In March 1999, the establishment of The Daily News put an end to the media's one-sided presentation of Zimbabwe's political situation, and gave the opposition an important channel of communication. Ragnar Waldahl demonstrates how this alternative to the state-run media gave voters access for the first time to competing accounts of the state of political affairs, and made the 2000 election the most exciting and open in Zimbabwe's short history.

Southern African ministers are to recommend that no action be taken against Zimbabwe despite a recent African Union report detailing human rights abuses committed by President Robert Mugabe's government. In a report prepared ahead of the Heads of State summit, the Southern African Development Community's foreign affairs ministers say they are opposed to sanctions but propose that the region should be more active in ensuring that Zimbabwe's parliamentary elections in March next year are fair.

Zimbabwe’s crisis is not only political and economic; the signs of social disintegration are everywhere, says this article on the site www.sokwanele.com. “Nightly, street children as young as five or six seek the “protection” of older children who act as pimps; cold, hungry and homeless farm workers huddle against each other on the roadside where they have been dumped like a pile of rubbish; a young girl of sixteen with a blank stare cuddles her baby, conceived when she was raped in a youth militia camp; an adult rushes her dying parent to the hospital, because it is cheaper to transport the living than the dead; she will not return when the parent dies, because she cannot afford to bury her; an elderly grandmother weeps when told that a foreign donor will no longer supply food aid – her thirteen grandchildren whom she is keeping have nothing else to eat.”

Stronger action is needed to end the 'ongoing human suffering' in Zimbabwe and Sudan, the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference (SACBC) said this week. “The Catholic bishops decry the ongoing human suffering of their brothers and sisters in Zimbabwe and Sudan, and calls on Southern African Development Community governments, the African Union (AU) and the United Nations to take stronger action, including the consideration of targeted sanctions,” a statement said.

President Robert Mugabe's succession, for long considered a political hot potato, will not come up for discussion at the ZANU PF congress slated for December, but drastic changes to its supreme decision-making organ, the politburo, and the presidency are in the offing as the party gears up for the 2005 parliamentary poll. Party insiders confirmed this week that President Mugabe and his "inner circle" were mulling far-reaching changes in the politburo.

The Zimbabwean government’s lack of transparency on grain availability in the country could jeopardize access to food for millions of Zimbabweans in the coming months, Human Rights Watch said in a briefing paper. Human Rights Watch called on the Zimbabwean government to make this information public immediately. “By withholding vital information on grain availability, the Zimbabwean government is gambling with its citizens’ access to food,” said Peter Takirambudde, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Africa Division. “Under international law, the government must take all necessary steps to fully ensure its citizens’ right to adequate food.”

Four leaders of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) have been released on bail after a short court appearance on Monday, the labour body reported. The four - secretary-general Wellington Chibebe and colleagues Lucia Matibenga, Sam Machinda, and Timothy Kondo - were arrested on 5 August under the Public Order and Security Act (POSA) in Gweru, south of the capital, Harare, while attending a workshop on the impact of taxation and HIV/AIDS on workers.

Given the current media environment in Zimbabwe, free and fair elections in March 2005 are highly unlikely, a fact finding mission to Zimbabwe said in a report released by the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) on Wednesday, August 4, 2004. During the week starting June 21, 2004, MISA sent a fact finding mission to Zimbabwe to look into the state of the media in the run up to the Parliamentary elections planned for March 2005. The members of this mission were Ms Pamela Dube, Editor of Mokgosi Newspaper in Botswana, Mr Fernando Gonçalves, Editor of Savana Newspaper in Mozambique and Zambian Media Law expert Patrick Matibini.

This paper compares the views about abstinence and condom use expressed by young people in Zimbabwe in focus-group discussions with the views underlying national policies and religious and traditional beliefs. Young people’s decisions to adopt one or the other of these risk-reduction strategies may not necessarily indicate genuine individual choices, but rather their deference to adults’ interests as they understand those interests. Evidence from the focus-group discussions indicates that adolescents are aware of this conflict between choice of strategy and sometimes conceal their condom use in order not to disappoint adults.

