By Dr Tafataona Mahoso

WHEN it comes to the subject of media freedom and media reform, students of Media and Society Studies in Zimbabwe fall into two general categories. 

Those who mistakenly believe that the recently repealed Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) was itself the cause of the media war Zimbabwe experienced from 1997 to 2017; and those who think AIPPA was itself only one of the nation’s responses to an on-going media war promoted by external powers seeking to maintain neo-colonial hegemony over our political, economic and cultural orientation in the face of global contestation.

For the former group, the repeal of AIPPA would bring media peace and end media polarisation. 

But for the latter group, polarisation and certain aspects of the same media war would continue by other means as long as the primary reasons for ideological contestation and rivalry remained.

History

On August 20 2002, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter Kansteiner boasted Western powers enjoying the support of local Zimbabwean ‘independent journalists’ in the former’s bid to effect regime change in Zimbabwe in order to punish the government for its support of the land revolution and for the Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF)’s intervention in DRC.

As a result, the SADC-sponsored Global Political Agreement (GPA) of 2008 recognised the reality of a foreign-sponsored media war against Zimbabwe and sought to de-escalate it.

Article 19 (1) (c) of the GPA therefore stated that: “The parties agree…that…in recognition of the open media environment anticipated in this Agreement, the parties hereby:

(i) call upon the (Western) governments that are hosting and/or funding external radio stations broadcasting into Zimbabwe to cease such hosting and funding; and

(ii) encourage the Zimbabweans running or working for external radio stations broadcasting into Zimbabwe to return to Zimbabwe.” 

The SADC negotiators were not alone in noticing the media war on Zimbabwe.

At a scholarly level, many academics have also noted and even researched the subject of the media war against Zimbabwe. 

For example, Zimbabwean born Oxford University Professor Blessing Miles-Tendi published ‘The Origins and Functions of Demonisation Discourses in Britain-Zimbabwe Relations 2000’ in The Journal of Southern African Studies.

When the Second Republic took over Government in 2017, it proceeded to repeal AIPPA; to replace AIPPA with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA); and to licence more private broadcasters. 

These reforms, to many observers, were expected to end media polarisation and the media war for good.

The up-coming 2023 elections and media war by another name

My first impression that the media war against Zimbabwe was continuing under another name was a September 1 2021 Herald story titled ‘Exposing Zim axis of evil’ and paraphrasing Mr Nick Mangwana, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services. 

Mr Mangwana is the Government Spokesperson.

The first two paragraphs of that story are enough to illustrate my point:

“Ahead of President Mnangagwa’s visit to the United Kingdom, the country’s detractors disguised as Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) have upped the anti-Government ante as they seek to besmirch the Second Republic through dark operations propaganda.

At the centre of the evil machinations are three CSOs, which Government spokesperson Mr Nick Mangwana described as ‘Zimbabwe’s axis of evil’, namely the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR), Doctors for Human Rights and Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO.”

Then, a little longer than a year later, on November 24 2022, a NewsDay story caught my attention. 

I had been aware all along that the same sort of war which used to be centred on CSOs and journalists ‘fighting for media space’ against AIPPA was being organised on similar lines but focused on the other side of the civil-society-media coin: human rights defenders ‘fighting for civic space’ or for ‘democratic space’. 

Our readers must bear in mind that both journalists and NGO activists call themselves ‘human rights defenders’.

The November 24 2022 story was titled ‘Rights defenders challenge Government on CSOs’. 

This time the number had grown from the three ringleaders alleged in the 2021 Herald story to 43 coalitions described by NewsDay as leading international human rights and legal aid organisations.

According to NewsDay, the CSO coalitions or federations supporting their local counterparts are based in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia, Zambia and elsewhere on the African continent, but their names and manner of organising suggest similar sources funding and influence from outside Africa.

Media war, CSOs, Zimbabwe’s CSO Bill and the 2023 elections

The expectation that the repeal of AIPPA would end the media war and media polarisation was based on a misunderstanding of media and society.

The 1997-2017 media war had centred around the payment of a small cash gratuity to Zimbabwe’s veterans of the liberation struggle; around the African land reclamation movement and revolution as a form of local self-administered reparations; and around Zimbabwe’s 1998 leadership of the Pan-African force that stopped a Western-sponsored proxy invasion and occupation of the DRC. 

In other words, the substance or content over which the media and journalists became polarised were not originally about media governance or the press per se, but about how the people, the society, were to be informed or misinformed about issues of life and death for Africa and Africans: land, water, security, the economy, natural resources, minerals, livelihoods.

So, it is not surprising that a media war can start and even escalate over how foreign-funded CSOs are going to inform or misinform the world, including us, about the role of the same CSOs, about their foreign funding, about elections and about defenAding ‘civic space’ this time replacing the former defence of ‘media space’ for exactly the same sponsors or principals and against our own indigenous views of the same issues.

Questions on media regulation

The subject of media and society brings to the fore the question of media regulation. 

At present there is agreement between conventional journalists and the state to allow the former to take part in the co-regulation of the media. 

Specifically, conventional journalists will take care of the mechanism for disciplining their members while the Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC) will serve as the appeals body.

But I have argued elsewhere that what this arrangement does is putting the cart in front of the horse. 

The promulgation of AIPPA followed extensive research and investigation to know the nature and scope of the media as it was then. 

Seismic changes have taken place in that industry and in the society. 

For instance, much of the media war I have referred to has migrated from conventional media and journalists to social media, bloggers, trolls, BOTS and hackers.

 The NATO war to encircle Russia using Ukraine is described by some as the first ‘Splinternet War’, in the sense that the internet is serving as an integral instrument of warfare but its netizens are severely split or splintered between East and West. 

And there is no doubt that conventional media and classical journalists now serve almost as an echo-chamber for so-called social media.

Even before this peculiar ‘world war’ over Ukraine, it was already clear that conventional journalism had collapsed into social media through a process some scholars call ‘Rhetorical Convergence or the Convergence of Genres’. 

Readers may want to revisit my previous instalment titled ‘Afghanistan and the collapse of conventional journalism into ‘imbeds’ and social media’.

This change in conventional journalism means perhaps that, from the perspective of the larger society, whether or not classical journalists adopt self-regulation or co-regulation is going to be irrelevant because the media war has moved to a different centre/sphere out of the control of these media practitioners who are more or less following social media rather than leading. 

It is the conflict, violence and polarisation amplified by media which forces society to demand regulation.

To illustrate further, it is now alleged that public perceptions of and expectations about the BREXIT movement in Britain, about the Donald Trump election and subsequent Right Wing assault the US Capitol as well as expectations about the Russian response to Ukraine’s bid to join NATO were all shaped more by the Splinternet and social media than by the conventional press. 

Therefore, any discussion of media policy and media regulation ought to take these trends into account instead of relying upon the very vocal but rapidly marginalised journalists and their traditional sympathisers. 

Regulation of any type must therefore follow thorough and objective research, surveys and inquiries. 

The NATO war of encirclement against Russia using Ukraine will change our understanding of media and society drastically.