Public Relations Realities, Part 2

Zimbabwe has never been known for its free press. Even standing next to the rest of Africa the recent events have made it clear to those paying attention that the idea is a cruel joke and has been from the first of independence in 1980. One certainly hopes that it was with an intense and upsetting irony that Bob Marley, the first non-African to perform in Zimbabwe at the celebration for independence sang the lines: "Now we find out who is…the real revolutionary, because I don't want my people to be fooled by mercenaries."

Well, fooled or cajoled The Honorable, Humble, Brother, Reverend, Doctor Robert Mugabe took power on that day along with his unbeatable Zanu party, and began what, at the time, were a hopeful series of land reforms, and the now control of the government of former Rhodesia to create the nation of Zimbabwe.

Well, as is now well known, his agricultural reforms were a disaster. A country so fertile that it used to export food is now dependent on aid from the UN food relief program. All foreign journalists have been expelled, and in a desperate attempt to maintain his grip on power Mugabe has told the former freedom fighters, which fought to end Robert Smith's stranglehold on media and agriculture, have been told to reclaim whatever land they can find and forcefully remove the Afrikaners who live there. Without any kind of government program or even help from Zanu police department in maintaining the piece.

In the September 1996 issue of a newspaper called High Density Mirror, a reference to the intensity of the reflection of corruption that would be returned on the president and his men. The Editor, whose identity still remains a secret even though the paper was shut down years ago, was not afraid to print the story that K. Makamure brought to him. Remember this is back in 1996. This was a time when foreign journalists were afraid to reprint these kinds of stories, because they feared there status in the country. When I wrote stories about these kinds of abuses, I was censured, threatened, and eventually fired from my job at an NGO, Inter-Press Service.