Wendy Willems

Remnants of Empire? British media

reporting on Zimbabwe

Article (Accepted version)

(Refereed)

Original citation:

Willems, Wendy (2005) Remnants of Empire? British media reporting on Zimbabwe. Westminster papers in
communication and culture . pp. 91-108. ISSN 1744-6708

© 2005 University of Westminster

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Remnants of Empire? British media reporting on Zimbabwe

Wendy Willems
Centre for Media and Film Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of
London

Original citation:
Willems, W. (2005). Remnants of Empire? British media reporting on Zimbabwe. In:
Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, Special Issue on Zimbabwe, October 2005:
91-108.

Abstract
This article explores the various ways in which the British media, and the broadsheets The
Guardian and The Daily Telegraph in particular, have framed and represented events in
Zimbabwe since 2000. It argues that representations of the situation in Zimbabwe have been
largely struggles over meanings and definitions of the ‘crisis’ in the country. The extensive
media coverage of Zimbabwe in the British media generated a significant amount of debate and
this article demonstrates how the Zimbabwean government drew upon international media
representations in order to define the situation in Zimbabwe as a struggle against imperialism.

Keywords: media coverage, Zimbabwe, British media, foreign news, discourse, representation,
post-colonial studies

In his book The invention of Africa, Valentin Mudimbe (1988) examines how in earlier days
navigators, traders, travellers, philosophers and anthropologists played an important role in
shaping the modern meaning of Africa and of being African. Whereas Mudimbe stresses the
crucial role of anthropology in representing Africa and Africans in the nineteenth century,
Askew (2002: 1) argues that in the current age it is essentially the media who is doing the job
formerly belonging to anthropologists. News accounts shape in decisive ways people’s
perceptions of the world.
Since early 2000, Zimbabwe has occupied an important place in both broadcast and print
media in Britain. Foreign representations of Zimbabwe, and British media coverage in particular,
have been sharply criticised by the Zimbabwean government. Public debates, both at home and
abroad, on the situation in Zimbabwe often were about representations of the crisis. The
Zimbabwean government became increasingly concerned about how the country was covered in
the international media and made various attempts to expel resident foreign correspondents and
to ban other reporters from visiting Zimbabwe.
This paper discusses how Zimbabwe was represented in the British media, why it
attracted so much attention and what responses British media coverage provoked from the
Zimbabwean government. The analysis will emphasise the way in which Zimbabwe was
reported in two British newspapers, namely The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph. 1 It aims to
give an impression of the nature of media reporting on Zimbabwe in Britain rather than to offer
an exhaustive account, and will hence serve as a starting point for further investigations.2 In
order to gain insights into the practices of news-making and journalism, I also conducted semi-

1
structured interviews with foreign correspondents from various British newspapers and foreign
news agencies. Although news is often portrayed as a reflection of reality, for example through
the metaphor of a ‘mirror’, this paper will depart from the notion that news is always socially
constructed, shaped by the particular context in which it is produced. It is therefore crucial to
analyse the socio-political environment in which news stories are made.
Finally then, this paper will argue that the international media -and in particular the
British media- have helped to create the conditions that allowed the Zimbabwean government to
define the situation in Zimbabwe as a struggle against imperialism.

Long-term correspondents
One of the reasons for the large amount of media coverage on Zimbabwe in the British press was
the presence of long-term Harare-based correspondents. Whereas other countries in Africa are
generally covered by short-term so-called ‘parachute journalists’ flying over from London-based
newsrooms or regional offices in Johannesburg, most British newspapers already had
correspondents on the ground in Zimbabwe. Newspapers such as The Times, The Guardian, The
Financial Times, The Daily Telegraph and news agencies such as Associated Press, Reuters and
AFP all had permanent correspondents in 2000. Several of these were Zimbabweans citizens
who had worked in the country’s media for a long time, some had even written for The Rhodesia
Herald before Independence. Others like the American-born correspondent for The Guardian,
Andrew Meldrum, came to Zimbabwe briefly after Independence and never left. The fact that the
majority of British newspapers had correspondents based in Zimbabwe implies that they felt the
country was already important irrespective of the events taking place since 2000.
During a seminar on Western media reporting of Congo in London in 2001, Liz McGregor,
who was The Guardian’s Deputy Comment Editor at the time, noted that:

With countries with a large white population like Zimbabwe and South Africa there is a lot more
interest and I think this is largely because the [British] newspapers are white-run and owned and they
are trying to identify with people who look like them. A lot of their view is skewed by the fact that
they’re white-owned newspapers and a lot of those follow British commercial interests. And I think
that one of the reasons why there is not a lot of interest in the DRC is that there is not a big white
party involved.3

