Dear Friends,
After weeks of zero activity and near-paralysis on the ‘Talks’ front, on Thursday came the announcement that President Zuma has appointed three new facilitators, to ‘speed up the talks’ we are told. After the complete news blackout that had shrouded the talks, this development must be a welcome respite for the hungry hacks, starved of any hard news for so long. Even the venue for the talks was top-secret and wild stories that the parties were changing the venue for the talks every day had journalists following ministerial cars in a desperate attempt to find out just where they were meeting. Wild speculation had taken the place of hard news and the long-suffering Zimbabwean people – at home and abroad – were reduced once again to mere spectators as their future was decided behind closed doors.
Meanwhile the Zanu PF negotiators, under instructions from their wily boss no doubt, had sneaked in another condition for the MDC team to meet before a settlement of the outstanding issues could be reached. Anything to delay the process is Mugabe’s unspoken agenda! As well as getting rid of US and EU imposed Sanctions, ‘Pirate radio stations’ broadcasting from outside Zimbabwe must be dismantled! It is the MDC’s responsibility, claims the Zanu PF team not only to remove Sanctions but now, they must also close down these dratted ‘Pirates’ operating outside the country. And who are these fearsome ‘pirates’? Why, none other than SW Radio broadcasting from London and VOA from Washington, they are the dreaded ‘pirates’ operating on the high seas and spreading lies and disinformation about Zimbabwe - or that’s what Zanu PF would have us believe! What they really want, of course, is to be the only voice Zimbabweans can listen to, the one they hear from the ZBC. In the absence of the Media Commission, the setting up of which was clearly laid out as one of the conditions of the GPA, Zanu PF still has complete control of the media, and that’s just what they want to keep in their vice-like grip. Regardless of the fact that there are 15 hour power cuts going on daily, the Zanu PF chefs still choose to believe that the Zimbabwean people are faithfully listening to ZBC and swallowing the lies and propaganda. What the zanies have failed to grasp is that Zimbabweans of all classes are desperate to hear the truth about what is happening in their country and the only places they can do that is with the wicked ‘Pirate Radio Stations’. Exactly how the MDC can silence these ‘Pirates’ is not clear. I have visions of pitched battles aboard the good ship SW Radio with the pirate chief Gerry Jackson and her First Mate, the redoubtable Violet Gonda, plus all the rest of her swashbuckling crew in bandanas, armed with cutlasses fighting off Captain Morgan and his MDC team as he boards the illegal vessel and attempts to gain control of the microphone! It is a laughable image but it illustrates the nonsensical claim from Zanu PF that the MDC has the power to close down radio stations - or get international Sanctions lifted for that matter.
All I know is that here in the diaspora, without SW Radio, I would never hear the real news from home, good and bad. Zimbabwe barely features in the British papers any more and the BBC is strangely silent on the subject despite their ‘agreement’ with Zanu PF’s Minister of Information that they were free to cover all parts of the country. Without SW Radio, I would never have heard in such detail the joyous news of President Obama’s presentation of the Robert F. Kennedy Award to our wonderful Woza women. Without SW Radio, I would not have heard the awful news that my old home town is once again under threat from the Green Bombers, I would not have heard the actual words of the Zanu PF member who told the residents of the town that they could expect another jambanja if they failed to accept the Kariba draft, “If you hear screams in the night, don’t go outside.” was his blood-curdling advice. And without SW Radio, the trial of Roy Bennett would not be fully reported and I would never hear the truth about the ongoing and horrific farm invasions -something else which the BBC has failed to cover.
In the five years since I left Zimbabwe, SW Radio Africa has been my lifeline and for all my friends and family at home the same is true. The only thing that could make it an even more valuable source of news is if Gerry Jackson and her ‘pirate’ crew were to be allowed to broadcast from inside the country. Will the arrival of these new South African appointees bring that day any nearer? Will they, Mac Maharaj, Lindiwe Zulu and Charles Nquakulu, be able to bring some urgency to the near- moribund negotiations going on in Harare? An agenda has been agreed, so we are told, which includes no less than twenty items and time is passing, just 10 days before the SADC deadline expires. With the 2010 World Cup getting nearer by the week, South Africa needs to see the Zimbabwean problem solved before visitors from all over the world start to arrive. Perhaps, as with Ian Smith decades ago, it will be South Africa who forces the dictator to loosen his grip and accept reality at last? Once again, we wait and hope.
Yours in the (continuing) struggle PH. aka Pauline Henson author of Case Closed published in Zimbabwe by Mambo Press, Going Home and Countdown political detective stories set in Zimbabwe and available from Lulu.com and Amazon.