The Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe:Weekly Update 2009-44

Comment: MMPZ condemns the authorities’ relentless attempts to emasculate professional journalistic activity at ZBH in their efforts to retain control of the national public broadcaster as the unbridled mouthpiece of ZANU PF.

This follows revelations in The Standard (8/11) that ZBH had suspended three managers “accused of leaking information about a government directive to ignore stories involving MDC-T ministers”.

According to the paper’s sources, the broadcaster’s administration then embarked on a “vicious witch-hunt” that saw it approach a “mobile phone service provider seeking information about the phone numbers the managers called”.

The managers’ suspension, the paper noted, brought to 10 the number of journalists the broadcaster has tried to expel on political grounds since the March 2008 elections, excluding the expulsion of its then chief executive officer, Henry Muradzikwa, for allegedly giving airtime to the MDC to campaign ahead of the elections.

In fact, although the broadcaster has since lost its court battles to retrench the other seven it suspended last year – also on allegations that they supported the MDC-T ahead of the country’s harmonised elections – it still has to re-engage them.

Such political vindictiveness does not only violate the public service mandate of the broadcaster, but also clearly exposes the coalition’s failure to fulfil its promise to foster professional journalism in the public media, nine months after its inauguration.

However, its failure partly appears to be a manifestation of the vagueness of the media reforms envisaged under Article XIX of the Global Political Agreement.

For instance, apart from the parties’ acknowledgement of the undemocratic broadcasting environment and their expressed ‘desire’ of “ensuring the opening up of the airwaves and ensuring the operation of as many media houses as possible,” there is no legal commitment under the article to facilitate the accomplishment of this.

In addition, it is difficult to see how the new government can effectively democratise the media when the parties only undertook to “ensure the immediate processing” of all applications for media licences by regulatory authorities under the existing Broadcasting Services Act and Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, the very same instruments that have been used to decimate the private media.

Thus, even if the respective new media regulatory authorities were to be finally established, they would still be obliged to regulate media activity under the same obnoxious Acts. Accordingly, all aspiring media owners are likely to be subjected to the same stringent and arbitrary licensing mechanisms of the past under which there is no guarantee they would be licensed.

Tragically for democratic media reform, the GPA does not specifically commit the parties to ensuring the fair vetting of applicants.

 

 

The print Media

 

Summary

The search for a political settlement in the aftermath of the MDC-T’s partial withdrawal from the inclusive government remained one of the most debated issues during the week, coming a close second to socio-economic restoration issues. See Fig 1.

Press coverage of the matter particularly evolved around the visit by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) President and SADC chair Joseph Kabila, and the subsequent convening of a meeting by the region’s Organ on Politics, Defence and Security to try to break the impasse, following an earlier fact-finding mission.

This, together with other related political and socio-economic issues threatening the coalition, formed the bulk (115) of the 193 reports that the Press (government papers [124] and private papers [69]) carried on the activities of the government. Of these, 77 appeared in the official Press and 38 in the private papers.

The Press did not reflect much success in the government’s reconstruction efforts or implementation of the Global Political Agreement (GPA), which the official papers recorded in 34 reports and private Press (five). The rest of the reports – government papers (13) and private Press (26) – dwelt on authorities’ general activities.

 

Fig 1: Topical news distribution in the print media

Publication	Political developments in government	Socio-economic issues	Human rights abuses
The Herald	34	41	7
Chronicle	12	7	3
The Manica Post	1	1	0
The Sunday Mail	5	4	0
Sunday News	2	6	1
The Financial Gazette	9	3	0
The Zimbabwean	2	4	2
Zimbabwe Independent	8	7	2
The Standard	1	5	3
Zimbabwean On Sunday	5	7	11
Total	79	85	29

 

Political Developments: Threats to the coalition

The government Press barely provided informative updates on the Troika Summit in Maputo, Mozambique. They simply reduced them to lopsided accounts that promoted the ZANU PF element of the coalition at the expense of its partners.

Within this framework, the official Press only emphasised alleged obligations that the MDC-T was allegedly expected to fulfil under the GPA as part of the Troika’s resolutions while saying little about ZANU PF’s.

As a result, the full relevance of the Troika summit’s purpose and outcome were obscured. While The Herald (7/11), at least, publicised the Troika’s resolutions, none of these papers made any professional attempt to give level-headed and informed coverage of what exactly transpired in Maputo, the import of the Troika resolutions and the feasibility of its 30-day window period for coalition partners to reach consensus on outstanding issues.

