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The Land and the Law
Weekly Media Update # 2002/15 - extract
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe
May 16, 2002

The complexities dogging Zimbabwe’s controversial land reforms demand intelligent, fair and accurate analysis from the media. But this was not the case during the week when government again bulldozed through Parliament the enactment of the Land Acquisition Amendment Bill, which gives government immediate control of white-owned farms targeted for resettlement.

Parliamentarians were hastily assembled before the official opening date to regularize the law reincarnated last November by presidential decree after a Supreme Court ruling nullified the General Laws Amendment Act to which the amendment originally belonged.

Coverage of this important development in the public media was especially unprofessional. Most notable was how the public media crudely reduced the Bill’s erosion of constitutional property rights guarantees to mere inter- party rivalry. For example ZTV’s bulletin (8/5 6am) quoted Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa explaining the effect of the Bill without challenge and featured a comment masquerading as a statement from ZBC’s reporter, Josh Munthali, that contained extreme distortions of the truth:

"The MDC is a coalition of ex-Rhodesians, Selous Scouts and white commercial farmers which explains their resistance towards land redistribution. The MDC stance on land is well documented. The party is on record saying it is opposed to any land reform and distribution currently under way…"

MMPZ wonders whether such false information will attract the attention of the police.

The private press criticized Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa for suspending parliamentary procedures to facilitate the passage of the Bill. But on ZTV Chinamasa argued (9/05,8pm) that

When the Bill was passed, ZBC quoted Agriculture Minister Joseph Made (ZTV, 8/05, 8pm) praising the amendment, but he also took the opportunity to misrepresent MDC policy without question:

"I think everyone should really take note that MDC vowed yesterday to fight all the way against the will and wishes of Zimbabwean people…"

On ZTV the next day (9/05, 8pm) Made was again quoted stating that the Bill would empower the government to acquire farmers’ immovable property and pay compensation for it. But he was not asked who was to determine the value of the property, whether government had budgeted for this or when the farmers could expect payment.

ZFU vice-president Abdul Nyathi was quoted (ZTV, 9/05, 8pm and 3FM 10/05, 6am) expressing the organization’s approval, saying the new law was

"…a demonstration that our government is highly democratic. And our people have been democratic in that they have not even been forcing the previous owners out of the farms."

How the reporter let Nyathi escape with such false claims remains a mystery.

Justice Minister, Chinamasa provided ZTV viewers with a clear demonstration of government’s increasing arrogance when he was quoted in the same bulletin saying it was

"perfectly permissible… to suspend standing orders. That is part of the democratic process. And also, it’s a democratic process that in fact the outcome is always determined by numbers…So there is nothing undemocratic about relying on the numbers that ZANU PF has in Parliament to pass its legislation. If we didn’t have the numbers we wouldn’t be in power…"

He was not asked what purpose standing orders were intended to serve or whether his actions had not undermined the democratic process of Parliament.

The Chronicle’s front-page headline (9/5), MDC thumped, eloquently sums up the public press’ trivialization of the new law’s enactment, which barely observed its irregular passage. The article was also carried in the same edition of The Herald.

While both papers did note that the MDC "unsuccessfully tried to block …the Bill" because it had been unprocedurally tabled before the House, neither paper followed this up and therefore wilfully overlooked the negative effects on the democratic process or the likely implications of the rushed law on land reform. Instead, they opted for the comments of Information Minister Jonathan Moyo describing the Bill’s passage as a victory for ZANU PF’s 10-point agrarian plan. Further political characterisation of the matter was reinforced when the papers quoted Moyo ridiculing the

"opposition, whose farmers have turned into full time detractors, (to) abandon their evil ways and join the rest of the country in building the economy".

The Chronicle followed this up in its comment, and noted "with disappointment reports that some counter-revolutionaries" in the MDC "tried in vain to derail the passing of the Bill" to "please their local and international masters".

The Sunday News (12/5) extended this propaganda in a story calculated to portray the MDC as a political outcast against land reform. It observed that all local political parties in Zimbabwe welcomed the amendment "which will speed the land redistribution programme, leaving the British-sponsored MDC in the cold". And its comment; MDC now irrelevant, echoed this sentiment.

This narrow and unquestioning endorsement of government’s increasingly authoritarian powers allowed the public media to side- step any analysis of the implications the law has for constitutional guarantees and of the other thorny issues besetting land reform generally: haphazard settlement and lawlessness.

The private press’ coverage of the amendment’s legal implications and the irregular way it was pushed through Parliament was hardly inspiring either.

The Daily News stories (7/5), and (9/5), merely reported the progress of the Bill and the powers it invests in government, but didn’t explore the legal implications of Parliament’s action in suspending its standing orders to force the legislation through.

The Financial Gazette story (9/5), ‘Land law changes can be challenged’, did investigate this angle however, quoting the MDC’s secretary-general, Welshman Ncube and other unnamed legal experts warning that the law was vulnerable to challenge as a result of its irregular passage through the House. SW Radio Africa also quoted Ncube (9/05) criticizing the Bill, adding dryly that it was an academic exercise since war veterans were already evicting farmers and that ZANU PF supporters were looting farmers’ moveable assets, which was against the law. Such activities also found space in the private Press during the week.

Indeed, the private press atoned for its patchy analysis of the amendment’s enactment through sustained investigation of the disorder bedevilling land reform. This was mirrored in The Daily News story (7/5) reporting the clash between war vets leader Andrew Ndlovu and the association’s acting chairman, Patrick Nyaruwata, over how resettlement should proceed.

While Nyaruwata is on record as advising fellow war vets in Manicaland to ignore threats issued by Ndlovu to commercial farmers and Indian businesses, the paper quoted Ndlovu accusing Nyaruwata of being a "traitor" and vowed to beat up farmers " and chase them from the farms" whether he liked it or not.

The two - whose mandate to supervise the land reform programme is not even catered for under any law - prompted The Daily News (10/5) to ask in an editorial: Under whose authority do these men act? Predictably, the public media ignored the story and continued to paint a façade of political correctness in government by censoring itself from publishing a parliamentary appeal by Finance Minister, Simba Makoni urging government to stop farm violence.

Makoni’s call for government

"to enable all farmers to farm without disruption as we intensify and expedite purposeful and production- oriented agrarian reform and land redistribution",

reported in The Daily News (8/5), was glaringly missing from The Herald story of the same day, Government has no plans to devalue Zimdollar: Makoni.

Similarly, a Reuters story published in The Daily News (10/5) and The Zimbabwe Independent (10/5) which accused Mugabe of "state terrorism" was also missing from the state media. The story, based on an annual review of world security by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), accused Mugabe of various sins, among them the perpetration of "state-backed farm seizures".

Sobering too were revelations by The Zimbabwe Independent (10/5), reporting the loss of game worth $US40 million via poaching perpetrated in conservancies by newly resettled farmers, which also involved local authorities and ZANU PF. The paper quoted a letter written by Pretty Kahlu, the acting chief executive officer for Umguza Rural District Council, seeking police co-operation on behalf of a ZANU PF district chairman, to shoot game on five farms to feed "ZANU PF militia housed in terror camps around Bulawayo". A similar Daily News article (10/5) reported

"most wildlife conservancies as saying they have lost up to 70 percent of their animals to government-sanctioned poaching".

The MEDIA UPDATE is produced and circulated by the Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe, 15 Duthie Avenue, Alexandra Park, Harare, Tel/fax: 263 4 703702, E-mail: monitors@mmpz.org.zw

Send all queries and comments to the Project Coordinator. Also, please feel free to circulate this report. Previous copies of MMPZ reports can be accessed at http://www.mmpz.org.zw

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