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Economic Meltdown
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Weekly Media Update 2005-37
September 26th - October 1st 2005

DESPITE the efforts of ZTV to distract its audiences from Zimbabwe’s deteriorating economic situation with a second week of national bira ceremonies dominating its news bulletins (nearly one hour of its evening bulletins were devoted to this topic), the media generally remained focused on the economy, carrying a total of 106 stories on the matter.

Thirty-eight of these appeared in the government Press and 29 in private newspapers. ZBH aired 39 reports (ZTV [12], Power FM [15], Radio Zimbabwe [12]), Studio 7 eight and SW Radio Africa three. The private media carried more open and critical discussions on the economic difficulties than the official media, whose coverage of the matter was largely piecemeal thereby compromising the quality and accuracy of their information.

For example, while ZBH carried 17 stories and newspapers 19 revealing symptoms of economic decline, they selectively reported on the causes by either obscuring government’s role in the crisis or reporting them in isolation as if they were not part of the country’s larger economic problems. This was illustrated by the way they oversimplified the viability problems facing several industries. The Sunday News (1/10) and ZTV (1/10, 6pm), for example, simplistically attributed the severe operational problems facing the country’s biggest tyre manufacturer, Dunlop Zimbabwe, to its failure to "mobilize foreign currency to import critical raw materials".

The pattern remained unbroken in the rest of the stories that these media carried (ZBH 22 and government newspapers 19) as they glossed over the economic crunch by projecting government as working flat out to turn the economy around. For example, The Herald (29/9) and ZTV (29/9, 8pm) did not query President Mugabe’s optimism that fuel supplies "would improve shortly" when addressing hundreds of war collaborators at his party’s headquarters, especially in view of the fact that previous promises by the authorities had not yielded anything.

While the private radio station, Studio 7 (30/9), critically analysed the statement, The Herald and ZTV did not question where the fuel would come from, where government had found the funds or even whether the deal would be long-term or one of those typical ad-hoc arrangements that have resulted in only a brief spasm of fuel-queuing.

Their supine parroting of this official statement once again revealed the autocratic and secretive nature of government, which was underscored by their passive reference to Mugabe justifying Zimbabwe’s economic hardships on the grounds that Zimbabweans’ current suffering bore no comparison to that experienced during the independence war.

The Herald quoted Mugabe as saying "the country’s ancestors had endured worse treatment and conditions, including brutality, detention and many other inhumanities and deprivations at the hands of colonialists". Similarly, the paper did not challenge Mugabe’s attribution of the economic crisis to "drought and sanctions" "illegally" imposed by Britain and its allies. Instead, ZTV (30/9, 6pm) and Power FM (1/10, 6am) reinforced this refrain by quoting ZANU PF’s Bulawayo Governor, Cain Mathema, the next day blaming the economic problems on colonialists. He told the stations: "It’s not the President who invented poverty in Zimbabwe, (it was) foreign investors who came here, such as Cecil John Rhodes (the founder of colonial Rhodesia)".

Besides blaming others except government for the country’s economic ills, ZTV (26/9, 8pm) and The Herald (27/9 & 29/9) also appeared averse to calls for transparency in government dealings when they tried to discredit "some quarters", particularly businessman Mutumwa Mawere, for querying the origins of funds that Harare used to partly repay its overdue arrears to the IMF.

The Herald (27/9) unquestioningly quoted Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono accusing such people of making "wild" claims because they "felt offended and angered" by Zimbabwe’s ability to repay its debts. Its comment (29/9) also criticised the IMF for "insisting… and expressing keenness to verify the source of the funds despite being given details where the money had been sourced" resulting in Gono "breaching banking ethics to reveal the source of the funds in more detail for the whole world to see".

But both papers failed to explain why Gono had suddenly rushed to the media to publish the details while he has previously refused to do so. Neither did they tell their audiences whether the details of the disclosures (The Herald 27/9) were comprehensive and allayed the curiosity of the IMF and Mawere.

However, the three – including Power FM (27/9, 6am) and Radio Zimbabwe (27/9, 6am) – did not see the irony behind Gono’s revelations of Zimbabwe’s IMF payment details with his continued refusal to divulge the logistics of the potential loan deal with South Africa. The Herald only quoted him as "dispelling rumours that Zimbabwe had rejected the much publicised loan assistance from South Africa", adding that negotiations were ongoing, although they had taken longer than initially expected.

The distribution of voices by the government media (shown in Fig 1 and 2) mirrors its reliance on official sources for news and contributed to the lack of analysis in many of its stories.

Fig 1.Voice distribution in the official Press

Although ZBH recorded more business voices, these were largely quoted expressing the problems facing their companies and not the national economy.

Fig 2: Voice distribution on ZBH

The private media, on the other hand, bemoaned government’s lack of a transparent and coherent economic policy to tackle the country’s problems. They pointed at Zimbabwe’s confusing relationship with the IMF and the authorities’ own contradictory policy statements, among other factors, as militating heavily against economic recovery.

The Financial Gazette (29/9) and Sunday Mirror were prominent in exposing these problems.

For example, the Gazette comment attributed Zimbabwe’s economic slide to the authorities’ arrogance. It cited Communications Minister Chris Mushowe and Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa’s recent threats "to forcibly take over white-owned firms" and to "zero-in on the remaining white-owned commercial farmland" respectively as some of the actions that have been highly "perplexing" and damaging to the economy as it alienates investors’ confidence.

The paper wondered whether the two ministers understood that Zimbabwe’s economic progress could be held back by "the dead hand of their obsession with revolutionary mantras and hatred for the West which, ironically, is Zimbabwe’s biggest export market besides South Africa".

In fact, the Sunday Mirror reported that the IMF and World Bank had "grilled" Finance Minister Herbert Murerwa over Zimbabwe’s new farm invasions during their annual group meeting in Washington, US, recently. It said the two institutions were "particularly worried" about the new invasions "considering the damage that the last bout of farm takeovers had done to the country’s productive capacity and in light of government’s recent pledge to do all it could to restore economic viability".

The government media skirted these issues, including the findings of a UNDP report carried in the Gazette, which revealed that the quality of life for Zimbabweans had plunged due to deepening poverty and HIV/AIDS and that 66 percent of the population "do not expect to reach the age of 40". The report placed life expectancy in Zimbabwe at 36.9 years.

Similarly, the official media would not report on the World Economic Forum’s latest Global Competitiveness Report 2005-2006, which bestowed Harare with the worst ranking among 117 countries for its poor macroeconomic environment (The Standard 2/10).

The paper quoted the founder and executive chairman of WEF, Klaus Schwab, saying Zimbabwe was "a particular case, whose quick descent to the bottom of the world’s competitiveness rankings reflects the continued deterioration of the institutional climate, including the disappearance of property rights (and) the corruption of the rule of law" among other factors. The revelations were part of the 39 stories that the private media carried exposing the symptoms of Zimbabwe’s economic decay, including continued commodity shortages, the soaring cost of living and the general crumbling of the country’s health and social infrastructures.

The diversity of the reports in the private media, as illustrated by the private newspapers, was reflected in their sourcing pattern. See Fig 3.

Fig 3. Voice distribution in the private Press.

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