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Dialogue of the deaf
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Weekly Media Update 2005-30
Monday August 8^th – Sunday August 14^th 2005

MEDIA debate on the international community’s renewed efforts to prod ZANU PF and the opposition MDC into talks and halt Zimbabwe’s political and economic slide gained momentum during the week.

The government-controlled papers carried 18 stories on the issue and private newspapers 13; ZBH aired eight reports while Studio 7 broadcast 19.

However, the government media continued to short-change their audiences by simply amplifying official rejection of the talks at the expense of balancing them with alternative views.

For example, ZTV and Power FM (8/8, 8pm), The Herald and Chronicle (9/8) passively quoted President Mugabe rebuffing dialogue with MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai on the tedious old refrain that the MDC were the "stooges and puppets" of Britain and he would therefore prefer to talk to the party’s alleged "principal", British Premier Tony Blair.

Despite Mugabe’s own admission that calls for talks emanated from "many quarters" including "those which he expected to know better", these media still made no attempt to relate his assertion to efforts by South Africa, the African Union and the UN to broker an internal settlement in the country.

Instead, government papers published seven editorials and opinion pieces that merely toed the official line on dialogue. The Sunday Mail’s article (14/8), MDC not key in talks equation, and Sunday News’ What talks? In your dreams perhaps, epitomised this stance.

The Sunday Mail story merely endorsed Mugabe’s sentiments about Blair and called on the MDC to call off "sanctions" against Zimbabwe as a prerequisite for any inter-party dialogue. The paper also inserted an intriguing mystery by claiming that Tsvangirai was so desperate for dialogue that he had "approached a former top military official in a bid to arm-twist President Mugabe into changing his position". But the story, based on unnamed sources, gave no evidence to substantiate its claims, or to identify the official.

However, that evening Studio 7 quoted Tsvangirai’s spokesman, William Bango, dismissing the story as a "fabrication".

The government media’s failure to give the talks initiative a truthful context also resulted in The Herald and Chronicle (10/8) and Power FM (10/8, 1pm) portraying the AU’s appointment of former Mozambican leader, Joaquim Chissano, to broker the talks as an exclusively personal initiative of Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and not that of the regional body, which the Nigerian leader chairs.

To reinforce this distortion and divert attention from the international community’s concerns on Zimbabwe, the official media then carried five stories that personally discredited Obasanjo. This was illustrated by The Herald’s vituperative columnist Nathaniel Manheru (13/8), who unflatteringly described him as a "man whose joints have apparently been well oiled by Uncle Sam’s filthy lucre".

The columnist also sought to pre-empt Chissano’s emissary role by threatening him against embarking on "impudent adventures".

The government media’s attempts to gloss over growing regional and international impatience with Zimbabwe’s crises also saw them misrepresent the conditions that SA has allegedly attached to an economic rescue package that was apparently offered to Zimbabwe.

In fact, these media only made reference to the issue in the context of official denials of the subject. The Herald (11/8), for example, quoted a "government official" denying that the loan was "tied to talks" adding that such claims were "figments of some people’s imaginations" as SA had only demanded a "comprehensive economic reform programme in which various stakeholders should contribute".

There was no elaboration on the economic reforms that SA was demanding.

The Herald and Chronicle (12/8) even distorted comments by newly appointed SA Ambassador to Zimbabwe Mlungisi Makalima. They misinterpreted Makalima’s statement that "matters of this nature (the loan deal) do not entail the discussion of the arrangements the two parties have entered into" to mean that SA had "not set tough conditions for Zimbabwe".

Earlier, ZTV (11/8, 6pm) merely asked Makalima whether his government had attached conditions to the loan and allowed him to minimize their importance by quoting him as saying it was "normal" for "such things to be there".

The unprofessional manner in which the government media handled the topic was mirrored in their sourcing. See Fig 1 and 2.

Table 1: Voice distribution on ZBH

Fig 2. Voice distribution in the government Press

Notably, all the foreign voices were either used in the context of dismissing media reports on conditions attached to the loan or expressing willingness to strengthen their country’s ties with Zimbabwe despite the alleged machinations by some countries to harm these relations.

Six of the nine articles carried by the Mirror stable of newspapers on the subject seemingly echoed the official line by putting the responsibility for dialogue on the MDC.

For instance, The Daily Mirror (10/8) comment, MDC should call on the West to revise its stance on Zimbabwe, endorsed Mugabe’s rejection of the talks. So did the paper’s columnist, Kuthula Matshazi, in his article (12/8), Yes! It’s Blair and not Tsvangirai for talks.

However, the same issue of the paper did take the trouble to access comment from the British government. Under a somewhat misleading headline, Blair not ready to talk to Mugabe: British envoy, the paper quoted British Embassy spokesperson Gillian Dare saying Blair would not meet Mugabe because there was "no specific bilateral UK/Zimbabwe crisis", adding: "Mugabe needs to engage with his fellow Zimbabweans and ‘talk about talks’ with Western leaders simply detracts from the pressing issues at hand."

The Financial Gazette and the Zimbabwe Independent concurred with Dare. They carried three articles that viewed Mugabe’s sentiments as illogical saying his remarks demonstrated his detachment from the reality in Zimbabwe.

What is needed, observed the Independent, is "national dialogue to find a way out of this man-made disaster, characterised by hyperinflation, and shortages of foreign currency, food, fuel, power, and water".

The Gazette added another dimension to the SA/Zimbabwe loan deal. It quoted Secretary for Information George Charamba saying the country had never "asked for money from South Africa" but that it was Pretoria that had "offered" to help Zimbabwe after the World Bank "approached (SA President Thabo) Mbeki" and asked him to "help Zimbabwe". However, no comment was sought from SA or the World Bank to establish the veracity of Charamba’s claims.

Studio 7, like its print counterparts, also gave the government, opposition, civic society and foreign diplomats greater leeway to debate the talks issue more openly in its 19 stories on the matter. Its diverse and balanced coverage of the talks is reflected in Fig 3.

Fig 3: Voice distribution on Studio 7

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