Therefore, well before the events in 2000, the British media had already decided that Zimbabwe
was a ‘story’ important enough to ‘deserve’ a permanent correspondent. Whereas neighbouring
countries were mostly covered by a Johannesburg-based correspondent, Zimbabwe could count
on their own correspondents. In addition to the Harare-based reporters, most British papers
would also send extra reporters during important events such as the 2000 Parliamentary
Elections and the 2002 Presidential Elections. The presence of Harare-based reporters greatly
facilitated a steady flow of reports in the British media on Zimbabwe.
However, with the appointment of Jonathan Moyo as Minister of State for Information
and Publicity in the President’s Office in 2000, new regulations were introduced that sought to
restrict the flow of foreign correspondents. More and more short-term parachute journalists were
not able to enter the country and permits of long-term correspondents were not renewed. In
February 2001, the first two journalists were expelled from Zimbabwe: Mercedes Sayagues
(South African Mail and Guardian) and Joe Winter (BBC World Service). In June 2001, they
were followed by The Daily Telegraph correspondent David Blair. In September 2002, the AFP
correspondent Griffin Shea had to leave and in May 2003 – under a large amount of media

2
attention, Andrew Meldrum of The Guardian was deported. Whereas The Daily Telegraph
managed to continue its reporting from Harare by hiring a Zimbabwean journalist, The Guardian
chose to carry on from Pretoria. In February 2005, three more foreign correspondents from
Associated Press, The Times and Bloomberg decided to leave Zimbabwe after having been
harassed by the police.
In July 2001, Minister Moyo announced that his Ministry had suspended all accreditation
of BBC correspondents in Zimbabwe. This announcement came after a report by BBC
correspondent Rageh Omaar on a speech that President Mugabe had given at the opening of a
new session of parliament.4 Moyo complained that Omaar had misrepresented the language used
by President Mugabe in the speech. In a letter to the BBC, he argued that contrary to reporting by
the BBC, President Mugabe had never stated that he “vowed to continue with the forcible [land]
acquisition”. Instead, Moyo argued that “the president made it clear that land would be acquired
as it has been, in terms of the laws of Zimbabwe”. According to Moyo, it was “apparent that, as
it has happened many times before, the BBC approached the president’s speech with a
preconceived view to distorting it to give a false impression that there is no rule of law in
Zimbabwe”. Moyo argued that there was a world of difference between forcible acquisition and
lawful acquisition.
Despite the government’s refusal to accredit BBC correspondents, the broadcaster still
managed to produce at least seven documentaries on the country, apart from regular feature
stories on the news.5 According to a report published by a BBC watchdog, out of 48
documentaries shown on the BBC from November 2000 to January 2004, Zimbabwe received
most attention with seven documentaries. Zimbabwe came after the Israel/Palestine conflict
which was covered in 16 documentaries.6 Apart from regular news features, programmes like
Correspondent, Panorama, Hard Talk and Breakfast with Frost carried several editions on
Zimbabwe. Most documentaries were made by reporters not officially accredited by the
Zimbabwean authorities. Both John Sweeney and Fergal Keane came to Zimbabwe on tourist
visas which further seemed to dramatise the content of programmes. When John Sweeney
wanted to interview Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition party Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC), he went to hide in the boot of the car when entering Tsvangirai’s
premises.7 Inclusion of footage on Sweeney’s acrobatic exercise sought to strengthen the image
of the foreign correspondent as a courageous hero willing to sacrifice his life for ‘the truth’.
Equally dramatic footage of Meldrum’s expulsion from Zimbabwe and the subsequent
publication of his memoirs sought to reinforce the same image.

Simplification
Whereas the existing infrastructure of foreign correspondents in Harare clearly played a crucial
role in the steady flow of news coverage from Zimbabwe, there is no doubt that another
important reason was the presence of a white minority in Zimbabwe. In a report that was
published in 1997, the Zimbabwean human rights organisation the Catholic Commission for
Justice and Peace (CCJP) estimated that 20,000 people were killed in the 1980s during the
Gukurahundi in the Midlands and Matabeleland provinces.8 However, at the time, the media paid
considerably less attention to the country as compared to the events in 2000. Within the space of
a few weeks, Zimbabwe came to dominate the headlines of major newspapers and agencies,
BBC, CNN, and even Hello! magazine9 devoted a five-page special to Zimbabwe, mainly
reporting the death of the farmer David Stevens.

