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Agriculture
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Weekly Media Update 2005-48
Monday December 12^th – Sunday December 18^th 2005

THIS week the government media again demonstrated its unwillingness to sufficiently expose government’s lack of a clear policy to revive the country’s agricultural sector.

This was evident in the 83 stories they carried on the matter, 53 of which were aired on ZBH (ZTV 26, Spot FM 10, Radio Zimbabwe 17) while the government papers published the remaining 31 stories. None of these reports fully acknowledged government’s piecemeal approach to the crises in the sector.

Instead, the official media continued to use President Mugabe’s State of the Nation address and the ZANU PF conference as cornerstones for recovery. This resulted in most of their stories giving the impression of a successful farming season without providing rational evidence to support this.

ZBH alone carried 35 "throwaway" stories ranging from expectations of a "bumper harvest"; government launching agricultural projects; and even analysts praising government plans to announce crop producer prices for the season.

Such stories took precedence over shortages of inputs and implements, which were only referred to in passing.

For example, while The Herald comment (12/12) argued that government had demonstrated "unshakeable commitment" to the successful revival of the country’s agricultural output through the introduction of "command" agricultural production codenamed Food Security/Maguta/Inala, spearheaded by the army, it failed to clearly outline government’s implementation targets to back the claims.

Similarly, ZTV (13/12; 6pm & 8pm) carried nine stories celebrating the current good rains without verifying whether there had been adequate preparation in the field. Instead, it merely quoted AREX officials providing meaningless estimations that 90% of the planted maize had germinated in Masvingo and that all maize planted in November had also germinated. They did not provide the hectarage under cultivation.

By the end of the week, The Sunday Mail and Sunday News (18/12) were able to celebrate an end to more than 4,000 challenges to the seizure of farms before the Administrative Court with a High Court ruling that formally did away with these disputes as a result of the Constitutional Amendment Act No.17, which nationalised the country’s agricultural land. The official media’s pro-government stance in reporting on the subject was mirrored in its voice distribution as illustrated in Fig 1and 2.

Fig 1: Voice distribution in the government Press

Fig. 2 Voice distribution on ZBH

The private media carried only 13 reports on the subject (private papers [9] and Studio 7 [4]) but they articulated better the difficulties in the farming sector.

For example, they questioned government’s commitment to enforce discipline and restore order on farms in view of the fresh farm invasions. The Standard (18/12) took President Mugabe to task over his failure to "punish" ministers who, it said, were failing to perform and were responsible for the agricultural decline, while The Financial Gazette comment noted that the current "wildcat farm seizures" had already claimed an estimated 20 productive farms since the controversial 17^th amendment to the constitution.

In a separate story, the Gazette reported on the fresh invasion of Kent Farm in Norton by Agriculture Deputy Minister, Sylvester Nguni, and Clerk of Parliament Austin Zvoma. The paper said this was despite the fact that the farm was being leased from Zimco, a Belgian firm whose investments are exempt from forced seizures under the Bilateral Investment Protection Agreement.

In fact, Studio 7 (16/12) revealed the extent to which government was abetting lawlessness in the sector when it reported that a government-run committee in Masvingo was still holding on to farm equipment it seized from 10 white commercial farmers despite a court ruling ordering it to return the tools.

The voice distribution in the private Press is shown in Fig 3.

Fig 3: Voice distribution in the private Press

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