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Price increases and the Diaspora dollar
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Media Weekly Update 2004-23
Monday June 7^th – Sunday June 13^th 2004

THE government-controlled media also glossed over the real situation relating to the country’s economic ills, including a crippling foreign currency shortage. Instead of reporting a massive increase in the price of mealie-meal and a less severe increase in bread, these media focussed on efforts by Gideon Gono, Governor of the Reserve Bank, to harness foreign currency from millions of Zimbabweans in the diaspora through the Homelink Money Transfer Agency. As a result, they largely ignored inflationary symptoms such as the commodity price increases, which continue to erode workers’ disposable income.

Although the private weeklies have tried to keep abreast of the sign of economic distress, they have since been out-sprinted by commodity price increases and have consequently failed to fully update their audiences on time. Nevertheless, The Financial Gazette revealed that the price of bread was set to rise to between $3,300 and $3,600 per loaf in response to a hike in the price of flour from $2,4 million to $4,1 million a tonne. The paper quoted industry players as having attributed the hike in the price of flour to the shortage of wheat and the depreciation of the Zimbabwean dollar against major currencies. The bakers warned that if the situation persisted, bread would cost more than $4,000 a loaf by December.

But The Herald (7/6) misled its readers by claiming that bread had fallen from $2,900 to between $2,800 and $2,500 a loaf - on the very same day that some retailers started selling a loaf at above $3,000.

Besides the commodity price increases, the media also carried various reports on industrial action by workers, particularly those from parastatals such as Zimpost and TelOne, demanding salary increments. However, the media treated these industrial disturbances in isolation, failing to view them in the context of the macro-economic crisis facing the country.

The government media tried to gloss over the country’s economic ills by narrowly presenting the Homelink facility as the ultimate panacea to Zimbabwe’s foreign currency woes (The Herald, 7/6). ZTV (11/6, 8pm) claimed that Homelink "has received a positive response from inside and outside Zimbabwe". Seven people, including Zimbabweans purportedly living abroad, were quoted praising the system.

But a report by SW Radio Africa (11/6), actually alleged that "outraged Zimbabweans" in Britain were planning "mass protests" against Gono’s scheduled visit to that country to solicit foreign currency, although it did not cite any Zimbabweans.

The Sunday Mirror did not report on the issue but surprisingly lambasted the MDC for organising the protests, asking: "How does the MDC justify its active opposition to a programme that promotes the national interest and still claim to be seized by the need to promote the same?"

The government media’s simplistic portrayal of the noble nature of Homelink resulted in the distortion of some basic home truths. For example, their coverage of the matter seemed to imply that those living and working abroad had been encouraged to do so as a result of deliberate government policy so they could remit foreign currency, instead of reporting the fact that they had been driven away by a harsh economic and political environment.

Thus Power FM (12/6, 6am) quoted RBZ official Herbert Nkala saying the Homelink facility was being launched "in recognition of the importance of Zimbabwe’s exported human capital to national development". The radio station noted that while between US$20-30m was currently being realised by the country through the facility, "conservative estimates say that US$100m a month can be generated from people living abroad… surpassing conventional commodities such as tobacco"

However, Studio 7 (11/6) was more inquisitive, taking to task one of the RBZ’s advisory board members, Eric Bloch, to explain the apparent rationale behind government’s contradictory policy of begging for foreign currency from the same people it was denying the right to vote and help shape policy at home.

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