BBC journalist reports live from Zimbabwe

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By Staff Reporter
(Click here to watch BBC report)

THE British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) defied Zimbabwe’s tight media laws this week by sending its World Affairs editor into the country, despite a ban.

John Simpson was interviewed on the BBC’s flagship News At 10 programme live from an undisclosed location in Zimbabwe on Monday – a major embarrassment for Zimbabwe’s intelligence services.

The BBC was banned from Zimbabwe in July 2001 when the then Information Minister Professor Jonathan Moyo accused it of distorting President Robert Mugabe’s speech.

Several other journalists from British papers have either been arrested or deported from the country.

Media laws require foreign journalists to seek accreditation before working in Zimbabwe, a provision which allows the country’s Information Ministry to routinely refuse foreign journalists entry into the country.

In a pre-recorded report screened before a live interview, Simpson said he had obtained confirmation that former Finance Minister Dr Simba Makoni was on the verge of breaking away from Zanu PF and forming a political party that would challenge Mugabe’s 28-year-old rule.

The clip also showed Zimbabweans facing their daily hardships, and exchanging money on the streets of Harare where inflation tops 24 000 and over 80 percent are out of employment. There were “allegations” that the country’s economic crash, Simpson reported, had been “deliberately engineered” by President Mugabe so that people are “entirely dependent on the state”.

Asked for his opinion on the “state of the Mugabe regime” by a News At 10 anchor in London, Simpson said: “In the week that I was in Harare, I found again and again people saying that 2008 was going to be the year of decision.”

In an article published in the UK Independent newspaper on Monday, Simpson said: "It's extraordinarily difficult to find anyone here who supports President Mugabe. He is loathed in the Harare slums. In Mbare, where two years ago his thugs bulldozed the shanties housing thousands of opposition supporters, small children shouted anti-Mugabe slogans as we drove past."

It was not immediately clear how many BBC journalists and employees were in Zimbabwe with Simpson, although he referred to “a colleague”. The BBC did not say when they would leave Zimbabwe either.

Simpson has reported from war zones, from Kosovo to Baghdad, and at one time survived a “friendly fire” attack by American fighter jets in Iraq. He admitted his trip to Harare had been “a bit scary at times”.

The BBC said he had left Harare, but remained in Zimbabwe, and the reporter appeared in a background showing a vegetated area, possibly a farm.

He said: “To be honest, it has been a bit scary at times, as you can see we are not in studio conditions here, we are outside Harare now. One of the most serious problems really was how many people watch the BBC in Zimbabwe, and people who are fairly moderately familiar faces on it get easily recognised.

“I was spotted three or four times, and word did go round that the BBC was there. My colleague and I had to decide whether we were going to pull out or not, we decided not to but of course we are not quite out yet.”

Mugabe's government has allowed only Arab TV network, Al Jazeera, to have a permanent presence in the country. The country only has one state-controlled TV station and several radio stations, also controlled by the government.

President Mugabe accuses the BBC and other western TV networks of bias and spreading “falsehoods” about the country.

The BBC was thrown out after Zimbabwe raised concerns with the wording of a report by Rageh Omaar, its former Africa Correspondent, about Mugabe's speech at the opening of the country’s parliament.

Professor Moyo, the then Information Minister now an independent MP, said Omaar had incorrectly paraphrased Mugabe's address.

"Your reporter clearly used the words that the president 'vowed to continue with the forcible acquisition' [of land], yet these words were nowhere in the president's speech," Prof Moyo wrote in a letter of complaint to the BBC. "There is a world of difference between 'forcible acquisition' and ‘lawful acquisition'."
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