EDITORIAL COMMENT: Econet raid on The Source scandalous

ECONET-RAIDED-REUTERS-OFFICES-IN-HARARE-YESTERDAY-5ECONET Wireless — the giant telecommunications company so far unblemished by scandal — has invited the chorus of condemnation which followed its decision to raid the offices of the Reuters-affiliated news agency, The Source, on Thursday in a bid to retrieve documents it believed were used to write stories on the operations of its subsidiary, Steward Bank.

The Gestapo-style tactics it employed to enforce a provisional High Court order granted by Justice Joseph Musakwa last week to invade The Source’s premises in central Harare with the Deputy Sheriff, lawyers and security agents in tow, are unprecedented.

The ransacking of computers, extracting of information from emails and general harassment of journalists going about their daily business smacks of rank hypocrisy on the part of the company which is also in the business of disseminating information through its mobile phone business.

At a time when the Zimbabwean government is fighting hard to decriminalise the journalism profession through the expunging of such laws as defamation, Econet’s actions are scandalous to say the least. Justice Musakwa ordered The Source, an affiliate of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, to “delete and expunge” two articles the online publication recently published about Econet and its banking unit, Steward Bank.

One of the articles titled “Debt-distressed Zimbabwe moves to reschedule domestic debt” claimed that the government had borrowed $30 million from Econet, disbursed through Steward Bank, in a deal brokered by former Econet chairman, Tawanda Nyambirai. The article claimed that Nyambirai pocketed a substantial facilitation fee for brokering the deal, for which the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe allegedly acted as the guarantor.

The other contentious story titled “Steward Bank seeks to settle $2,1 million in Chiyangwa loan” alleged that Steward Bank was considering swapping residential stands worth $2,1 million to recover funds borrowed by a property firm owned by businessman, Phillip Chiyangwa. The article quoted confidential documents which showed that Pinnacle Property Holdings owed $2,170,763.78, despite surrendering collateral worth $720,000.

Justice Musakwa interdicted the news agency from “publishing contents of emails and internal memoranda or correspondence of a private nature relating to the applicants’ business or that of its customers, consultants or other counter-parties. The Source, through Advocate David Ochieng, instructed by Chris Mhike, raised constitutional arguments and made an urgent application to the High Court seeking the matter to be referred to the Constitutional Court.

Judgment on the application had not yet been delivered. Mhike said the “invasion” violated the fundamental right of freedom of expression enshrined in the country’s statutes. He said a number of correspondences and documents which pertain to communications between The Source and its sources had been seized. Mhike said the raid had been conducted while they were waiting for a response to their urgent Constitutional Court application.

We condemn in the strongest terms the raid on The Source premises and the subsequent infringement on the freedom of expression of the journalists at the news agency. We aver that the mobile phone company could have acted differently in seeking the enforcement of the order rather than leading the raid on a media organisation going about its normal business.

The strong-arm tactics used by its security agents were unwarranted and have no place in a democracy. Sadly, Econet’s actions mirror those of other conglomerates all over the world who have a penchant for using their financial muscle to muzzle the press. Examples abound of big businesses that have sought to stifle reportage of their operations only to come unstuck and with egg on their faces after the courts have ruled in favour of the media.

In South Africa, the Mail and Guardian newspaper has been gagged several times but ultimately won its right to publish corruption exposes on powerful companies and their bosses after judges ruled that it was in the public interest to do so.

Earlier this year, the UK Daily Telegraph’s chief political commentator resigned and launched a blistering attack on the paper’s management and owners over its lack of coverage of the HSBC tax story (it was broken by other papers), which he described as a “fraud on its readers”.

Peter Oborne claimed the paper deliberately suppressed stories about the banking giant, including revelations that its Swiss subsidiary helped wealthy customers dodge taxes and conceal millions of dollars in assets, in order to keep its valuable advertising account. There are numerous other examples but the bottom line is that freedom of the press is sacrosanct and can never be mortgaged to pander to the whims of big business.

We respectfully submit that Econet were wrong to raid The Source. It’s never too late to admit mistakes and correct them where possible given what is at stake. Tellingly, the company’s humble beginnings where it fought a long and protracted legal battle to win an operating licence should remind it of the folly of employing bullyboy tactics.

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