Jackson is doing better this time around. Six weeks ago, she and a handful of fellow Zimbabwean journalists began broadcasting from a cramped studio in London to an eager audience in the troubled southern African nation. Their station, SW Radio Africa, is their country’s only live independent radio voice at a time when Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, is trying tighten the country’s already-harsh media restrictions ahead of next month’s presidential elections.
Funded by the American government agency USAID, SW Radio Africa has already caused a stir among the country’s political leaders. Information Minister Jonathan Moyo has called on Britain and the European Union to ban the station, accusing it of fanning tribal divisions and ethnic hatred. Zimbabweans, however, have responded positively: more than 300,000 have visited the station’s Web site and callers have flooded its phone-in program to discuss controversial issues like food shortages and political violence. Jackson spoke to NEWSWEEK’s Ginanne Brownell in London. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: Right now, the only radio station allowed to operate inside Zimbabwe is the state-run Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corp. What are its broadcasts like?
Gerry Jackson: You would have to be there to really understand how unbelievably bad the news has become. It’s never been great, but it has sunk to truly new depths. There is no attempt to try and cover it up with some form of balance. It is full of very dated, nationalist rhetoric and neocolonialist type stuff. It is just endless …When the violence started in the run-up to parliamentary elections in 2000 and [squatters who occupied white-owned farms] started killing white farmers, you got no information. There was no one telling the story and no one giving Zimbabweans a voice.
Who are your listeners?
What we can garner from the feedback we get is that people across the board are listening. Every racial group, every age.
Good feedback so far?
Overwhelming. They are delighted that we have managed to do this. We got a call from a listener who had come back from the rural areas and seen a bunch of people up in the trees, putting bits of wire and antenna together to get a better signal.
But the Zimbabwean government has been critical.
[Minister of Information] Jonathan Moyo of course is going to criticize and accuse us of being a random, hate radio. What we broadcast is nothing that shouldn’t be on a radio station in Zimbabwe today, nothing different. A journalist’s role has always been to put out the information that the government is giving so people can understand it, and equally to broadcast back what people are saying to the government. It is absolutely not happening in Zimbabwe. They say we are not balanced, but then they do not want to talk to us.
What about Moyo’s accusations that your station was fanning tribal divisions?
It was expected. Moyo always turns it around in his “Alice in Wonderland” world.
Just this week, Mugabe’s government passed a tough new media law restricting foreign reporters in the country and requiring licenses for all local journalists and news organizations. But he did agree to allow foreign observers to be there for the election. Will that help make the elections fairer?
That’s not going to help. They need monitors-observers and monitors are two different beasts. Observers stay in very nice hotels and are only allowed in certain areas. What are you going to observe? There are few adjectives to describe how profound the violence is and how widespread the intimidation is at every single level. It constantly shocks me. I heard this week about a 6-month-old baby who had been beaten within an inch of its life and a 4-year-old whose face had been split open. It is incredible brutality. And not only the people-wildlife as well. What is being done to the beef and dairy herds-it’s incomprehensible. Dairy cattle having their eyes gouged out and being disemboweled [by squatters on white-owned farms] just to be malicious. Horses on farms chased over cattle grids to purposely break their legs. One attack on cattle was perpetrated by a 12-year-old who severed the spine of an animal with an ax. It’s unlikely there’ll be a national beef or dairy herd at the end of this land exercise. And that is an aspect that doesn’t ever get touched because everyone says, “well people are suffering so much, who is going to touch that?”
How is the international press coverage?
I am frustrated. A white farmer gets killed and the [foreign press] cover the story en masse. Some black peasant gets killed down the road, they don’t even [print] his name. That is happening on a daily basis.
Your funding comes from the U.S. government. Is this another bone of contention between you and the Zimbabwean government?
There is no source of funding we could have received that would have satisfied the Zimbabwean government, and our job is not to keep [it] happy. We approached various nongovernmental and donor agencies with proposals and [USAID’s] Office of Transition Initiatives eventually gave us the funding. The vital issue is we have complete editorial control and absolute autonomy. That is something that the Zimbabwean government finds difficult to comprehend, because they control the media. They cannot believe that any media outlet is free. The focus should be the violence and intimidation [people face], not how we set up the company.
What do you discuss on your program?
We cover current affairs. We had a plan to do lighter programming with music, but the situation has become so serious that it is becoming more a talk program. HIV is a main focus. There is so little education in Zimbabwe [about it], and it is so very serious. We introduce many topics for discussion, but the focus now is the violence. We choose the topic for the day and we call people who have left their numbers [on an answering machine in Zimbabwe] for their opinions.
How do you see Zimbabwe’s future?
If only I had a crystal ball. It is such a spectacularly huge mess in every area-[a] total collapse of the health system, a conservative estimate of 25 percent of the population infected with HIV, the agricultural base destroyed, hundreds of people fleeing the country every day, shortages of food, 60 percent unemployment and 80 percent of people living under the poverty line. Many people are holding out that [opposition leader] Morgan Tsvangirai is the savior. What a daunting task if he gets in. There is no quick fix here. I do believe if the elections were free and fair, he would win. People want change.
What about you? You were fired from the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corp. because you took live calls from angry citizens during the 1997 food riots. Then you won a legal battle to set up the privately owned Capital Radio in Zimbabwe two years ago-but Mugabe had it closed after six days. Now the government is complaining about Radio Africa. Don’t you fear for your own safety?
I don’t have personal fears. If I did have personal fears I guess I wouldn’t be doing this.
Will you go back to Zimbabwe?
If the situation is resolved and FM licenses were given in Zimbabwe, obviously that is the best-case scenario. For those of us who have relocated it has been hard. You feel bad leaving people behind. It has become self-fulfilling in Zimbabwe, where everyone with expertise leaves. So how are we ever going to get it right?
