Editors spin web of lies over IMPI report

Geoffrey Nyarota Correspondent
SOME editors attending a workshop organised by the Zimbabwe National Editors’ Forum (Zinef) in Kadoma a fortnight ago conspired to spin for publication a web of falsehoods about the drafting of the Information and Media and Panel of Inquiry (IMPI) report, apparently for the sole purpose of undermining the image and status of the panel’s chairperson, myself. An article that appeared in the issue of The Daily News published on Monday, December 14, 2015, under the headline “Disagreements over final IMPI report” alleged that some of the 20 editors who attended the workshop had expressed disagreement with the final IMPI product.

A total of three newspaper editors were appointed by the Ministry of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services to serve on IMPI during 2014. The Panel’s official report, a 666-page document, was presented to the Ministry in February 2015.

The Ministry appointed Stanley Gama, editor of The Daily News, Dumisani Muleya, editor of The Independent and Constantine Chimakure, former editor of the short-lived and now defunct Zimbabwe Mail to serve on the panel, alongside 23 other panellists.

Of the three IMPI editors, only Muleya and Chimakure attended the Kadoma Workshop, while Gama is in charge of the paper in which the malicious article was published. The largely imaginative article, which was attributed to a “staff writer”, was in fact penned by the newspaper’s assistant editor, Maxwell Sibanda. He also attended the workshop.

The article ascribed a number of false and potentially defamatory statements about me to three unidentified editors, said to have attended the two-day workshop organised by Zinef in Kadoma to “unpack the 666-page IMPI Report ahead of a January media indaba being planned by the Ministry of Media, Information and Broadcasting Services.”

Zinef compiled its own very comprehensive workshop report. They made a copy of their unpublished report available to me. The Daily News article, replete as it is with demonstrable falsehoods, differs significantly from the content of the Zinef report.

Also significantly, it is only The Daily News, and not any other newspaper, that reported on the Kadoma Workshop. By deduction from Sibanda’s article only Muleya and Chimakure, two out of the total of 26 IMPI panellists are now seeking to “distance themselves from the final IMPI report”. The two are officially listed as having attended the workshop.

“While acknowledging that some of the issues raised in the document were true reflections of what they gathered,” reports Sibanda, “they also allege that there were a lot of issues that were removed from the final document.” Sibanda cites only one issue, though, an entire chapter, as allegedly having been removed from the report.

“There is a whole chapter that dealt with the CIO taking over The Mirror newspaper and how the spy agency was controlling stakes in other publications that is missing,” Sibanda reports.

This assertion is totally false. No chapter submitted by any of IMPI’s seven thematic committees is missing from the report, as alleged, presumably by Constantine Chimakure of the Polarisation, Perception and Interference Thematic Committee. The material submitted by this committee constitutes Chapter 3, which stretches for 37 pages from page 146 to 183 of the report. No whole chapter dealing with CIO takeovers of any publications was ever submitted by Chimakure’s or any other thematic committee for inclusion in the report. I will revert to this issue later.

Sibanda quotes another editor as saying: “Since the completion of the document we have never met, neither did we sign to approve the final draft.” It is false that panellists did not approve the report. The same editor then proceeds to provide an insight into this shortcoming. “There were issues also to do with finances during the last weeks,” the editor explains, “and as such we were no longer attending any meetings, so most of us were not part of the ending processes which include the final draft.”

On February 9, 2015, I circulated to all panellists a memorandum which contained the following: “We have communicated with you, some during the meeting last Wednesday and others by phone about the status of the IMPI Report. It was pointed out to you that today is the final deadline for receipt of corrections, but only those of an earth-shattering nature.

“Silence on the part of panellists will be taken as an indication of approval of the content of the report and therefore of its adoption by IMPI. It will therefore be forwarded to the Ministry.”

The IMPI secretariat was obliged to resort to this strategy to seek final approval and adoption of the report through email communication because the Ministry of Information had advised that the budget for the IMPI process had long been exhausted as the process was now continuing after expiry of its deadline. Panellists were, in fact, engaged in a dispute with the Ministry over non-payment of certain outstanding allowances.

The IMPI secretariat was caught in between a rock and hard place in seeking to deliver the finished product to the Ministry and securing the participation of disgruntled panellists in order to be able to deliver the finished product.

At this stage the secretariat was soldiering on without being paid.

As far back as November 10, 2015, I had written to panellists along the following lines: “Meanwhile I am now under tremendous pressure because the extended deadline expired on October 31, 2014.

Technically the secretariat is no longer covered in terms of salaries and running expenses. I have indicated to the ministry that there will be need for at least a one-day workshop where panellists can finally endorse and adopt the report.”

All that notwithstanding, my communication to panellists on February 9, 2015, elicited only two responses, both positive and both from the two panellists whom I ranked among the most conscientious of the IMPI team, lawyer Jacqueline Chikakano and senior journalist Chris Chinaka.

The first response came from Chikakano.

“Noted, Chairperson,” she said, “will send through any corrections by the end of the day as agreed.” She subsequently submitted various corrections. Then Chinaka submitted a contribution that I took to be representative of the position of panellists, including the usually silent ones, towards the proposed adoption of the report.