3
 Foreign correspondents would generally blame their editors or newspapers for the large
amount of coverage devoted to white farmers. One correspondent argued that the extent of
attention was inherent in the news business:

In general, in the international media, if one white farmer was killed, that created far more news
input than if thirty blacks were killed, in general. And I think that’s wrong. I am not happy with that.
But I saw it happen and I couldn’t change it. In [the newspaper I write for], if white farmers had
been killed, it would often be a front page story. I didn’t affect that. (…). And so, I don’t like to
think that the death of one person is more than the death of another person but you know, that is one
of the things in the news business that does happen.10

Another correspondent felt it was a very important story that British newspaper readers with
often strong ties with Zimbabwe wanted to read about:

I am really pleased that the white farmer story was there. Because everywhere in the world, if you
are working for an Austrian newspaper and you are in Bangkok and an Austrian gets hijacked, that
story of that Austrian will do better in Austria than it will do in Sydney or in Bangladesh. And
people like to read about themselves. And that’s what I am part of. I am not trying to change the
world. I am not a politician. I don’t want to influence people at all. I simply want to say what’s going
on.11

This particular correspondent felt that “journalists were simply responding to what is going on;
we suck it up and we move on”.
The incidence of the farm occupations also enabled journalists to greatly simplify the
situation in Zimbabwe. In their classic study on news values, Galtung and Ruge (1965: 65) argue
that “the more clear and unambiguous the signal (the less noise there is), the more probably that
it will be recorded as worth listening to”. In other words, the significance of an event should be
relatively unambiguous so that the diversity of potential interpretations may be kept to a
minimum. News events do not have to be necessarily simple but the range of possible meanings
must be limited. In the case of Zimbabwe, the occurrence of the farm occupations enabled the
media to explain the situation in terms of a conflict between black and white. Because of the
British media’s primary interest in the well-being of -as often mocked by Mugabe- ‘its kith and
kin’, the situation came to be seen as a racial one. Although the land occupations were part of a
much more complex situation, it was a tale that could easily be made understandable to foreign
audiences without having to provide much context. The story spoke for itself, or as another
foreign correspondent put it:

Look, it [the farm occupations] was a big story that you couldn’t ignore. I mean it was a big story.
(…). What I had a problem with, the prominence that was given to white farmers. And one of my
editors said to me “look, put white and black in your lead paper, and you know, you are on the wire”.
White farmer killed by black militant. And that’s on the wire, you know.12

A picture made by Associated Press photographer Rob Cooper also captures this simplification
on the part of the media very well.13 In March 2000 it was published in newspapers all over the
world and Peter Stiff later also used it for the cover of his book Cry Zimbabwe: Independence –
twenty years on. The picture displays the wife of a white farmer protecting her two little
daughters, all dressed up in immaculate pastel colours, against the danger of approaching ‘black
squatters’ behind a fence. The photographer is choosing the side of the white farmer by showing
the ‘squatters’ from his perspective, or his side of the fence. ‘White’ here represents innocence

4
and vulnerability whereas ‘black’ represents danger and threat. This dichotomy between good
and evil would easily do well in a soap opera or drama, and Fiske and Hartley (1989: 268) have
argued that the difference between fictional and news narratives are not always that different as
may initially seem:

Conflict is as important in making a good news story as it is in making a good fiction, and its
relationship to the social system is similar. News values and fictional values stem from the same
society, they both bear the same need to be popular, and it is not surprising that they are
fundamentally similar.

Ethnicisation
Some newspapers have also further supported the idea of racial conflict by suggesting the
incidence of ‘ethnic cleansing’. On the 10 August 2001, The Daily Telegraph put it as following:

When a mob laid siege to Two Trees farm yesterday, sealing off the property with roadblocks, a
carefully planned operation swung into action to sow terror among the white landowners around
Chinhoyi. […]. It was the latest escalation of President Robert Mugabe’s offensive against white
farmers, and amounted to the ethnic cleansing of a swathe of Zimbabwe’s most fertile region.14

Or in another article one year later on the 7August 2002:

Horseshoe, Mutorashanga, Raffingora, Umboe Valley, Ruzawi River, Mvurwi - these are the names
of some of the farming districts from where heavy hearted farmers and their families are leaving in
one of the last chapters of Mr Mugabe’s ethnic cleansing of the countryside.15

This seemed to echo discourses used by some Conservative MPs like Lord Elton who asked his
colleagues the following in the House of Lords:

My Lords, the Government of Zimbabwe made clear their objective of removing white people who
own property in Zimbabwe. Is that not a form of ethnic cleansing? When will it be treated as such? 16

It was part of the Conservatives’ general criticism of the government’s ‘lack of action’ on
Zimbabwe. Often, comparisons were made with the situation in Kosovo and Mugabe was
equated with Milosevic, as the Shadow Foreign Secretary, Michael Ancram put it in an opinion
piece in The Guardian:

Yet the fact that Mugabe is getting away with murder has not bestirred our government. Its inaction
is a damning indictment of its foreign policy. What is the difference between ethnic cleansing, or
state murder and torture, in Kosovo and in Zimbabwe? Why was the government so keen to act in
Kosovo and yet is so inactive on Zimbabwe? Mugabe is every bit as evil as Milosevic. So why is our
government afraid to stand up to this despot? Zimbabwe is not some distant country of which we
know little. We know it very well and we owe it our support.17

In an earlier debate in the House of Commons in April 2000, Foreign Office Minister Peter Hain
dismissed the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ as ‘Tory rhetoric’. Asked by Conservative MP David
Wilshire whether he agreed that “what we are now seeing is the beginnings of ethnic cleansing”,
Peter Hain responded:

I do not want to use that phrase. This phrase has been used in an inflammatory way by the
Opposition. I think we should take this opportunity, if I may say so, to adopt a measured response.

