyed all of Pretoria
and have plenty to spare... The court documents summarising this arsenal ran to
23 pages of testimony. That's a whole different ballgame from a few rusty, empty
mortar shells and a truck with a few binoculars, filled petrol cans and two
hunting rifles.
Governments like to create
enemies -- Pieter Mulder
South African parliamentarian Pieter Mulder,
leader of the Freedom Front, told Mandela he was viewed as a traitor and a
sell-out by the Boer community because he still remained in parliament. He also
said "governments always like to create enemies for themselves. America has
Saddam Hussein, Mugabe has the white farmers. South Africa's government must be
careful not to fall into that same trap." http://sa.indymedia.org/news/2002/09/2132.php
Only 49,000
hectares of 1,5-million ha State-land given to homeless poor since 1994...
Meanwhile,
the leader of the Democratic Alliance, Tony Leon, this week also exploded the
widespread myth created by the ruling ANC regime that it suffered "land hunger"
and thus needed to confiscate all commercially-owned farm land in order to
rehouse "landless peasants and emergent farmers".
Not true, said Deon -- the ANC had only distributed a mere 49,000
hectares of the available 1,5-million hectares of State-owned land.
"Boer coup"
allegations orchestrated to deflect media attention from the spreading
anti-Mbeki campaign
This entire "right wing coup" allegation is not only becoming a gross
travesty of justice and a vast invasion of the human rights of this Boer
minority -- it is also an artifically-created "crisis"-- merely another ANC
media ploy to draw attention away from the increasingly violent, countrywide
disruptions being caused by the growing anti-Mbeki crowd.
The Landless Peoples' movement is mounting increasingly violent property
invasions and protests actions targetting ANC-structures all over the country.
This weekend's violence already claimed the life of at least one security
guard in Sebokeng. See http://www.apf.org.za
and http://sa.indymedia.org/news/2002/09/2132.phpOnly 49,000 hectares of
1,5-million ha State-land given to homeless poor since 1994...
Meanwhile, the leader of the Democratic Alliance, Tony Leon, this
week also exploded the widespread myth created by the Mbeki regime that the
country suffered "land hunger" and thus needed to confiscate all
commercially-owned farm land in order to rehouse "landless peasants and emergent
farmers". The Mbeki government has thus far distributed only 49,0900hectares of
the available 1,5-million hectares of State-owned land.
Alienation of
one-million+ hectares of commercial farm land caused drop in food
production:
- Mbeki's government has however already alienated one-million hectares of
commercial farm land and is thus removing South Africa's last remaining 45,000
excess-food producers and replacing them with millions of subsistence
peasants.In the former South African homelands, where traditional tenant farm
families raise subsistence crops, they only manage to produce 5% excess food for
sale to the rest of the population as long as the weather cooperates -- whereas
South Africa's commercial farmers have been selling an average 98% of their
crops to the market for the past 150 years, even under the worst weather or
agricultural conditions.
SOARING FOOD PRICES --
WIDESPREAD MALNUTRITION -- The resulting rather dramatic drop in food
production over the past decade now forces South Africa to not only import huge
quantities of grains for the first time in its entire agriculural history -- the
soaring grain prices are also causing widespread malnutrition among some
22-million poor South Africans, with the Eastern Cape''s 1.2-million people thus
far hit the hardest, with at least 600,000 children reported surviving on the
edge of malnutrition. 160 small children have already died in 11 hospitals in
the past six months in this region:
Toeing Mbeki line
is "a threat to democracy" warns Tutu
The growing anti-Mbeki sentiment
in South Africa does not express itself in the violence-driven campaigns
conducted by the country's millions of poverty-stricken, angry squatters wanting
housing: another Nobel Peace Laureate, Desmond Tutu, even warned on September 6
at a University of Pretoria function that "anyone toeing the Mbeki government
line is a threat to democracy".
The Emeritus-archbishop of South
Africa's Anglican community has called on all South Africans to take the Mbeki
regime to task on the great many issues which are causing great damage to the
country:
- Mbeki's self-destructive Aids- and antiretrovirals policy;
- Mbeki's clear approval of his friend Mugabe's Zimbabwean land progroms;
- The ANC's high-level frauds such as its shady multibillion-rand military
arms deal.
