ZIMBABWE-MEDIA: Strikers Call For Fair Coverage

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Pedzisai Ruhanya

HARARE, Aug 28 1996 (IPS) - A large crowd of striking civil servants moved around the centre of the Zimbawean capital Wednesday protesting against the official media’s blackout on the workers’ side of the story.

Targetting the Ministry of Information and the Herald House which is home to the operations of the largest official daily newspaper here, ‘The Herald’, the strikers carried placards and chanted slogans demanding fair coverage of the eight-day-old strike which has paralysed the civil service.

Although there have been no official reports, some Zimbabwean journalists interviewed Wednesday confirmed that they have been ordered by the Ministry of Information to only report statements from the government on the strike.

“Every Zimbabwean has equal rights to information. Down with the ministry’s archaic decision,” an irate civil servant told IPS Wednesday.

And one picket read: “Minister of Information stop press muzzle.”

Earlier in the day, a group of civil servants chased away vendors of ‘The Herald’, who were trying to sell the paper at Africa Unity Square in the downtown area of the capital. The strikers gather at the Square every morning.

“I cannot buy lies. They are insulting us everyday. We are tired of government propaganda from this paper,” said one of the protestors.

The Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC), the sole broadcast medium in the country, also only carries authorised stories of the civil servants’ strike.

According to the strikers this is unfair.

“We pay license fees to ZBC and they should tell the whole nation about why we are on strike. Instead they are ignoring our cause only to tell us that we are fired,” complained one of the strikers.

To keep in touch with other striking civil servants nationwide, the Civil Service Negotiating Committee which is spearheading the strike, has proposed a means to counter the media’s information blackout.

Committee member Felix Mafa told the gathering Wednesday that ‘The Worker’, a monthly paper owned by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), could be turned into a daily to counter government propaganda.

In a press release Tuesday on the strike, the ZCTU said that its Emergency General Council meeting had noted the denial by government “on the civil servants access to an information network for its members and the public through the state-owned press”.

“I urge all civil servants to stop buying ‘The Herald’. Government papers are destroying our legitimate cause. Our paper will represent all views without favour,” Mafa said.

Workers immediately began to contribute money towards the production of the daily paper, and hospital workers handed over 2000 Zimbabwean dollars (200 U.S. dollars) to the Civil Service Negotiating Committee.

The Zimbabwean media also did not carry the ZCTU’s ultimatum which calls on government to settle the labour dispute within 72 hours.

In its release, the ZCTU: “… gives government, as a major player, 72 hours to come out with a solution and if that is not met then the ZCTU will consider calling for a national strike in an effort to force government to come up with a resolution.”

The statement, signed by ZCTU president Gibson Sibanda, also calls upon government to lift the information freeze imposed on the civil servants, and to end the arrests, intimidation and victimisation of the striking civil servants and their sympathisers.

Zimbabwe’s two privately-owned financial weeklies – ‘The Independent’ and ‘The Financial Gazette’ – have yet to carry stories about the strike, but the workers hope that they will come to their rescue this week.

“We are confident that the two (papers)will put our problems in a clear position. At the moment, these are our hope,” Aaron Sibanda told IPS.

The nationwide strike is the first by the entire public service since independence in 1980. The civil servants are protesting against salary increase of up to 10 percent recently awarded by government and are asking for a 60 percent pay rise.

Some 7000 civil servants have started to receive letters of dismissals from the civil service which employs more than 160,000.

But the workers stand their ground and vow to continue, despite government’s statement, announced on ZBC and reported in the media, that those who did not return to work by last Friday were fired.

“We were not hired on the television and we cannot be fired on the television. We are prepared to go on with the strike until our grievances are justly addressed,” Mafa said.