Urgent action against gender inequality is required to tackle the high rate of HIV-infection among women and girls in Zimbabwe, a report prepared by a regional task force has warned. Nearly 80 percent of all HIV infections in the 15 to 24 age group were among young women, said the Zimbabwe country report of the UN Secretary-General's Task Force on Women, Girls and HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa.

The website, Zim Online, this week reported that the Zimbabwe government is planning to acquire high-tech equipment from China for the purpose of bugging the internet. According to the site, 'authoritative sources within Posts and Telecommunications (PTC) and government circles have revealed that the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) is already looking into ways of controlling internet communication as soon as the equipment arrives.'

The Zimbabwe Teachers' Association ZIMTA and the Progressive Teachers' Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) have called on the government to prevent political violence against teachers in the run-up to the 2005 general election. "Only the government can protect our members from political violence," ZIMTA secretary general, Denis Sinyolo told ZimOnline.

"The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, (the Human Rights Forum) takes grave exception to the behavior of the Zimbabwe Government at the recent meeting of the Executive Council of the African Union [AU], as well as the plethora of comments by the state-controlled media concerning this meeting. At this meeting, the Minister of Foreign Affairs conveyed the impression that his Government was ignorant of the report on human rights observance submitted to the Executive Council by the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights. At least, the Minister had been poorly prepared for this meeting, and, at worst, the Minister was misleading his august colleagues."

The government of Zimbabwe is on the verge of promulgating a bill titled Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) Bill into law to provide for the "operations, monitoring and regulation of all non-governmental organisations." The government argues that the proposed law is meant to protect public interest by ensuring that NGOs are governed and administered properly and use donor and public funds for the objects for which they were established. An analysis of the draft bill will show on the contrary that this is a political gimmick that is meant to administratively create criminals out of human rights defenders and NGOs so as to provide excuses for intrusion, clamp down and closures of NGOs.

Introduction

One of the central features of the Zimbabwean crisis, as it has unfolded since 2000, has been the emergence of a revived nationalism delivered in a particularly virulent form, with race as a key trope within the discourse, and a selective rendition of the liberation history deployed as a an ideological policing agent in the public debate. A great deal of commentary has been deployed to describe this process, much of it concentrating on the undoubted coercive aspects of the politics of state consolidation in Zimbabwe […]

However the manner in which the ideological battle has been fought by ZANU PF as a party and a state is of particular importance in trying to understand the ways in which a beleaguered state is attempting not only to extend its dominant economic and political objectives, but also its "intellectual and moral unity, posing all questions around which the struggle rages not on a corporate level but on a 'universal' plane, and thus creating the hegemony of a fundamental group over a series of subordinate groups." (Gramsci 1971: 182.)

For the manner in which Mugabe has articulated the Zimbabwean crisis has impacted not only on the social forces in the country but also on the African continent and in the Diaspora. Such an ambitious political outreach demands that we view the Zimbabwean state as more than a 'simple, dominative or instrumental model of state power,' but as a state with a more complex and multi-dimensional political strategy. (Hall 1996:429; and Hall 1980.)

In this multi-dimensional strategy, the state has monopolised the national media to develop an intellectual and cultural strategy that has resulted in a persistent bombardment of the populace with a regular and repeated series of messages. Moreover this strategy has been located within a particular historical discourse around national liberation and redemption, which has also sought to capture a broader Pan Africanist and anti-imperialist audience […]

Moreover in articulating this ideological strategy the ruling party has drawn on deep historical reservoirs of antipathy to colonial and racial subjugation in Zimbabwe, Southern Africa and Africa more generally, and on its complex inflections in the Diaspora. Thus the Mugabe message is no mere case of peddling a particular form of false consciousness, but it carries a broader and often visceral resonance, even as it draws criticisms for the coercive forms of its mobilisation. […]

Nation and Race.

