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Election aftermath
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2005-46
Monday November 28^th – Sunday December 4^th 2005

FOLLOWING the electorate’s indifference to the Senate elections, ZBH embarked on a campaign to validate the poll, enhance the alleged popularity of ZANU PF and bolster the relevance of the Upper Chamber.

As a result, its 49 stories on the elections and the Senate either myopically celebrated ZANU PF’s victory as reflective of the party’s growing popularity, or merely depicted the re-introduction of the Upper House as a milestone in the country’s democratisation.

The fact that less than 20% of the electorate had participated in the election was censored. Nor was there any analysis on the causes of the unprecedented voter apathy that marred the poll.

Rather, in a bid to portray ZANU PF as popular and suffocate the fact that most of the electorate had snubbed the election, Radio Zimbabwe (28/11, 8am) and ZTV (28/11, 8pm) passively quoted Policy Implementation Minister Webster Shamu claiming that "over 80% of Zimbabweans … rejected regionalism, tribalism, neo-colonialism by voting resoundingly for the ruling party".

There was no effort to challenge this shameless attempt to present the ruling party as an unparalleled unifying force.

The government Press’ 34 stories on the subject adopted a similar slant.

The papers, as illustrated by The Herald (28/11), merely gloated over ZANU PF’s "landslide victory", even in the 19 uncontested seats, without providing useful figures on the total ballots.

Like ZBH, the paper (29/11) also gave irrelevant and useless statistics aimed at portraying ZANU PF as a dominant political party. For example, it claimed that the party had "showed its strength" by winning all seats in Matabeleland South and "taking 55 percent of the valid vote and three seats in Matabeleland North", adding that "countrywide, the swing to Zanu-PF was around 15 percent".

It did not explain or provide the basis for its figures. Instead, it used the endorsement of the poll by SADC and Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) observers to reinforce its portrayal of Zimbabwe’s electoral process as democratic (30/11).

Inexplicably, ZBH missed SADC’s judgement of the election. It only reported on COMESA’s findings and quoted the outgoing Palestinian ambassador commending the conduct of the poll.

The government media also tried to promote the Senate as a vital arm in the country’s legislature. For example, The Herald (30/11) claimed that the Upper House would "bring meaningful and beneficial changes in the way the country’s laws are made".

ZTV and Radio Zimbabwe (30/11, 8pm) quoted selected individuals and claimed that "the public" had "acknowledged the importance of having a Senate" and expressed confidence that the "new senators will fulfil promises they made during campaigns".

The government media’s supine coverage of the topic was reflected by their dependence of ZANU PF voices as shown of Figs 1 and 2.

Fig 1 Voice distribution in the government Press

Fig 2 Voice distribution on ZBH

However, the private media dismissed the government media’s claims that the poll showed that ZANU PF was a popular party, saying victory in a poll where less than 20% of the electorate voted was hardly a yardstick to measure the popularity of the party.

If anything, noted NCA chairman Lovemore Madhuku in The Financial Gazette (1/12), the election showed that "people are not interested in ZANU PF’s political programme".

The Independent’s Muckraker column agreed, noting that celebrations of a "landslide" victory by the ruling party only showed "how desperate Zanu PF is for electoral validation".

While the official media only used few regional observers’ favourable comments on the conduct of the election, the Gazette reported that the United States and Australia had dismissed it as a non-event. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer was, for example, quoted describing the poll as a "farce" that was aimed at "creating expensive sinecures for Zanu PF cronies at the expense of the suffering majority..."

Studio 7 (28/11) carried a similar story and quoted Downer noting that the low voter turn-out showed that "the democratic process in Zimbabwe has almost completely collapsed".

Besides, the station and the Independent quoted the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) highlighting how the ruling party could have tipped the scales in its favour by diluting MDC strongholds with ZANU PF constituencies and reducing the number of seats in urban areas, where the opposition commands huge support.

These stories were part of 25 (private stations [9] and private Press [18]) reports the private media carried on the Senate.

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