West Seeks to Intimidate Mugabe Supporters

[XXPANTHAXX]

Wednesday, 31 December 2008
by Stephen Gowans

The corporate news media, especially in Britain, constantly rail against
the state-owned press in Zimbabwe, charging The Herald and The Sunday
Mail with acting as "mouth-pieces" for President Robert Mugabe. But
"coverage of foreign affairs in the West is almost wholly dominated by
news media that are controlled by the wealthy, operating to amplify the
views of the Council on Foreign Relations and high state officials who
are either wealthy themselves or owe their position to the patronage of
the wealthy." In southern Africa, so-called "independent" media are in
fact funded by the British or U.S. governments. The Zimbabwean state has
every right to defend itself, through media.

West Seeks to Intimidate Mugabe Supporters

by Stephen Gowans

"The exploited and oppressed need to struggle to create their own
platforms, and preserve the few they have, from the depredations of
exploiters who would silence them."

In political contests the objective of each side is to discredit the
opposition, and when that can't be done, to silence it. This is done to
prevent the opposition from persuading others to take its point of view.
If one side can persuade others to its position, it can count on their
support and possibly gain an advantage over the other side.

While all sides seek to silence their opposition, or at least, to
marginalize it, they often present themselves as being champions of free
speech, prepared to jump into the rough and tumble of the free market of
ideas, confident their ideas will, through their sheer force, prevail.
If they seek to silence the other side, it's not because they oppose
free speech, but because they're against "propaganda" and providing
platforms to "monsters."

By contrast, their own propagandists are not to be understood as
propagandists. Nor do they promote the views of monsters. Instead, they
are neutral, objective and balanced.

Coverage of foreign affairs in the West is almost wholly dominated by
news media that are controlled by the wealthy, operating to amplify the
views of the Council on Foreign Relations and high state officials who
are either wealthy themselves or owe their position to the patronage of
the wealthy and will likely end up at the CFR when they leave their
government positions.

But for a few obscure publications, coverage of foreign affairs is
dominated by the interests of the rich; that is, of investment bankers,
corporate lawyers, the chairmen of corporations and members of
hereditary capitalist families. Even those who write for obscure
publications that profess to take an alternative view are usually so
immersed in the received media wisdom that they either can't escape it
on all matters, or are afraid to escape it on some, for fear of being
dismissed as extreme.

In countries that have taken a strong anti-imperialist stand, the
Western media monopoly is often broken. In these countries, some media
outlets, usually state-controlled, provide a point of view that
radically departs from that of Western ruling classes. This deprives the
wealthy in the West of monopoly control of the means of persuasion.
Accordingly, they try to disrupt and disorganize media that challenge
their monopoly.

In Zimbabwe, state owned newspapers, including The Herald and The Sunday
Mail, reliably present the point of view of the Mugabe government. The
Western media criticize these newspapers as "Mugabe's mouthpieces,"
which, in large measure, they are. But while Western media criticize The
Herald and The Sunday Mail for reflecting the point of view of the
Zimbabwe government, they hide the fact that they too are mouthpieces -
not of governments directly, but of the wealthy interests that own them,
and indirectly, through the inordinate influence the wealthy exert on
Western governments, of Western governments, too.

Some of the competing media outlets in Zimbabwe, from community
newspapers to SW Radio Africa and the Voice of America's Studio 7, are
mouthpieces of the US and British governments that fund them. The
rabidly anti-Mugabe SW Radio Africa, for example, bills itself as the
independent voice of Zimbabwe, but operates on funds from the British
and other Western governments and Western ruling class foundations.
There is nothing independent about it.

Arrayed against Zimbabwe's state-owned newspapers are "six anti-Mugabe
weekly newspapers, three based in Harare, two from South Africa and one
from the UK, and all freely distributed in Zimbabwe's rural areas." [1]
On top of these are the US government's Studio 7 and the British
government's SW Radio Africa, plus the ubiquitous - and uniformly
anti-Zanu-PF - Western media.

Despite the formidable weight the West has thrown behind anti-Mugabe
media, it has still found virtue in going beyond countering The Herald's
and The Sunday Mail's content, to seeking to intimidate its journalists.
In July 2008 the EU announced it was expanding sanctions to include
Munyaradzi Huni, the political editor of The Sunday Mail, and Caesar
Zvayi, the former political editor of The Herald and a frequent
contributor to the newspaper.

Zvayi is nothing, if not anti-imperialist and committed to the Mugabe
government's efforts to invest Zimbabwe's nominal political independence
with real economic content. He describes the Movement for Democratic
Change, the Western-created and -guided opposition party, as "a
counter-revolutionary Trojan horse that is working with outsiders to
subvert the logical conclusion of the Zimbabwean revolution," [2] rather
than as an organic expression of grassroots Zimbabwean opposition, as
Western propagandists would have it.

He likens Zanu-PF's political platform to "getting beyond the façade of
flag independence to full socio-economic empowerment of the historically
disadvantaged Africans," [3] rather than as a program to enrich Mugabe
and his cronies, the Western media line. To Zvayi "Zimbabwe represents
the last frontier in Africa for the struggle between black nationalist
resistance and Western neo-colonial encroachment by proxy," [4] rather
than the accustomed Western media view of the country as a former
breadbasket that has become a failed state owing to "disastrous" land
reform policies.

The Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), which says it "seeks ways
in which to promote the free flow of information and co-operation
between media workers," refused to condemn the sanctions the EU slapped
on Zvayi and Huni. MISA is funded through USAID by the US State
Department, through The Westminster Foundation for Democracy by the
British Parliament, and through Fahamu by the European Union, the
British Department for International Development, and the British
Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Small wonder then that MISA refused to condemn the EU's sanctions on
journalists. [5] Zvayi, who landed a job as lecturer at the University
of Botswana, was later fired and booted out of the country by its
president for his association with The Herald. [6] It seems Botswana
puts as little store in the free flow of information as MISA does.
Predictably, MISA uttered not a word of protest about Botswana's
actions.