5
 To compare what is happening in Zimbabwe with what happened in Kosovo I would have thought
was ludicrous. It does not make it any more acceptable to find the lawlessness and violence and now
deaths of all sorts of people. I do not think the targeting of the predominantly black (though multi-
racial) Opposition, with the whole succession of killings, with up to 100 people violently attacked, I
do not think you can describe that as ethnic cleansing because it is often black on black, but it is
equally serious.18

By portraying the situation in Zimbabwe as one of ethnic conflict, both newspapers and
politicians seem to have reiterated media coverage of other parts of Africa. In recent academic
studies, anthropologists and media studies scholars have pointed to the failure of journalists to
provide nuanced accounts of crises in Africa. They have particularly criticised media coverage of
Somalia and Rwanda for using tribalism to explain the events unfolding in those countries
without paying attention to the West’s own role in the roots of the problems. Although these
scholars do not deny that ethnicity can be used to manipulate people, they have stressed the
social constructedness of identities and the invented character of ethnicities. Or as Jan Nederveen
Pieterse, quoted in Carruthers (2004: 165), argues: “Ethnicity, although generally considered a
cause of conflict, is not an explanation but rather that which is to be explained. The terminology
of ethnicity is part of the conflict and cannot serve as the language of analysis”. To some extent,
media coverage of Zimbabwe seems to have fallen into the same trap.

Marginalisation
British media’s framing of the situation in Zimbabwe as a black versus white conflict ultimately
made the much larger number of black victims invisible. According to statistics of human rights
organisations, ten white farmers have been killed between 2000 and 2004 compared to more than
190 blacks, mainly supporters of the opposition party Movement for Democratic Change.19
While I was waiting to interview the Secretary-General of GAPWUZ, the General Agricultural
Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe, I started chatting with another staff member. She told
me how she had attended a seminar in South Africa and felt disappointed that people did not
seem to know that a large number of farm workers had become displaced as a result of the farm
occupations. She felt there was more attention for the dog of a white farmer than for farm
workers. And she referred hereby to a photograph that appeared in March 2002 in both local
Zimbabwean and international newspapers of the dead body of a white farmer named Terry Ford
covered by a blanket with his dog guarding over it.20
The marginalisation of the farm workers’ voices can also be blamed on their more general
lack of power in Zimbabwean society. Organisations representing white farmers such as the
Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU) or Justice for Agriculture (JAG) attributed very important
roles to the media and followed conscious strategies to influence the media. They acknowledged
having been hospitable to journalists and to have frequently hosted foreign correspondents,
particular short-term parachute journalists. One representative told me that it has been a lot easier
to show foreign journalists around on the farms than Harare-based correspondents. As he said:
“They can come and we can get them out onto the ground to see for themselves exactly what is
going on. And they don’t live here. They aren’t as vulnerable as other people”.21 Further
elaborating on the arrival of foreign correspondents, the representative continued:

We usually get contacted before they arrive in the country and the first stop is here. At the same
time, there are still quite a lot of journalists who might be here for two weeks and it’s only the last
couple of days that they hear about us and get in contact with us. Very sad and they end up doing a
lot more work in those two days than they have done in the previous twelve days. So yah, my advice

6
 to those journalists out there is that we’re here, make contact with us. If you are not prepared to
come into the country, we do have this database with statistics and a lot of footage, a lot of the
camera work has been done and is ready.22

Both organisations also felt they had a role in correcting the misinformation carried in
government propaganda. The CFU frequently advertised in the media in Zimbabwe to “present
the facts about land reform”, and at the height of the farm occupations, they released almost daily
‘farm invasion updates’ which were circulated through e-mail internationally and were also
published in local private newspapers such as The Daily News. They have a well-structured
website and a Communication Officer who focuses on issuing press releases. JAG uses a similar
strategy and circulates email newsletters up to this time. At the launch of the organisation, they
also employed a Public Relations Officer who used to work as a Press Officer for the CFU.
Compared to CFU and JAG, the farm workers’ union GAPWUZ has a much weaker media
strategy. The organisation does not employ a Communication Officer nor does it have a website
or access to e-mail. Although they had reasonable contacts with local journalists, they did not
have a network of foreign correspondents.
Whereas I demonstrated in the previous section that the Zimbabwean story in itself was
attractive to journalists, this section aimed to show how various farmer organisations have
actively sought to highlight their plight and been hospitable to foreign journalists.

