New Zim radio making waves
2002-01-30 19:58
Harare - As Zimbabwe's government tries to block out independent media ahead of the March presidential election, a new short-wave radio station has managed to by-pass the regime and take to the airwaves.
Barred by restrictive legislation from broadcasting within
Zimbabwe, SW Radio Africa has set up in Britain, but is run by
Zimbabwean expatriates and people who moved from there to work on the station.
Since mid-December the station has aired three hours a day of
music, news and a phone-in programme - where listeners dial a local
number in Zimbabwe and receive a call back to talk on the show.
Callers have flooded the line, talking about food shortages in
Zimbabwe, the widespread political violence, and the trouble
finding jobs during the nation's worst-ever economic crisis.
One other station, Voice of the People, had already turned to
the short-wave solution before the June 2000 parliamentary
elections. Its programmes are pre-recorded in Zimbabwe, and then
transmitted from outside the country.
300 000 visited website
There's no effective way of measuring the number of listeners in
Zimbabwe, but 300 000 people have visited SW Radio Africa's
website, which offers a simulcast and archives of the broadcasts,
the station's spokesperson Gerry Jackson said by phone.
The last time Jackson helped start a radio station, in October
2000, Zimbabwe's government sent armed police to shut it down and
seize its equipment in Harare after less than one week on the air.
The police action, which sealed off half a floor in Harare's
Crowne Plaza hotel, came despite a landmark Supreme Court case that briefly ended the government monopoly on the airwaves and allowed Capital Radio to broadcast.
Government's response to her latest venture has not been kind.
"They want to willy-nilly continue to beam their illegal
broadcasts in the vain hope of rendering Zimbabwe ungovernable by
promoting political violence, tribal division and ethnic hatred,"
information minister Jonathan Moyo said in the state-run Herald
newspaper.
"They have all the trappings of the genocide broadcasts in
Rwanda, and we don't want to have to act after the fact," he said.
President Robert Mugabe even succeeded in convincing neighbouring leaders to criticise the broadcasts.
He left a summit of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) this month with a communique that expressed "concern" that broadcasters overseas were airing "hostile and inciting propaganda against the government".
A 'tool of the British government'
The state press has also raised a storm claiming that the
station is a tool of the British government, and over the fact that
it receives funding from a branch of the US Agency for
International Development (USAid)
"How did it get to this? This is supposed to be about rock and
roll," Jackson said of the controversy.
"The focus of the story is the situation in Zimbabwe," she said.
"Our concern is the increase in violence in the country, and the
fact that there is no freedom of speech and no freedom on
assembly."
"If you were trying to keep Mugabe happy all the time, you'd be
very limited in what you can do," she said.
Mugabe passed a new broadcasting law in 2000 that effectively
barred Capital Radio from transmitting and placed enormous
obstacles to other would-be broadcasters.
Two weeks ago, his government forced through a new security law that criminalises criticism of the president and effectively bars
political assemblies.
This week, Mugabe's government will again try to pass a new
press law that will ban foreigners from working permanently in
Zimbabwe and make all journalists answerable to a commission
hand-picked by Moyo. - Sapa-AFP
- SAPA