Shockwaves of freedom
By Rachel Alembakis Posted Apr 1 2004
Illustration by Zac Crockett
Zimbabwean journalists founded SW Radio Africa in reaction to President Mugabe's harsh media restrictions on the independent press. Journalists have been protesting for a free press since the rise of the Mugabe regime in the 1980s.
Although one group of exiled Zimbabwean reporters and DJs no longer reside in their homeland, their voices are still heard by their native people. Despite current crack downs on human rights by President Robert Mugabe's regime, these free-press advocates have found a way around the heavy media restrictions through a venture in grass-roots community radio. They call it SW Radio Africa.
Broadcasting each night from a suburb in northwest London via the shortwave (SW) band, the SW Radio Africa team presents the day's events in Zimbabwe. But instead of standard radio format with sound bites and segments, the station fosters a two-way dialogue between the London staffers and their African audience, who call in first-hand observations often countering state-run media reports.
“The strength in what we do is to let people speak in their own voices,” says Mandisa Mundawarara, one of the presenters of Callback, a program where Zimbabweans tell their stories live.
SW Radio Africa broadcasts every night from 6 to 9 p.m., Zimbabwe time, 4 to 7 p.m. London time. The station's broadcasts include an hour-long newscast and the show Callback. During the day, Zimbabweans with a story or comment for Callback can call a Zimbabwean cell phone, leave a message and be contacted later by the London staff, who interviews and books them sometimes as guests.
“There is always somebody wanting to speak about what is affecting them,” Mundawarara says.
On a recent night of Callback, Mundawarara and co-host John Matinde, a well-known former DJ for Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC), accepted a wide range of calls. Matinde spoke with a college student about his ambitions to become a computer software engineer and discussed his job prospects in Zimbabwe versus working abroad. Mundawarara then took a call from a man concerned about the upcoming parliamentary elections and the need for citizens to participate. Both hosts attentively converse with the callers, asking questions to elicit a full picture.
The number of people calling Callback varies from one to seven a day. But the callers face challenges. A text message in Zimbabwe can cost 200 Zimbabwean dollars; the quality of telephone lines vary; shortwave radios haven't been sold in Zimbabwe since Ian Smith's regime fell in the early 1980s; and batteries are hard to come by.
SW Radio Africa is supported by donors, who founder and station manager Gerry Jackson declines to name. “I'm reluctant to put in print exactly who, but the only thing I have to say about it is that it is the most amazing gift of money,” Jackson says. Although the donors supply financial support, Jackson makes it clear that the station staff, not the donors, have editorial control.
The story of SW Radio Africa began in 1997, not 2001, which is the year it first aired. In the late 90s, Jackson was a ZBC DJ. She worked there 13 years, until 1997 when food riots broke out and she opened the show's phones to people at the scene. She was fired from her job and decided to open the country's first non-state radio station. She fought a legal battle up to the Zimbabwean Supreme Court, winning in 2000 when the court ruled that since the state constitution didn't forbid independent media, there was no legal reason to prohibit Jackson from operating her company, Capital FM.
She set up shop in a Harare hotel. “We did it in a hurry; people were frightened to join,” Jackson says. “We just quickly got a room; we got some equipment; I imported the transmitter from South Africa. We started just putting out some music while we were checking the signal, and six days later, they closed it down at gunpoint.”
With presidential elections looming, Jackson decided the only way to cover the elections fairly and without fear was to broadcast offshore. In November 2001, Jackson and her eight-person staff moved to Britain and started broadcasting from their present location.
The March 2002 election resulted in a landslide victory for President Mugabe and the ruling Zanu-PF party, a victory that was decried as a fraud by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). “The presidential elections were the most intense ever,” says Tererai Karimakwenda, member of the news production team. “None of us were sleeping. A lot of people were phoning and e-mailing and wanting us to contact them, so that they could tell us what was going on.”
Karimakwenda met Jackson while they were both working for ETV South Africa in the late 1990s. After the station's Harare bureau closed, Karimakwenda produced television shows and documentaries for the Catholic Church, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Amani Trust, a Zimbabwe-based non-governmental organization. It was the latter work, he says, while documenting torture victims from the Mugabe regime, when he began to sense he was being followed. Karimakwenda decided that the safest option was to go abroad and join SW Radio Africa.
In London, Karimakwenda spends his days gathering news for the nightly broadcast. Fact checking is more laborious with SW Radio Africa than with other stations because of their news-gathering method.
“These people are telling me what they're seeing, and sometimes you have to double check and make sure it's not someone setting you up,” Karimakwenda says. “There have been a few incidents, where stories came out in the local press there, and we call people there, and they're telling us things that they read. You have to make sure you're not recycling information.”
This recycling extends to other Web sites covering Zimbabwe. Karimakwenda says that sites often rewrite news from other sources and quote extensively from each other. This creates a challenge for the news team when they are verifying their sources. Additionally, the government has forbidden official sources, including police and military spokesmen, from speaking to SW Radio Africa.
Yet another challenge is maintaining a rational editorial line in the midst of chaos.
“We did a story —— there was this Valentine's Day march by the Women of Zimbabwe, (WAZA) who march regularly calling for peace and love and handing out flowers; they're regularly beaten up and thrown into jail,” Jackson says. “They got permission from police to do this march. We interviewed one of the organizers and broadcasted that just before we went on air. We heard that the court had banned the march and told them shoot-to-kill policy if they went on the street. That's not necessarily what they'll do, but this is the bullying tactic, so who's going to march?”
Maintaining the line between inciting fear and informing people means taking a rational stance to news, Jackson says.
There are other concerns, like protecting the identities of SW Radio Africa's callers and grass-roots reporters.
“One thing we're very conscious of is that the people who call us are taking the risk,” Mundawarara says. “We're here – they're the ones taking the risk there. We encourage pseudonyms, encourage them to call from cell phones, because it's harder to eavesdrop on a cell phone conversation.”
While the staff of SW Radio Africa downplay their role in comparison with those of their countrymen, their actions have earned them an exile that will last as long as the Mugabe regime, who has barred them from entry. The staff would like to return and carry on their work. For the moment, they stay in London using the shortwaves to spread the word.
In 1980, it was, ironically, shortwave radio that helped Robert Mugabe and the Zanu party win their first election; now shortwave radio is being used to rally his opposition. “It may seem ironic, but it's not only that,” Mundawarara says. “I was speaking to a man on the show the other day who said that these are the things we use to organize people we're using tried and true methods against persecution. We don't need to reinvent the wheel.”