The Zimbabwe Guardian, also known by logging on to URL
http://www.TalkZimbabwe.com, is a British-based online newspaper that
offers a radically different take on what's going on in Zimbabwe than
found in the Western media, or in Western government-funded
"independent" news sources, like Studio 7.

While it would be going too far to say the newspaper is a Mugabe
mouthpiece, it is conspicuously absent of the hysterical anti-Mugabe
line that marks the British-based SW Radio Africa. This refusal to
contribute to the limitless demonization of Mugabe has landed the online
newspaper in hot water in the UK. On December 14, the UK newspaper, The
Observer, reported that,

"...there are concerns that a website that carries articles written by
UK-based Zimbabweans is acting as a propaganda machine for the Mugabe
regime. Talkzimbabwe.com started life as a critic of Mugabe but in
recent months has positioned itself strongly behind him and against his
rival, Morgan Tsvangirai. Sekai Holland, a veteran political activist
who has been targeted by the Mugabe regime, said she was worried the
site had been ‘infiltrated' by Zanu-PF supporters. ‘It's very
dangerous,' Holland said. ‘This website is being used to spread stories
in support of Mugabe.'" [7]

This portended the beginnings of a campaign of intimidation to disrupt
The Zimbabwe Guardian for refusing to toe the West's anti-Mugabe line.
The campaign was given momentum when Lance Guma invited the website's
founder, Itayi Garande, onto SW Radio Africa's "Reporters Forum." Guma
told Garande,

"A lot of people are saying in view of targeted sanctions that target
people who are said to be aiding and abetting the regime and Mugabe, you
qualify under that criteria, because you are supporting the regime from
here in the United Kingdom and as a result you should be deported.
What's your response?" [8]

It was clear from what followed that Guma wasn't particularly interested
in Garande's response; what he was interested in was building momentum
for Garande's eviction from the country and demonizing anyone who
publicly challenges Western propaganda. This echoed an earlier media
campaign to have an expatriate Zimbabwean who writes opinion pieces for
The Herald fired from his job as a London transit worker for "aiding and
abetting Mugabe," that is, challenging the West's campaign of vilifying
the Mugabe government.

Interestingly, SW Radio Africa Guma's view boils down to this: if you're
not writing propaganda for us (i.e., SW Radio Africa's sponsors, the
former colonial master, Britain) you're writing propaganda for the other
side. Guma would never use the word "propaganda" in connection with SW
Radio Africa, though it's clear that's what Radio SW Africa does: it
propagates a point of view (one congenial to British financial and
corporate interests.)

Garande, too, writes propaganda, as does anyone who writes to persuade
others. The relevant question is: is the content of the persuasive
communication true or false, and should someone be fired from his job,
deported or sanctioned for writing it? The normative question can be
skirted by pointing out that whether it ought to happen or not, it does
happen, and it happens often.

There is no free environment of public advocacy, no limitless freedom
for one to say whatever he pleases with impunity, and there never has
been. As George Galloway points out, no one could have marched through
the streets of London in 1941 urging support for Hitler and escaped
punishment.

Today, it many places, no one can deny that Nazi Germany sought to
systematically exterminate Jews without facing a jail sentence. You can
say that journalism is different from persuasive communications related
to political views, but that accepts the fiction that journalism is
politically neutral. It never is, whether in the journalism of The
Herald, The Zimbabwean Guardian, Radio SW Africa or The New York Times.

Political battles can be waged as much at the level of ideas as on the
streets or in the battlefield. Those who engage in battle accept that as
a consequence of joining the battle they may face adverse consequences,
including death.

While those who wage the battle from the field of persuasive
communications face less severe penalties (though some are occasionally
killed) they're no more immune from some form of injury than a guerilla
or insurrectionist is; they may be fired, deported or sanctioned.

As to the normative question, the answer depends on which value you
place higher: the victory of your side in a political battle, or the
right of others to advocate an opposing view to marshal support to
defeat your side? When conflict represents exploitation versus the end
of it, the question becomes, which is senior: The right to be free from
exploitation or the right to justify it?

There are similar conflicts: between protection of children from sexual
exploitation and the right of pedophiles to advocate the production of
child pornography; between the right of Africans to achieve true
independence and the right of imperialists to demonize anti-imperialist
movements to undermine them. Public advocacy rights ought never to be
senior to the right to be free from exploitation and oppression.

If they are, free expression becomes more important than freedom from
exploitation. Inasmuch as exploiters, by virtue of the wealth that is
the fruit of their exploitation of others, are likely to have greater
access to platforms that allow their free expression of ideas to count,
the view that the right of public advocacy is inviolable and absolute is
congenial to their interests, but not to those of the exploited.

The exploited and oppressed need to struggle to create their own
platforms, and preserve the few they have, from the depredations of
exploiters who would silence them, by intimidation or otherwise; at the
same time, they must be prepared, where they have the upper hand, to
subordinate the right of free expression to the right to be free from
exploitation and oppression.

Stephen Gowans is a writer and political activist. He can be reached at
sr.gowans@sympatico.ca.

NOTES:

1. New African, May 2008.

2. TalkZimbabwe.com, August 1, 2008.

3. The Herald (Zimbabwe), May 29, 2008.

4. Ibid.

5. The Sunday Mail (Zimbabwe), July 26, 2008.

6. The Herald (Zimbabwe), August 9, 2008.

7. Jamie Doward, "Key Mugabe ally is free to live in London," The
Observer (UK), December 14, 2008.