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Interview Part 4: Prof Moyo and Thornycroft
SW Radio Africa's Violet Gonda talks with Professor Jonathan Moyo, Journalist Peta Thornycroft for the programme, Hot Seat. This is the fourth and final part of the interview:
Broadcast on Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Violet Gonda: Welcome to the concluding debate with former Information Minister Jonathan Moyo and Foreign Correspondent Peta Thornycroft. In the final segment we discuss Zimbabwe’s Citizenship law, a follow up on Zanu PF since their Goromonzi Conference and opportunities for pposition groups. We first discuss recent controversial moves by the authorities to strip newspaper publisher Trevor Ncube of his Zimbabwean citizenship. I asked Professor Moyo if there’s a new push to finish off the private media as most suspect.
Jonathan Moyo: Well, I think clearly for quite some time now Trevor Ncube has been seen by certain sections of the ruling elite as public enemy number one and some of the stories that have been coming out of the Zimbabwean Independent of late are not the kind that would please the same sections, especially those dealing with such scandals as the ZISCO saga, diamonds and many other things including the ownership of newspapers by the Central Intelligence Organisation. So they were targeted. But, I think there is a bigger story here which is less about Trevor Ncube and more about the primitive citizenship laws that we have. And, the fact that, you know, over the last five years, but basically over the last 27 years, we’ve been institutionalising a personalised approach to legislation. In order to dispossess people of assets you come up with laws that deny them of their citizenship. In order to deny people’s voting rights; you come up with funny citizenship .
I can tell you that what is striking about the Trevor Ncube issue is that there is absolutely no doubt that he was born in this country, raised, grew up in this country and therefore he is a Zimbabwean. There is no question about that. And, the fact of who is parents are really is irrelevant, as irrelevant as the fact of where he was born. It can’t be Trevor Ncube’s problem. There is no human being who decides where they will be born and by whom. Therefore, place of birth and parentage, therefore descent, are matters which really should be outside legislation. These are matters of God. It us God who decides where you are born, God who decides by whom in terms of parents and it is an overzealous Government which then seeks to regulate that, creates problems. We can only regulate to the extent of naturalisation; where the person who was born by whoever parents decides that country X shall be his or her home and wants the citizenship of that country.
Zimbabwe is one of the most backward countries when it comes to citizenship law. And, this is a problem we should understand not only in terms of what they are trying to do in the Trevor Ncube case but generally across the board. What is worse here in Zimbabwe, this is really a strange law because the majority of people in the political class are not Zimbabwean by descent. Many, and perhaps even all of them were born in Zimbabwe, but their parents are from Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa. And, you wonder, ‘why mess around’? And, we know for a fact that most of these people, because they are part of the ruling elite, they have not renounced in the manner they are asking Trevor to do.
Trevor Ncube, we all know, its common cause, he renounced his Zambian citizenship on grounds that he is potentially capable of assuming it. He renounced that. Only that they say he didn’t do, was to then go to Zambia and say because he is potentially capable, or, because he has that entitlement, he should renounce it. Many, many, I repeat, Zimbabweans among the ruling elite are in that category, many! And, if they do not handle the Trevor Ncube issue properly, they are going to be embarrassed because they will then force the rest of us to name names,
Peta Thornycroft: Good!
Violet: Can you name some of them right now? (Laughs)
Moyo: Well, as we have said before, we don’t want to threaten anybody but we do want to promise that if they continue disturbing public life in this manner then all hell will have to break loose. Because Zimbabwe is one of those countries with an amazing presence of regional nationalities within the ruling elite.
Violet: And you know I did speak with Trevor Ncube, and he said, as you mentioned, that he had renounced his Zambian citizenship and now he’s been stripped of his Zimbabwean citizenship, meaning that he is now stateless. Now he also said this whole affair is intimidation harassment, and harassment meant to terrify him and soften him. Now Peta, what are your views on this whole citizenship issue?
Peta: Well I, just on Trevor Ncube, I interviewed him for the Sunday Independent in Johannesburg and he told me that there’s always a smaller and a bigger picture in Zimbabwe. And, the smaller picture here, which confused him, was that when he was editing The Independent and The Independent was exposing the Roger Boka scandal, Tobaiwa Mudede’s name cropped up in some of the stories, so when he needed a passport in 2002 urgently, he asked Bornwell Chakaodza who knew Mudede’s PA to go with him to see if that would help him get one quickly because he knew he had a bad reputation with Mudede who’d actually said that Trevor Ncube had ruined his career.