Personalisation
Another reason for the significant amount of media coverage on Zimbabwe has been the fact that
the story could be personalised. Galtung and Ruge (1965: 65) argue that “the more the event can
be seen in personal terms, as due to the action of specific individuals, the more probable that it
will become a news item”. For Galtung and Ruge, this applies in particular to Western media
coverage of ‘geographically and culturally distant’ nations. It is more likely that the affairs of
these nations will be portrayed in the Western media as the activities of one of two senior
political figures or even only the head of state.
In the case of Zimbabwe, Mugabe provided journalists with the ‘same old’ story of a
promising African leader that had still gone corrupt, despite high hopes with some at
Independence in 1980. Journalists often used the metaphor of ‘The Jewel of Africa’ to describe
how wonderful Zimbabwe had been before Mugabe had turned it into a nightmare. The narrative
of the transition from ‘food basket to basket case’ was often invoked in order to stress that
Zimbabwe was the tale of a success gone bad. The sudden degeneration of a country as a result
of the actions of one individual provided a particularly powerful story for British newspaper
audiences. Obviously, Mugabe should indeed to a large extent be blamed for the current
situation. However, by presenting Robert Mugabe as the ‘bad guy’ solely responsible for the
crisis in Zimbabwe, the media failed to contextualise the situation and to take into account other
more externally related factors which have also contributed to the catastrophic economic
situation in Zimbabwe such as for example the implementation of neo-liberal structural
adjustment policies in the 1990s and related to that the limited amount of interest of Britain and
the international community in financially supporting land reform.

Re-appropriation
In the previous section, I have highlighted how the situation in Zimbabwe has been represented
in the British media and for which reasons. In the next section, I will argue that the dominance of
the white farmer story in the British media assisted the Zimbabwean government in fixing the

7
meaning of the crisis in Zimbabwe as a bilateral problem between Zimbabwe and Britain over
land. It allowed President Mugabe to construct Britain as its former colonial power who was
using the media in order to discredit and derail Zimbabwe’s land reform programme. In this
respect, Terence Ranger (2004: 221) has argued that “during the presidential campaign in 2002 it
often seemed that Robert Mugabe was campaigning against the man he called ‘Tony B-Liar’
rather than against Tsvangirai”. This opposition between Zimbabwe vs. Blair became even more
apparent in ZANU PF’s 2005 parliamentary election campaign.
The dichotomy that the British media used in order to frame the situation in Zimbabwe in
terms of black and white was quickly appropriated by the Zimbabwean government to confirm
their suspicion that Britain’s main interest was to protect its colonial interests in the country. The
Zimbabwean government-funded daily newspaper The Herald reported that ZANU PF Minister
Olivia Muchena said what was worrying was the intensity with which CNN and BBC were trying
to drum up opinion against the democratisation of the country’s economy in a bid to protect their
imperialist interests. And the newspaper quoted her as follows:

“They [CNN and BBC] are against us for having gotten to the root of economic empowerment and
democratisation on the economic front so they have to vilify President Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF,
and glorify whites as the chief producers of food,” she said.23

Britain in particular was also seen as an active supporter of the opposition party MDC. The fact
that the MDC was generally supported by the international community and that some of its
members were white was considered by the ruling party ZANU PF as proof that Zimbabwe
would be a colony again if the MDC would get into power. MDC was presented as an
inauthentic, non-Zimbabwean party, full of Rhodesian interests, its members having no
legitimacy to rule Zimbabwe because they had not participated in the liberation struggle. On
numerous occasions, ZANU PF has tried to prove this point. In their efforts to legitimise their
exclusive right to govern Zimbabwe, they have interestingly often drawn upon examples from
the foreign media. Footage shot in 2000 by CNN showing white farmers signing cheques to the
MDC has been regularly shown on Zimbabwean television and frequently appeared in ZANU
PF election campaign advertisements. During an edition of Zimbabwe Broadcasting
Corporation’s programme NewsHour in June 2004, the CNN clip was used together with an
excerpt from a debate in the House of Commons between Michael Howard and Tony Blair. In
this particular debate, Blair inelegantly remarked that the British government was working with
the MDC:

Michael Howard: Is that not an excellent illustration of the need for Britain to demonstrate clear and
firm leadership, in the G8 and elsewhere, in working with the international community to help to
achieve the objectives of peace and stability to which we are all committed?

