Breaking the Airwaves

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Two years ago, Gerry Jackson was sitting in her Harare home "going mad. I just wanted to know what was going on in my own country," recalls the ex-DJ with state-run Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation. "I wanted news." But since all broadcast media in Zimbabwe are controlled by the government, there was no reliable source. She tried setting up a station, Capital Radio, in Harare, but Robert Mugabe shut it down six days after it went on air. So she went into exile, to London, where she and a team of seven now run SW (Short- Wave) Radio Africa, beaming back to Zimbabwe.

Surveying the audience is impossible given "the extreme fear on the ground," says Jackson. But the station estimates that hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans tune in for SW Radio's three hours of nightly programming. "You don't get newspapers in every corner of Zimbabwe," says John Matinde, a DJ who headed ZBC's Radio 3 pop station for a decade. "Radio is a way of reaching all people."

SW Radio goes live on air at 6 p.m. Zimbabwe time each evening, and the first hour is devoted to Callback. Listeners dial a Zimbabwean number, and SW Radio returns the call, patching them into on-air chats. Hour two is Newsreel, devoted to current events. The final hour features programs such as From the Outside Looking In, a platform for exiled Zimbabweans. It's all about dialogue. "We didn't set up SW Radio Africa because we have answers," says Matinde. "We have plenty of questions, and we want debate."

That is not one of Robert Mugabe's favorite activities. Ministers routinely decline interview requests from the station, which the government has slammed as a tool of colonial-minded Britain. (Jackson says funding comes from NGOs and other donors, but not the British government.) Station personnel have been banned from their homeland — though sources still phone in with their reports. And the staff sometimes hears of listeners being targeted. Recently, in the Mashonaland West town of Zvimba, two teens listening in on someone else's radio were beaten by soldiers.

In fact, SW Radio is only taking a page from Mugabe's own playbook. During the chimurenga in the 1970s, his party aired reports on shortwave from Mozambique. Listeners would huddle clandestinely around radios, waiting to hear the reassuringly familiar words: "This is the Revolutionary Voice of Zimbabwe." Some three decades later, "the people still need a voice," says Jackson. "We're just trying to give people hope."