When they got to the office, this is what Ncube told me, the PA said to Chakaodza ‘come in on your own and bring Ncube’s passport with you’. And he went in there, and when he got into the office, Mudede fumed at him and threw Trevor’s passport across the office and said ‘tell him to go outside and queue with the rest of them’. So, what Trevor Ncube was saying is exactly what Jonathan is saying; the way it’s been personalised. So, I’m not sure and Trevor Ncube is not sure himself.
Of course, the bigger picture is the harassment of Ncube, the harassment of the media because you cannot be a media owner if you’re not a Zimbabwean.
But, I’m quite sure, and he said so on the record to me that he would step aside, he has a very good team in The Independent who would carry on without him. After all, his main business is these days in South Africa. But the agony for Trevor Ncube as there was agony for Anti-Apartheid activists in South Africa, was that they then had to chose if they’d had their passport withdrawn and they wanted to travel, they would be allowed to leave South Africa permanently on what was called an Exit Permit, and that meant that they could never return to South Africa. And, I don’t know whether the Zimbabweans can get that sort of thing up and going efficiently because they’re not terribly efficient at the airports, despite their electronic scanning. But, clearly, that’s an agonising decision for any person who loves his nationality as much as Trevor Ncube loves his.
But for me, it’s so reminiscent of what happened under Apartheid, and I’m quite sure that when they first seized Trevor’s passport, and I think Raymond Majongwe and Paul Themba Nyathi’s a year ago, there was an enormous outcry over it and clearly the echoes of the Apartheid era were there for everyone especially in the ANC who remember that. So Trevor went to court and he won and then it all sort of faded away. Now, whether they are coming back at it another way because they have long mean vicious memories, I don’t know, but nobody can be sure of their citizenship.
I don’t know whether I’ve just got a very long built-in paranoia about immigration anywhere in the world but every time I get to Immigration in Zimbabwe I wonder if someone’s going to rip my passport off me and that is a paranoia that spreads over. It used to happen in South Africa, when I was travelling in and out of South Africa and I wasn’t a South African citizen ever, and I just used to think ‘oh God, they’re going to make me a prohibited immigrant’. You know, I knew so many people; so many South Africans; who’d had their passports… or, South Africans who were permanent residents and got to the borders of South Africa to go and see their family and found they were on the list. There was a list of people at all the border posts of people who weren’t allowed to go in.
We’re in that; we’re in the Apartheid era situation, in fact, it was more clear cut in South Africa than it is now, because one just doesn’t know now, from what Trevor Ncube told us, whether or not this is Mudede or this was some kind of policy taken either amongst the Securocrats, or, in Cabinet.
Violet: What would you say Professor Moyo because this act was actually crafted or amended in 2002 just before the Presidential Elections, wasn’t it?
Moyo: Yes.
Violet: What would you know about this?
Moyo: Yes, I mean, clearly, it is about the law and it’s about a vindictive law that is targeting segments of the population. And that’s why, yes, there is a smaller picture which is focusing on Trevor captured by the anecdote that Peta has shared with us. And where the intention clearly is not just to intimidate but also to embarrass, release certain details about an individual so that you question his patriotism and you say ‘why are you sounding more Zimbabwean than Zimbabweans, Zimbabweans are good people, they are not like you. They don’t query, question or confront the system’ that is the intention.
But, this is a law which has to be seen in the context of the recent politics around land reform with the former farm owners who were white and who are being pushed back to Britain, or to Australia and wherever people think they must go, and former farm workers coming from the regional neighbouring countries and whose votes were seen both in 2000 and 2002 as a big problem.
But there is a lot of shopping around now and this is what happens where you have a bad law and selective application of the law. Everyone in Office who thinks that somebody in the media or in civil society or elsewhere is trying to be too big for their boots; find a law to use to deal with that individual. It is for this reason that at the end of the day this is just a waste of time because we know that Zimbabwe will, like other progressive countries, very soon, in a matter of a few years, embrace dual citizenship. This law is going to fly out.
Even if we don’t have a constitutional overhaul this is one of the laws that is going to fly out for many reasons. Including the fact that now, as we speak, we have a lot of people, Zimbabweans in the Diaspora, with children born in the Diaspora who are entitled to citizenship there where they are born at the place of birth. But, who also will be entitled to the citizenship by descent , and we would have to recognise this. And, the Trevor case might, at the end of the day, with some inconvenience to Ncube, help us focus on this matter and I think with a result that might solve a problem for many.
