Writers in [police] residence
It is interesting that only a few weeks ago, the government was being extolled by some incorrigibly optimistic watchers of the Zimbabwean crisis for “opening” up media space by licensing new publications and also calling for applications from prospective broadcasters. Media reform is one of the sticking points of the GPA and the GNU that it birthed, and one has to imagine the reluctance of the former ruling party to give in to the demands of its sleeping partners based, of course, on its own historic knowledge of how these “tools” were used in the hands of the “white enemy” back then.
Yet there is something about some “analysts” here who are always quick to see reforms in the making each time the unflinching Zanu PF lifts its finger to scratch itself. They imagine the party is about to move the mountain of political, economic, media or whatever reform demanded by progressive forces and other people of goodwill. Yet here we are this week being told yet again that some scribes from the alternative media have once again been made very reluctant guests of the police. The latest arrest of these journalists coincided with Webster Shamu telling a gathering of SADC journos that there are scribes who continue to do the bidding of Western and other forces, a line favoured by oligarchs when referencing the private media.
That Shamu does not raise a finger – even to scratch his head – about these continued arrests tells some he could well be colluding with the police, after all, the cops have publicly avowed their allegiance to his party! How else would “ordinary” Zimbabweans read into it? Is not ours a land filled with political conspiracies? You hear it in kombis, pubs and yes, newsrooms! One just has to listen to ZBC bulletins and the unstinting dressing down of Biti and Tsvangirai to get the gist of how the Minister of Journalists favours his own. Thus it is that it is apparent that anyone dreaming of reforms of any sort in this country as long as Zanu PF lives is surely indulging in an exercise that will only give birth to ulcers and migraines.