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Political developments
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2004-46
Monday November 15^th – Sunday November 21^st 2004

THE government media’s censorship of the power struggles within ZANU PF, largely triggered by the scramble for the post of vice-president, reaffirmed them as unreliable sources of information unable to inform the public adequately on important events.

While the private media openly discussed the succession issue, the government media largely ignored the matter and only covered it at the weekend, more than a week after the private media broke the story.

Even then, coverage by the government broadcaster (20 & 21/11, 8pm), The Sunday Mail and Sunday News (21/11) seemed to have been prompted by President Mugabe’s public comment on the matter during his address to ZANU PF supporters who had come to meet him at the Harare International Airport on his return from a two-day visit to Tanzania.

These media reported Mugabe saying he fully supported the decision by his party’s politburo to reserve the vice-presidency for a woman.

Ironically, a day before Mugabe’s comments, ZTV (19/11, 8pm) even tried to dismiss private media reports on the issue. It passively quoted ZANU PF spokesman Nathan Shamuyarira dismissing the Zimbabwe Independent (19/11) story, which noted that the decision by the politburo to nominate a woman for the vice-presidency had enhanced the chances of Water Resources Minister Joyce Mujuru of clinching the post while diminishing those of another contender, ZANU PF secretary for administration Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Without attempting to carry out an independent analysis of the matter, ZTV’s chief correspondent, Reuben Barwe, simply resorted to editorialising his report with his own spiteful bias "calculated to influence opinion": "…The report in the so-called independent weekly that has unashamedly taken a position to denigrate the ZANU PF leadership over the years is littered with a lot of spite all calculated to influence opinion."

However, The Daily Mirror (15/11), The Financial Gazette (18/24), Zimbabwe Independent (19/11), The Standard and the Sunday Mirror (21/11) did not display such professional journalistic poverty. They fully updated their audiences on the unfolding events and explored the power struggles within the party that the issue had sparked.

For example, The Standard reported that the decision to appoint a woman as one of the two vice-presidents had created disenchantment within ethnic groups, such as the Karangas and Manyikas, who believed the elevation of Mujuru to the vice-presidency would "perpetuate" the Zezurus’ stranglehold on the ZANU PF leadership.

These observations seemed to tally with President Mugabe’s apparent confession on ZTV (20/11, 8pm), and in The Sunday Mail and Sunday News the next day, that some party officials were unhappy with the politburo’s decision. He warned that the issue could become a problem at the party’s Congress in December.

Besides revealing the extent of the fierce rivalry within the ZANU PF leadership, the media also exposed serious in-house fighting among ruling party officials as tension heightened ahead of the party’s primary elections to nominate candidates to represent ZANU PF in the 2005 general election.

For example, the Press carried six reports about violence erupting within the ruling party in areas such as Masvingo and Beitbridge. Three of the stories were carried in the government Press, the rest in the private Press.

In fact, the Independent reported that campaigning among ZANU PF candidates ahead of the party’s primaries had assumed fever pitch with the ruling party’s aspiring candidate for Kadoma, Jimayi Muduvuri, "using bizarre campaign tactics such as buying lingerie for women to attract voters".

The broadcast media ignored these issues.

Nevertheless, the private radio stations continued to highlight the continued rights violations allegedly perpetrated by state security agents and supporters of ZANU PF against members of the opposition and civic society by carrying about seven reports on the issue.

However, these were compromised by their over-reliance on the MDC’s account of the incidents, which were not balanced by alternative sources.

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