The Prime Minister: On the latter two points, we work closely with the MDC on the measures that we
should take in respect of Zimbabwe, although I am afraid that these measures and sanctions, although
we have them in place, are of limited effect on the Mugabe regime.24

I would agree with Phimister and Raftopoulos (2004) that the international character of the crisis
in Zimbabwe has been very important, and often ignored in academic analysis. In a recent
article, Phimister and Raftopoulos argue that Mugabe’s rhetoric of anti-imperialism has been
very successful in gaining the support and solidarity of other African leaders in the region and
Pan-African groups in the Diaspora such as the December 12 Movement in the United States, the

8
Black United Front in the United Kingdom and the Aboriginal Nations and People of
Australia.25 It has provided an effective cover-up of the injustices committed by the Zimbabwean
government against its own people. Phimister and Raftopolous (2004: 386) also point out that in
his efforts to define the crisis in Zimbabwe in terms of a rectification of colonial injustices,
Mugabe “has been helped at every stage by clumsy Western, particularly, British intervention.
The initial damage done in 1997 by ‘new’ Labour’s arrogant denial of any responsibility for past
colonial injustices in Zimbabwe”. Phimister and Raftopolous here refer to a now famous and
widely publicised letter written by the previous Secretary for International Development Clare
Short to the Zimbabwe Minister for Agriculture, Kumbirai Kangai in which she stated the
following:

I should make it clear that we do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to meet the costs
of land purchase in Zimbabwe. We are a new Government from diverse backgrounds without links
to former colonial interests. My own origins are Irish and as you know we were colonised not
colonisers.26

Britain’s previous Minister for African Affairs in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office,
Baroness Amos, also sought to break away from Zimbabwe’s definition of Britain as former
colonial power. In an address in South Africa, she stated that:

At the heart of our foreign policy, therefore, is co-operation, not colonialism. We do not seek to
recolonise Africa, or Iraq. Colonialism is about the imposition of values by force, the exploitation of
resources by force, the domination of one race by another. Those days are gone. The fact that it is me
standing here as a British Minister – a descendant of those colonised – is surely demonstration of
this. […]. The operative dynamic nowadays is “sharing”, not “dominating” or “imposing”.27

These examples serve to show how Britain has been at pains trying to communicate with
Zimbabwe. It demonstrates how it does not want to be reminded of its identity as former
coloniser of Zimbabwe. Perhaps this failure to deal with the past resembles what Paul Gilroy has
recently named Britain’s ‘postcolonial melancholia’. In his book After empire: melancholia or
convivial culture?, Gilroy (2004: 96-97) writes that:

[…] the totemic power of the great anti-Nazi war seems to have increased even as its veterans have
died out. The evacuation of Britain’s postcolonial conflicts from national consciousness has become
a significant cultural and historical event in its own right. Those forgotten wars have left significant
marks on the body politic but the memory of them appears to have been collapsed into the
overarching figuration of Britain at war against the Nazis, under attack, yet stalwart and ultimately
triumphant.

Drawing upon psychoanalytic perspectives, he argues that Britain’s firm stance against Nazism
has resulted in making itself feel righteous and innocent, thereby enabling itself to forget about
its many wars of decolonisation in Africa. As Gilroy notes: “Being forced to reckon with the
ongoing consequences of imperial crimes makes them uncomfortable in equal measure”.28

Conclusion
In this paper, I have shown how the British media, and specifically The Guardian and The Daily
Telegraph, through strategies of simplification, ethnicisation and marginalisation have sought to
frame and represent recent events in Zimbabwe in terms of a racial conflict between black and
white, and more importantly, how the Zimbabwean government has successfully managed to

9
exploit these discourses on what they termed as ‘Britain’s kith and kin’. This has enabled them to
present and frame the crisis in Zimbabwe as a bilateral disagreement over land with imperial
power Britain which resulted in a significant amount of solidarity and support from neighbouring
countries and black movements in the Diaspora. The continuing struggle against Empire also
made it possible for the government to cover up its human rights violations against mainly black
opposition supporters.
This clearly demonstrates how recent events in Zimbabwe have been struggles over
meanings and definitions of the crisis. The media was a crucial arena in which these battles took
place. In order to gain a thorough understanding of the ‘crisis’ in Zimbabwe, it is therefore
essential to closely analyse these representations and their reappropriation by the Zimbabwean
government.

