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Peasant demonstrators, violent invaders: Representations of land in the Zimbabwean press
Wendy Willems, World Development
June, 2004

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In February 2000, Zimbabweans rejected a referendum on a draft for a new constitution which included a controversial clause that would allow the government to compulsorily acquire land from large-scale commercial farmers without paying for the land itself but only for improvements made on the land. Subsequent to this rejection, numerous commercial farms were occupied. Although there had been previous waves of occupations on large-scale commercial farms, those taking place in early 2000 were much more widespread and better organized. Despite the rejection of the referendum, a constitutional amendment on compulsory acquisition of land by the government was pushed through Parliament in April 2000. The state-supported daily newspaper The Herald described this event as follows:

Zimbabwe yesterday took a giant leap towards correcting the historical imbalances in land ownership when Parliament passed a Bill which gives Government the power to compulsorily acquire land for resettlement without paying compensation. (. . .) The MPs [who voted in favor of the law], who included Vice-Presidents Muzenda and Msika immediately broke into the liberation war song "Zimbabwe Ndeyeropa" [Zimbabwe's independence was won through bloodshed] soon after the Bill was passed as British High Commission officials trooped out of the Speaker's Gallery. (. . .)

Some MPs could not contain their joy and swayed to the rhythm of the song, while others clapped and banged benches in ecstasy.

The Herald constructed the amendment as an historical occasion concluding the "struggle for land" in Zimbabwe which had started during the first uprising against the British in the late 19th century ["First Chimurenga"] and had continued during the liberation war in the 1970s ["Second Chimurenga"]. It described the amendment as a means to overcome past impediments to land reform, giving rise to a "Third Chimurenga," thereby suggesting that legal restrictions had been the main reason for the previously limited extent of resettlement. Mocking "celebrations" in Parliament later in the year, cartoonist Tony Namate commented upon what had happened in a cartoon that was published in the private newspaper The Daily News. The cartoon showed the celebrating MPs dancing to the tune of "ZANU ndeyeropa" which Namate literally translated as ZANU-which is Zimbabwe's ruling party - is "bloody." Through this cartoon, Namate was anticipating the violence that would be a likely accompaniment of the strategies to remain in power.

This example serves to show how the state and private media in different ways interpreted the new developments concerning the land issue as they took place in 2000. Reports on land came to occupy a central place in the local and international media which increasingly led to concern among government representatives. In the run-up to the June 2000 parliamentary elections, The Herald quoted President Mugabe as criticizing media reportage of violence related to the farm occupations: "Those whites who died were shown like small gods on BBC, CNN and other foreign news agencies but no black was shown. Were there no blacks who died?"

The same paper also cited the secretary of the Women's League of the ruling party Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) Thenjiwe Lesabe as defending the importance of land: "Why do you think we called ourselves children of the soil during the 1950s and 1960s? It is now really sad to see our own black journalists joining foreigners in saying land is not important. It shows they are confused and echoing foreign ideas."

The Herald, which declared its full support to the ruling party ZANU-PF in an editorial, joined in government criticism of local and international media reports:

Instead of sponsoring commercial farmers' resistance to land redistribution the Western media and their governments should encourage the immediate surrender of some of the farms.

The land reclamations are not Communist-oriented or a disrespect for the rule of law as what the Western- inspired media contends.

The deaths of a policeman and two farmers and the injuries to some war veterans and farmers are regrettable developments, which should not have been allowed to happen. There was, however, nothing like the chaos that many Press reports inside and outside the country were suggesting. (. . .) The truth is that, contrary to sensational reports and wishful doom prophecies, things are not falling apart. The centre is compact and holding strongly.

It blamed the Western media and local private media for exaggerating accounts of violence. At the same time, ZANU-PF interestingly drew upon representations of the land question, as they appeared in the electronic or print media, in its parliamentary election campaign advertisements. A few days before the June 2000 parliamentary elections, the private newspaper The Daily News carried a ZANU-PF advert which included a still image of a CNN news program that had shown white farmers signing donation cheques to ZANU-PF's main contestant in the elections, the opposition party Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The last sentence of the advertisement read: "You have seen who his masters are. Vote wisely. Zimbabwe will never be a colony again." Through this extract, ZANU-PF aimed to communicate that the opposition party MDC was dominated by white farmer interests and that voting for them would be a compromise to Zimbabwean autonomy. Whereas on many occasions government representatives criticized the media for being "biased" toward whites and foreigners, the ruling party did not hesitate to recognize the "truth" of the same representations if they could be used to justify ZANU-PF s main election campaign issues: radical land reform and national sovereignty.

As the March 2002 presidential elections approached, the government increasingly began to use the state-funded media in its attempts to win the hearts and minds of Zimbabweans for its "fast-track land reform" program which was officially announced after the 2000 parliamentary elections. A variety of jingles and video clips including "Chave Chimurenga" [it is now war] and "Rambai Makashinga" [continue to persevere] were repeatedly broadcast on state television and radio to convey positive messages about farming life. These examples demonstrate how media representations of the land question became increasingly important and contested in the Zimbabwean public sphere.

This article discusses the way in which two Zimbabwean daily newspapers, The Herald and The Daily News, represented issues of land in the period between the rejection of the referendum in February 2000 and the parliamentary elections in June 2000. Three main themes are presented: representations of the land reform and resettlement program, portrayals of farmers and farm workers and reporting on the causes of the farm occupations.

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