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By invitation
SW Radio Africa - the
story behind the station
SWRadioAfrica began broadcasting from London on shortwave, into
Zimbabwe, on 19
th
December 2001.The footprint of the signal covers
most of the Southern African region.
A donor-funded project, the station was set up in response to the
government clampdown on independent media and the deteriorating
situation in the country. It is run and staffed entirely by Zimbabweans,
most of whom worked, at one time or another, for the state owned
Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, when there was still some
pretence that the organisation aspired to broadcasting norms.
Independent radio has never been allowed in the country.
It has been a hard year but it has been great radio. Constrained by no
one, we’ve been able to do exactly what we want – rare in the world
of radio today. No music playlist, no editorial control. That freedom
alone brings its own interesting problems. It is very easy to work within
the constraints of an existing system, the comfort zone of restriction.
It’s quite a mental leap to free think and create something entirely
new.
We have had to wrestle with a few problems. The dreaded ‘balance’.
What is balance when a government is intent on attacking its own
people? It gets even more interesting when the government bans all
its officials from speaking to you.
We broadcast for three hours each evening, seven days a week and
from the beginning we didn’t want it to be ‘us speaking to them’ – we
wanted phone in programmes. So for the first hour of broadcasts we
established ‘call back’. It is financially impossible for Zimbabweans
to phone us, so we have a local mobile number where listeners can
leave their telephone details. We call them back and it’s an open forum.
Using a conference call system we can also open up the lines for
debate.
We follow that with a news hour, covering the breaking stories of the
day, while the final hour is dedicated to music, HIV education and
some lighter material.
It’s extremely difficult for people living in a democracy, with access
to a mass of information, to understand what it’s like to live in a society
where a government controls the media, particularly when your country
is being systematically destroyed and you’re desperate to find out
what is really going on. Although there are a handful of independent
newspapers, radio is often the only source of information in rural areas.
Newspapers are expensive and virtually unobtainable outside the cities.
Newspaper vendors also come under frequent attack by government
youth militias, if they are seen to be selling independent papers.
We also stream live and archive programming through our website
The site was specifically designed for the
estimated three to four million Zimbabwean exiles now scattered across
the planet. The site is also used as a source of information for the
many activist groups around the world who are trying to pressure the
international community to take the Zimbabwean crisis seriously.
With little good news to report it has been vital that we try and give
our listeners heart and encouragement and we have countless reports
of listeners cheering as they hear that some government, somewhere
has imposed travel sanctions, or whatever small response there has
been from the international community.
It is an exhausted and depressed population who are listening so we
broadcast as many positive stories as it is possible to find. Hope is the
most important thing that we can pass on and the most common
feedback we get is that
SWRA
is a lifeline. We hear of people climbing
trees with a bit of wire to use as an aerial to get a better signal, informal
groups gathered around a fire with a shortwave radio nearby.
We have a complete audio archive of the deliberate destruction of the
very fabric of a country. There are any number of beautifully tabled,
erudite reports from human rights organisations detailing the methods
of torture, abuse, the politicisation of food aid, the destruction of the
environment. But that is apparently not enough. It just continues.
Meanwhile ordinary Zimbabweans have become our informal
correspondents. On the end of a telephone line, reporting with wisdom,
intelligence and often humour. We take our hats off to the very many
brave people prepared to speak out and take a stand. It is worth
remembering that Zimbabwe is rated just above North Korea and Cuba
on the list of the most repressed places on earth.
This is a country where you’ll be arrested for praying outside a police
station where a loved one is incarcerated, you have a very good chance
of being beaten and tortured for no particular reason and genocide by
starvation is in place. Didymus Mutasa, the organising secretary for
the ruling Zanu PF said, ‘We would be better off with only 6 million
people, with our own people who support the liberation struggle. We
don’t want all these extra people’.
It is estimated that 7 million Zimbabweans are facing starvation, due
in the most part to the government’s land policy. Dams in the country
are still 70% full. Don’t blame the drought. That isn’t the problem.
The stories we broadcast are real life and death issues and it is quite
strange to be sitting in safety in London, with our minds and hearts
living in Zimbabwe and our studio clocks set to Zimbabwe time.
It was only recently that the government decided to make its attitude to
the station absolutely clear. They’ve sabre rattled before but we woke
up one morning in December to find we were on the banned list and
when the question was raised in parliament the justice minister said
‘They are free to come back, but they will be welcome in our prisons’.
So that was fairly clear - as Ladysmith Black Mambazo sang, we’re
homeless.
We plan to continue broadcasting until democracy is finally brought to
Zimbabwe, for however long that may be and as long as we successfully
continue to source funds. There are many signs that this will be the year
of change.
In 1978, Robert Mugabe broadcast from exile on shortwave and called
it theYear of the People’s Storm, the year to ‘free the land from tyranny
and re-chart the course of freedom’. Sadly, he has merely increased
the tyranny.
We would like to put it more simply. 2003, the year of freedom,
democracy and rock ‘n roll. And when that happens we can go home
and broadcast on FM.
Gerry Jackson is Station Manager at SW Radio Africa. Based in the United
Kingdom, the station has been beaming programmes to Zimbabwe. Here she
gives her personal view of the first year of the station’s operations
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