- Mbeki's own lavish lifestyle and graft and corruption at the highest level,
apparently including Mbeki's own wife -- this from a man who is publicly
advocating "honest governance" through the Nepad programme of the African
Union, which this week was adopted by the United Nations as its new policy
towards Africa.
http://www.news24.com/Die_Burger/Nuus/0,4140,4-75_1259020,00.html
OUR DUTY IS TO OPPOSE
MBEKI -- Tutu has made it clear that all South African citizens --
including Boers and most certainly all parliamentarians -- have a duty to
oppose Mbeki's poor and increasingly suppressive governance -- which was
recently described by the well-known liberal political observer Robert Kirby in
the Mail and Guardian as "very dangerous and just like
Mugabe's". |
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe
November 18th- November 24th 2002
Weekly
update 2002-43
CONTENTS
* GENERAL COMMENT
*
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: DIPLOMATS ATTACKED
* RENEWED ATTACK ON THE
JUDICIARY AND THE AG
1. General comment
The Media Monitoring
Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ) notes with concern the
continued harassment of The
Daily News by ZANU PF supporters and state
agents. The paper (20/11) reported
that its reporters were detained when
they
were covering a demonstration
by pupils and civic organizations against a
deputy headmaster who allegedly
raped a 13-year-old schoolgirl at Marimba
Park Primary school. The
journalists were later released without charges
being preferred against
them.
In another incident, The Daily News (22/11) reported that ZANU PF
youths,
allegedly under instructions from a senior party official, destroyed
copies
of
the paper valued at $51,000 in Masvingo. No arrests were made
despite the
fact that the police reportedly witnessed the incident.
These
blatant acts of intolerance ultimately violate the public's right
to
access
information through media of their choice and grossly undermine
their
constitutionally enshrined right to freedom of expression.
MMPZ
calls upon government to create an enabling environment in which
journalists
can practice without victimization and guarantee the unimpeded
circulation of
papers throughout the country.
Meanwhile, in a week where media practitioners
were supposed to have
tendered their application forms to the Media and
Information Commission
appointed by government to regulate the media, The
Herald (21/11) found
itself peddling falsehoods. The paper alleged that the
United States embassy
had apologized to the Zimbabwean government for
violating a regulation
requiring diplomats to inform government of their
intention to travel beyond
a
40km radius of Harare. This followed an
attack on US staffers at Melfort.
The
article relied only on an unnamed
government official thereby compromising
its credibility.
The next day
(22/11), The Daily News quoted a US official denying that his
embassy had
apologized to government.
Such fabrication of stories is a punishable offence
under the draconian
Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act
(AIPPA), yet no arrest
was made.
The story is but one example of how the
public media have violated the law
with impunity.
No journalist from the
public media has ever been charged under a law that
has already seen 12
journalists, including a foreign correspondent, being
charged for allegedly
breaching its provisions.
It is this selective application of the law that
defeats the purpose of
regulating
the media and further exposes
government's intention to muzzle the private
media on the specious grounds
that it is upholding the rule of law.
MMPZ calls on government to treat all
media alike to avoid suspicion among
media practitioners and the public at
large.
In fact government should repeal this law, which has been widely
condemned
as eroding constitutional guarantees.
According to The Daily
News (22/11), even the Supreme Court judges queried
the constitutionality of
some provisions of AIPPA during the hearing of a
legal
challenge by the
Independent Journalists Association of Zimbabwe (IJAZ)
seeking to invalidate
some provisions of the law. While ZTV (21/11 8pm) used
one of the judge's
criticisms of the Attorney-General's office for its
failure to
draft
sections of a law in compliance with the provisions of the
constitution,
it
did not actually report the queries raised by the judges. ZTV's
reporter
capitalized on the criticism, accusing the Attorney-General's office
of
"sabotaging the government through bungling". And The Herald's
report
of the court proceedings (22/11) simply censored the judges'
queries
altogether.
2. International relations: Diplomats
attacked
The on-going public media campaign against Britain took another
dimension
during the week with the government-controlled media accusing the
country of
fanning tribalism in Zimbabwe. They based their argument on a
document
detailing a plot allegedly hatched by the Shona to exterminate the
Ndebele.
