Transitional Barometer Monthly Report: April 2010

THE government-controlled public media carried 261 stories on the activities of the inclusive government during April, down from last month’s 336. ZANU PF activities accounted for 146 (56%) of these, more than double the 115 reports these media devoted to the activities of ZANU PF’s coalition partners: MDC-T 76 (29%) and MDC-M 39 (15%).

ZANU PF views also dominated in the public media. Of the 287 coalition voices recorded by ZBC in the month, for example, 190 (66%) belonged to ZANU PF, muffling those of the two MDC formations comprising 62 (22%) for MDC-T and MDC-M 35 (12%).

Such disproportionate coverage in the public media of the activities of the three partners in the inclusive government meant that these media were again this month guilty of contravening Article XIX (d) of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) compelling them to report equitably on the coalition partners. See Figs. 1-4.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE media devoted 261 reports to political developments during the month, chiefly comprising the following issues:

 

·      The on-off power-sharing talks;

·      Visit to the country by leader of the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL), Julius Malema, at the invitation of ZANU PF;

·      Invitation by the ZANU PF arm of government to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to open the 51^st edition of the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF);

·      Continued wrangling among coalition partners over new indigenisation regulations; and

·      Independence Day celebrations.

 

There was a lack of clarity in the public media on the fate of the ZANU PF/MDC talks following the intervention last month by talks’ facilitator and South African President, Jacob Zuma.

While in March they gave the impression that nothing had been agreed on, this month they reported the dialogue as having largely succeeded in overcoming the differences among the coalition except on the question of sanctions.

In addition, confusion prevailed in the public media over whether Zuma had set the parties a deadline (March 29) to submit a report on their negotiations or whether it was merely a guideline. For example, ZTV (1/4, 8pm) and The Herald (2/4) downplayed the importance of this timeframe, reporting that the negotiators had finally completed their dialogue on March 31 and had submitted a “verbal” report to Zuma’s facilitation team. The contents of this were not disclosed.

The public media also failed to reconcile this information with claims by presidential spokesman George Charamba late last month (The Herald 30/3) that the parties were not obliged to submit a report to Zuma. The paper quoted him alleging that the coalition principals would only do so “out of courtesy” and for Zuma’s “own benefit” so that he would be informed when he met the chairman of SADC’s Organ on Security, Mozambican President Armando Guebuza, to update him on the progress of the dialogue. No comment was sought from Zuma.

Otherwise, the bulk of the 60 reports the public media carried on the subject either downplayed the failure of the talks or promoted ZANU PF’s argument that Western sanctions must be abolished before there could be any successful conclusion of the negotiations.

The MDC’s concerns, among them the unilateral appointment of senior government officials, were dismissed as merely administrative issues, while the party was presented as paying “lip-service” to the lifting of sanctions, targeted at the ZANU PF leadership and its allies.

Similarly, the public media were not impartial in their coverage of visiting South African ANC Youth League leader, Julius Malema, invited by ZANU PF to promote its credentials as a “revolutionary party” and its contentious policies on land and black empowerment.

Their 70 reports on the topic positively reported Malema’s endorsement of ZANU PF at the expense of the party’s coalition partners without assessing the effects of such actions on the country’s power-sharing dispute, especially in view of Zuma’s “honest broker” status.

For example, The Herald and Chronicle (9/4) enthusiastically amplified Malema’s support of President Mugabe’s leadership and ZANU-PF’s “brave and militant” empowerment programmes, like land reforms and indigenisation, as a basis for redressing colonial injustices while criticizing the MDC-T as a “popcorn and mushrooming party”, "unpatriotic" and "puppets" of the West.

However, Zuma’s subsequent attempts at damage control, promising to pursue the search for an internal settlement in the country with “necessary seriousness and impartiality”, were censored by most of the public media. The Chronicle (13/4) – which did carry this news as an AFP report – hid the story away in its foreign news section.  

