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The purge and the UN report
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Weekly Media Update 2005-27
Monday July 18^th – Sunday July 24^th 2005

THE government media’s coverage of the UN special envoy’s report on Murambatsvina further affirmed their status as unreliable megaphones of the authorities.

These media suppressed details of Anna Tibaijuka’s damning report on Murambatsvina and merely bombarded their audiences with official condemnation to her findings.

The partisan nature of the government media was reflected in the fact that none of the 25 stories they carried (government Press [8] and ZBH [17]) reported exclusively on Tibaijuka’s report. Snippets of the findings these media carried were only reported in the context of the authorities’ acerbic rebuttal of the UN envoy’s observations.

In fact, before the UN’s report was publicized, The Herald and Chronicle (22/7) carried two reports that sought to prepare their audiences for the government’s pending counter-offensive. They quoted Zimbabwe’s permanent representative to the UN, Boniface Chidyausiku, admonishing the UN for giving Zimbabwe 48 hours to respond to the report, adding that the country was not "under any inquisition" to warrant the ultimatum.

When the findings were made public, the government media devoted far more space to the authorities’ attack on Tibaijuka’s findings at the expense of a professional and dispassionate interpretation of the report. For example, without providing details of the UN report, ZBH (22/7, 8pm) gave prominence to remarks by Foreign Affairs Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi dismissing it as biased and "full of hate", adding that its use of "judgmental language" showed the "in-built bias against government and [Murambatsvina]".

The Herald and Chronicle (23/7) also quoted Mumbengegwi making similar remarks and disputing Tibaijuka’s observations that 700,000 people had been affected directly by the operation, while a further 2,4 million had been indirectly affected. Besides, the government papers were equally guilty of peddling speculative conspiracy theories to cloud the findings of the UN envoy.

For instance, The Sunday Mail and Sunday News (24/7) distorted the reasons behind the UN’s investigation of government’s blitz on the urban poor by reincarnating the government media’s earlier conspiracy theory that British Prime Minister Tony Blair had endorsed Tibaijuka’s appointment to suggest that he intended to influence her findings.

The Sunday News claimed - without any evidence - that Blair had "made it clear he expected Mrs. Tibaijuka to come up with a ‘good’ report that he intended to take to the UN Security Council for debate".

The Sunday Mail made similar claims and reported that "the government, legal practitioners and analysts" had criticized Tibaijuka "for failing to correctly capture the objective of the operation and the efforts being made to resettle the affected people".

Notably, only government apologists Johannes Tomana and Augustine Timbe were quoted alongside Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo. Timbe was reported as saying "the fact that some influential members of the UN had already condemned the exercise prior" to Tibaijuka’s deployment raised suspicions and "betrayed the objectivity Zimbabwe expected" when it approved the UN mission.

ZTV (24/7, 8pm) also confined comment to pro-government commentators such as Claude Maredza and the Rev. Obadiah Msindo to discredit the report. Msindo claimed it was "one-sided" and premised on "biased testimonies" made by some NGOs who wanted "to advance their hidden interests".

Maredza concurred, adding that Tibaijuka’s report was "pre-judged" as she followed "Blair’s instructions in compiling it."

The government media’s attempts to suffocate the UN’s criticism of Murambatsvina with official dismissals of the report dovetailed with their slant to gloss over the humanitarian crisis caused by the operation and instead projected government as addressing the situation through Operation Garikai. ZBH carried 49 stories that passively propagated this notion while 15 appeared in the government Press. As a result, these media failed to address the policy contradictions and confusion that characterizes government’s activities.

For instance, none of their stories sought an explanation for why the authorities were now "repatriating" those they had made homeless to the very settlements they had demolished after spending weeks holed up in camps such as Caledonia Farm, (ZBH, 20-22/7, 8pm, and The Herald, 23/7). Neither did these media question government’s logic of now allowing the "beneficiaries" of stands in Hatcliffe to build "temporary shelters" while they build ‘legal’ homes when it had made the same people homeless by demolishing similar structures in the first place.

Nor did Radio Zimbabwe (20/7, 8pm) question why the police had destroyed homes "at Clearwater Farm near Gweru" leaving "26 families" homeless when they had announced that they were "winding up" Murambatsvina.

The government media’s professional ineptitude in handling the topic was reflected by their dependence on official comment and pro-government sources as shown in Figs. 1 and 2.

Fig 1 Voice distribution of ZBH

Fig 2. Voice distribution in the government Press

* Notably, almost all alternative voices and ordinary people that were quoted endorsed government’s actions.

In contrast, the private media, as exemplified by Studio 7 (22-24/7), The Standard and The Sunday Mirror (24/7), gave detailed and balanced coverage of the UN report through informative excerpts and impartial analyses. For example, Studio 7’s six stories on the UN report highlighted its reservations over Murambatsvina, that it had triggered "a humanitarian crisis of immense proportions" and that it had called on government to halt the operation. The station (24/7) also carried an interview with Tibaijuka defending her findings.

The Sunday Mirror and The Standard also carried a summary of the report’s findings in their front-page stories.

The Sunday Mirror argued that the report was "in actual fact fairly objective and constructive" and reported "commentators" as having "urged the…government to avoid its knee-jerk defensive and bombastic attitude and derive lessons from the report".

In its comment, The Standard also warned government "to abandon its empty bravado and bombast" and engage the UN on a way forward, saying that snubbing the UN could result in further international isolation.

The papers’ reports were part of 21 stories the private Press carried on Murambatsvina and Tibaijuka’s findings that at last provide some detail of the scale of the disaster.

Fourteen other stories aired on Studio 7 included reports on policy contradictions characterizing Murambatsvina; the humanitarian crisis caused by the operation; news of local and regional clergy’s efforts to assist the affected despite police attempts to thwart such moves, and revelations that government had continued to demolish more structures in Manicaland leaving 700 more families homeless.

The private Press also carried 11 stories on the effects of Murambatsvina, such as worsening urban poverty, homelessness and general insecurity among the urban poor.

The private media balanced official opinion with alternative comment in their coverage of the UN report and Murambatsvina. See Fig 3.

Fig. 3 Sourcing pattern in the private Press

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