- HARARE -- Zimbabwe's government
has begun a huge propaganda campaign to cheer up the country with music,
football and sex. All the main forums of popular culture have been harnessed
to depict government policies as reasons to smile and break into song.
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- State-sanctioned jingles with upbeat tunes which feature
wriggling female dancers and next month's African Nations Cup football
final dominate television and radio.
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- It is is being compared to the Roman emperors' attempt
to appease the masses with bread and circuses - though in Zimbabwe's case,
without the bread.
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- President Robert Mugabe's regime has difficulty importing
fuel and other necessities but its well-funded publicity drive was in full
flow this week, the radio and television stations playing new jingles every
30 minutes.
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- Musicians, actors and other artists said the Zanu-PF
party was on its way to monopolising popular culture, forcing them to either
collaborate or go without work.
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- Some vowed to fight back. One theatre group said it would
open a chain of cinemas in the townships soon to show films of political
satire. An exhibition at the national gallery in Harare included strident
criticism of the government.
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- But such defiance will have limited impact in the absence
of independent daily journalism, said Andrew Moyse, head of Media Monitoring
Project Zimbabwe, a watchdog group in Harare.
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- "The ruling party is totally setting the agenda.
It is closing down independent and external avenues of information to make
people more susceptible to propaganda," he said.
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- A recent decision to champion the national football team,
the Warriors, showed that the information minister, Jonathan Moyo, had
learned the value of sport, he added.
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- Mr Moyo has ended years of official neglect of the Zimbabwe
Football Association and is now funding the team, which delighted fans
by unexpectedly qualifying for the African Nations Cup in Tunisia.
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- He is believed to have written the lyrics which are aired
almost hourly: "We are the hunting grounds; we are going for goals,
goals, goals. Score Warriors; go, go, Warriors."
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- One western diplomat credited Mr Moyo with a publicity
coup, but doubted that the feel-good factor would last.
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- "After a match you want to go home and eat, but
what if you can't afford the bus fare and there is no food in the house?"
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- Since Mr Mugabe's rigged re-election last year was followed
by a political crackdown, the economic collapse has turned Zimbabwe into
the world's fastest shrinking economy. Much of the hunger, poverty and
unemployment has been blamed on the chaotic seizure of white-owned farms,
but in jingles the policy is depicted as a heroic redress of colonial injustice.
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- Their production values are good, and some of the tunes
so catchy that even opposition supporters have found themselves humming
along. But accompanying one on screen with a traditional dance, the kongonya,
has prompted protests from TV viewers appalled at the pelvic grinding of
young women and children.
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- "Pornographic, sexually perverted, disgusting,"
some of them said.
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- Mr Mugabe has defended the advert and this week the state-owned
Herald newspaper devoted two pages to explaining that the dance epitomised
the fight against colonial domination.
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- "The sexually suggestive connotations of the waist
wriggling and the fast rhythmic throwing upwards and downwards of buttocks
is again a sign of defiance of the detractors of the land reform,"
the Herald explained.
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- Since the the independent Daily News was closed, opposition
groups have boycotted the Herald, but people are so starved for news that
even in Harare, an opposition stronghold, it sells out quickly.
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- Opposition groups praised the bravery of independent
weekly newspapers such as the Independent and Standard, but said they were
too small to counter the government's daily propaganda.
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- Some art forms considered elitist are swelling the criticism
of Zanu-PF. Theatre in the Park, a trust, has just finished a season of
outdoor shows in Harare which included satires on nepotism and dictatorship.
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- Plays such as Up the Vice Staircase and Super Patriots
and Morons, which savage tyranny, have been left unmolested by Zanu-PF's
secret police and youth militia. "They use [them] as a barometer for
what people are thinking," said Daves Guzha, a producer.
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- Defiance was also evident at the national gallery. The
ground floor showed idealised images of happy cotton farmers - an exhibition
commissioned by a parastatal company - but an exhibition upstairs had bleak
images of oppression with such titles as An Illusion of Freedom.
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- "My work is getting more political. You have to
speak out," said Charles Kamangwana, an artist whose depiction of
women selling oranges made a statement in the way the paint dripped.
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- "You know they're not going to sell any oranges.
The drips are like tears," he said.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2003
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/zimbabwe/article/0,2763,1106231,00.html
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