Zimbabwe Report
Hounded out by Mugabe's thugs
The Sunday Times
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Journalist Brian Latham tells how he was forced to leave his family and homeland last week as Zimbabwe's dictator tightens the screw
Last Monday, Valentine's Day, started like any other with a scan through the Zimbabwean newspapers. I was first into the Harare office I shared with two other freelance journalists and a photographer. The calm of the morning was shattered just before 10 a.m. With three business stories to write for Bloomberg news and in a hurry to get my stories onto the wire, I hadn't noticed the office messenger open the door. a voice behind me told me to stop writing. I turned round to find three men in plain clothes had entered the office. The leader told me he was "from the police" and wanted to question me and my colleagues, angus Shaw and Jan Raath. "Call them and tell them to come to the office," the man ordered. "We have had a tip-off that you are running a spy ring." They spent an hour sifting through private papers, listening to our phone calls and inspecting photographs. Only the insistence of our lawyer that no law had been broken persuaded them to leave. That was the first and easier of two raids that day. We were warned, as they left, that we could expect a visit from Zimbabwe's notorious and feared "law and order" branch, which operates out of Harare central police station, usually with scant respect for law or order.
Half an hour later they arrived, ordering us to stop work. This time we were accused of being "illegal journalists" (reporters in Zimbabwe can only work with the permission of the government's media commission). Protest from Beatrice Mtetwa, our lawyer, and ourselves was fruitless. The same accusation was made, menacingly, time and time again. When asked to prove their allegations, one of the policemen smiled and said: "First we get suspects, then we get facts, not the other way around." a plainclothes policewoman, all 6ft 4in of her, inspected our computer equipment. She wanted to know whether we had broadband satellite connections, presumably to back the spying allegation. But all of us worked on dial-up internet, using Zimbabwe's rickety phone system to get our stories out, often with a frustrating lack of success. Policemen from the law and order branch told us they knew our home addresses and the registration numbers of our vehicles. Their visit left our office, known by Zimbabwean journalists as the Old Gentlemen's News Co-operative, in a state of shock and bewilderment.
We had been tipped off that the police were in a vindictive mood and determined to close us down before the parliamentary election next month. already mired in controversy and allegations of violence and vote rigging, the elections are set to pit President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF against the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. I had hoped to see the election through. Instead, I climbed on to my motorcycle and, at high speed, went to get my passport, which had been hidden in a friend's house for months because of the ever-present threat of closure, torture and harassment. another friend took me across the border into neighbouring South africa, from where I could find a flight to London. It wasn't a difficult decision to make. after more than a decade of reporting from Zimbabwe we were all more than aware of how often wrongful, illegal arrests are made, how frequently confessions are extracted under torture, how corrupt court officials think little of keeping people in disease and lice-ridden cells for months on end.
So I fled, but it was only after crossing into South africa that what I had lost seeped into my consciousness. I had left my children behind, two of them in school and now without a father or anyone to pay their fees. I had lost my home and possessions because I crossed into South africa in just the clothes I was wearing. and I'd lost the country I was born in. My colleagues, angus and Jan, also fled. We are free but sadly bereft. None of us knows when we will see our families again, lie in our own beds or have dinner with friends. all the charges are spurious. We have been accused of spying for foreign powers and of publishing information "likely to be detrimental to the state". But all we have ever done is let the world know what was happening in Zimbabwe, and it has cost us everything. Driving south to South africa down the wooded escarpment into Zimbabwe's broiling lowveld, we passed the devastation left by Mugabe's so-called land reform, home to thousands of unemployed people waiting for better times. almost my entire life has been spent in Zimbabwe. Once, I used to return light-hearted after working in other african countries. It was like Switzerland; everything worked and everywhere was clean. That has all changed. Litter festoons the cracked, broken streets and little works. Worst of all, the people are beaten and bloodied. I had reported from anywhere in the world in order to earn a living but, like most people, I liked working in my own country, among my own people - people who laughed at the same things I did and shook their heads in horror at the things that horrified me. I'll miss them.
