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Elections and succession
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2007-17
Monday April 30th 2007 - Sunday May 6th 2007

PROFESSIONAL incompetence marked the government media's coverage of the 2008 poll preparations, the Zaka East by-election and the infighting in ZANU PF over the issue of succession. Most of the 22 stories they carried (ZBC [nine] and official papers [13]) were basically passive repetitions of official statements. For example, there was no investigation into the root causes for the "disruption" of ZANU PF's Bulawayo provincial elections, leading to their postponement by party commissariat Elliot Manyika (ZTV 1/5, 8pm & 3/5, 8pm; Spot FM 2/5, 7am and Radio Zimbabwe 3/5, 8pm).

ZTV (1/5, 8pm) just reported that Manyika deferred the elections after spending "four hours" unsuccessfully trying to resolve differences between two ZANU PF factions over the registration of party members, one which was reportedly loyal to war veteran leader Jabulani Sibanda, the other remained unlinked to anyone.

No attempt was made to unmask its leaders or connect the squabbles to the succession issue. Rather, the station merely reported "a visibly angry" Manyika as having "walked out" of the meeting after being heckled.

The Chronicle (30/4 & 2/5), The Herald (30/4) and Sunday News (6/5) also failed to report factionalism in the ruling party as indicative of the succession issue. It was in this context that The Herald (30/4) failed to establish the reasons behind the delay "for several hours" of elections to choose ZANU PF's Masvingo provincial leadership "following squabbles in Chivi, where two parallel structures claimed legitimacy".

Only the private media did. For example, The Zimbabwe Times (1/5) reported six ZANU PF supporters being injured during violent clashes between rival ruling party factions following the Masvingo provincial elections, which saw a group loyal to former army commander Solomon Mujuru winning the polls. Reportedly, those injured included Chivi North MP Enita Maziriri and former Masvingo governor Josaya Hungwe.

However, the Sunday News and Sunday Mail papered over the infighting when they passively allowed ZANU PF secretary for administration Didymus Mutasa to mask this factionalism by claiming the party's "two factions" had since "closed ranks" following Mugabe's decision to seek re-election next year.

The government media's docile reporting also manifested itself in their failure to report a lack of transparency in the way the authorities were preparing for the 2008 elections. For example, there was no clarity in the way the Registrar-General Tobaiwa Mudede planned to "embark on an extensive national registration programme" ahead of the polls (The Herald 4/5) or question the context in which the ruling party had resolved that senators be "elected" instead of being chosen through the "proposed proportional representation system".

In fact, the official media simply reduced debate on the electoral preparations to a ZANU PF affair. Consequently, no comments were sought from civic and opposition leaders on whether they approved of the groundwork, especially in view of the current SADC initiative to ensure that preparations for 2008 are democratically conducted.

Instead, the paper unquestioningly quoted President Mugabe dismissing controversies that have plagued previous elections, claiming that it was "untruthful for anyone to say that elections in Zimbabwe were manipulated and fraudulent". In the same vein, the official media failed to adequately inform their audiences about the authorities' preparations for the Zaka East by-election. They just announced the holding of the ZANU PF primaries to choose a candidate (The Herald 30/4; ZTV 4/5,1pm and Radio Zimbabwe 6/5,6am). Nothing was said about opposition preparations.

The poor manner in which ZBC covered the story was reflected by the fact all 10 voices it cited on the subject were solely from the ruling party.

The government Press also relied on ZANU PF in its coverage of the subject as shown in Fig 5.

Fig. 5 Voice distribution in the government Press

The private media did not perform any better.

They only carried two stories that exposed the motives underpinning some of the ruling party's 2008 electoral proposals. For example, The Financial Gazette (3/5) revealed that ZANU PF MPs wanted Mudede to relax Zimbabwe's harsh citizenship laws to enable the "registration of aliens, mostly farm workers, ahead of the elections" as the ruling party tries to "salvage votes from groups it marginalised in previous elections" under the same laws.

The Zimbabwean agreed, noting that while there was slow progress in bringing the ruling party and the MDC to the negotiating table, ZANU PF was "forging full speed ahead with a wide range of initiatives, including plans to terrorize the populace, emasculate the opposition, re-draw constituency boundaries (and) rig the ballot". Although the rest of the private media ignored such reports, they carried 11 stories that either bemoaned the slow pace of South African President Thabo Mbeki's mediation efforts or exposed the fierce divisions within ZANU PF.

The private papers' sourcing pattern is shown in Fig. 6.

Fig. 6 Voice distribution in the private Press

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