1
The electronic news database Lexis Nexis was used in order to select the relevant articles in The Daily Telegraphy
and The Guardian. A search on ‘Zimbabwe’ and ‘Zimbabwean’ was carried out for the period between January
2000 and June 2004. Subsequently, articles that discussed the issue of Zimbabwe as the main topic were identified
and copied manually into an Endnote database. 1,200 articles were selected for The Guardian and 1,370 for The
Daily Telegraph. All articles were coded with a particular keyword such as media, land, cricket, food, 2000
parliamentary elections, 2002 presidential elections. This allowed me to classify articles according to author, date,
title, newspaper and topic. It also enabled me to conduct a full-text search in the entire database.
2
For a more in-depth analysis of media representations of Zimbabwe in the British media, please refer to my
forthcoming PhD thesis Media, politics and land in Zimbabwe (working title) in the Media and Film Studies
Programme, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, School of Oriental and African Studies.
3
See: Reporting the World, 2001, Is coverage of Africa racist? And why are we ignoring the DRC crisis?
4
See: BBC News online, 26 July 2001, Zimbabwe acts against BBC.
5
BBC1 had three Panorama editions devoted to Zimbabwe: Panorama: Mugabe: the price of silence (10 March
2002, reporter: Fergal Keane); Five days in May (15 June 2003, reporter: Fergal Keane); The secret of the camps (29
February 2004, reporter: Hilary Anderson). BBC1 also had Sean Langan reporting from Zimbabwe: Sean Langan in
Zimbabwe (14 and 15 January 2002). BBC2 had three Correspondent programmes on Zimbabwe: Zimbabwe: The
promised land (19 August 2000, reporter: Mufadzi Nkomo); Zimbabwe burning (3 March 2002, reporter: John
Sweeney) and Zimbabwe: Hounded out (16 February 2003, reporter: Iain and Kerry Kay). BBC2 also had a This
World edition devoted to Zimbabwe: The Food Fix (16 November 2004, reporter: Farai Sevenzo).
6
See: Asserson and Williams, 2004, The BBC and the Middle East. Analysis of documentaries. Fourth report,
March 2004, p. 6.
7
John Sweeney’s programme Zimbabwe burning was broadcast on BBC1 on 3 March 2002. Footage viewable on
the BBC website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1850000/video/_1852133_carbootedit_vi.ram (last accessed: 20
February 2005).
8
Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, 1997, Breaking the silence: building true peace: a report on the
disturbances in Matabeleland and the Midlands, 1980 to 1988.
9
Zielenbach, 2000, The widow of murdered Zimbabwean farmer David, Maria Stevens, tells how she’s finding the
strength to cope with the loss of her husband and her feelings towards her troubled country. In: Hello!, Nr. 612, 23
May 2000, pp. 98-102.
10
Interview with foreign correspondent, 15 September 2003.
11
Interview with foreign correspondent, 15 August 2003.
12
Interview, 15 August 2003.
13
See front page of Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad on 30 March 2000 or: BBC News Online, Zimbabwe
farmers plan legal battle, 6 September 2000. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/913414.stm (last accessed: 20
February 2005).
14
Blair and Thornycroft, Chinhoyi, White farms ‘cleansed’ by Mugabe mobs, The Daily Telegraph, 10 August
2001.
15
Zimbabwe’s white farmers manage one last smile before they leave for good, The Daily Telegraph, 7 August

10
2002.
16
House of Lords, Hansard Debates text, 8 May 2001.
17
Ancram, Comment & Analysis: Blair must take a stand on Mugabe: Next week’s earth summit will have to call
Zimbabwe to account, The Guardian, 23 August 2002.
18
House of Commons, Minutes taken before the Foreign Affairs Committee, 18 April 2000.
19
For statistics on 2000, see: Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, 2001, Human Rights and Zimbabwe’s June
2000 Election, p. 40-41. For statistics on 2001, see: Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, 2002, Political Violence
Report December 2001, p. 12-13. For statistics on 2002, see: Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, 2003, Political
Violence Report December 2002, p. 17-19. For statistics on 2003, see: Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, 2004,
Political Violence Report December 2003, p. 12. For statistics on 2004, see: Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum,
2004, Political Violence Report November 2004, p. 13. All reports are available on the website of the Zimbabwe
Human Rights NGO Forum: http://www.hrforumzim.com
20
See for example BBC News Online, Arrest in Zimbabwe farmer’s murder, 19 March 2002.
21
Interview with representative farmer’s organisation, 22 August 2003.
22
Interview with representative farmer’s organisation, 22 August 2003.
23
Blacks urged to establish own media bodies, The Herald, 15 August 2002.
24
House of Commons, Hansard Debates text, 14 June 2003.
25
See also: Raftopoulos, 2004, Nation, race and history in Zimbabwean politics.
26
The letter was reprinted in the Pan-African magazine New African. See: Short, 2002, How it all started.
27
Speech by Baroness Amos, Setting the record straight. to the National Press Club in Pretoria, 31 March 2003.
28
Gilroy, Paul. Why Harry’s disoriented about empire. The chronic pain of loss feeds our melancholic attachment.
In: The Guardian, 19 January 2005.

11
References
Askew, K. (2002). Introduction (pp. 1-13). In: K. Askew and R. Wilk (eds.), The anthropology of
media: a reader. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers.

Asserson, Trevor and Cassie Williams (2004). The BBC and the Middle East. Analysis of
documentaries. Fourth report, March 2004, p. 6.
http://www.bbccharterreview.org.uk/Responses/A/Asserson_Trevor.rtf (last accessed: 20
February 2005).

