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MDC political developments
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2006-8
Monday February 20^th – Sunday February 26^th 2006

THE entry into mainstream opposition politics of former student leader and scientist Arthur Mutambara, and his subsequent election to the presidency of the Gibson Sibanda-led MDC faction during its congress, also attracted considerable media attention during the week.

The Press carried 32 stories on the matter, of which 17 were in the government papers and 15 in the private papers. ZBH aired 16 reports (ZTV [four], Radio Zimbabwe [five] and Spot FM [seven]), while Studio 7 carried four and SW Radio Africa three.

Notably, the national broadcaster’s coverage was piecemeal and dismissive of the congress. This was summed up by its preview of the event in which Spot FM (20/2, 8pm) quoted ZANU PF official William Nhara using the opportunity to dismiss the political competition as inconsequential, saying the "MDC should not be taken seriously as it does not have a solid agenda and a programme for the people of Zimbabwe".

ZBH’s condescending coverage of the matter characterised its subsequent stories. Although ZTV and Spot FM (25/2, 8pm) reported that Mutambara had been "nominated unopposed", they hardly provided his biography, except referring to him as a former "student activist".

In fact, the next day Spot FM (26/2, 8pm) mutilated parts of Mutambara’s viewpoints on land and international relations, claiming he had "embraced" the ruling party’s philosophy because his stance echoed "sentiments, which have always been expressed by ZANU PF".

On the other hand, the government papers merely used their daily updates on the goings-on in the breakaway faction’s preparations for congress to fortify their projection of the opposition as being in turmoil and beyond redemption. They only seemed to report fairly on Mutambara’s election when using the development as a political tool to spite Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the other faction, as having lost control of the opposition.

The Sunday Mail (26/2) fairly presented Mutambara’s election and endorsed him as the new leader of the MDC faction, while earlier reports in The Herald (20 & 21/2) highlighted the haggling over Mutambara’s nomination for the presidency by quoting a fellow aspirant to the presidency, Gift Chimanikire, denigrating Mutambara.

The paper’s columnists Caesar Zvayi (22/2) and Nathaniel Manheru (25/2) however, used Mutambara’s background as an activist student leader to dismiss him as a "hooligan" while accusing him of being a front for Western interests due to his lengthy stay abroad.

While the MDC voices uncharacteristically dominated the government media’s sourcing pattern, they were mainly used to portray the opposition party as confused. See Fig 1 and 2.

Fig. 1 Voice distribution in the government Press

Fig. 2 Voice Distribution on ZBH

Although the private media provided sober assessments of Mutambara’s potential to rejuvenate the opposition and the impact of his entrance onto the political landscape, none of them fully discussed the circumstances surrounding his return, his ascendancy to the presidency of one faction or his relations with other political formations in the country.

This was particularly so considering that The Financial Gazette (23/2) quoted him referring the paper to "Welshman, Tsvangirai, Daniel Shumba and the UPM" about the "conditions that (he had) put across". The statement passed without scrutiny.

The matter was not helped by Studio 7 (20, /2), which reported Chimanikire accusing the faction’s leader, Welshman Ncube, of subverting the party’s constitution "to accommodate" Mutambara, again without proper investigation.

Chimanikire told the station that he was neither "involved" nor "privy" to the circumstances under which Mutambara had returned to assume the leadership of their faction of the MDC, but "only read about the development in the Press".

Otherwise, these media simply carried varied commentators’ assessments of Mutambara’s potential political acumen.

For example, while the Zimbabwe Independent quoted Brian Raftopoulos noting that Mutambara still needed "time to grow" into a national leader, it also quoted Eldred Masunungure arguing that Mutambara was a "natural politician who knows the psychology of the masses".

In addition, the Gazette, Studio 7 (23/2) and SW Radio Africa (24/2) revealed that the Tsvangirai faction had tried to bar its rivals from holding their congress arguing that doing so violated the party’s constitution, including a standing High Court order that "upheld" Tsvangirai’s leadership of the MDC.

However, SW Radio Africa quoted the "pro-Senate" faction’s Paul Themba Nyathi contesting that "our legal team says our congress is lawful", adding that if the Tsvangirai group felt aggrieved it should challenge the matter in court.

But not every private paper gave a balanced view on Mutambara’s leadership abilities. The Daily Mirror, like the official Press, carried five stories that depicted him as an appendage of Western imperialist machinations.

For example, the paper (24/2) cited unnamed analysts claiming that they "strongly" believed Mutambara was "an American secret service agent" because "his academia beyond undergraduate level has been built in the West, particularly the States which has not hidden its anti-Zimbabwe agenda – effecting regime change".

The private media’s voice distribution is shown in Figs 3 and 4

Fig 3 Voice distribution in the private Press

Fig. 4 Voice pattern on private radio stations

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