It
was alleged that British intelligence, working in
collaboration with the
MDC,
was using the document to divide the country
on tribal lines. The Herald (19
&
20/11) and the Chronicle (20/11
& 21/11) serialized the grossly inflammatory
contents of the document,
accusing the British intelligence of writing it
(The
Herald 20/11) and
circulating it (19/11) to mobilize international pressure
against the
government.
ZBC (ZTV 8pm; Radio Zimbabwe 1pm & 3FM, 6am, 21/11) also
broadcast
excerpts of the document alleging that the British, through the
London-based
Zimbabwe Democracy Trust (ZDT), "have already capitalized on
the
contents of the document and are presenting it as evidence
against
President Mugabe at international meetings".
Not a shred of
evidence was produced to establish these serious allegations
against the
British and the MDC, and nor were they asked to comment,
although The Herald
(21/11) did publish a denial from the British High
Commission on its letters
page.
ZANU PF's secretary for publicity and information Nathan Shamuyarira
also
dismissed the document as "totally false and. a shameful fabrication
by
former Rhodesians", adding that they were a "heap of lies drawn from
the
closets of the former colonialists", The Herald (22/11).
However, The
Sunday News (24/11) maintained that Britain was behind the
document saying:
"It exposes British Prime Minister Tony Blair's
incurable racist arrogance
and his lack of interest in the truth".
The public media were so engrossed in
vilifying Britain that they risked
fanning ethnic strife.
Meanwhile, The
Herald and The Daily News (19/11) broke the news of the
detention and assault
of American embassy employees by war veterans in
Melfort, barely a week after
police shot dead an American citizen in unclear
circumstances. Predictably,
the two dailies presented the detentions
differently.
The Herald, 'War
vets detain US trespassers', blamed the attack on the
victims, presenting
them as having been in Melfort illegally. The paper
stated
that the
employees were "briefly detained . after they allegedly threw
food from a
moving vehicle to farm workers whom they filmed as they
jostled for the
food", as if that was a criminal offence.
And to lend credibility to this,
the paper linked the incident to remarks
made
by the US Assistant
Secretary of State for African Affairs Mark Bellamy,
that
his country was
considering "interventionist" measures to ensure non-
politicization of food
aid.
This assertion was given more ammunition by Information Minister
Jonathan
Moyo, who said the incident was "rooted in intrusive and
interventionist
behaviour by some US embassy personnel who have been
trespassing
onto some farms."
This was despite the fact that the US
embassy protested against the
incident,
which it described as
"symptomatic" of lawlessness in Zimbabwe.
However, Moyo parried such
accusations with observations that: "Everyone
knows that the US is the
citadel of mafia conduct and racist vigilante
groups. So will America restore
the rule of law by controlling the mafia
and the Ku Klux Klan?"
By
contrast, The Daily News of the same day restricted itself to a
statement
released by the embassy after the incident. It quoted the US
embassy as
having said their staff were "going about their normal diplomatic
work"
and "were conducting a survey of displaced farm workers in order
to
assess the needs for humanitarian assistance in Zimbabwe" when
they
were attacked.
However, The Herald (21/11) would not relent. It
continued to blame the US
embassy saying its officials had defied a
government order "requiring
diplomats travelling more than 40km outside
Harare to notify it in
advance". An unnamed Foreign Affairs Protocol Officer
was extensively
quoted claiming that the US Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Joseph
Sullivan, had
"apologized to the Government over the behaviour of his
officers after
he was reminded of the regulation".
No comment was sought
from the embassy, leaving the job to The Daily
News (22/11). The paper quoted
the embassy spokesperson, Bruce Wharton
saying they " will never apologise
for doing what we are supposed to be
doing".
The paper also reported that
Melfort was actually within 40km of Harare.
However, the exact location of
Melfort got confusing as The Herald's story
of
the same day,' Government
summons diplomat', maintained that it was
beyond the 40km mark.
While
government, through its media, accused the US of defying its order,
SW Radio
Africa (21/11) quoted a US state department spokesman as saying
Zimbabwe had
breached the Vienna Convention, whose signatories should
guarantee the
security of diplomats.
