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The purge continues
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Weekly Media Update 2005-26
Monday Jul 11^th – Sunday July 17^th 2005

OPERATIONS Murambatsvina and Garikai continued to receive widespread coverage in the media, which carried 122 stories on the matter. ZBH carried 54 of these (ZTV [32], radio Zimbabwe [12], Power FM [10]) while Studio 7 aired 11. Government papers published 33 stories and the private Press carried the remaining 24.

The government media generally continued to endorse Murambatsvina and glossed over the human suffering it has caused. They also failed to expose policy contradictions characterising the two exercises. For example, they failed to question why government was extending Murambatsvina to the low-density suburbs after initially announcing that it was "winding up" the exercise. Or why the authorities had granted residents of low-density suburbs a 10-day reprieve to "regularise" their structures without providing the same facility to those living in the city’s high-density areas.

Comments in The Herald (12/7 &15/7) seemed to set the agenda by advocating a different approach in the implementation of Murambatsvina in low-density areas compared to the hard-line stance it assumed when government was demolishing the ‘illegal structures’ of the poor. For example, while The Herald (12/7) welcomed the extension of Murambatsvina to the up-market suburbs "for the sake of fairness", it noted: "So long as these were built by a reputable builder and conform to the model building and planning by-laws, it would appear that the home-owners will be able to regularise the building work, for the standard fee, and keep them".

It then called on the authorities to focus "on forcing people to obtain required documents and licences rather than on destroying property".

The Sunday Mail (17/7) raised similar sentiments following the announcement of the reprieve for the affluent suburbs, which was reported in The Herald (16/7). It said the move showed government’s "appreciation of the voice of reason", and would give the exercise "the correct image of reconstruction as opposed to that of demolition".

The paper’s observations dovetailed with President Mugabe’s comments which were quoted in the Chronicle and Herald (15/7) referring to Murambatsvina as a "well thought out operation", which would "improve the livelihood of Zimbabweans", adding that the emphasis "has been wrongly centred on the demolition aspect…and not the reconstruction programme".

However, President Mugabe’s claims seemed to contradict Finance Minister Hebert Murerwa’s statements that Murambatsvina was not budgeted for. In fact, the Independent revealed that the government was to come up with a supplementary budget to cater for unplanned expenses, including Murambatsvina.

ZBH’s tone on Murambatsvina remained unchanged. It continued to give its unconditional support to the extension of demolitions to the up-market suburbs.

For example, ZTV (12/7,8pm) sought to justify the demolition of ‘illegal’ structures in low-density areas using selective comments from victims in the high density suburbs "hailing" the fair-minded manner in which government was not discriminating between the poor and the rich.

Homeowners in the low-density suburbs were not accessed for their views.

And to portray Murambatsvina as enjoying national consensus, Radio Zimbabwe and Power FM (13/7 6am) and ZTV (13/7 8pm) erroneously gave the impression that Parliament had unanimously rejected a motion to condemn Murambatsvina while in actual fact ZANU PF used its parliamentary majority to defeat a motion by MDC legislators urging government to stop the blitz (Studio 7, 12/7).

Despite The Herald’s fair examination of the matter in its two editorials, the rest of the government Press’ articles dutifully confined themselves to government positions.

Fig 1. Voice distribution in the government Press

Apart from The Daily Mirror’s five reports on the purported benefits of Murambatsvina and an opinion piece that sought to pre-empt UN envoy Anna Tibaijuka’s findings on the operation, the rest of the 30 stories the private media carried continued to expose Murambatsvina as a monumental disaster.

The Financial Gazette, for example, reported Bulawayo City Council condemning the blitz, saying the city stood to lose $62 million a month in lost revenue, which it collected as licence fees from 3 000 registered informal traders now displaced by the exercise.

The Standard (17/7) reported that some local authorities, who were now facing "huge lawsuits" from victims of Murambatsvina, had distanced themselves from the operation. For instance, MDC’s Gweru Mayor Sisal Zvidzai, told the paper that his council was forced to join the operation by Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo two weeks after its the launch.

The paper also recorded another Murambatsvina-related death: that of a policeman who died after the "wall he was destroying collapsed on him".

Studio 7 (13/7), the Gazette and Independent reported that a South African Council of Churches (SACC) fact-finding mission led by Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane had added its voice to the growing list of international criticism of the exercise, describing Murambatsvina as "unparalleled in modern-day Africa" and similar to "apartheid forced removals".

The government media ignored this criticism and attempted instead, to discredit the SACC as being a "front" for the British.

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