Zimbabwe: NUJ help is at hand

MICHELLE STANISTREET led a team that visited Zimbabwe in September to launch a project for the recovery of the country’s journalists’ union

LOOKING UP at the extraordinarily phallic tower that is ZANU-PF’s party headquarters in Harare, the reality of being in Zimbabwe really hit home. Our NUJ delegation, visiting to set up our TUC-funded project to help develop their sister journalists’ union, was to meet Zimbabwean ministers as well as journalists and their union reps.

The last ten years have been hell for Zimbabwean journalists, with arbitrary arrests, attacks, the threat of being thrown into jail for up to 20 years for publishing information deemed to be prejudicial to the government, and the climate of fear in a country where they are considered an “enemies of the state” and “agents of imperialism” for reporting the truth.

We pressed the case for reform in our meetings with both ZANU-PF and MDC ministers in the supposed power-sharing government, including Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara.

The party offices and the men themselves were starkly different – drab faded rooms decorated with portraits of Robert Mugabe for the ZANU-PF, and leather armchairs, slick suits and expensive jewellery for the MDC new kids on the block.

Both parties were full of assurances that thriving independent media were vital for Zimbabwe’s future, but there was a telling moment in our meeting with the ZANU-PF Media Minister Webster Shamu, when he added an all-important rider to the blandishments that came before: “But of course there needs to be discipline.”

For our hosts in the Zimbabwean Union of Journalists (ZUJ) it was a chance to show ministers that people outside the country are looking out for their security, as journalists and trade unionists.

Trade unions have had a rough time too, but even when, at the height of hyperinflation, unemployment leapt to 96 per cent — it currently stands at only 90 per cent! — the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions stood up to the Mugabe regime to defend the rights of workers — those few still in regular employment and the much larger number that have swelled the ranks of the informal economy.

The dollarisation of the economy has brought a degree of stability — with food back on supermarket shelves and fewer power cuts — but most food and goods remain out of reach for ordinary Zimbabweans. Journalists earn as little as US$60 a month, while the price of a shopping basket of food to feed a family of six is around $170 a month.

Wellington Chibebe, the ZCTU Secretary General, explained: “People ask, how do Zimbabweans cope? We’re lucky that we are enterprising people but in a way that causes other problems. We’re now concentrating on being enterprising, on how to survive, which has weakened our ability to mobilise and fight.”

Despite the shaky rapprochement at national government level, Zimbabwean journalists still face persecution. We met Vincent Kahiya, editor of business paper The Independent, who earlier this year was arrested with his news editor for breaking a story about the arrest and torture of a human rights campaigner.

Accused of spreading “alarm, despondency and public disaffection”, they have already had five court appearances, though their trial has yet to start. He told us about the experience of working “with an axe over your head”.

We joined colleagues for a workshop where we were blown away by the enthusiasm participants had for looking at ways they could tackle the challenges they face through grassroots trade unionism and workplace organisation.

The gratitude they showed for the NUJ’s support was humbling. And the realisation that, with a genuine commitment and some modest resources, we can make a practical difference for ZUJ members was exciting.