In Zimbabwe the state has a monopoly control over the electronic media through such laws as the Broadcasting Services Act and the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act. Through such instruments the ruling party has been able to saturate the public sphere with its particularist message and importantly to monopolise the flow of information to the majority rural population […]

Thus, as a report on the ways in which Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) delivered views on the nation in 2002, concluded: “ZBC's conceptualisation on "nation" was simplistic. It was based on race:

The White and Black race. Based on those terms, the world was reduced to two nations - the white nation and the black nation and these stood as mortal rivals. The black nation was called Africa. Whites were presented as Europeans who could only belong to Europe just as Africa was for Africans and Zimbabwe for Zimbabweans. (Gandhi and Jambaya 2002: 4.) […]

For the Mugabe regime the emergence of the opposition MDC in 1999, was a manifestation of foreign British and White influence in Zimbabwean politics. This construction of the opposition thus placed them outside of a legitimate national narrative, and thrust it into the territory of an alien, Un-African and treasonous force that 'justified' the coercive use of the state in order to contain and destroy such a force […]

Having discursively located the opposition as an alien political force, the full coercive force of the state was brought to bear on those regarded as 'unpatriotic' and 'puppets of the West'. Deploying elements of the police, intelligence service, army, the war veterans, party supporters and the youth militia, the ruling party has inflicted enormous damage on the personnel and structures of the opposition […]

Nation, History and Culture.

Scholars have observed that the writing of history has often been used to 'legitimate' the nation- state, both in an attempt to 'naturalise' it as the central principle of political organisation, and to make it the 'subject and object of historical development.(Berger, Donovan and Passmore 1999:xv) In Zimbabwe there has been clear evidence of this process since 2000 in particular […]

As part of the attempts to revive ZANU PF's political fortunes in the 2000 general election and the 2002 Presidential election, the ruling party placed a strong emphasis on reviving the narrative of the liberation struggle in general and the heroic roles of ZANU PF and Mugabe in particular […]

In this narrative of liberation, a common African history and Pan Africanist solidarity, the land has played a determining role as the key marker of a common struggle. It has formed the centrepiece of the ruling party's construction of belonging, exclusion and history. The official discourse on the liberation struggle has been marked by the translation of a multi-faceted anti-colonial struggle into a singular discourse designed to legitimate the authoritarian nationalism that has emerged around the land question since 2000. (Hammar, Raftopoulos and Jensen 2003.) […]

During the 2002 Presidential election this liberation rhetoric was accompanied by a cultural programme that saturated the public with liberation war films, documentaries and dramas, promoting ZANU PF generally and Robert Mugabe in particular, while also carrying strong messages against whites. […]

Amongst the most damaging aspects of the telling of this national narrative through a series of dualisms (black/white, British/Zimbabwean), and compressions of the various aspects of the anti-colonial struggle into a single field of force, has been the enormous loss of complexity of the colonial encounter. The complexity of the settler-colonial period (not least of which included the changing relations between the black elite and different settler regimes) has been flattened into a Mugabe/Blair colonial encounter. (White 2003:97.) While the demonisation of Whites has served the needs of authoritarian nationalist politics in Zimbabwe, it has prevented a more creative, tolerant and difficult dialogue on the European influences in the making of Zimbabwean identities […]

The On-Going National Question.

The Mugabe government has worked hard to generalise its model of resolving the national question, based largely on the model of land reform through violent land occupations, articulated through a Pan Africanist and anti-imperialist discourse. Moreover in this model the human rights question and the democratic demands of civic groups are dismissed as an extension of Western intervention, with little relevance to the 'real issues' of economic empowerment […]

In South Africa the Zimbabwean debate has taken on a particular resonance, not least because of the apparent popularity of Mugabe amongst many South Africans. On a broader level there are many aspects of the history and politics of Zimbabwe that resonate in the current South African context. (Phimister and Raftopoulos 2004: forthcoming; Southall 2003; Melber 2003.) Zimbabwean commentators close to the ruling party have not hesitated to 'shame' the South African government into taking more Africanist political positions […]