The Sunday Mail (8/11) personified this disinformation campaign, with its article: MDC-T draws bad card in Maputo…as summit says the party has to remove sanctions, close party radio stations in 15 days, summing up its attempt to pass off propaganda as news analysis.

For example, apart from putting the onus for the lifting of sanctions and the stopping of broadcasts into the country by foreign-based radio stations run by Zimbabweans solely on the MDC-T in contradiction of the GPA and the Troika’s resolution (which only urges the international community to lift sanctions), the ‘analysis’ merely represented a calculated attempt at discrediting the MDC-T and depict it as Western puppets. 

It was in this context that it reduced the Maputo meeting to “a Biblical fig leaf to a politically naked Adam (MDC-T)” solely based on unsubstantiated “reports” alleging that Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai had already been trying to find ways, especially through representations for “more meetings” with Mugabe, “so that he could get a face saver” from the President “to allow his party to get back to Cabinet and the Council of Ministers”.

Earlier, the government papers similarly failed to provide useful insight into meetings that Kabila held with the three principals prior to the Maputo Troika Summit, preferring to restrict themselves to official rhetoric on the matter.

The private papers also failed to provide readers with details of what transpired at the Troika meeting, although they provided more useful interpretation of the outcome of the meetings, the issues at stake and the feasibility of coalition partners reaching a consensus within the stipulated 30-day period.

For example, while The Standard (8/11) quoted political scientist Simon Badza arguing that the 30-day time frame was “unrealistically ambitious”, The Zimbabwean On Sunday of the same day reported MDC-M secretary-general Welshman Ncube explaining how the implementation period would proceed. He told the paper that the Troika resolutions obliged the coalition partners to “immediately resume negotiations on all grievances of all parties simultaneously”, adding: “Within 15 days, South Africa will check on progress and review. If in another 15 days there is no conclusion, the Troika will intervene and assist.”

However, he did not explain the form of the intervention. Neither did the paper ask him.

 

Human Rights abuses

The government papers failed to put into perspective the country’s human rights controversy in their 11 reports on the matter, which recorded two new incidents. These comprised the expulsion of three university students for demonstrating against new fees; and the arrest of MDC-T treasurer-general Roy Bennett’s lawyer, Mordecai Mhlangu, for allegedly obstructing the course of justice after writing to the Attorney-General challenging the subpoena of former arms dealer Peter Hitschmann as prosecution witness in the trial of Bennett on terrorism charges.

The papers merely treated these issues as the normal course of justice.

 

In contrast, private papers linked the continued politically hostile environment, as reflected by draconian legislation, to persistent human rights abuses. They published 18 stories on the matter and recorded four rights-related abuses, including Mahlangu’s arrest. The other three comprised:

·         The alleged attack by soldiers of 43 former street children at Thuthuka training centre in Bulawayo for allegedly being MDC-T supporters.

·         Sentencing of Hester Theron to a wholly suspended three months’ jail term for refusing to vacate her farm;

·         Alleged coercion of teachers and villagers in Masvingo and Midlands to donate towards ZANU PF’s National Congress in December.

 

 

Letters to the Editor

The official papers, particularly The Herald and Sunday Mail, continued to abuse their letters’ pages to harm the reputation of the MDC component of government during the week.

They carried a total of 10 letters attacking the MDC for various alleged misdemeanours, ranging from being irresponsible and unpatriotic, to being Western puppets. Examples include: New GPA claims cheap propaganda and Tsvangirai must denounce sanctions (The Herald 2/11); Tsvangirai has no conscience (The Herald 5/11); What does Morgan know about heroes? (The Herald 6/11) and History reminds us that Tsvangirai is not with us (The Sunday Mail 8/11).

Notably, none of the papers’ letters remotely criticised any possible shortcomings of the ZANU PF constituent of government despite their purported national outlook, which is supposed to embrace all shades of political opinion.  

 

 

The Electronic Media 

 

Summary

The country’s political developments, reflected by SADC’s efforts to resolve the conflict in the unity government, highlighted the week even though the country’s socio-economic crisis received more space in the electronic media. Out of the 183 stories ZBC aired on these issues, 95 exposed tension in government, 58 presented it as making progress in fulfilling the political agreement and 28 were general stories on its activities. Only four were on human rights abuses.

Private electronic media statistics were not that flattering. Of the 74 stories they carried on political developments and related matters (private stations [45] and online publications [29]), only three highlighted government’s tentative achievements. The rest exposed threats to government stability as underlined by the protracted impasse over outstanding issues (40), continued human rights violations (28) and persistent socio-economic problems (3).

