Back to Index

Censorship of food security reports
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2004-32
Monday August 9th - Sunday August 15th 2004

The urgent need for additional alternative daily sources of information, including an independent national broadcaster, was further confirmed by the government-controlled media's censorship of reports disproving claims that the country had produced sufficient food.

These only appeared in the private media.

The Zimbabwe Independent (13/8) for example, reported that the World Food Programme (WFP) had asked the Zambian government to mobilise maize for Zimbabwe in light of growing fears of looming food shortages in the country. This, according to the paper, coincided with the South African Grain Information Services revelations that about 40,000 tonnes of maize had been brought into Zimbabwe through South Africa between April and July this year. Studio 7 (12/8) carried a similar report.

More evidence of food shortages appeared in The Standard (15/8) which reported that three governors from Matabeleland North, Matabeleland South and Masvingo had written to government seeking food aid as their provinces had run out of food. Masvingo governor Josiah Hungwe was quoted confirming the report.

The government media ignored these reports.

Instead, these media sought to present a rosy picture of the country's food situation, particularly ZTV (9/8, 8pm), which quoted the chairman of the government's Taskforce on Food Procurement and Distribution and State Security, Minister Nicholas Goche, claiming that, "Maize deliveries to the GMB are high, indicating that levels of production are high." However, Goche let the cat out of the bag when he stated that only 125,000 tonnes of maize had been purchased so far from the farmers, two months before the onset of the new farming season.

Even more revealing were his projections that between 600,000 and 700,000 tonnes of maize would be delivered to the government-run Grain Marketing Board (GMB).

This was in stark contrast to Agriculture Minister Joseph Made's assertions earlier this year that the GMB would receive about 1,2 million tonnes of maize this season, almost half of what he claimed the country had produced.

ZTV did not subject these conflicting projections to analysis. Rather, it diverted attention from Goche's startling revelations by showing footage of maize stacks at one GMB depot in a bid to buttress official claims that the country had produced enough food.

Although the private media did expose these discrepancies, their effectiveness was compromised by the fact that they are niche market sources of information that are not readily accessible to most of the people subjected to official propaganda in the dominant government-controlled media.

It is against this background that civic organisations should intensify their lobbying for the repeal of repressive media laws, which have severely curtailed citizens' rights to access information through media of their choice.

Visit the MMPZ fact sheet

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP