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Anti-graft
drive and electioneering
Media Monitoring
Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted of the Weekly Media Update
2004-7
Monday February 16th
– Sunday February 22nd 2004
The government-controlled
media’s continued blind endorsement of government’s anti-graft campaign
manifested itself in their follow-up coverage to the amendment of
the Criminal Procedures and Evidence Act under the Presidential
Powers (Temporary Measures) Act. These media merely presented the
move as a spirited initiative to stem corruption. There was no analysis
of the underlying implications of the new anti-graft law, which
the private media condemned as yet another repressive law meant
to deny citizens their constitutional rights. Neither did they fully
explain why government was only acting on corruption now, when it
has previously ignored massive cases of vice.
In fact, lack
of clear answers to such questions resulted in the private media
viewing the fight against corruption in the prism of the forthcoming
parliamentary elections, which President Mugabe recently announced
would be held in March 2005. They used the fact that the anti-graft
dragnet had only netted smaller fish as evidence to back their observations
that the fight against corruption was part of ZANU PF’s campaign
arsenal to woo the urban electorate.
Such line of
analysis was completely ignored by the government media. Instead,
ZTV (16/02, 6pm) simply relayed the narrow perspective of the anti-graft
war, saying the police had welcomed the newly gazetted anti-corruption
legislation, as it "will help fight economic crimes."
In the same bulletin, faceless "legal experts"
were quoted as having said the new law would "help fight
corruption, for example, money laundering, externalization of funds…"
Selected members
of the public were also roped in to endorse the regulations. Similarly,
The Herald (17/02) comment stated: "The gazetting
of the regulations shows that the Government is determined to deal
with corruption in the country", adding "Corrupt
people… who jeopardise the country’s economic development are economic
saboteurs who should be denied bail."
In an attempt
to give the regulations a degree of legitimacy the comment went
on: "These laws will not be peculiar to Zimbabwe because
other countries like Botswana and the United States already have
such laws." No attempt was made to fully explain what
the US and Botswana laws exactly stipulated nor the circumstances
under which they were passed.
Further, the
paper (and ZBC) narrowly presented the regulations as targeting
those perpetrating economic crimes only and conveniently ignored
the fact that the new laws could also be used against those charged
with the violation of another draconian law, the Public Order and
Security Act (POSA).
This was only
raised in the private media. For
example, SW Radio Africa (17/02) quoted MDC’s secretary for legal
affairs David Coltart as saying, contrary to government media’s
claims, there is a "provision applying these new… laws
to charges leveled against accused people in terms of the Public
Order and Security Act… The…Act, in particular Section 5, has been
the law used by the regime to lock up hundreds of MDC leaders and…people
in civil society." The
private Press did not fully expose this, although it categorically
stated that the law was unconstitutional.
The Financial
Gazette (19/2) quoted Coltart saying the law contravened sections
13 and 18 of the Constitution "in that it removes a person’s
rights to have a question of his liberty determined by an independent
court in a fair hearing within reasonable time".
He raised similar
views in The Standard (22/2) story, Mugabe accused of
abusing presidential powers. Other legal experts such as Sternford
Moyo and Lovemore Madhuku were quoted in the same report condemning
the law saying it contradicted the principle of the separation of
powers, so vital in a democratic society.
Studio 7 (16/02)
agreed. It quoted former magistrate, Wilbert Mandinde, saying the
law violated the constitution because "the presumption
is that you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent. But the
constitution is very, very clear. It says you are innocent until
proven guilty…" The station (17/2) also quoted constitutional
lawyer Greg Linnington echoing similar views adding that, "Sometimes
when a country is undergoing some kind of emergency, there may be
grounds for allowing the police to hold someone for an extended
period without bringing him to a court of law…but there’s no state
of emergency in Zimbabwe at the moment."
Human rights
lawyer Otto Saki also pointed this out in his article ‘Makamba’
regulations violate rights, which appeared in the Zimbabwe
Independent (20/2).
But the government
media steadfastly ignored these fundamentally important issues relating
to citizens’ constitutional rights to liberty, focusing narrowly
instead, on a blinkered presentation of the regulations. ZBC (16/02,
8pm) for example quoted the newly appointed anti-corruption minister,
Didymus Mutasa, as saying "The law helps us to help the
people of Zimbabwe to unearth corruption." ZTV also
quoted Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa as having said government
drafted the law " for the benefit of all Zimbabweans."
The government
media was so obsessed with the government’s fight against graft
that they even found themselves wildly editorializing some stories
that were not directly related to corruption in order to insert
references to the ‘crusade’ against graft.
A typical example
appeared in The Sunday News (22/02). In its report, 80
and still full of energy, which reported President Mugabe’s
birthday, the paper strayed into uncritical praise of Mugabe’s bid
to fight corruption: "The anti-corruption blitz, which
Mugabe declared, has shown him as an honest politician as some bigwigs
within the ruling party have been arrested for economic crimes.
One does not need to be a political scientist to discern that if
public poll surveys were to be carried out they would show that
President Mugabe is the "man of the moment".
As if to back
this portrayal of Mugabe as an untainted leader, whose government
is committed to fighting corruption, the paper and its sister publication
The Sunday Mail (22/2) carried several reports highlighting
government’s efforts to clamp down on corruption. Examples are;
We never used money for positions: President, and Surrender
farms or face jail, Nkomo warns top brass, (The Sunday Mail),
while The Sunday News carried Govt on land reform
clean up exercise, Payback time, and RBZ intensifies probe
on companies.
However, the
private media was sceptical of the government’s sincerity. They
pointed out that if indeed government was serious about weeding
out corruption it should start with the top brass of the ruling
party. For instance, The Tribune (20/2) observed, "The
current clampdown on corrupt businesspeople is a desperate attempt,
not to correct the situation but to save the system…First things
must come first. Political patronage must be destroyed by getting
rid of its godfathers."
In its article,
Heavyweights escape corruption dragnet, The Financial Gazette
also quoted independent analysts questioning why the anti-graft
crusade had only affected ZANU PF’s lightweights and not influential
individuals. Among those quoted was John Makumbe who dismissed the
whole anti-corruption campaign as a political gimmick. Said Makumbe:
"I don’t see the political will to go the whole mile
to fight corruption. A lot of politicking is taking place ahead
of ZANU PF congress in December and the 2005 parliamentary election".
The Zimbabwe
Independent comment also viewed the issue in a similar light.
It warned people not to be hoodwinked into believing that government’s
anti-graft drive, which manifested itself in the promulgation of
the repressive anti-corruption law, was a genuine war against economic
crimes. It noted that the new anti-graft law "will be
used together with AIPPA and POSA to complete the apparatus of the
police state Zanu PF is assembling prior to next year’s poll",
adding that ZANU PF "have evidently decided that the
war on corruption will be the central plank in their electoral platform".
In fact, The
Sunday News (21/02) vindicated the paper’s claims. It quoted
ZANU PF Politburo member Dumiso Dabengwa as having said: "with
the anti-corruption drive and tangible programmes to revive the
economy Zanu PF was putting itself in a better position to win the
2005 parliamentary elections."
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