(a) Social, Economic and Political

Probably the most rapidly developing and most complex governance crisis in the region, Zimbabwe is consistently in the international media headlines for human rights abuses, torture, and economic meltdown.

Gripped in a major governance, economic and humanitarian crisis that has seen its people experiencing shortages of even the local currency, Zimbabwe’s economy is rapidly collapsing, as illustrated by its contraction by at least 10 % per annum during the last three years.

The country remains on a knife-edge after deeply flawed and internationally condemned Presidential election in 2002 retained incumbent Robert Mugabe. Earlier Parliamentary elections in 2000 had seen a new, labour-backed opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC); win almost half of the 120 elected seats in parliament. The country remains, in practice, a de facto one party state.

A combination of both natural factors and the haphazard fast-track land ‘reform programme’ have pushed the country onto the precarious edge of an unprecedented food crisis, with half the population surviving on food aid.

An already unpopular constitution written during the Lancaster House talks that led to independence from Britain in 1980 has been made worse by partisan amendments that have undermined the accountability of the Presidency and Cabinet.

Legitimate public concerns over land reform have been exploited and abused by the ruling ZANU-PF party for vote buying, and as a smokescreen for its attempts to destroy political opposition

Political violence is rampant and has become almost institutionalised by the State.

The effects of the Aids pandemic have been compounded by a rapidly declining health delivery system. There are currently 3000 reported Aids-related deaths a week.

The judiciary has been under systematic attack from ruling party politicians who have forced judges to resign, and replaced them by partisan appointees.

Gender gains made through the historic Legal Age of Majority Act of 1982, which equalised the status of the sexes, have all but been reversed through revisionist legal pronouncements, an increase in discriminative practice against women, as well as increase vulnerability of women through violence and internal displacement

Corruption is increasing rapidly, as the economy is fast becoming informalised.

State institutions are being informally militarised, and now the public sphere is virtually dominated and controlled by militias in the pay of the ruling party.

Resilience of NGOs to persevere against all odds is commendable despite operating in a hostile environment.

The threat of gains made by civil society organisations in advancing the macro issues of political and economic governance may be diverted to dealing with humanitarian aid because of the desperateness of deprivation for basic needs of survival.

(b) Media, Freedom of Expression and Information & Communication Technologies

The media have been a major target of the government and ruling party’s on-going campaign against opposition elements under the banner of the so-called “third chimurenga revolution”. The government and ruling-party militants have ridden rough shod over constitutional guarantees of free expression through the use of blatant violence and reversion to legal mechanisms whenever it suits them. The major victims of this systematic repression of dissenting voices include the privately owned media.

On the legal front, the Broadcasting Services Act and the tongue-in-the cheek named Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act have significantly added to the government’s huge armoury of repressive legislation. Among other things, the inappropriately named Access to Information Act not only reduces public access to government information but imposes strict registration criteria on all media and media workers, and above that prohibits the publication and broadcast of “false news” as determined by government.

The appointment of pro-government judges to the judiciary has made a lottery out of legal defence and proactive litigation.

The state controlled media have always been mouthpieces of the ruling party and its government but in recent years they have turned into shameless propaganda organs of a self-serving political elite with little regard for the principles of journalism and media ethics. The private media, in turn have increasingly disregarded the same ethical considerations focusing on waging vicious propaganda wars against their government owned ‘rivals’.

Public access to existing non-state media is limited largely to urban and peri-urban areas of the country with the majority of the rural people left to their own devices or at the mercy of government propaganda organs.

As a result, and not surprisingly, the media are inextricably divided between privately owned and state owned sectors. This division is deliberately exploited and exacerbated by the government’s divide and rule tactics.

Besides the laws mentioned above, the ancient Libel and criminal defamation regulations, the antiquated official secrets legislation inherited from the British, and the Law and Order Maintenance Act enacted by the rebel Ian Smith regime, are enthusiastically used by the independence government of Robert Mugabe to harass, intimidate and subjugate free thought and investigative journalism.

Although the Broadcasting Services Act ostensibly ended the state’s monopoly over broadcasting, the act invests rigid control of the “deregulation” process with government, and there is little chance that the act will result in any kind of broadcasting diversity.

A private radio station, Capital Radio, which was closed down in 2000 in spite of the constitutional court’s ruling that it be granted a license, is challenging the constitutionality of the Broadcasting Services Act.

Meanwhile, radio initiatives are using alternative approaches to broadcasting to circumvent government restrictions on broadcasting. Voice of the People (VOP) and SW broadcast in Zimbabwe via short-wave transmitters located outside the country, and Radio Dialogue distribute programmes on audiocassettes that are played in taxis, and through “road shows” in public places.

State sponsored-violence is also used to undermine the distribution of privately owned publications in commercial farming regions, as well as in other rural and working class urban areas.

Links between civic groups and the mass media remain weak, and civic groups make little effective use of the media to promote issues related to human rights and democracy.

(c) Education

Disillusionment has rapidly grown among rural teachers who are incessantly targeted by ruling party militia for allegedly supporting the opposition MDC.

School attendance is disrupted by political violence, particularly on commercial farms, but also in other rural as well as working class urban areas.

Violence and economic hardships have led to the attendant problem of brain drain in the education sector where many teachers have left for greener pastures abroad, both within the region and overseas.

Achievements of the 1980s have currently faded on account of weaknesses in sector management and overall policy environment.

Tremendous gains were made in the education sector between independence and the onset of a Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in 1990. In the period immediately after the introduction of the SAP, per capita spending on education fell by 29 per cent in real terms.

Real expenditure per pupil in primary school has been on a particularly steady decline since 1990, and this has been worsened by the political and socio-economic crisis.

The political and economic crisis has also curtailed the government’s involvement in international education initiatives.

Zimbabwe, once a country with one of Sub-Saharan Africa’s best education systems now suffers from severe shortage of teaching and learning materials, poor compensation for teachers, poor and ever deteriorating school furniture and infrastructure and weakening teacher development programmes.

The spread of HIV and the subsequent Aids pandemic is having a devastating impact on both teachers and pupils.