Recently Edward Chikombo, Zimbabwean cameraman for the Zimbabwean Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) was murdered and journalist Gift Phiri from the South African-based The Zimbabwean newspaper was tortured, and Time magazine’s Alexander Perry was convicted for reporting without accreditation. It has been speculated that Chikombo’s murder may be linked to the smuggling of film footage of a badly-beaten Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader, Morgan Tsvangirai.
Censorship in Zimbabwe has repercussions in South Africa as well, says the FXI, and demonstrates the interlinked nature of the media freedom climate in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). If pictures of the growing repression in Zimbabwe do not reach the SA public, and SA-based international correspondents are prevented from reporting on Zimbabwe, then it is “our media freedom as South Africans that is being violated too”.
The press statement continues: “South Africans will be unable to hold its own government to account for its foreign policy choices on countries such as Zimbabwe. South Africa simply cannot afford the luxury of ‘quiet diplomacy’ in the face of such brutality, it amounts to a tacit endorsement of censorship that affects the whole region.”
The South African Government’s approach towards foreign policy betrays shocking double standards for a country that was liberated from the yoke of apartheid partly because other countries took a principled stand against the apartheid regime, says the FXI.
“Many in the SADC region struggled and died to free South Africa. Yet we return these sacrifices with mealy-mouthed protestations about Zimbabwe being left to sort out its own problems, peppered with an occasional condemnation of the Zimbabwean government’s conduct. In the same way that the defence of human rights was at the core of these countries’ foreign policy, human rights should be at the core of South Africa’s foreign policy too, and should govern how the government conducts itself in all international forums, and in relation to all repressive regimes.”
The FXI does a great deal of work in the SADC region, and travels to SADC countries all the time. The FXI hosts the Southern African Journalists’ Association (SAJA), which has two Zimbabwean affiliates (the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ) and the Independent Journalists of Zimbabwe (IJAZ). The FXI also undertakes work around access to information with economic justice organisations in the region. As a South African civil society organisation with strong working relationships in the region, the FXI distances itself from the grossly inadequate response of the SA Government.
According to the FXI, Zimbabwe undoubtedly carries a colonial legacy from the Lancaster House agreement, concluded with the British Government in 1980, that has profoundly disadvantaged the liberation cause in Zimbabwe. However, says the FXI, this historical fact should not be used as an excuse to justify internal repression, that the Zimbabwean government, and the Zimbabwean government alone, is responsible for.
More specifically, the FXI believes that Zimbabwe’s Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AAIPA), and the Public Order and Safety Act (POSA), should be repealed, as they cast a pall over freedom of expression in the SADC region. They also violate internationally accepted standards of freedom of expression. The FXI will support all efforts on a cross-border basis to have these acts repealed.
