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Mugabe's
speech and electoral issues
Media Monitoring
Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2004-29
Monday July 19th – Sunday July 25th 2004
The irony behind
government plans to democratise Zimbabwe’s electoral laws on one
hand while on the other contemplating enacting more repressive laws
to further erode the public’s basic freedoms of association and
expression illuminated the week.
This followed
President Robert Mugabe’s address to the Fifth Session of the Fifth
Parliament, where he echoed his government’s intentions to institute
"far reaching changes" to the Electoral
Act, so that it would conform to the SADC electoral standards.
However, while
the president seemed to promise Zimbabweans greater autonomy in
electing political leaders of their choice into office, he at the
same time revealed that his government was working towards legislating
laws that would further gag the voice of civic society ahead of
the March 2005 Parliamentary polls.
These include
the Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and the Security of Communications
Bills, expected to be made into law before the dissolution of parliament
ahead of the elections.Though the government media reported generously
on President Mugabe’s speech and other related issues, it steered
clear of this apparent contradiction in government policy. This
only received attention from the private media. For instance, the
official media mainly appeared content in rehashing Mugabe’s speech
and exaggerating its importance as exemplified by the way they swamped
it with pro-government voices. Besides, they also used the speech
to campaign for the ruling ZANU PF by either discrediting the opposition
MDC, ZTV (19/7, 6pm) and Radio Zimbabwe (20/7, 6am) or by superficially
portraying Mugabe as a magnanimous figure whose reconciliatory overtures
to the MDC were yet to be complemented, The Herald (22/7).
It was in this
light therefore that The Herald claimed that Mugabe’s speech
"sought to build bridges and embrace everyone, irrespective
of political affiliation, in rebuilding Zimbabwe’s economic and
political processes". The paper cited Mugabe’s call
to MPs for "collective deliberations and judgement"
on the proposed electoral laws to support its claims. Said the paper:
"This is not the first time that President Mugabe has
extended the olive branch to the opposition to join hands with the
rest of the nations in building the country".
However, The
Standard (25/7), differed. It quoted analysts as saying Mugabe’s
speech "lacked concrete solutions" to the
Zimbabwe crisis "but mirrored his party’s re-election
strategy characterised by growing intolerance to opposing voices
ahead of next year’s general elections". In fact, while
ZTV (20/7, 6pm and 8pm) unquestioningly depicted the proposed electoral
changes as indicative of government’s democratic nature, SW Radio
Africa (20/7) quoted MDC spokesman, Paul Themba Nyathi, saying the
authorities had merely succumbed to pressure by SADC, which wanted
member states to abide by the region’s democratic standards. The
observation was partly corroborated by South African deputy foreign
affairs minister Aziz Pahad on Studio 7 (19/7).
In addition,
SW Radio Africa (20/7) quoted Nyathi and Crisis Coalition Zimbabwe
(CCZ) chairman Brian Kagoro reiterating the view that it would be
insufficient to overhaul the Electoral Act alone without repealing
other repressive laws such as POSA and AIPPA, including eradicating
political violence in the country. Studio 7 (20/7), The Daily
Mirror (21/7), The Financial Gazette (22/7) and The
Zimbabwe Independent (23/7) also carried similar concerns. For
example, The Financial Gazette article, Poll reforms like
putting ‘lipstick on a frog’, cited a document compiled by CCZ
and distributed during the recent sixth SADC Electoral Commissions
Forum summit in Victoria Falls, which dismissed the proposed reforms
as a culmination of "government’s intention to tinker
with rather than transform the electoral environment."
In fact, the
Gazette revealed, under a somewhat misleading headline, that
despite government’s assurance of electoral changes, the MDC remained
sceptical of the authorities’ sincerity. As a result, the party
and other members of civic society planned to launch an organisation
dubbed the Broad Alliance to "gauge the mood of the voters"
ahead of the 2005 polls. Reportedly, the Alliance’s findings would
help inform the MDC on whether it should participate in the elections
or not.Nyathi and National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) Chairman
Lovemore Madhuku were quoted confirming the development, saying
the Alliance was a collaboration of democratic forces designed to
"fight for democratic space".
However, the
development enticed the usual vituperative response from the faceless
Herald (24/7) columnist, Nathaniel Manheru, who queried:
"Who(m) does it (the MDC) hope to make love with in this
‘broad alliance’? The whole thing smells masturbatory. How does
it ally with itself?" The Sunday News’ (25/7)
Mzala Joe also dismissed offhand the MDC’s concerns about
the electoral reforms as "nothing but schoolboy trickery".
