3 February 2002
(Page 3 of 3)
Eliphas Mukonoweshuro: Well I think we're starting to realize that the Commonwealth is a club that relies only on moral pressure, and they are very quick to give exceptions and excuses to any country that seriously erodes and abandons the values which they claim to be the basis of cooperation within the Commonwealth. I think the Commonwealth is a toothless bulldog.
What do you want the US to do?
Eliphas Mukonoweshuro: We have been trying to talk to anybody who would listen. That does not mean standing on street corners and giving out pamphlets. We were trying to look at opinion-makers within the establishment, the American government and try, in the first place, to discover the extent to which our perception of the problem is shared. From there we are trying to suggest ways in which the US, together with the rest of the international community, could find appropriate methods of engaging the Zimbabwean government to stop a catastrophe that is likely to happen in the event of a contested election; that has been our message. It is better, and less costly in terms of resources and human lives, that the government be engaged this side of the presidential poll.
Will the media survive the onslaught of the new legislation?
Mark Chavunduka: It depends on how far they are willing to go. We have already resolved to fight these laws where we can.
The latest example of one of their strategies is from yesterday [Jan 31, 2002]. We had three reporters arrested, one from The Standard and two from the Daily News; what they do is arrest reporters on spurious allegations and then they set long remand dates, so that papers and journalists might suffer financially under the weight of the legal bills. Those are quite heavy for us; for example after Ray [Choto] and I were arrested in 1999, our bill - which is not yet completely paid off - is over two million Zimbabwe dollars [currently US$36,000 although the Zimbabwe dollar has suffered a steep decline during the past two years]. There is no way that we could pay that bill on our own, the paper would have collapsed, so we got assistance from outside and we were able to continue fighting the case.
The government, even when it brings a case against us and loses, pays for it with taxpayers' money. We need funds to defend ourselves. But what they have done is to make it a crime for papers to receive material or financial support from outside to suffocate us financially.
We've decided on two things. One is to ignore the laws and continue fighting as we've been doing; and two, we've decided to put in place mechanisms to ensure that we can continue to receive external support. The government has been totally dishonest on the question of foreign funding because they made amendments to the Political Parties Finance Act to stop the opposition from receiving funds from abroad, yet we know they are receiving millions of dollars from Libya. So call it illegal or whatever, we are also putting in place our own mechanisms to enable us to survive.
This is a very bleak vision. What do you see in the future for Zimbabwe?
Eliphas Mukonoweshuro: Well it is frightening... one can only see a deluge. I don't think we're likely to experience any semblance of political normalcy. As long as Mugabe will have stolen the election and declares himself the president of Zimbabwe it will be a contested legitimacy. We are likely to see chronic instability, untold suffering, substantial departure of skilled manpower; we are likely to see the country being reduced to the level of peasant subsistence.
You mentioned that by talking to us in this way, you may be committing a crime in terms of the recent legislation. What do you think will happen when you return to Zimbabwe? You've already had a confrontation of a very serious nature with the security forces in the past.
Mark Chavunduka: Quite frankly, I'm not even thinking about what will happen. If they are going to arrest us when we go back then so be it. But the position that we have taken as independent editors is that we consider these pieces of legislation as being illegal and therefore, to our thinking, they are null and void.
We are going to continue doing our work as we have been doing, making sure that we have done as many background checks [on our stories] as we can, as we have always done, and basically that is the position we are going to take. I'm not even going to waste time worrying myself about whether I'm going to be arrested in Harare airport or not. We're dealing with a rogue regime and anything could happen.
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