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Jen Redshaw

As an election looms, the internet is proving a key avenue for free speech

Starved of free speech and tired of relentless government propaganda, Zimbabweans are turning to the internet for real news about their country as it heads towards controversial elections next month.

In a country where the few remaining independent newspapers have to censor themselves and where criticising President Robert Mugabe in a bus on your way to work can get you arrested - as two  Harare residents discovered in December - the Web is one of the few places where Zimbabweans can express themselves freely.

In the past four years, a host of websites  highly critical of the Mugabe government have sprung up.

'We will ... record the atrocities of the ruling oligarchy without fear,' said the founders of www.newzimbabwe.com, one of the most popular sites.

With a parliamentary election  set for March 31, online discussions are turning urgent.

Activists on another site, www.zvakwana.com - zvakwana means 'enough is enough' in the local Shona language - urge supporters to spoil ballot papers as 'an active way of saying you believe the electoral process is cock-eyed'.

'The only solution left is that the entire Zanu-PF [ruling party] be put in jail for the next 25 years,' irate subscriber Mampofu writes in the group's latest e-mail newsletter, titled Stir It Up.

Few in Harare have any doubts that the ruling party will win this election, which the opposition says will be rigged to prolong Mr Mugabe's 25-year hold on power.

But hope for change has not completely died - not on the Web, at least.

Another site, www.e-zim.com, is running a poll asking whether 'Mugabe and his cronies will be defeated by the people in the end'. Last week 77 per cent of respondents voted yes.

Zimbabweans are hungry for regular doses of independent news. The country's best-selling Daily News was shut down under stringent press laws in 2003, depriving many of an alternative source of information to the official Herald newspaper.

However, www.zwnews.com e-mails subscribers a free selection of international news articles on Zimbabwe each morning. Many reports come from South Africa-based  www.zimonline.co.za, which claims to have a network of 60 correspondents operating clandestinely inside Zimbabwe.

Not surprisingly, Mr Mugabe's government views most online activity as a threat. Fourteen people were arrested in an internet cafe in 2003 for allegedly sending e-mails calling for the president to step down.

In a possible sign of an impending crackdown, the government last year proposed changes to regulations that would oblige all internet service providers to block e-mails considered 'prejudicial to the state'.

But for the opposition, the internet and e-mail are vital campaign tools, especially now that traditional campaigning methods are proving difficult.

Last week police in  Bulawayo announced they would not allow the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change to conduct door-to-door campaigns because people would 'feel threatened', the Chronicle newspaper said. The report came a day after the ruling party announced it had been given 2,500 bicycles for its own door-to-door campaign.

With no access to national television or radio broadcasts, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai distributes his weekly  message to supporters via e-mail and the party's website, www.mdczimbabwe.org. Party press officers  forward news alerts to a network of correspondents around the world.

'We are forced to rely on the internet and e-mail because state newspapers are a monopoly of the ruling party,' opposition spokesman Paul Themba Nyathi said.

'But [with] e-mail and the internet, the government can't do much about it.'

Meanwhile three of the few remaining foreign correspondents in Zimbabwe have fled the country after threats from the authorities. Jan Raath of Britain's The Times, Brian Latham of the Bloomberg agency and Angus Shaw of Associated Press were believed to have slipped out of the country on Friday after the government accused them of spying and possessing communications equipment 'prejudicial to the state', sources said.



Voters find online  alternatives to    Mugabe's doctrine