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Government-controlled media's role as ZANU PF propagandists
Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Weekly Media Update 2006-44
Monday October 30^th 2006 – Sunday November 5^th 2006

THE government-controlled media’s role as ZANU PF propagandists was clearly illustrated by their misrepresentation of the local council election results. Instead of highlighting the severe voter apathy that characterised the poll and frankly discussing the implications of this for the contesting parties and the country’s democratisation, these media passively celebrated ZANU PF’s "victory", saying it signified its growing popularity and the demise of the opposition. Spot FM (29/10, 7am), for example, cheered the outcome, simplistically claiming that it was an endorsement of the ruling party’s policies as "people have realised that they have nothing to benefit from the MDC".

Similarly, The Herald (30/10) article, Zanu-PF trounces MDC, supinely quoted the ruling party’s newly elected mayor of Kadoma claiming the results "showed that Zanu-PF was making inroads and gaining support in urban areas which were once perceived as opposition strongholds". No attempt was made to reconcile such myopic views with the fact that a mere 11% of the 42 000 registered voters in Kadoma elected ZANU PF.

Only the private media tried to subject the results to some analysis. The Financial Gazette (2/11), for instance, used a cartoon to satirically expose the fallacy of the ruling party’s claims. It mockingly depicted a ZANU PF official saying a paltry nine percent of the Kadoma electorate that voted for the party demonstrated that it "continued to identify with the people".

The Zimbabwe Independent (3/11) disproved the MDC’s claims that it got 44% of the rural vote, noting that the opposition still had an "uphill task to weaken the chokehold Zanu PF had on rural voters" as the outcome showed that it won only "9,54% of the contested seats". The Sunday Mirror (5/11) echoed similar views in its article, Lessons from RDC elections.

In another development, the private media exposed the continued rights violations against MDC supporters and civic activists by the police and suspected ruling party supporters. This week they carried nine stories on rights abuses in which they recorded four new incidents of violations. These comprised the assault, harassment and arrest of perceived opposition supporters and members of the National Constitutional Assembly.

Such abuses, Studio 7 revealed (31/10), had resulted in civic groups forcing their parent organisation, NANGO, to "pull out of talks with government and the UN" on the establishment of a human rights commission. Reportedly, NANGO members argued that "engagement was pointless as long as rights abuses continued".

Except for The Herald (3/11) report on the court appearance of a student leader charged with "masterminding a violent (students) demonstration", the official media ignored rights violations.

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