Fear prompted flight - journo
2005-02-24 13:30
Special Report
The US says "thugs" from Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party killed a supporter of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and hurt several others at a weekend rally.
Johannesburg - Valentine's Day, February 14, saw yet another setback for journalists in Zimbabwe.
Police from the country's feared Law and Order Section raided the office used by Associated Press freelancer Angus Shaw, Jan Raath, a stringer for the Times of London and myself, freelance correspondent for Bloomberg News in New York.
The police conducted two searches over two days without warrants. Hard drives were removed from computers and unencrypted without permission. In the constant company of officers, we weren't even allowed to visit the lavatory without supervision.
The office, in Harare's downtown Avenues District, had been used by journalists for decades. Its location has never been a secret and was widely known among journalists as the old gentlemen's news co-operative because, uniquely these days, it was shared by competing agencies.
Our lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa, a brave protector of the press over the years, received information that police were going to pursue charges against us at all cost.
Independently of Beatrice, we were also tipped off by sources in the country's ruling Zanu-PF party who said the authorities were going to jail us.
'Not-so-veiled threats'
Police eventually left the office on Monday evening, saying they would either come to our homes or summon us by phone to Harare Central police station.
After about six hours of questioning and not-so-veiled threats, we jointly decided we had no option but to flee.
Earlier in the day, the police, who refused to give their names, had told Mtetwa they did not need information to search our offices or question us.
"First we find suspects, then we get information from the suspects," they said, laughing when Mtetwa said it was supposed to be the other way around. Leaving the country was fraught with difficulties.
Harare International Airport, guarded heavily by police and state security agents from the Central Intelligence Organisation, was ruled out. Instead we left by road, separately and heading for different borders at different times.
We left behind us our homes, our country, our friends and our families. To name the people who helped us escape would invite the certain wrath of the authorities, incarceration, beating and possibly worse.
Ordinary people have seen their fathers tortured, their wives and daughters raped and their homes burned down by President Robert Mugabe's notorious Green Bomber militias.
Our departure came just six weeks before a general election set for March 31, contested by the ruling Zanu-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
The poll has already been dubbed "the free and fear" election by residents of Harare's largely MDC-supporting townships.
Western nations barred from elections
With the effective closure of the Associated Press, Bloomberg, DPA and Times bureaux, Zimbabwe's foreign correspondents' association has seen its numbers fall catastrophically.
Only the tiny Reuters and AFP bureaux remain to cover an election in a country the size of California.
The Zanu-PF government has already made it clear that "unfriendly western nations" will be barred from sending observers and monitors.
Still, many say our forced departure was to be expected. We follow in the footsteps of others evicted even more forcefully.
Old hands like Andrew Meldrum of the Guardian was deported, illegally and by the scruff of his neck, for no apparent reason.
Others, like David Blair of the Telegraph, had applications for work permits refused for no given reason. Our predecessors, though, had all been born abroad.
Angus Shaw and I were born Zimbabweans. We were educated and brought up there and had lived almost our entire lives in the country.
'Cannot fight'
Jan Raath, born in South Africa, had made Zimbabwe his home over 30 years ago and remains a Zimbabwean citizen.
Others have asked why we did not remain to fight the system, why we fled. The truth is we could not fight.
During the last five years of political upheaval in Zimbabwe, all three of us have witnessed brutality the country has not seen since the 1970s bush war.
For the lonely individual, the massed Zanu-PF forces of militias, police, spy agencies, informers and soldiers are unbeatable.
We had to escape because the option was a disease-ridden prison cell, possible torture, almost certain beating and humiliation.
Uppermost in my mind was the almost nine-month incarceration of Mugabe's own finance minister, Chris Kureneri.
He has been charged, but not tried for "economic crimes".
If Mugabe is prepared to let his own minister rot in prison, what might he charge us with - spying, working as "illegal journalists", publishing information likely to be prejudicial to the security of the state and economic crimes? -
Brian Latham has for the time being sought refuge in London
- SAPA