|
Back to Index
Corruption
Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Weekly Media Update 2006-44
Monday October
30th 2006 – Sunday November 5th 2006
DESPITE carrying
official acknowledgements by Trade Minister Obert Mpofu of corruption
by top government officials at the state-run Ziscosteel (Zisco)
in previous editions, the government Press appeared uninterested
in unravelling the details surrounding the allegations.
This dependence
on official pronouncements at the expense of investigative journalism
was evident in all three stories the papers carried on the matter.
For example, the Sunday News (5/11) passively quoted Anti-Corruption
Minister Paul Mangwana threatening prosecution of those "implicated"
in the scandal, "including high-ranking officials",
adding, "as soon as an anti-corruption team completes
probing the goings-on at Zisco, all findings would be made public".
The paper though, showed no curiosity over why government needed
a second investigation on the matter before publicising findings
of its first inquiry.
Earlier, The
Herald’s Nathaniel Manheru, whom the private media have alleged
is a pen name for government spokesman George Charamba, even tried
(4/11) to trivialise the graft allegations by normalising them as
"so common and mundane to public administrators
as to be pedestrian", adding that they were "characteristic
(of) managerial problems and improprieties of parastatals so known
to all of us".
Manheru then
criticised Mpofu’s revelations of the alleged scam as "baffling"
and "condemnable"
saying his claims that politicians had looted Zisco were
"simply unsupported by the report itself"
as the "real beneficiaries were corporate bodies outside
of Zimbabwe".
Notably, the
author and indeed the government media did not identify the actual
culprits and their pillaging roles. Only the Zimbabwe Independent
(3/11) did in the first instalment of an investigative report on
the matter. Earlier, The Financial Gazette (2/11) revealed
that the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Industry planned "to
press the Minister of Finance" to
publicise the report’s findings. It was also planning to impeach
Mpofu for allegedly giving false evidence before them on the matter.
Reportedly, the committee was unhappy with the minister’s attempts
to backtrack on his initial claims of government officials’ involvement
in the corruption, saying the minister had "deliberately
misled" them. In addition, the paper linked the scandal
to previous ones that the authorities "swiftly swept
under a thick carpet". It thus viewed government’s
much publicised "anti-corruption drive"
as "nothing but empty rhetoric".
Besides failing
to tackle the Zisco saga, the official media avoided questioning
the authorities on the chaos surrounding the administration of Harare.
For instance, despite carrying nine stories on the confusion and
mismanagement of the city by the government-appointed Harare Commission,
including blatant contempt of court and parliamentary orders by
its chair, Sekesai Makwavarara, the papers did not ask government
why it still retains such incompetent city administrators.
The private
media was largely reticent on the matter.
Visit the MMPZ
fact
sheet
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
TOP
|
