Prominent lawyer and former Harare mayor Muchadeyi Masunda has described the arrest of Alpha Media Holdings (AMH) senior journalist as a sad and disturbing development.
Masunda (MM), who is also the AMH Editorial Advisory Board chairperson, made the remarks on the platform In Conversation with Trevor hosted by AMH chairperson Trevor Ncube (TN).
He said journalists had an important role to play in a democracy and must be left to do their work without interference. Below are excerpts from the interview.
TN: Greetings, welcome to In Conversation with Trevor, brought to you by Heart and Soul Broadcasting Services.
Today I'm in conversation with Muchadeyi Ashton Masunda, an attorney and international commercial and sports arbitrator. Welcome to In Conversation.
MM: I'm delighted that at long last I'm having a physical face-to-face interview with you, and I hope you're not going to subject me to gratuitous abuse as you have been warned to do since the last.
I don't know how many years that I have known you.
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TN: We meet at a time, when just this morning, I mean, our colleague, Blessed Mhlanga, was arrested, rather he handed himself over to the police after the police had been making some noises about wanting to interview him.
What's your reaction to this kind of treatment of journalists?
MM: It's a very sad and disturbing development, you know, because it strikes at the very root of an important facet of any democratic state, which is freedom of expression.
And I think it's, I don't know, you know, what it is that has actually happened, maybe it's a bit sub-judice for anyone to comment at this stage, but one hopes that justice will prevail.
And, but one thing that we must never ever lose sight of is that there are four pillars of good governance and democracy.
And the proverbial fourth estate constitutes one of those four pillars.
And the journalists have a particularly important and pivotal role to play in society because they keep a check on the other three pillars of governance and democracy, namely the executive that comes out of the legislature, the legislature itself, and the judiciary.
And the fourth estate is the only one of those four pillars that has from time immemorial been entrusted with that very important role.
So in this particular instance, what is of concern to me is that Blessed Mhlanga was arrested in the course of his duties as a journalist and his duty is to gather information and disseminate information to the members of society on matters that are of topical interest.
So one waits with bated breath to see if the person that Blessed Mhlanga interviewed, namely Blessed Geza, is also going to be subjected to the same sort of treatment, and if so, the grounds upon which he's going to be prosecuted.
TN: Do you get the sense, I mean, we are 40, how many years, 45 years as a politically independent country, that we actually value the significance and the role of the fourth estate as you have just explained now?
Do we value, do we give it the role that it should have?
MM: We keep getting mixed signals. There are times when we appear to be on course in terms of giving due respect and taking due cognisance of the role that the media has to play.
But then again we have instances where there appears to be the selective application of the law, and that is untenable.
TN: You are also the chairman of the AMH Editorial Advisory Board. In this role, if you could just explain as briefly as possible what this role entails.
I mean, this is not what we're going to talk about, but we can't avoid not talking about it with Blessed insight.
What's your view of the state of the profession itself? This fourth estate, what position is it in? What is its bill of health?
MM: Well, first and foremost, at the risk of making you blush, I must congratulate you for this decision that you made way back in 2017, when the independent Editorial Advisory Board of Trustees came into existence, because you relinquished whatever control you may have had in the past on the titles that are published under the auspices of Alpha Media Holdings, which is a company that you established.
And that couldn't have been easy, you know, because you had morphed from being an investigative journalist in your own right to management and became the chief executive and now executive chairman.
And it can't be easy because this was unprecedented.
I'm not aware of any media house in the whole of southern Africa, if not the whole of Africa, that has ever done this, to actually hand over the control of the editorial content of, there were three, four titles, NewsDay, Zimbabwe Independent and The Standard as well as the Southern Eye, and entrust that responsibility to the hands of an independent group of people, six of us.
And, you know, we have a situation that has worked out extremely well, you know, during the last, what, five, six years that we've been in existence, where the editor-in-chief and his team, they are accountable to that independent Editorial Board of Trustees, as opposed to management team.
So that gives them an even freer hand to report on matters that are of interest to the reading public.
And I think that was a very strategic and courageous move that you made.
And that, in my view, has gone a long way towards actually strengthening the members of the fourth estate because in the past, as is the case with a number of other media houses, where journalists feel constrained, you know, to cover certain matters that are of topical interest to the unsuspecting members of the public.
TN: You, Simba Makoni, David Coltart, and others, have produced a document called the Constitutional Hill Global Guidelines on Apex Court Appointments. In the first instance, what motivated, what informed this work?
MM: We are privileged to be members of an international think tank, which is based in Barcelona, Spain.
And that think tank was established around 2012, to look at how it could be of assistance to not frail, broken states, but states that seem to be heading in that direction.
And more so, those states where there was a lot of potential for the situation to be salvaged, and those states to be steered in the right sort of direction.
And our country, Zimbabwe, fell in that category, because we have a somewhat curious situation where we have, arguably amongst the highest literacy rates, not just in Africa, but in the world.
But sometimes when you see certain things happening, you start questioning yourself, why aren't we putting all those literacy skills that we have garnered over the years into use?
And in this particular instance, we, especially those of us that have been involved in the legal profession, in its various facets, like in my case, this is my 51st year, since January 1974.
I was watching with concern, especially in those public spectacles where wannabe judges were being subjected to what was nothing short of cruel and unusual punishment, you know, in those interviews that were open to the public.
TN: I will press you there. For me, it was not so much the cruel punishment, it was the calibre of people that were being presented as judges. Is that how low the bar has been set?
MM: Yes or no, Trevor, I can see where you're coming from.
But, you see, what one needs to appreciate is the eligibility and selection criteria, which used to be applied in the appointment of judges, pre-independence and immediately after independence.
So, yes, in pre-independence and immediately after independence, we had what was arguably one of the strongest judiciaries in Africa, and indeed in the world.
But, you see, what we needed to do was to sit down and come up with selection and eligibility criteria which would work, especially after the advent of Uhuru in April 1980.
But as you quite rightly said, there were a number of people that presented themselves as wannabe judges who had no business being anywhere near those interviews.
But again, you do not solve a problem by compounding it.
There was also the question of the questions, the type of questions that needed to be crafted and put to all of them.
You know, as opposed to the members of the Judicial Service Commission who happened to have been chosen to serve on those panels that interviewed the wannabe judges, appearing in certain instances to be unduly harsh or unfair to certain candidates.
Because one thing that ought to prevail at all material times is a sense of fairness and a sense of humility, especially on the part of people that are asking the questions.
