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Talks follow-up
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Weekly Media Update 2005-31
Monday August 15^th – Sunday August 21^st 2005

THE political crisis seizing the country continued to contest for space in the media. ZBH carried 13 stories on the issue and the private stations featured eight reports (six on Studio 7 and two on SW Radio Africa). The print media carried 23 stories, 17 of which appeared in the official Press while the remaining six were in the private papers.

In their coverage, the government media continued to deny the existence of political problems in the country by glossing over growing local and international impatience over the failure to find an internal settlement through national dialogue.

For example, The Herald (16/8) passively quoted acting Information Minister Chen Chimutengwende reiterating government’s rejection of talks with the MDC on the lame excuse that the opposition was a "puppet party" sponsored by "our foreign enemies".

The 13 stories ZBH carried on the matter echoed these views.

To try and give credence to the official position that the MDC/ZANU PF talks were useless, The Herald (18/8) and ZBH (18 & 19/8, 8pm) gave a misleading impression that former Mozambican President Joachim Chissano had spurned his appointment by AU chairman and Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo to broker a political settlement between Zimbabwe’s warring parties. They downplayed the fact that Chissano had only withdrawn from his mission following President Mugabe’s rejection of dialogue with his opponents. This was clearly captured by The Financial Gazette’s story (18/8), No talks, Mugabe tells Chissano and private radio stations (18/8).

In an effort to further confuse the issue, ZBH then sought to vilify Obasanjo for allegedly foisting talks on Zimbabwe by breaching AU rules to unilaterally appoint Chissano.

Without discussing the exact AU protocols Obasanjo had violated, ZTV (19/8 6 & 8pm) then quoted selected members of the public and pro-government analysts vilifying Obasanjo as a puppet of the West. Some members of the public described him as "mad" and "(British Premier Tony) Blair’s wife" who was "receiving money from the British and channeling it to the MDC". Notably, all those who were quoted were seemingly in the vicinity of ZANU PF’s Harare provincial offices.

The denigration of Obasanjo also found expression on Power FM (20/8, 6am).

Like ZBH, The Sunday Mail (21/8) also portrayed Obasanjo’s appointment of Chissano as "unprocedural", claming his actions had elicited the ire of SADC. This, said the paper, was illustrated by "Chissano’s refusal to mediate in the talks".

Although the paper claimed that Obasanjo had not consulted SADC as is "prescribed under the AU protocol", it did not provide any official confirmation from SADC on the matter. And despite a Nigerian embassy official directing the newspaper to seek clarification from the AU secretariat in Addis Ababa on the issue, the paper provided no evidence to show it had followed such advice.

The government media’s attempts to gloss over Zimbabwe’s relations with the AU and its SADC counterparts resulted in these media focussing on the diplomatic etiquettes of the proceedings at the SADC summit in Botswana at the expense of pertinent issues. It was in this context that while The Sunday Mail reported on how the SADC "silver jubilee summit" had opened "with praise for Zimbabwe honouring the founding fathers of the region", the Gazette highlighted how the Zimbabwe crisis had split the regional body.

For example, the private weekly cited "diplomatic sources" as claiming that there were "intense manoeuvres within SADC", led by South Africa, Mozambique and Botswana to dissuade other members of the regional bloc from siding with President Mugabe whose policies they regarded as a stumbling block to regional development.

Studio 7 (19/8) also reported that SA President Thabo Mbeki and Botswana leader Festus Mogae "pressured" Mugabe to brief SADC leaders "in a closed door" meeting on the crisis in Zimbabwe. Chimutengwende was quoted confirming the meeting, but denied that Mugabe was under pressure to address his counterparts saying "any president has a right to brief his colleagues on the situation in his country so they can discuss them".

The Herald (19/8) also reported the meeting but did not fully discuss the circumstances that gave rise to the briefing.

Meanwhile, the government sought to further deflect criticism of government’s policies by merely rehashing the authorities’ rebuttal of the UN report on Murambatsvina without analysis. For example, ZTV (16/8, 6&8pm) allowed Secretary for Information George Charamba to downplay the devastation caused by Murambatsvina by claiming that "only 20" households were affected in Nyanga and not the reported 700.

Zimbabwe Ambassador to the UN Boniface Chidyausiku also gave ridiculous figures on the number of people affected by the purge of the poor. He told Studio 7 (17/8) that, contrary to the UN report, only between 2 000 and 3 000 people had been affected by Murambatsvina. However, the station let him off the hook by failing to disprove his claims with overwhelming official statistical evidence to the contrary; a case of very sloppy interviewing.

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