 

Fig 2: Topical news distribution in the electronic media

Media	Political developments	Socio-economic issues	Human rights abuses
ZTV	36	89	0
Spot FM	7	17	2
Radio Zimbabwe	20	10	2
Studio 7	17	0	10
SW Radio Africa	8	0	10
*New Zimbabwe	1	1	0
ZimOnline	11	4	7
*The Zimbabwe Times	3	1	1
Total	103	122	32

 

*Statistics for The Zimbabwe Times and New Zimbabwe.com are incomplete. This is due to technical problems experienced by the two websites during the week, which made their accessibility impossible some days.

 

Threats to the coalition

Those who only rely on ZBC remained barely informed about SADC’s efforts to unlock the logjam threatening the fractious coalition. This is because none of the broadcaster’s stories on the political crisis provided coherent details on the circumstances leading to the SADC Troika meeting in Maputo; investigated the behind-the-scenes discussions, or presented and analysed its outcome impartially.

This perspective tallied with ZBC’s previous attempts to downplay the visiting SADC ministerial fact-finding team’s acknowledgement of the crisis in government and its recommendation for a full Troika meeting over the matter.

For instance, while the Troika’s communiqué clearly acknowledged all the parties’ concerns and implored them to “engage in dialogue with immediate effect within fifteen (15) days not beyond thirty (30) days” to address “all the outstanding issues emanating from the implementation of GPA and SADC Communiqué of 27 January 2009,” ZTV (6/11, 7am) emphasized the Troika’s calls on the MDC-T to re-engage ZANU PF.

It was only in its evening bulletins of the same day that a brief summation of the meeting’s outcome appeared. Even then, it was through MDC-M’s Welshman Ncube’s narration, which was relegated to the end of the superficial report.

Consequently, there was no attempt to analyze the feasibility of resolving the crisis within the set timeline given the entrenched differences among the alliance partners.

The visit by SADC chairman and DRC President Joseph Kabila earlier in the week was given a similar perspective.

Instead of relating his visit to friction in government, ZBC simply allowed ZANU PF government officials to delink the two. As a result, Spot FM (3/11, 6am), for example, did not reconcile official claims that Kabila was purely in Zimbabwe on a State visit with his meeting with the coalition principals.

Only the private electronic media provided coherent details on these developments. Not only did they clearly report on the SADC communiqué, they also sought alternative comment on the wisdom of the body’s decisions.

For example, ZimOnline (9/11) quoted political scientist Eldred Masunungure contending that the SADC deadline was “an ambitious timeline given the gravity of the issues and the lack of good faith from the two main parties”.

However, like ZBC the private electronic media did not investigate proceedings of the meeting or investigate SADC’s options in the event that its latest intervention fails.

 

Progress in the coalition

Nearly all the 58 stories ZBC carried highlighting progress in government were presented in isolation of its problems. These included;

• The provision of $3.6 million for constitutional reform;
• The visiting Chinese business delegation’s expressed interest to invest in various sectors of the economy; 
• The projected allocation of more funds to SMEs in the 2010 budget and,
• The submission of shortlisted candidates for the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to President Mugabe.

 

 

The KP meeting and Human rights abuses

ZBC initially ignored the meeting of the international diamond trade regulator, Kimberley Process (KP), in Namibia, and human rights groups’ lobbying to suspend Zimbabwe from diamond trading over alleged rights violations in Chiadzwa diamond fields.

It reported on the matter (6/11, 8pm) only when it emerged that Zimbabwe had escaped censure after the KP agreed to give the country more time to reform its mining policies. 

Even then, it presented the decision as having been unanimous and a vindication of government’s denial of alleged human rights abuses in Chiadzwa, ignoring the fact that the body’s decisions are by consensus and that the dissenting voices of South Africa, Namibia, and DRC in the 75-member body resulted in the recommended ban on Zimbabwe’s diamonds being vetoed.

Neither did it report on the alleged death threats against Centre for Research and Development director Farai Maguwu by suspected members of the CIO, who wanted to stop him from publicizing cases of Chiadzwa rights violations his organization had compiled ahead of the KP summit.

This only appeared in the private electronic (and print) media.

They also reported three fresh incidents of rights violations in 28 stories on the matter. Two were similar to those in the private Press, while one reported alleged threats by ZANU PF supporters to disrupt NGOs’ food distribution in Manicaland conducted in the absence of party members (Studio 7, 3/11).

 

- November 13, 2009 by MMPZ Monday November 2nd 2009 – Sunday November 8th 2009

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Source: (received via email on 13.11.2009)