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The land audit
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2003-41
Monday October 13th - Sunday October 19th 2003

Such chaotic policing of strategic national sectors by government was highlighted by private media reports demystifying government propaganda on the success of the land reform programme. The Financial Gazette, The Zimbabwe Independent, The Sunday Mirror and Studio 7 (17/10) all unearthed details of the Charles Utete Land Audit report, presented to President Mugabe last month. Although SW Radio Africa also covered the issue, it largely used The Financial Gazette and The Zimbabwe Independent stories. These private media generally noted that the findings exposed the chaos and anomalies surrounding the whole reform process, which the private media has persistently exposed in the past.

The government-controlled media however, ignored the issue and continued to give the impression that government was putting everything in place to ensure the success of the coming farming season.

The Financial Gazette (16/10) was the first to report on the Utete report, saying the audit "indicates that a paltry 134 000 people have so far been allocated land, 30 percent of which are still to take up their allocation under the A1 and A2 resettlement models, leaving swathes of productive land lying idle". The paper noted that this figure is far below government’s claims that 300,000 households had been resettled under the controversial fast-track land reform programme. Said the paper, "This not only compromises the country’s food security situation, but also has a negative impact on the feeble economy as agriculture has, for some time, had the biggest single sectoral contribution to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP)".

SW Radio Africa (16/10) carried the same report that evening.

The Zimbabwe Independent (17/10) dismissed the report as a "smokescreen aimed at whitewashing the damaging consequences" of the land reform programme. It noted that instead of technically reviewing the land reform programme, the report "is saturated with Zanu PF mantras and lacks analytical depth". For instance, said the paper, the report "ignores the link between land reform and economic decline and skates over the destruction of commercial agriculture and the plunder of billions of dollars worth of equipment by the ruling elite". Further, the paper observed that apart from justifying the arbitrary fast-track programme, the report "glosses over the issue of multiple-farm ownership which President Mugabe had led the public to believe was the central focus of the investigation", adding in its comment "Thus the rotten core of Zanu PF’s land seizures remains surgically unattended".

But The Sunday Mirror (19/10) viewed the report differently. It described it as "thorough" and claimed that "the thorny issue of multiple farm ownership is addressed in detail in a separate annexure to the Utete report". However, the story did not state exactly what those details were.

The issue did not find space in the government-controlled media, which was preoccupied with peddling ‘positive news’ on the land reform programme. For example, The Herald (14/10) unquestioningly reported claims by District Development Fund (DDF) Director James Jonga that the fund would till about 100,000 hectares of land for communal and A1 farmers. Jonga was quoted as saying the targeted hectarage would produce 500,000 tonnes of grain "which happens to be the equivalent of the national grain reserves". He added, "This plus the other huge amounts that will come from the model A2 farmers will mean that the country has more than it needs for normal subsistence and commerce".

In another report in the same issue, Maize harvest set to increase, the paper simply relayed Chombo’s figures on projected high yields for the 2003/2004 farming season without scrutiny. The article bombarded readers with general figures of the amount of inputs government has distributed to farmers and the anticipated tonnage without clarifying whether they represented the needs of the country.

ZBC adopted The Herald stance throughout the week. In one such report, ZTV (16/10, 8pm) even tried to downplay the shortage of seed saying that government "has started importing seed from South Africa and Zambia to offset the 70 000-tonne deficit".

However, SW Radio Africa (13/10) quoted South African economists as saying "South Africa was no longer capable of supplying all the 14 SADC countries" with maize and has "just enough to take its own citizens through to the next season." In fact, The Standard (19/10) revealed that newly resettled farmers were still failing to access inputs and were facing several problems two months into the farming season. Even ZTV (16/10, 8pm) and The Sunday Mail (19/10) could not hide this fact.

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