Chinaka wrote: “Besides the factual points raised at our last meeting around the broadcasting sector, and need for consistency and uniformity in presenting facts and figures, I support the adoption of the report. In cases where we were unable to get vital information we should say so.”

No one challenged Chinaka. In the absence of any further communication from other panellists, which was itself not unusual during the IMPI process, this became the final communication leading to the adoption of the report by IMPI.

More importantly, Chinaka’s correspondence indicates that at the time of his writing a meeting had just been held to discuss the adoption of the IMPI Report, contrary to the false claim by whichever editor fed false information to Sibanda as published in The Daily News that, “Since the completion of the document we have never met, neither did we sign to approve the final draft.”

The funds were no longer available for the secretariat to convene a meeting where panelists would engage in verbal discussion before appending their signatures to the report. The only other response received on February 9 came from Chimakure. He referred to the issue of the CIO being allegedly involved in the takeover of certain publications, including The Mirror and The Financial Gazette. I will still revert to this issue more fully.

Sibanda quotes one of his IMPI editors as saying, “We are disappointed at the final product which was compiled by a private firm.”

This editor had ample opportunity to review the draft report as a whole as well as the draft chapters in the period leading to February 9. He clearly did not utilise that opportunity, although he was paid handsomely for his expected services. It was a decision of the Ministry that professional drafters should be contracted to compile the report.

The secretariat merely facilitated. If this particular editor had any reservations about this particular arrangement he never voiced them at the material time. The same editor is finally quoted as saying, “At one time there was a delay in compiling the draft document since the IMPI chairman, Nyarota wanted to do it himself.”

This statement is both false and defamatory. At no point did I ever want to single-handedly draft the IMPI Report, assuming it was in any way feasible for such a document to be complied by one person.

On Friday, June 13, 2014 the IMPI panellists established an internal Report Drafting Committee, which was tasked with the responsibility of drafting the report. The Drafting Committee was selected primarily on the basis of their sound understanding of media issues, and above all, members were required to have excellent writing skills.

The following 12 panellists — almost half of the IMPI team — were chosen to serve on the drafting committee: Geoffrey Nyarota (chairperson) with Thembe Khumalo as deputy, Pikirayi Deketeke, Susan Makore, Chris Chinaka, Cont Mhlanga, Vincent Kahiya, Dr Anthony Mhiripiri, Jacqueline Chikakano, Plaxedes Wenyika, Foster Dongozi and Chris Chivinge.

For either Muleya, Gama or Chimakure to now suggest, and for Sibanda to record as accurate fact, that I ever wanted to draft the IMPI report single-handedly, smacks of outright malice and is clearly defamatory. In any event the then Minister Prof Jonathan Moyo intervened and instructed that professional drafters be contracted.

No panellist ever challenged the Minister’s instruction.

With reference to the alleged CIO issue, Sibanda quotes another editor who participated at Kadoma, — this, presumably, could only be Chimakure — as saying, “There is a whole chapter that dealt with the CIO taking over The Mirror newspaper and how the spy agency was controlling stakes in other publications that is missing.”

This assertion is totally false. No chapter was ever removed from the IMPI Report either by the drafters or by the secretariat. Indeed, there was some dispute over a section of a chapter submitted by Chimakure and Stanley Gama’s thematic committee, Polarisation, Perception and Interference, which was chaired by Vincent Kahiya, then editor in chief at AMH.

When the draft of this particular chapter was circulated to all panellists for their review, Jacob Chisese, the chief executive officer of The Financial Gazette who was also an IMPI panellist raised very strong and, as far as I could assess, legitimate objections.

He threatened to sue if unsubstantiated falsehoods about the ownership of his company formed part of the IMPI report. These concerns were circulated to all panellists. No one defended the controversial paragraph against Chisese’s charges and threats of litigation, not even Chimakure himself.

Now he seeks to hold the IMPI process to ransom for very personal reasons because content that was challenged as potentially defamatory was excluded from the final report. I have previously confessed that my caution in this case was influenced by Chimakure’s track record in the area of publication of defamatory or potentially defamatory content at NewsDay, where he was relieved of his editorship following an outcry from disgruntled persons.

They included former South African President Thabo Mbeki, MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai and myself. I filed a case for defamation against NewsDay and Chimakure back in 2013.

Now Chimakure has the temerity to be quoted by Sibanda as ludicrously pronouncing: “It is a cause of concern when the secretariat decides to remove a whole chapter without consulting us the people in the committee that crafted the report.

We will only approve the IMPI Report if they put back the chapter.”

Even in The Daily News article Chimakure displays little respect for truthful presentation of facts. As chairperson of IMPI I never saw the allegedly missing chapter. Chimakure does not explain how, if the allegedly missing chapter were to be found, he proposes to have it inserted in the finished IMPI Report in order for him to allow its official adoption.

If Chimakure’s allegedly missing chapter is, in fact, non-existent then he and Sibanda should do the right thing ethically, that is craft an appropriately worded retraction and apology for equally prominent publication in the same Daily News.

Above all, Muleya, Gama and Chimakure are all experienced senior journalists. If they have any genuine or legitimate issues to raise about the report which they participated in producing they should surely be happy to have their names publicly associated with the issues raised.

The Ministry would take their contributions more seriously that way.