BY JUSTICE ZHOU

The MDC have no responsibility or control over external private radio stations, a spokesperson for the London-based SW Radio Africa Gerry Jackson said last Wednesday.

She was commenting to a simmering argument in recent weeks by Zanu (PF) officials that the two MDC formations had done nothing to fulfill some key elements of the Global Political Agreement. They said these include ending the activities of what they refer to as “Pirate Radio” stations, adding speed to the accord’s increasingly emerging fault lines.

“SW Radio Africa and VOA broadcast legally and they do not require the permission of the MDC. It has nothing to do with them”, said Jackson, the station manager for the independent broadcaster.

The officials lashed out at the MDC after resolving at the 224th Ordinary Session of Zanu PF‘s Politburo last Month that the ailing and long-servicing leader of their party Robert Mugabe should resist the outcry over outstanding issues and further reforms pertaining to the GPA unless their demands were met to stop private radio stations from beaming into the country from their locations in Europe and USA, accusing the broadcasters of being hostile to their party.

“The fact is the independent media is not allowed in Zimbabwe . In 2000 I had challenged the government in the Supreme Court over their broadcasting monopoly, and won the right to set up the first independent radio station,” she said.

Jackson is the co- founder of Zimbabwe ’s first independent radio station, Capital FM Radio which was forced off air with barely a week of its launch in 2000. Police raided the studio of the former Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio 3 DJ in the room of a five star hotel in Harare , grabbing her broadcasting equipment at gunpoint. She had set up the station after being fired from ZBC for putting callers on air who were critical of the government. So she took the government to court over their monopoly on broadcasting, and in 2000, the Supreme Court ruled that private radio was legal.

But the regime of Robert Mugabe defied the court ruling, fast-tracking new broadcasting legislation that tightened state controls on the media. Jackson said Mugabe used his wide-ranging presidential powers with the aid of then Information Minister Jonathan Moyo, Mugabe’s former propaganda architect, enforcing a string of punitive laws that targeted independent voices and left them with no choice but to relocate and continue transmissions from far and wide in safer exile positions.

Moyo, now an independent legislator, has reaffirmed persistently his routine determination to foment suppression of private media. In an abrasive article published last month in a Zimbabwean weekly newspaper, he complained that the stations “continue to channel anti-Zimbabwe propaganda” in support of the Morgan Tsvangirai-led MDC establishment, in what some critics have dismissed as the controversial professor’s misguided attempts to fuel the current verbal attacks and counter verbal attacks between the principals of the inclusive government over the GPA.

Jackson said it was not possible for independent radio stations to consider returning as nothing has changed around the media situation. This was despite that the GPA emphasizes the vitality for the exiled media workers to return to Zimbabwe and accredit locally to promote diversity, jobs, pluralism and freedom of expression as the country reforms towards democracy.

“None of us would be able to work. Until the draconian media legislation is removed and it is absolutely clear that the media will not be able to operate freely, no one can return home”, she said.

Mugabe and his party allies have since 2005 attempted to restrict outside broadcasts, engaging Chinese and Iranian expert personnel to supply equipment meant to deliberately jam external signals of private radios run by Zimbabweans.

The three principals of the pact which was clinched in September last year agreed on the need for media reform to create a free and diverse media climate. The Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC) which was formed to replace the MIC has yet to be commissioned and Mugabe who is supposed to have endorsed it in line with Article 19 of the power sharing agreement remains mum, lending credence that there is no rule of law in Zimbabwe .

The Zimbabwe chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA-Zimbabwe) wrote last month to Information Minister Webster Shamu asking for an update on progress towards the implementation of reforms.

Whereas Mugabe’s camp is vehemently contesting the activities of “pirate radio”, linking it to the MDC and using the row as a bargaining chip to force concessions, analysts say Zanu PF’s protest is nothing other than a cheap separatist strategy to cast a cloud of uncertainty on the coalition government and stall it to conserve political life