Media freedom in Zimbabwe?

Above: Alleged footage from a Zimabwean prison. (AP / Youtube)

A recent documentary by the state-owned broadcaster in South Africa, The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), reveals harrowing conditions in what it claims is a Zimbabwean prison.

The SABC claims the footage was shot over four months by prisoners with cameras smuggled into a prison at Beitbridge, close to the South African border.

Unsurprinsingly, Zimbabwe’s Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa has dismissed the documentary as fabricated: “What was shown by the SABC3 is not true. The SABC is lying. We do not allow cameras into our prisons. We have made investigations and found out that the footage is not from Zimbabwe but other countries,” he told www.radiovop.com.

Roy Bennett, the deputy agriculture minister-designate from the MDC, the opposition party in Zimbabwe, who spent a month in prison on sabotage charges before being released last month, called his experience harrowing:

"Those pictures (shown by SABC) are real, if not rather conservative pictures. The conditions in the prison I was in in Mutare were far worse images than that," he told Al Jazeera.

Having seen the documentary, a student based in South Africa posted a blog post on Newzimbabwe.com, raising questions around the ethics and law concerning the documentary, calling the actions of the broadcaster neo-imperialistic:

“Is it the prerogative of a television station, its editor, his reporters, and the directors to decide what is and what should or shouldn’t be the national agenda in a country of millions of citizens, all with different professions, some even more challenging than journalism which can be practiced by anyone even with just a three or six month diploma or certificate training?

Not in South Africa, not in England, not in Australia and certainly not in America will they tolerate anyone sneaking a camera into their jails without clearance from the correctional services department. Wouldn’t we all be rich if we could bug cabinet meetings; commit other national security breaches and sell the tapes, all in the name of freedom of information?

This is clearly an act of neo-imperialism through the media which has been used corruptly by the West to contain Third World sovereignty by disrespecting state institutions through criminal acts. In the interest of justice, and the rule of law, SABC, which generally is a good television station, should offer the world and the Zimbabwe government an explanation and a legal one for that matter, why it broke the law in a foreign country in the process of news gathering.”

I can`t say I agree with this "clearly being an act of neo-imperialism used by the West to contain Third World sovereignty". The blogger does however raise an important question, that of imperialism in media, but in this case I would happily leave all such notions aside. As long as the documentary is genuine, I`m not too bothered about any underlying motives.

It would seem that in the interest of justice, and indeed the inmates in these prisons, some of which is probably sat there in the interest of the idea of the same democracy the blogger above so defiantly is defending, SABC have done the world and Zimbabweans a service by revealing the state of Zimbabwean prisons. And you can`t unveil a wrongdoing by asking the wrongdoer for permission, can you?

As to the criticism raised by the student blogger, there is a lot to be read about what he seems to be pointing at, the imperialism paradigm in development theory. Colin Sparks writes about it in Globalization, Development and the Mass Media, where he scrutinises the different paradigms of development theory.

Srinivas Melkote and Leslie Steeves also write about it in Communication for Development in the Third World: Theory and Practice for Empowerment, abother text on the different paradigms of development theory.