Carruthers, Susan L. (2004). Tribalism and tribulation. Media constructions of “African

savagery” and “Western humanitarianism” in the 1990s (pp. 155-73). In: S. Allan and B. Zelizer
(eds.), Reporting war: journalism in wartime. London: Routledge.

Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (1997). Breaking the silence: building true peace: a
report on the disturbances in Matabeleland and the Midlands, 1980 to 1988. Harare: Legal
Resources Foundation.

Fiske, John and John Hartley (1989). Reading television. London: Routledge.

Galtung, John and Mari Holmboe Ruge (1965). The structure of foreign news. The presentation
of Congo, Cuba and Cyprus crises in four Norwegian newspapers. In: Journal of Peace Research
2(1): 64-91.

Gilroy, Paul (2004). After empire: melancholia or convivial culture? London: Routledge

Mudimbe, V. Y. (1988). The invention of Africa: gnosis, philosophy, and the order of
knowledge. London: James Currey.

Phimister, Ian and Brian Raftopoulos (2004). Mugabe, Mbeki and the politics of anti-
imperialism. Review of African Political Economy 31(101): 385-400.

Raftopoulos, Brian (2004). Nation, race and history in Zimbabwean politics (pp. 160-75). In:
Brian Raftopoulos and Tyrone Savage (eds.), Zimbabwe: injustice and political reconciliation.
Cape Town: Institute for Justice and Reconciliation.

Ranger, Terence (2004). Nationalist historiography, patriotic history and the history of the
nation: the struggle over the past in Zimbabwe. In: Journal of Southern African Studies 30(2):
215-34.

Reporting the World, Is coverage of Africa racist? And why are we ignoring the DRC crisis?
Freedom Forum European Centre, 16 May 2001, p. 9. Full transcript available on:
http://www.reportingtheworld.org.uk/index_1.html (last accessed: 20 February 2005).

Stiff, Peter (2000). Cry Zimbabwe: Independence - twenty years on. Alberton: Galago.

12
Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (2001), Human Rights and Zimbabwe’s June 2000
Election. http://www.hrforumzim.com (last accessed: 20 February 2005).

Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (2002), Political Violence Report December 2001.
http://www.hrforumzim.com (last accessed: 20 February 2005).

Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (2003), Political Violence Report December 2002.
http://www.hrforumzim.com (last accessed: 20 February 2005).

Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (2004). Political Violence Report December 2003.
http://www.hrforumzim.com (last accessed: 20 February 2005).

Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (2004), Political Violence Report November 2004.
http://www.hrforumzim.com (last accessed: 20 February 2005).

Official documents

House of Commons, Minutes taken before the Foreign Affairs Committee, 18 April 2000,
Question 60,
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmfaff/447/0041806.htm (last
accessed: 20 February 2005).

House of Commons, Hansard Debates text, 14 June 2003, Column 523,

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmhansrd/vo040614/debtext/40614-06.htm
(last accessed: 20 February 2005).

House of Lords, Hansard Debates text, 8 May 2001, Column 893,

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200001/ldhansrd/vo010508/text/10508-01.htm (last
accessed: 20 February 2005).

Speech by Baroness Amos, Setting the record straight, National Press Club in Pretoria, 31
March 2003. http://www.britain-in-libya.org/news-CooperationNotColonialism-Mar-03.htm (last
accessed: 20 February 2005).

Media sources

Ancram, Michael, Comment & Analysis: Blair must take a stand on Mugabe: Next week’s earth
summit will have to call Zimbabwe to account, The Guardian, 23 August 2002.

BBC News Online, Zimbabwe farmers plan legal battle, 6 September 2000.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/913414.stm (last accessed: 20 February 2005).

BBC News online, 26 July 2001, Zimbabwe acts against BBC.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1458399.stm (last accessed: 20 February 2005).

13
BBC News Online, Arrest in Zimbabwe farmer’s murder, 19 March 2002,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1880941.stm (last accessed: 20 February 2005).

Blacks urged to establish own media bodies, The Herald, 15 August 2002.

Blair, David and Peta Thornycroft, Chinhoyi, White farms ‘cleansed’ by Mugabe mobs, The
Daily Telegraph, 10 August 2001.

Gilroy, Paul. Why Harry’s disoriented about empire. The chronic pain of loss feeds our
melancholic attachment. In: The Guardian, 19 January 2005.

Short, Clare (2002). How it all started. New African 405: 10.

Zielenbach, Tim (2000). The widow of murdered Zimbabwean farmer David, Maria Stevens,
tells how she’s finding the strength to cope with the loss of her husband and her feelings towards
her troubled country. In: Hello!, Nr. 612, 23 May 2000, pp. 98-102.

Zimbabwe’s white farmers manage one last smile before they leave for good, The Daily
Telegraph, 7 August 2002.

14