SW Radio Closed Down Defense: Dissembling Zimbabwean Democracy Scare

On the night of 13 August 2014, I heeded to a radio broadcast that dangled me in emotions of faith and mistrust. Coincidentally, this broadcast was only a few hours after the monolithic Zimbabwean society occasioned in remembrance of historied gallantry portrayed by the country's sons and daughters who took oath to liberate the country from the jaws of colonial mastery. We remembered our heroes and dined jubilantly with pride, thankful to the new aristocracy awarded to us.

Guests who graced stand for Question and Answer on the new Zimbabwean radio station, ZiFM, new for it is less than 3years of age on the airwaves, comprised of a representative from ZACRAS, one Tichaona Zindoga from the Herald's principal political editorial desk, and interestingly, a character based in the United Kingdom whom I have keen denoting as Comrade Gerry Jackson. Jackson is no ordinary human creation. Jackson is a fighter- a fighter for 'democracy' if you please to put it thus. Jackson corresponds a valet de chamber of distinction, once upon a time preferred.

The latter is the founder of the radio station that is currently battling for a breath. It is a radio station choking from strangles ordained from the same kitchen where its own corn pudding has for long been prepared and served in the hope for it to grow into a globally reckoned 'democracy paladin'. International in spite of the truth that all focus is on Zimbabwe only. Now, to say comrade Jackson was molded into being a Zimbabwean democracy combatant beseem.

Jackson's projectiles included a sponsored pirate radio station called SW Radio. Yes, it shut down. I am aware most of us would recall. Its masters recalled it.

SW Radio, which Tichaona Zindoga reminded the world was clandestinely opened 19 December 2001, just two days before the signing of the uncommon ZDERA, which brought with it economic sanctions against the country of Zimbabwe by the West, was closed on the 10th of August 2014 in a move that arouses questions of suspicion on its agenda of existence.

“It was a U.S. State [Department] agency that gave us seed money to break what was then a stranglehold on radio. Although, technically, the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) is a national asset, it is run by Zanu PF,” Jackson was reported as saying

Comrade Jackson extravagantly defensed against the closure of SW Radio recklessly raising flair of a fake democracy scare in Zimbabwe. She believed the absence of SW Radio would defraud of a democratic space as no other channel in Zimbabwean broadcasting terms has the same virility of begetting a free democratic society as this very one sponsored by the United Kingdom.

Momentarily unaware she was being live broadcasted to revere back to the Lords of London in dear supplication for compassion exuding her poignancy, Jackson ignorantly stuck to an assertion that the country lacked what she believed was 'freedom of speech'. In a situation of sheer confusedness, would a person not ideate the move to eliminate SW Radio were connives of the Ministry of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services or alternatively, Zanu PF's schemata.

Comrade Jackson would remonstrant. I am most positive. The world would be torn into a jape and laugh. Jackson would have wished to call shots at the country's media pluralism premising arguments on the ownership of ZIFM, an enterprise of the country's deputy Minister of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services.

Purportedly gauged to cover 18% of the Zimbabwean population in its broadcasting, SW Radio's withdrawal from broadcasting is believed to be a Heavy-Blow and a compromise to the democratic space in Zimbabwe, as according to the founder.

Interestingly, the discussion opened and tabled persuasions to the radio station's mischance. It is heave-ho, it emerged. A rapture of financial privilege, an end to the donor-ship tenure. That in good sense, discriminates Zimbabwe from involvement and significance in the whole debacle. And Zindoga would maintain it is nothing but an institutional crisis that should be stomached in corporate dictums. The world spared. Zimbabwe spared.

This World Is Joint. Hills Have Eyes.

What is here enthralling is that the route in which the civic society, and the Movement for Democratic Change as an umbrella organization would take was long prognosticated much to the credence of the United Kingdom's Department for International Development, known better with the acronym 'DFID', the US government and the European Union as well.

Stephen Chan, in his Africa Report article named 'The future of democracy in Zimbabwe', made a more intellectual and naturalisticdiscernment of the Zimbabwean donor-civic society-democracy situation. The article posted on the 29th of October 2013 at a minute to two o'clock noontime introduced itself to the public with the following big question.

“Is democracy dead in Zimbabwe? It is alive and well in the sense that it has a close relationship with Russian, Malaysian and Singaporean democracies, in which opposition parties are displayed as evidence that political pluralism is alive and well – except that the opposition parties never come to power”.

Its greeting line was stoic and bold, it insisted “MDC and civic activists will have to reinvent themselves as the West shifts its interest to other regions”. By any standards of universal nomenclature, the name 'Stephen Chan' does not relate to any Zimbabwean blood ties. He is not one of us. Neither does it sound any closer to known sobriquets.

He makes more predictions and dares more lands, more fields. He stabs with more serious statements as, “One serious problem in Zimbabwean politics has been the possibility of becoming 'rich' by becoming 'democratic.' To be a funded democrat or civic activist has been to become a professional person”

Although most of our people can shudder a trifle, and seek to veil honesty. Most that have been awarded with perfunctory 'democracy' honours like our local Beatrice Mthethwa, Morgan Tsvangirai, and okay, Comrade Gerry Jackson will only seek a hidden place to nod in affirmation. Chan agrees fighting for 'democracy' has become nothing but a discontented vocation.

Failed delegacy.
Jackson is interesting and fragile. She would become a tasteless civil servant who is torpid and works less effortful, SW Radio sponsors would think. She targeted ordinary Zimbabweans, mostly our kins, captivating nought under banners that spread and exsertedfar to advocacy on humanitarian 'aid'. She remains self-sequestrated in her crisis in Zimbabwe belief where she conceive donor fatigue was resultant of the 'length of the crisis in Zimbabwe'.

The European Union is back to mother wit.
Displaying clear conceptual bankruptcy, Jackson however told the BBC that the "massive disarray" in the opposition MDC, had contributed to "donor fatigue" while moves by the European Union to re-engage Mugabe had not helped. Twist and turns are inevitable where the foundation of a concept in non-concrete. Did not one Rashid Pelpuo, Ghana's minister of state for public-private partnerships, also warn the world that even trade agreements are always tied to "aid, technical and political assistance."

(Zisunko Ndlovu is a social development practitioner and political writer from Binga, Zimbabwe. Send comments and suggestions to:[email protected] )

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