Back to Index

The SADC initiative
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2007-14
Monday April 9th 2007 - Sunday April 15th 2007

AGAIN the government media misrepresented the objectives of the SADC resolutions on Zimbabwe, especially in light of the visit to the country by the regional bloc's executive secretary Tomaz Salamao during the week.

This was reflected by the 23 stories that the official papers and ZBC (11) carried on the matter.

Instead of apprising their readers on SADC's exact brief for Salamao, these media narrowly presented his visit as an affirmation of the region's solidarity with Zimbabwe in its fight against alleged Western plots to overthrow government. For example, ZTV and Spot FM (12/4, 6pm and 8pm) claimed Salamao was in the country to assess "how SADC can assist the country recover from the effects of illegal sanctions imposed by Britain and its allies".

The Herald and Chronicle (13/4) carried similar claims.

However, nowhere in the official media was Salamao quoted confirming the claims. For instance, while the government dailies depicted his mission as aimed at "rescuing" Zimbabwe's economy from "Western-imposed illegal sanctions", Salamao himself was quoted saying: "I am here to implement what was decided by the (SADC) heads of state and to have some consultations."

He did not divulge the conditions, nor was he asked to.

And rather than seek comment from other SADC members on the matter, the papers merely cited an unnamed "source closely following the SADC mission" as saying the feeling in the region was that "Zimbabwe, in terms of Article 4 of the rules of the IMF" had cleared its debt and was thus entitled to the Fund's support. It was in this context that the rest of the stories the official media carried portrayed Zimbabwe's economic and political crises as stemming from alleged Western efforts to oust government. In fact, besides unsubstantiated accusations from The Herald and Chronicle (13/4) that US Ambassador Christopher Dell was organising an "anti-government march" in Bulawayo, the official papers carried several opinion pieces by columnists, such as Reason Wafawarova, David Samuriwo and Munyaradzi Huni, presenting Zimbabwe as a victim of Western neo-imperialism.

Despite its seemingly fairly represented sourcing pattern, the government papers' coverage of the topic was vehemently sympathetic to government (See Fig 5).

Fig 5 Voice distribution in the government Press

Notably, the MDC was quoted in retrospect and always in contexts that cast them as confused or stupid.

ZBC simply ignored the opposition in its narrow sourcing pattern as shown in Fig 6.

Fig 6 Voice distribution on ZBC

Only the private media frankly discussed the SADC initiative in the 24 stories they carried on the matter. Not only did they carry revealing updates on plans by South African President Thabo Mbeki for a negotiated settlement to the country's crisis, they also analysed the plans' potential for success. For example, apart from announcing that Mbeki had since written to both the ruling party and the opposition spelling out his plans, the Independent and the online agencies cautioned against hopes for a speedy solution, citing various points of disagreement between the two parties.

Key to these disagreements, the Independent noted, was the MDC's perception of President Mugabe as "the face of an illegitimate regime" while equally in ZANU PF's eyes the MDC was "a puppet construct of the West". It was in this light that the Gazette quoted an unnamed diplomat saying that the "immediate challenge is now to get the major parties to agree on the terms of reference that would form the nucleus of the talks".

Similar views found space in several private electronic media (11-13/4).

However, the private Press relied more on unnamed sources as shown in its sourcing pattern (Fig 7).

Fig 7.Voice distribution in the private Press

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