Moreover the 'spell' of anti-imperialism and the resonance of the race debate in Zimbabwe, has found a broader canvas for its articulation in the diaspora. In addition to cementing the support of other liberation movements in Southern Africa, ZANU PF has actively cultivated linkages with a few black civic groups in the US, UK and Australia in an attempt to build Pan Africanist solidarity around the Mugabe project. […]

Conclusion

A decade ago I wrote an article on 'Race and Nationalism' in Zimbabwe. In re-reading the piece in recent weeks what strikes me most about the analysis, apart from an underestimation of the potential for a revived nationalist project by the ruling party, was its strictly national focus, which even then was a limitation of the article. In 2004 it is impossible to confront this subject meaningfully without addressing the broader reach of its effects at both regional and international levels. Mugabe has not only defined the national project around a selective reading of nationalist history and an exclusivist construction of the nation, he has also sought to ensure that this message resonates in other black struggles both regionally and internationally […]

ZANU PF has set itself the task of establishing a hegemonic project in which the party's narrow definition of the nation is deployed against all other forms of identification and affiliation. In this project the media and selected intellectuals have been used to provide a continuous and repetitive ideological message, in order to set the parameters of a stable national identity conducive to the consolidation of the ruling party. As Zimbabweans listen to the radio, watch television and read the daily newspapers, all controlled by the ruling party, they are being 'informed' about what it means to be a 'good Zimbabwean,' and a 'genuine African'. They are also being told who is the 'enemy' within and without and advised to confront such 'enemies' with ruthless exclusion if necessary. For the present this political assault has seriously closed down the spaces for alternative debates around citizenship and national belonging.

* These are excerpts from a paper by Brian Raftopoulos, Associate Professor, Institute of Development Studies, University of Zimbabwe entitled Nation, Race and History in Zimbabwean Politics, presented at the University of Edinburgh's Centre of African Studies International Conference on 'States, Borders and Nations: Negotiating Citizenship in Africa' in May 2004. A complete version of the paper will be published in a forthcoming volume. Please see for further information. For a list of references please click on the link below.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Zimbabwean media has consistently ignored the voices of women in issues of national interest and continuously marginalised women as both newsmakers and as sources of news, a study has confirmed. While gender activists in Zimbabwe and in Southern Africa in general have continuously called upon the media to be gender inclusive, a recent study by the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) and a South Africa based non-governmental organisation Gender Links, has shown that not much progress in terms of gender-inclusiveness has been made by most mainstream media in general.

The National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) has begun a rural outreach programme to campaign for a boycott of parliamentary elections set for March next year, the organisation has said. Earnest Mudzengi, the NCA information and advocacy officer told the Daily News Online that the coalition group wanted the public to boycott next year’s legislative polls unless the government made “meaningful” and sweeping changes to the constitution.

Zimbabwe's worsening economic conditions were one of the key reasons for the growing number of children on the streets, according to a recent survey. Results from an assessment of children living and working on the streets in urban areas around the capital, Harare, showed that the majority ended up here as a result of poverty, sexual or physical abuse and family breakdown. Of the 450 children interviewed by Zimbabwe's National Council for the Welfare of Children, with support from UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), 58 percent had become homeless during the last year.

The days of the private media in Zimbabwe are numbered. Soon, readers will wake up to see only state-owned newspapers decorating the newsstands. On June 10, the government controlled Media and Information Commission (MIC) closed The Tribune, leaving at least 60 full-time staff out of work. The Tribune is the third newspaper to shut down in less than a year. Last September armed police shut down The Daily News, a popular newspaper that was a harsh critic of President Robert Mugabe’s government. Its sister publication, The Daily News on Sunday was shut down as well.

Residents of Zimbabwe's capital, Harare, have been forced to use river water because of ongoing breaks in the purified water supply, raising concern over possible outbreaks of waterborne diseases. Like many other urban residents, it's a daily routine for 12-year-old Stella Chiyangwa to walk six kilometres to a river to fetch water for household use - she now lives a life not much different from that of her counterparts in remote rural areas.