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Print and Electronic Daily Media Update #7
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe
March 29, 2005

1. Daily Print Media Update: Tuesday March 29 2005

a. Campaigns
ZANU PF continued to receive positive publicity in the government-controlled dailies. These papers carried 10 reports on the ruling party's campaign activities. Six were in The Herald while four were in the Chronicle. Campaign activities of the MDC, smaller parties and independent candidates were suffocated.

In fact, the MDC was only mentioned in the context of ZANU PF officials' vilification of the party. Whites, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the US President George Bush were also castigated in some of the reports on the ruling party's campaigns for allegedly trying to effect regime change in Zimbabwe. Notably, The Daily Mirror had no campaigns reports. Its daily Election Watch column, which, over the past weeks has publicised campaign activities of both the ruling party and the MDC, was missing in today's issue.

b. Administrative
WHILE the Chronicle had no reports on the administration of the impending election, The Herald carried two reports on the topic. One was an announcement on the deployment of African Union observers. The other was a feature article that used, among other issues, the accreditation of foreign observers and selected foreign media, the printing of ballot papers and the dispatching of 50,000 translucent ballot boxes to all the provinces to gloss over problems bedevilling the electoral process. These developments were simply presented as an indication of the country's readiness to hold the election under the SADC electoral guidelines.

But while the government Press was advancing its familiar claims that the country had fully conformed to the regional guidelines on the conduct of democratic elections, The Daily Mirror reported to the contrary in one of its three reports on administrative issues. It reported that about 1,000 polling officers deployed to Mudzi by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) had been sent back to Harare by the District Administrator and the ZANU PF candidate for the constituency, Ray Kaukonde, who allegedly accused the officers of being MDC sympathisers. Although ZEC spokesperson Utloile Silayigwana was quoted saying the commission was still investigating the matter, MDC Secretary-General Welshman Ncube claimed the officers had since returned to Harare and were likely to be redeployed in the capital.

In its other story, The Daily Mirror reported that the High Court had ruled that an application by aspiring MDC candidate for Gweru Rural, Renson Gasela, seeking the disqualification of his ZANU PF rival Josphat Madubeko did not merit an urgent hearing. Gasela wanted Madubeko, a headman, disqualified in terms of the Traditional Leaders Act, which bars traditional leaders from contesting an election. The government Press ignored these issues. The third report that the private daily carried was an announcement by the ZEC that 8,235 presiding officers and 90,585 polling officers were undergoing training countrywide.

b. Political violence
ONLY The Daily Mirror carried a report on political violence. It reported that the MDC candidate for Mhondoro, Shakespeare Maya, was remanded out of custody to April 7 for allegedly assaulting a man he saw wearing a ZANU PF T-shirt in Norton. However, the paper provided few details of the incident. Instead, the report focused on comments from police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena saying the police had banned road show campaigns "to clamp down on public disorder and the disruption of traffic". Bvudzijena also revealed that 13 more cases of political violence had been reported throughout the country since March 22. However, there was no detailed breakdown of the incidents in the paper's story.

The government dailies ignored these issues and only carried three stories dismissing reports on the politicisation of food by government and intimidation of suspected opposition supporters. Two of the stories reported Social Welfare Minister Paul Mangwana trying to disprove Archbishop Pius Ncube's allegations that government was starving people in Matabeleland to coerce the electorate to vote for the ruling party. Mangwana was quoted saying 74,100 tonnes of maize had been distributed in Matabeleland between November last year and March 18. However, the papers did not challenge him to explain the criteria in which that maize was distributed.

The other report was an opinion piece by The Herald's regular pro-ZANU PF columnist Caesar Zvayi, seeking to dismiss reports of the violent intimidation of opposition supporters as "testimony of the role of third forces" in the alleged attempts by civil society and the MDC to "tarnish the March 31 poll".

2. Daily Electronic Media Update: March 28th, 2005 

ZTV aired the second presentation of the MDC's election manifesto by the party's president, Morgan Tsvangirai and his deputy, Gibson Sibanda. The presentation was made in English, Shona and Ndebele. Also presenting their manifestoes were independent candidates Margaret Dongo (Harare South) and Leonard Nkala (Phelandaba).

The jamming of SW Radio Africa's short wave transmissions continues and as a result, MMPZ is still unable to adequately monitor the content of its output. The station continues to attempt to broadcast on three separate frequencies in the short wave band in the evenings and between 5am and 7am (1197 Khz) in the medium wave band.

Election countdown

a) Campaigns
MONDAY'S news coverage continued to show the heavily biased output of state television in favour of ZANU PF.