Likewise, the public media censored Malema’s reprimand of ZANU PF’s use of violence to intimidate voters during elections at the party’s youth rally in Mbare. While The Sunday Mail (4/4) reported him praising ZANU PF’s controversial land and indigenisation programmes, and promising to lobby South Africa’s ruling ANC to adopt similar policies, The Standard of the same day reported him as having also “strongly denounced the party’s violent tendencies during elections”.

The pattern remained unbroken in the public media’s coverage of Zimbabwe’s 30th Independence anniversary (37 stories), differences among the coalition parties over the indigenisation regulations (49) and Ahmadinejad’s opening of ZITF (39). These issues were presented in a way to promote the ZANU PF arm of government.   

For example, the public media’s reports exclusively attributed the benefits of independence to ZANU-PF policies, such as land reforms and black economic empowerment.

The clashes between the MDC-T and ZANU PF arms of government over how best to implement the controversial indigenisation programme were also exclusively reported through the eyes of ZANU PF. The MDC’s position only appeared in the context of the party being discredited.

For example, while the public media reinforced the ZANU PF view that there would be no significant changes to the indigenisation regulations regarding company ownership, they ignored reports from Prime Minister Tsvangirai’s office stating that Cabinet had agreed to revise them to avoid damaging the country’s economic renewal efforts. The Herald (19/4), for instance, accused the MDC-T of causing “despondency and misinformation” while earlier, the paper’s Eagle Eye column (17/4) accused it of being held hostage by “white Africans” and the “Rhodie element” in its ranks over the party’s statements that the controversial regulations had been shelved.

The private media published 144 reports on political developments. Of these, 92 were on power-sharing talks (Including Malema’ visit [22]) and 21 on the controversial invitation of Ahmadinejad to open the ZITF. The remaining 31 reports focused on the coalition’s bickering over indigenisation laws.

The private media provided more informed presentations of these issues.

On power-sharing, they noted that though the parties had agreed on several issues like electoral reforms, the negotiators had missed the SADC deadline and talks had ultimately failed as the parties remained “poles apart on six key issues”, among these being the unilateral appointment of senior government officials and sanctions(SW Radio Africa 12/4, ZimOnline 29/4 & Financial Gazette 29/4).

These media explored the repercussions of Malema’s propaganda statements for ZANU PF, which they condemned and depicted as compromising Zuma’s impartiality and credibility in the negotiating process. They also widely publicised Zuma’s ensuing reprimand of Malema and his assurances of neutrality in mediating a negotiated settlement in the country.

Audiences of the private media also benefited from a more accurate picture of the policy clashes in the coalition over the indigenisation regulations. Besides recording the ZANU PF component of government’s defence of the regulations, they also highlighted concerns by the MDC-T and analysts about the laws, which they said undermined investor confidence and militated against the bid to have Western sanctions removed.

The parliamentary watchdog Veritas in its Bill Watch 17 (16/4) provided a useful insight into the legal status of the regulations, although none of it found its way into the media. It noted that while “one amendment is expected to be gazetted in the near future to accommodate the views of the Parliamentary Legal Committee,” the regulations will, in the meantime, “continue in force in the form in which they were gazetted on 29th January”.      

 

THE media kept a close watch on developments on the on-off constitutional reform process, publishing a total of 135 reports on the subject.

ZANU PF’s outreach activities received the most attention in the public media, which appeared in 38 of the 102 reports these media carried on constitution revision. These favourably reported ZANU-PF’s constitutional outreach activities and its views on various issues, such as land reforms, as well the party’s campaign against the inclusion of gay rights in the country’s supreme law.

MDC-M outreach programmes were captured three times, while stories about civil society’s activities and other special interest groups, like women and the disabled, were recorded in 37 other reports.

The public media portrayed progress in constitution making in 15 reports, citing the periodic release of funds for the exercise by donors and the training of rapporteurs, thematic committees and outreach teams as evidence. They also updated their audiences on the administrative modalities of the exercise by highlighting the composition and the selection criteria of rapporteurs, as well as the thematic committees.

