Global Journalist

Chinese Ties Dampen Zimbabwean Industry and Media

By Gerry Jackson Posted Fri, Sep 28 2007

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Zimbabwe is a beautiful but tragic country. It has the highest inflation rate in the world at over 10,000 percent. It also has the fastest shrinking economy in the world for a country not at war, the lowest life expectancy at just 34 years for women and 37 for men, 80 percent unemployment, and a quarter of its population lives in exile. In fact, there is no end to the superlatives that describe the situation.

This monumental collapse of a once-thriving country has taken place under the rule of Robert Mugabe, the 83-year-old man who has been the country's only leader since its independence from Britain in 1980. The 600 tortured and recently hospitalized political activists so far this year confirm the extent of the government's atrocities toward political criticism and opposition.

But you cannot damage a country like this alone; you need to have some good friends to help you along the way. Mugabe has had a well-reported “Look East” policy, which involves luring investment from countries in the Eastern hemisphere with successful economies. China is the major target of its policy, although attempts have also been made to attract Malaysian, Indonesian, Singaporean, Vietnamese and Iranian investors.

Direct Chinese investment has increased from $5 million a year in 1991 to more than $6 billion in 2007. China wants Africa's resources without asking too many questions about human rights.

China currently funds Mugabe's catastrophic land reform program placing the country on the edge of mass starvation. The offer is to hand over some of the arable farmland confiscated from white owners to Chinese management. These farms, originally designated for landless blacks, have the tendency of being handed out to government ministers and other regime loyalists, who have failed to make them productive. Zimbabwe has promised its tobacco crop to China for the reward of the reform.

“Zimbabwe is ultimately the loser,” political commentator John Makumbe says. “The country has to forgo future foreign currency earnings because of this barter system.”

Vast tracts of land and mineral rights for platinum and gold were given to China, and nobody knows what else will be given next. Zimbabwe also provides an excellent market for cheap Chinese products. Zimbabweans coined the term “zhing-zhong” to describe the goods that are swamping the country and helping to destroy local manufacturing. We have “zhing-zhong” buses whose windows won't open in the searing heat, and “zhing-zhong” jamming equipment to get rid of annoying radio stations.

As a broadcaster in Zimbabwe, I have fallen foul of the state on various occasions. I was fired from the state broadcasting company when I opened its phone lines during the first food riots in 1997. I challenged the government's broadcasting monopoly in the Supreme Court and won the right to open the country's first independent radio station, SW Radio Africa, in 2000. However, Mugabe used his power to overturn the ruling and closed the station after agents of his Central Intelligence Organisation blew up the station's Harare transmitter – clearly showing that the rule of law did not exist.

As the country's crisis escalated, the only alternative was to set up offshore, shortwave broadcasting back to Zimbabwe. Setting the broadcast in Africa would have made more sense, but Mugabe has friends all around southern Africa, leaving us no choice but to base it in Britain.

In December 2001, we started broadcasting in Zimbabwe. Everything worked well until early 2005 when Chinese radio-jamming equipment “zhing-zhonged” our signal by making an extremely irritating noise and interrupting the transmission.

The United Nations has articles of responsibility for states that commit internationally wrongful acts, and jamming a broadcast signal is against international law.

Jamming continues to this day. It is not a cheap exercise, however, and it draws a huge amount of power in a country that already suffers a serious power crisis,in which most homes do not have electricity for hours at a time every day. Serious money goes into ensuring there is no independent news in Zimbabwe.

“Thanks to support from China, which exports its repressive expertise, Robert Mugabe's government has yet again just proved itself to be one of the most active predators of press freedom,” Reporters Without Borders stated.

We have tried alternatives, such as using multiple frequencies and sending SMS text messages of our news headlines to offer free services to our subscribers in Zimbabwe. But it is difficult and expensive to fight for press freedom when Mugabe prints all the money, acquires his military hardware from China, and is regarded as one of Africa's most repressive rulers.

I attended an international press conference a couple of years ago and expressed my concerns to a Chinese journalist. I asked him what we should do. His reply was simple and fairly bleak: “Learn Chinese.”