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The Presidential Interview
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted of the Weekly Media Update 2004-21
Monday May 24^th – Sunday May 30^th 2004

THOSE with satellite televisions had the privilege of watching President Mugabe’s recent interview with British TV’s Sky News. Although the interview gave a section of the Zimbabwean society a chance to see Mugabe being interrogated – a rare sight in a country where the public is subjected to Mugabe’s monologues masquerading as interviews – it was only a qualified success because the interviewer, Stuart Ramsay, seemed not to have fully done his spadework on Zimbabwe’s crises. This was illustrated by his failure at times to challenge Mugabe’s claims with concrete evidence and also allowed himself to become side-tracked by irrelevant comparisons. As a result, President Mugabe was let off the hook on a number of occasions.

Nevertheless, the interview covered important national issues and the President’s responses to a number of probing questions revealed his discomfort. The government media carried excerpts of Mugabe blaming British Prime Minister Tony Blair for the worsening bilateral relations and also a verbatim of the interview in the Press. But they neither assessed nor interpreted the essence of some of Mugabe’s revealing statements on his government’s policy issues.

Only the private media highlighted these. For example, they questioned Mugabe’s claims against the facts on the ground. Stakeholders in the economic and socio-political spheres of the country were also accessed for comments. Some of the issues emanating from the presidential interview and probed by the private media included the exact position of the stalled ZANU PF/MDC party talks, food security and human rights abuses in the country.

The private media however, agreed that Mugabe’s responses on how his government was tackling these problems had been unconvincing. The Zimbabwe Independent (28/5) reported a Sky News poll of its viewers claiming that 86 percent of the participants thought Mugabe was "unconvincing". The paper also quoted MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai and political analyst Brian Raftopoulos expressing similar sentiments.

SW Radio Africa (25/5) quoted MDC secretary-general, Welshman Ncube, describing Mugabe’s inferences, that since the opposition party’s voice was being heard in Parliament there was no need for negotiations, as a demonstration that ZANU PF was not interested in the talks. Ncube claimed that although the South Africans had a deadline for the talks, the MDC’s position had always been that "…there is nothing…happening on the ground which makes any of us optimistic that there is a solution to the Zimbabwe crisis…" because ZANU PF "has always refused to come to the negotiating table". For the talks to succeed, added Ncube, the first thing the SA government ought to do is "to stop shielding Mugabe from international pressure…"

The next day (26/5) the private radio station reported that Mugabe’s disclosures that the Malaysian government had contributed building material to enable him complete his lavish Borrowdale mansion had sparked an outcry in that country. Consequently, the Malaysian parliament had urged its government "to clarify its involvement..." The station cited opposition leader Lim Kit Siang, as saying that Mugabe’s admission that Malaysia funded the mansion was "shocking" because "no audit had been tabled in Parliament pertaining to the alleged funding, which may involve taxpayers’ money…"

The government media ignored the debate about Mugabe’s mansion. Instead, The Herald (27/05) quoted Information Minister Jonathan Moyo discrediting the Sky News interview saying the questions were "either crude or very stupid" but would not elaborate. He also dismissed the Sky News poll on the interview saying it was a "false survey", a sentiment shared by ZTV’s Media Watch.

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