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Voodoo economics
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2003-33
Monday August 18th - Sunday August 24th 2003

Government’s recent announcement of a $672 billion supplementary budget – premised once more on similar illusory economic fundamentals as the original one – clearly demonstrated why Zimbabwe’s ailing economy would remain in the intensive care unit.

Symptoms of such voodoo economics, as epitomised by galloping inflation, now officially 399.5 percent, and acute commodity shortages continued to dominate news reports. The Press carried about 156 stories on such issues and other related developments, 83 of which featured in the government-controlled Press and the rest in the private Press. However, most of the stories failed to translate into well-informed analyses that enlightened readers about the sad economic realities besieging the country. For example, none of the 83 stories the government-controlled Press carried ever investigated or queried the ruling ZANU PF’s complicity in Zimbabwe’s accelerated plunge towards economic meltdown. They either diverted readers’ attention from government’s shortcomings by blaming others, The Herald and Chronicle (20/8), or swamped them with government’s so-called successes in its fight against the current economic adversities (The Herald, 21/8), which the government controlled media now describe as "challenges".
In fact, the government-controlled Press’ determination to shield government from public scrutiny manifested itself in the way it uncritically reported Finance Minister Herbert Murerwa’s supplementary budget presentation. Its five stories on the issue failed to question the economic relevance of the budget, especially when it was presented under a highly inflationary environment characterised by the fickle exchange rate of the Zimbabwe dollar against its US counterpart.

Such was the government-controlled media’s penchant for political correctness that The Sunday Mail (24/8) and ZBC (24/8, 1pm) reported about how the controversial National Youth Service Programme, viewed by government opponents as ZANU PF’s indoctrination nerve centre, had received "a major boost" after Murerwa allocated it an additional $1.5 billion under the supplementary budget.

However, in a rare display of professionalism, ZBC sought alternative viewpoints on the budget. For example, ZTV (22/08, 8pm) quoted an economic analyst, Farai Zizhou, as saying the budget would worsen inflation saying "The Minister (Herbert Murerwa) has talked about the need to take measures that will contain inflation but then with a rising budget deficit it is difficult for the economy to actually attain any lower inflation." Another economist, Andy Hodges, was quoted, on the station’s 6pm bulletin of the same day, as saying " the supplementary budget deals with consumptive spending…it’s all about salary increases…it really isn’t a supplementary (budget) to stimulate the economy." But then, ZTV swamped these rarely candid observations with reports that gave the impression that the budget was the right tonic for the economy.

The Herald and Chronicle (23/8) appeared equally clueless. They seemed obsessed with celebrating a "major boost" for Zimbabwe’s contentious land reforms, which was allotted $45 billion in the budget to finance crop inputs and livestock production. The papers and ZBC did not question how government would finance the supplementary budget, as did Studio 7 (21/08). Moreover, the government-controlled media were silent on what exchange rate the supplementary budget was based on considering that it was hyper-inflation and a new exchange rate introduced last February under government’s National Economic Revival Programme that made nonsense of the original budget and required the submission of the supplementary one.

The private media hardly performed any better. For example, the private Press only carried five stories on the budget; three of which were carried in The Daily News (21, 22 and 23/8) while The Zimbabwe Independent (22/8) and The Weekend Tribune (23/8) each carried a single story.

However, unlike the government-controlled Press, the three papers were critical of the budget. For example, The Daily News (23/8) quoted University of Zimbabwe business studies lecturer Anthony Hawkins as saying it was difficult to take the supplementary budget "seriously" because it did not make sense to "increase the budget deficit" when "inflation is a problem". He dismissed Murerwa’s prediction that agriculture would recover by 2.3 percent this year by noting that the minister had earlier "claimed that inflation will be 96 percent by the end of this year". Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce official James Johwa was also quoted in the same story rebutting Murerwa’s agricultural forecast as "a big lie", as "we have messed up the land reform (and) there is no agriculture to talk about", while economist John Robertson believed that a political solution was the only way out of the economic crisis. MDC’s shadow finance minister Tendai Biti had no kind words for the government’s supplementary budget either. The Zimbabwe Independent quoted him dismissing it as "a criminal budget that is meant to legitimise government’s fiscal indiscipline", adding "they (government) have found a proper way to strip state assets before their exit".

Churning out sanitised reports about government’s supplementary budget was not the only professional sin committed by the government-controlled media. They also attempted to stifle the facts behind Zimbabwe’s worsening cash shortage and food insecurity. Thus, ZTV (19/08 8pm), The Herald (20, 21/8) and Chronicle (20/8) became preoccupied with unquestioningly endorsing observations, especially by ZANU PF MPs Victor Chitongo and David Chapfika, that the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) was the sole author of the current cash shortage. They deliberately ignored the fact that a failure by the RBZ automatically translated into a flop by government because the central bank was not autonomous as it worked under the jurisdiction of the finance ministry.
However, The Zimbabwe Independent and Studio 7 (20/8) quoted Johwa duly making the connection. He was quoted in The Zimbabwe Independent as saying government was only "passing the buck on the cash crisis because they are trying to exonerate themselves from their economic mismanagement".

If the government-controlled media was not blaming the RBZ, it was setting up more smokescreens for government’s incompetence by blaming certain sections of society, such as "detractors of the government" (ZTV, 23/08 8pm & 3FM, 23/08 1pm) and cross-border traders, who were accused of externalising large sums of money (The Herald 18/8).These claims however, seemed to contradict those by the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority public relations officer Priscilla Sadomba who told The Sunday Mail (24/8) that there was a slow response to the government’s August 24 deadline waiving restrictions on Zimbabweans returning externalised local currency. To buttress the notion that people hoarding money were the cause of the shortages, the government-controlled Press ran four reports of the police arresting individuals in possession of millions of dollars.

Meanwhile, the issue of travellers’ cheques (TCs) continued to receive a fair share of critical analysis from both sections of the media. In an unusual show of unity, all media generally agreed the TCs would not be an effective solution to the cash crisis. However, there was no such concurrence between the two over the reasons bedevilling food shortages in the country. While the private media attributed Zimbabwe’s food shortages to government’s ill-devised policies, the government media was relentless in its partisanship. For example, they all failed to explore the ruinous consequences of government plans to politicise food aid by demanding that international relief agencies surrender their food distribution role to village headmen, a topic raised by The Daily News (19/8). Social Welfare Minister July Moyo reportedly issued the directive, a contradiction of President Mugabe’s assurance last year to World Food Programme director James Morris that his government would not interfere in NGOs’ food aid distribution.

The government-controlled media also ignored the resultant threats by the international food aid donors that they would stop distributing food to Zimbabwe’s starving masses if government insisted they abdicate distribution to headmen, who are on the government payroll (Studio 7, 20/8 and The Daily News, 22/8). Nor was there any attempt to find out how the order would affect Zimbabwe’s 5.5 million hungry people. Instead, the Chronicle (20/8) tried to blame such disastrous policies on MDC "political upstarts…and the gutter Press", that it said, "are taking the government to task on its policy that NGOs should work hand in glove with local authorities…in the distribution of food".

The blame game intensified towards the end of the week with The Manica Post (22/8) reporting that traditional leaders in Mutare had attacked NGOs for sidelining them and politicising food aid in favour of the MDC. But no evidence was provided to support this claim.

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