Talks reduce journalists to speculators

Save for the few leaks meant to serve the cause of any one of the three parties in the negotiations, most journalists are relying on third party accounts to keep a nation that is thirsty for regular updates informed about the deliberations.
Some of the sources are said to be not even anywhere near the venues of the talks but have all the same emerged as the conveyers of drips and drabs of scanty details about the talks finding their way into the public domain.
The media blockade has alarmed journalists and other media stakeholders who feel short-changed by the three political parties signatories to the GPA.
The media is viewed as having the greatest chance of helping bridge the gap and repair the damage that was caused by 10 years of political in-fighting between the main political actors in the country.
The blackout has changed this view. It would appear that ZANU-PF and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) formations — the protagonists in the Zimbabwe crisis — see the media as an impediment to whatever agenda they have.
Analysts pointed out this week that even during the Lancaster House talks between 1978 and 1979 that brought independence from the former colonial master, Britain, all the political parties involved in the deliberations held press briefings and conferences to keep their people back at home appraised of the developments.
These included leaders from the Patriotic Front, among them President Robert Mugabe, the late Edison Zvobgo, the late Joshua Nkomo, Abel Mu-zorewa of the UANC and even rebel leader, the late Ian Smith, who were all too eager to tell the whole world their side of the story.
Questions are abound what is unique about the current Southern African Development Com-munity (SADC) brokered talks intended at finding a permanent solution to the Zimbabwe crisis.
Welshman Ncube, the secretary general of the MDC-M who is one of the party’s chief negotiators, refused to disclose in an interview with London-based SW Radio what has been agreed on between ZANU-PF and the two MDC formations since the talks resumed  about a week ago.
Ncube said all the parties were barred from communicating the deliberations through the media.
“I can’t tell because there is an agreement that we should not begin to negotiate in the broader media and one of the resolutions, which have been taken by the negotiators is to simply indicate that we are talking,” said Ncube.
“The talks are continuing, we have an agreed agenda, which we need to go through without talking to each other or doing reinterpretations that might lead to further complications through the media,” he said.
Takura Zhangazha, the director of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (Zimbabwe Chapter), said the media blackout was undemocratic and in keeping with a culture of secrecy and elitism exercised by the three parties.
According to Zhangazha, the bla-ckout is also characteristic of the secretive nature of the SADC proceedings primarily because the region’s political leaders tend to protect each other.
He said the blackout on the media, seen as the fourth realm of the State, was an affront to the freedom of expression and ac-cess to information, issues enshrined in the universal bill of rights.
“The two MDC formations seem to have embraced this undemocratic trait for their own benefit because they simply do not want to allow the public or civil society knowledge, let alone input, into the nature and point of what they would call outstanding issues,” he said.
The talks to nudge ZANU-PF and the MDC factions from their entrenched positions are being held in secret locations in and around the capital.
The MDC has a catalogue of issues it wants addressed such as the reversal of senior government appointments, the swearing in of Roy Bennett as the deputy Minister of Agriculture, the cessation of persecution and prosecution of its supporters and officials and the halting of hate language in the State media.
ZANU-PF, on the other hand, wants the MDC to call for the removal of sanctions slapped on President Mugabe and more than 200 of members of his previous administration and the disbandment of pirate radio stations bro-adcasting into Zimbabwe.
South African President Jacob Zuma this week dispatched a team of former cabinet ministers — Charles Nqakula, Mac Maharaj and his international relations adviser, Lindiwe Zulu, to act as sounding board during the negotiations.
On Monday the team met with the three principals, President Mugabe, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara but details of their discussions were kept a closely guarded secret.
There is a general consensus though that Zuma, the new facilitator in the Zimbabwe crisis who replaced former South African leader, Thabo Mbeki, is showing urgency in resolving the political fallout before his country hosts the 2010 World Cup in June.
Lawton Hikwa, an information specialist at the National University of Science and Technology, noted that the fragility of the talks meant that the regional grouping and the parties involved in the dialogue must walk a tight rope to avoid rocking the boat He said the explanations that had come out so far regarding the secrecy surrounding the dialogue were that the negotiators did not want to pre-empt what they would have discussed before informing the three principals about the common conjecture reached.
“My thinking is: if there is to be any briefings to the Press, this will be done once the principals have agreed and or disagreed with recommendations of the negotiators.
“The Zimbabwe situation is still too delicate to consider as a matter easy to solve,” he said.
Hikwa said there were perceptions that needed to be managed, for instance, whether a real and true win-win conclusion was conceivable and achievable.
“That in my view is the peculiarity of the matter,” he said.
But Zhangazha differed. He said the secrecy essentially meant that there was limited scope for the Zimbabwean public to input into whatever was being discussed as was the case last year during the frenetic negotiations under Mbeki.
“This secrecy will then lead to flawed and unpopular outcomes of this negotiating process, which SADC will defend as necessary compromise, while the MDC and ZANU-PF will simply ram the resolutions down the throats of their supporters and the public as necessary compromises. The parties will also claim that the outcome of these negotiations resulted in opportunities, which should not be undermined within the context of a transition,” said Zhangazha.
He added that the current media blackout was indicative of a culture that the political parties seem to have embraced of continued suppression of freedom of the media as well as State restrictions of access to information in their inclusive government.
“It means also that given this culture, there is more than greater likelihood that after the negotiations the media environment in the country will not change for the better sooner, and that once again, all claims of allowing media freedom by the political parties will be token, a facade, and at best incremental in outcome.”