Problems hampering constitutional reforms were reported in nine stories. The public media presented these as stemming from donors’ reluctance to bankroll the exercise, triggered in part by the extravagant demands by the parliamentary select committee members. The Chronicle (10/4), for example, quoted MDC-M secretary-general Welshman Ncube criticising this “extravagant behaviour” saying select committee members had allocated themselves hefty allowances of as much as “$1,000 per week” while lawyers seconded to Copac as party functionaries, were demanding as much as $6,000 each, to the displeasure of donors.

 

The private media devoted 21 of their 33 stories on the topic to detailing problems threatening constitutional reforms. Besides highlighting the “haggling” between government and donors on how various costs of the exercise would be met, they also exposed the re-emergence of ZANU-PF youth militia bases nationwide, allegedly to intimidate the public into adopting their party’s position on constitution making ahead of the outreach consultation phase.

They also widely reported on the disputes between rapporteurs and the Constitutional Parliamentary Select Committee(Copac) over allowances, and some of the talking points, which the rapporteurs considered to be too political.

The private media noted progress in the constitution-making process in five reports. These included the release of US$8m by donors and the adoption of the talking points. The rest were general reports on the suspension of most parliamentary activity to allow for the constitutional outreach exercise and calls by analysts for a re-examination of the role of chiefs, among other issues. 

THERE was very little activity in Parliament during the month after business was suspended to prepare for the Parliament-led constitutional outreach programme. As a result, most parliamentary activities reported in the media were those that were conducted outside the House, mostly by the committees shadowing government portfolios.

The public media carried 25 reports on parliamentary issues. Ten of these, which focussed on the investigation by the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines and Energy into the mining of diamonds at Chiadzwa, did not provide an accurate picture. They suffocated news that the committee had been prevented from conducting their fact-finding mission at the Chiadzwa diamond fields, including the subsequent parliamentary statement urging that the committee be allowed to exercise its watchdog role.

The Sunday Mail (4/4) only belatedly carried this news buried in a report about the Zimbabwe Miners Federation’s planned visit to Chiadzwa, which appeared on page five of the paper’s business section. Instead of shedding light on why the committee was barred from visiting the diamond fields, which it passively attributed to lack of police clearance, the paper quoted ZMF president Trynos Nkomo accusing the committee of being “obsessed with Chiadzwa diamonds” at the expense of “other thorny issues”. How this was so was never explained.

The paper’s next issue (11/4) carried an opinion piece by Tafataona Mahoso speculating on the purpose of the parliamentary committee’s visit, saying it was to “mainly create a stink in front of journalists and to ventilate the stink as much as possible … in the name of transparency”. 

Ten other reports in the public media fairly reported on other, less controversial activities, such as parliamentary tours of the Chronicle newsroom and Beatrice Hospital; appearances before the Health and Child Welfare, and Local Government portfolio committees, and the public hearing by the committee on Media, Information, Communication and Technology in Bulawayo, among others.

The remaining five reports comprised announcements on the brief resumption of parliamentary business to attend to the signing into law of the Public Finance Management, Audit Office and Financial Adjustments Bills, which are anticipated to bring fundamental changes to government’s accounting systems.

 

In contrast, the private media paid greater attention to the banning of the Parliamentary Committee on Mines and Energy’s visit to Chiadzwa, devoting most (10) of its 17 reports on the topic to this. They prominently reported the parliamentary team’s surprise over the decision as it had been reportedly approved by the Home Affairs co-ministers. The Standard (4/4), for example, quoted unidentified committee members saying they believed the ban was imposed to conceal evidence of corruption in the mining of Chiadzwa’s diamonds and vowing to push for a special committee to investigate Mines Minister Obert Mpofu’s interest in the companies that were awarded mining licences.

Their other reports also highlighted the suspension of parliamentary business until June 7 to facilitate the constitutional outreach programme, and reported on the ongoing committee activities by the Indigenisation and the Defence and Home Affairs portfolios.