Meanwhile, The Daily News and The Herald (20/11)
reported that two
government officials on the European Union's (EU) blacklist
had been granted
visas by Belgium to attend the EU and African-Caribbean and
Pacific (ACP)
countries' Joint Parliamentary Assembly (JPA).
While The
Herald simply reported the move as an "opportunity to clarify the
situation
in the country.to EU parliamentarians", The Daily News rightly
predicted that
their travel would spark "heated debate in the European
Parliament". The
paper added that there were already reports from Brussels
that two British EU
MPs, Glenys Kinnock and Geoffrey van Orden were
"leading a campaign" to bar
the two ministers, Paul Mangwana and Chris
Kuruneri, from attending the
meeting.
However, the rift between the private media and the public media was
further
exposed in The Herald and The Daily News's (23/11) follow-up on the
issue.
In its editorialised AFP story, 'ACP mulls boycott- Nations challenge
EU's
ban
of Zim officials', The Herald focused on the threatened boycott
of the joint
meeting by ACP countries, while The Daily News' s Reuters'
article, 'EU bars
ministers', emphasized the banning of the Zimbabwean
ministers.
The Herald article was heavily dependent on comments from the
ACP
parliamentarians, and Mangwana in particular, who acted as a reporter
for
the
public media in Brussels. Mangwana predictably described the
impasse as a
"diplomatic victory against the machinations of the
British".
The Daily News article on the other hand, was equally biased by
failing to
report the position of the ACP and confining itself to quoting van
Orden
saying: "as a body that upholds the democratic ideal and the rule of
law,
the European Parliament must not play host to people who use
murder
and intimidation to maintain their grip on power".
ZBC (ZTV, 23/11,
8pm; Radio Zimbabwe, 24/11, 1pm) pursued the angle
taken by The Herald. It
quoted Mangwana as saying the ACP
parliamentarians made it categorically
clear that the EU does not "have sole
right on their own to decide who should
constitute the Zimbabwe
delegation" and viewed the decision to allow an MDC
delegate to attend the
meeting as a "deliberate attempt to divide Zimbabwe
and recognise the
MDC as if it's a government in power".
Those who rely on
the broadcast media only heard the side of the EU from
SW Radio Africa
(22/11). The short wave station quoted Kinnock as saying
the EU decision was
"based on the need for consistency on the part of
the EU parliament in terms
of the resolutions of the EU."
However, if ZBC was guilty of heavily relying
on Mangwana for comments,
then SW Radio Africa was equally guilty of only
using MDC and EU sources in
its bulletins.
Just like its public media
counterparts, The Sunday Mail (24/11) narrowly
interpreted the ACP stance to
support Zimbabwean delegates as a "major
victory" for Zimbabwe.
The Sunday
Mirror (24/11) concurred, saying "analysts" had seen this as "a
renewed sense
of solidarity".
However, the impression that developing countries were
staunchly behind
Zimbabwe was belied by Botswana President Festus Mogae, who
told a
London magazine that "the crisis Zimbabwe was facing was difficult
to
solve because it represented a drought of good governance",
The
Zimbabwe Independent (22/11).
Nonetheless, no media critically
explored the conflict between travel
sanctions
and international law,
which stipulate that blacklisted individuals can
attend
international
conventions.
3. Renewed attack on the Judiciary and the AG
The
decision by a Harare magistrate to acquit MDC legislators Tafadzwa
Musekiwa
and Job Sikhala on November 15th of alleged fraud charges
apparently incensed
ZANU PF officials such as Jonathan Moyo, who called
for an overhaul of the
judicial system.
The public media's treatment of the issue exposed
government's attempts to
cow the judiciary into making political judgments,
as it openly admonished
the
courts for failing to convict MDC
suspects.
For example, The Herald (16/11), MDC legislators Sikhala, Musekiwa
set free,
quoted Moyo subjectively criticising the attorney general's (AG)
office for
"bungling" in cases involving the MDC. Moyo also claimed that
the
magistrates' courts are "seemingly ready to find an excuse,
however
lame, to let MDC acc