Of the 18 rally reports carried on ZTV in its 6pm and 8pm bulletins, 15 were on the ruling party, two on the MDC and one on the Zimbabwe People's Democratic Party (ZPDP). The time allocated to the ZANU PF rallies also reflected this bias. Out of the 40 minutes and 30 seconds ZTV devoted to the political parties' campaigns, 35 minutes (86%) were allocated to ZANU PF, three-and-a-half minutes (8.6%) to the MDC and two minutes (5%) to ZPDP.

In addition, four MDC rallies were crammed into one report in the 8pm bulletin with picture coverage only being given to rallies the opposition party held in Highfield and Gweru. The other two rallies, in Bindura and Norton, were mentioned in passing. ZTV delayed broadcasting news of all four rallies, which took place over Saturday and Sunday.

ZTV's (8pm) report on the four MDC rallies was given a total of two minutes and 10 seconds, while two ZANU PF rallies addressed by President Mugabe in Chikomba and Mutoko alone were allocated a total of six minutes and 10 seconds, including full picture coverage of both rallies. The ZANU PF rallies were billed as top news stories.

The pattern was the same on radio. A total of 12 ZANU PF campaign stories were reported out of 14 campaign stories aired on Power FM (six) and Radio Zimbabwe (six). The remaining two stories were on the MDC's Highfield rally on Sunday, carried briefly once each by Power FM and Radio Zimbabwe. This contrasted sharply with the generous coverage the government-controlled radio stations gave to ZANU PF rallies in Shamva, Mutoko, Mpopoma, Chitungwiza and Mount Darwin.

The bias in coverage was also evident in the way the government radio stations sourced their voices as shown in Fig 1

Fig 1

Studio 7 attempted to balance its coverage of the political parties' campaigns in its four stories, reporting two MDC rallies in Bulawayo and Harare, one ZANU PF rally in Chikomba and the campaign activities of independent candidate for Kariba, Sam Mawawa. The private radio station also carried a profile of the MDC's Tsholotsho candidate, Mtoliki Sibanda. Studio 7 reported that it had tried unsuccessfully to report on the campaign activities of ZANU PF's Musa Matema (Tsholotsho) and Shumbayaonda Chandengenda (Kariba), as well as the MDC's Nathan Makwasha (Kariba) and independent candidate for Tsholotsho, Jonathan Moyo.

Moyo, for example, reportedly told the private radio station that he preferred to focus on his campaign than "waste time talking to us". Studio 7 reported Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube predicting a ZANU PF victory in the elections, not because of popular mandate but through rigging. The cleric alleged that the ruling party was "enticing the people by providing food, computers and sewing machines", adding, "Everything is in their favour, 300 000 bogus voters are on the roll, 800 000 dead voters and 600 000 names of duplicate voters gives them a total of almost two million votes."

b) Administrative issues
ZTV carried one administrative report in which it merely reported on an announcement by the Zimbabwe Election Commission (ZEC) calling on Public Service and District Development Fund (DDF) employees willing to be recruited and deployed for electoral duties to report to their provincial offices.

Power FM carried a total of 11 stories on issues relating to the administration of the election. Eight of the stories were on voter education and assurances by electoral authorities that the election logistics were in place, while the rest comprised ZANU PF's satisfaction with the election preparations and an announcement that the leader of the SADC observer team and the Iranian delegation would meet President Mugabe. All the stories merely echoed official sentiments.

Radio Zimbabwe's four stories on the topic were similarly superficial and sympathetic to the ruling party and covered the same issues broadcast by Power FM.

By comparison, Studio 7 was not dependent on official statements for its stories relating to election administration. For example, the station reported that 800 polling officers deployed to Mudzi by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission had been sent back to Harare by the District Administrator and ZANU PF provincial chairman (and candidate for the area), Ray Kaukonde, allegedly because they were "MDC loyalists". ZEC spokesperson Utloile Silayigwana confirmed the incident.

In its second story, Studio 7 reported fears expressed by the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) that about 50 000 polling agents, mostly teachers, due to be deployed outside their constituencies, may not be able to vote if the ESC did not address the issue before Thursday. In addition, ZESN chairman Reginald Matchaba-Hove was reported in the same story as raising concerns about the capacity of what he said were about 7,000 local observers to effectively observe the conduct of the voting process in more than 8,000 polling stations nationwide.

c) Political violence
ZBH did not record any cases of politically motivated violence or rights abuses. However, ZTV, Power FM and Radio Zimbabwe carried one story apiece on government's rejection of Archbishop Pius Ncube's allegations reported on Sky News television that it was deliberately starving opposition supporters in Matabeleland in order to force them to vote for the ruling party. Studio 7 aired a report that on Sunday police had arrested 145 MDC supporters coming from an MDC rally in Highfield. However, no details were given on why they were arrested, neither was there police confirmation of the arrests.

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