In fact, as in the previous week, the government media appeared
to spearhead the authorities’ campaign against civic society by
trying to justify the relevance of government’s proposed laws.
Thus Power FM
(20/7, 6am) reported that the NGOs Bill – which entails the creation
of an NGO council whose thrust would be to ensure "rationalisation
of the macro-management of all NGOs" – was expected
to "bring sanity in the operations of NGOs which have
over the past years been riddled by controversies especially in
regards to internal political issues."
But SW Radio
Africa (23/7) disagreed, arguing that the Bill was more of a totalitarian
tactic by the authorities to enslave its people than a quest for
instilling order in NGO operations. It claimed that Mugabe’s aim
was merely to ban international human rights groups from Zimbabwe
and cut off overseas funding for local organisations promoting civic
rights. Studio 7 (19/7) expressed similar views. It quoted Kagoro
as accusing government of criminalizing civic rights, saying the
fact that the authorities were prepared to use banning orders and
arrests to force NGOs to register with the State, meant that NGO
work will join the growing list of criminalized professions.
But perhaps
more disturbing were revelations in the private media that government
planned to monitor the Internet through a Security Communications
Bill. Though the government media shied away from providing details
of the Bill, Studio 7 (22/7) mirrored part of the Bill’s repressive
nature when it quoted government lawyer Johannes Tomana saying the
Bill would empower authorities to pry into the public’s private
mail posted through the Internet so as to "curtail the
circulation of subversive material".
Tomana justified
this blatant intrusion into the private lives of Zimbabweans as
necessary because the country "faced a serious security
threat" from information disseminated through cyberspace.
However, the
private station failed to point out that the Bill appeared to have
been designed to circumvent last March’s ruling by the Supreme Court,
which nullified similar legal requirements on the basis that they
were unconstitutional. The Court noted that the provisions of the
Posts and Telecommunication Act, which granted the President powers
to intercept mail, telephones, e-mail and any other form of communication,
violated citizens’ rights to freedom of expression and to freely
receive and impart information as enshrined under section 20 of
the Constitution.
The government
media ignored this too. Rather, in a bid to give the impression
that foreign funding of the region’s electoral bodies was the root
cause of Zimbabwe’s electoral problems in particular and SADC’s
in general, these media gave more prominence to Mugabe’s address
to the SADC Electoral Commissions Forum summit on the purported
ills of Western funds. For example, ZTV and Radio Zimbabwe (21/7,
8pm), The Herald and Chronicle (22/7) quoted President
Mugabe deploring foreign funding of regional electoral bodies saying
it prevented them "from being free and reduces the quality
of our elections".
But as NCA’s
Douglas Mwonzora argued on SW Radio Africa (21/7), Mugabe’s call
merely exposed the ruling party’s hypocrisy. Mwonzora said whilst
Mugabe wanted to bar international donors from funding elections,
"Zanu PF still has alliances with communist parties the
world over and they obviously get some support from them. You need
only to look at the Zanu PF Congress itself, it is attended by people
from China, Soviet Union and from the Eastern block." Mwonzora
also dismissed Mugabe’s rhetoric about the need for "the
integrity of bodies that manage elections" in the region,
observing that Mugabe himself appoints ZANU PF sympathisers to run
elections in the country.
As if to vindicate
the ruling party’s interference in the electoral process, SW Radio
Africa (19/7) quoted a former schoolteacher in Nkayi, Lennox Makhala,
alleging that officials from the Registrar-General conducting voter
registration in the area were openly inducing people to vote for
Zanu PF. He said a Zanu PF councillor for Ward 25, who monitored
the number of identity cards (IDs) issued in the ward during the
exercise, reportedly ordered kraal heads to make sure that all those
given the IDs would be present on election day, failure of which
the traditional leaders would be held accountable. As a result,
Makhala said villagers felt they already have their votes taken
away, well before the actual general elections next year.
Similarly, The
Standard reported that ZANU PF was "deceptively
telling farm workers to join the party’s structures or risk being
excluded from voting in next year’s parliamentary election".
Besides, the article reported that farm workers and beneficiaries
of land reforms were being forced to attend the ruling party’s meetings
through threats that they risked losing their plots if they did
not comply.
In fact, it
is against such abuse of the land reform that the Southern Africa
regional Poverty Network’s recent report cited by the Independent
noted that ZANU PF had turned the reforms "into a political
tool instead of serving its purpose of resettling landless peasants".
The government
media conveniently ignored such issues.
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