NONE of the media’s 47 reports (official media [20] and privately owned outlets [27]) reported any fresh headway in the democratisation of the country’s media landscape despite the authorities’ orders to the Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC) in March to get to work registering new media products. 

Except for a Sunday News report (4/4) that passively quoted ZMC chairman Godfrey Majonga saying “they were still planning on how to proceed”, the government media did not question this lack of progress.

Instead, two opinion pieces published in The Herald (20/4) campaigned against the reform agenda, accusing independent media of peddling falsehoods. One of these (20/4), written by Tichaona Zindoga, dismissed the MDC’s calls for the “opening of media space” as simply calls “for the regularisation of the flotilla of anti-ZANU-PF media, currently in the murky pirate domain, which are supported by the party’s friends and partners in the West”.

But the public media devoted half of their 20 reports on media issues to promoting the planned launch of a second television channel (ZTV 2) by the public broadcaster, ZBC. However, they did not report how this would be funded, especially in light of two other reports they carried exposing the sorry state of the Bulawayo-based Montrose studios and the Chronicle newsroom.

Neither did they view this as an extension of ZANU PF’s control over the “public” broadcasting sector, nor viewed it as a violation of the Global Political Agreement that calls for a “free and diverse” media.

 

The private media continued to question government’s commitment to media reforms. They gave prominence to analysts and human rights organisations’ criticisms of the snail pace reforms, which they generally blamed on ZANU-PF’s intransigence. They cited reluctance by the ZANU PF arm of government to reform the airwaves and the revival of its mouthpiece, The Voice paper, as evidence of this.

In addition, they exposed the continued hostile political and legal environment that journalists are still forced to operate under by reporting the police’s interrogation of two reporters from the private weekly, The Standard, and one freelance journalist for carrying stories exposing the “illegal” and “irregular” sale of council land (The Standard [28/4). They also reported news of new application and registration fees for newspapers and journalists by the ZMC and speculated on the eventual licensing of NewsDay and The Daily News, among other media developments.

 

THE media carried 141 reports on human rights issues in the period under review, a 76% increase from the 80 stories recorded in March, reflecting the extent to which the inclusive government’s efforts to tackle this plague had failed. The rise also spoke volumes about the lack of impact of the coalition’s national healing exercise.

The private media carried 86% (121) of these and recorded 44 new incidents of rights-related abuses. State security agents, ZANU PF supporters and war veterans were identified as offenders in 41 cases, while the MDC was blamed in the remaining three. The victims of such rights violations mainly comprised MDC supporters, journalists, human rights activists, ordinary people and white farmers and their workers.

The public media reported news of five new incidents in 20 stories they carried on human rights issues. All presented the MDC as the offender and ZANU PF as the victim.

Some of the incidents carried in the media included:

·      The arrest of an MDC-T councillor, Bernard Nyamambi, in Victoria Falls for allegedly undermining President Mugabe (Chronicle & New Zimbabwe.com 7 & 8/4)   

·      MDC-T retaliatory violence against ZANU PF in Mashonaland Central (The Herald, Chronicle 19/4)

·      The arrest of WOZA protestors for demonstrating against high electricity tariffs outside Harare’s ZESA offices (The Standard, The Zimbabwean on Sunday & SW Radio Africa 15, 16 & 18/4).

·      Police ban of an MDC march in Masvingo to pressurise President Mugabe and ZANU-PF to fully implement the Global Political Agreement, citing manpower shortages (The Daily News 12/4).

·      The arrest of eight Harare City councillors at the request of businessman Philip Chiyangwa after their exposure of Chiyangwa’s alleged fraudulent acquisition of land in Harare (Studio 7 & Zimbabwe Independent 8 & 9/4). 

·      The invasion of a ranch, owned by a South African national in Beitbridge, allegedly at the behest of ZANU-PF Home Affairs co-Minister Kembo Mohadi, and another farmer in the same area by suspected ZANU-PF supporters (SW Radio Africa & The Zimbabwean on Sunday, 15, 16 & 18/4)