Violet: You know I have a few minutes left and I want to talk briefly about Zanu PF and MDC. In the first segment of this teleconference we heard what Mugabe and his Zanu PF are doing to harmonise Presidential and Parliamentary elections. Now, what have you uncovered about Zanu PF post their conference in Goromonzi?
Moyo: From my understanding, the kitchen, the Zanu PF kitchen; Kitchen Cabinet working, making and queen-making is taking place and is very, very hot right now. And, I think, from what I hear, there is a growing meeting of minds among the various factions on the question of Mugabe’s succession. There are growing calls for elections to be held when due next year in March 2008. And interestingly, because Joyce Mujuru seems to be the target of the resolution, many of those who supported her are reacting in ways that are designed to ensure that that resolution does not see the light of day especially now that the matter has been taken back to Provinces. And, in Provinces, the political game in Zanu PF can be very, very uncertain.
Violet: And, it’s been reported that Joyce Mujuru’s husband, Solomon, has been campaigning in the provinces for the provinces to reject Mugabe’s idea. Have you heard anything about this?
Moyo: Well, but that campaign was visible in Goromonzi itself. I mean, one of the major, if not the reason itself why they did not come up with a single resolution and they had to postpone the matter is because the Mujuru camp was campaigning vigorously and they were the host province.
Violet: So, Peta, can you give a reflection of what you see is the way forward for the opposition in Zimbabwe, and the opportunities that the infighting or factionalism within Zanu PF creates for the opposition.
Peta: Well, there are opportunities aren’t there. I mean, there were opportunities in Murambatsvina and they didn’t grab them. I thought, I read Arthur Mutambara’s Annual Statement a couple of days ago. I thought it was most intelligent and raised many questions about strategy and tactics that the opposition is going to face. I’m not saying opposition MDC, I’m just saying the broad opposition to Zanu PF. I’ll just hold my breath and see if they translate any of that into any action, or lobbying or clever ploys to do.
You know, Mutambara, raises this question; are they really going to commit suicide? I mean they need ten MP’s not to go to Parliament one particular day when they have to get a two-thirds majority to change the constitution to allow any change to the elections. Are they working on it? I don’t know, maybe it’s too early in the year, maybe they are working quietly, I haven’t heard anything of that nature so far, I’ve read some stuff but certainly, Mutambara raised really interesting possibilities for debate and obviously what he is talking about is some kind of coalition of all opposition parties, opposition groups, civil society etc, etc, and if they have the means with which to do this. Maybe something will happen, but you know, I’m a bit of a pessimist about the opposition. We’ve seen it, where it was in 2000 and it’s been downhill all the way since then.
Violet: And finally, Professor Moyo, considering that the trend of late seems to be showing that the MDC is losing the electoral mandate and leading to voter apathy, do you believe that the MDC has the potential to wrest power from Zanu PF, and, if you think so, how?
Moyo: I don’t think so and therefore I don’t have to answer how. But, I do think that, Zanu PF, yes, I see the point raised by Peta, it will not commit suicide, but it will definitely have to reinvent itself. Zanu PF is now going through the same political experiences we have seen in Zambia, in Malawi in Kenya and in other countries where a ruling dictator, if you will, is clearly on his way out, has become a lame duck President.
And, you have people whose interest go ten, twenty, thirty years and they see that the party, the ruling party is a name and that there are more important goals that tie them with other elements in society. So, it will not be, if the Zanu PF MP’s block the two year extension proposal in Parliament, they will definitely not be committing suicide, they will be trying to give themselves a new lease of life. And that is why this is very important. And, it’s not about the MDC or other parties banking on Zanu PF.
It is about all of us as a nation looking at the structures of this one party that has been in power for 27 years and saying to ourselves ‘can they continue?’ And the answer on the wall is ‘no they can’t’. Even Kaunda could not continue beyond 27 years. In order for a founding ruling party to continue for a longer period, it needs to be flexible, it needs to be dynamic, it needs to embrace change. That’s what KANU or now Chama Cha Mapinduzi in Tanzania did, and it’s the only time when a ruling party can survive. Zanu PF has been so stiff and the only outcome will be to break; not to kill political careers of Zanu PF people, but to renew them.
Violet Gonda: Professor Moyo and Peta Thornycroft thank you very much for taking part in the teleconference.
Jonathan Moyo: Thank you and you’re welcome
Peta Thornycroft: Thank you Violet
Audio interview can be heard on SW Radio Africa’s Hot Seat programme. Comments and feedback can be emailed to violet@swradioafrica.com
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