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Crackdown follow-up
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2007-30
Monday July 31st 2007 - Sunday August 5th 2007
August 09, 2007

The government media continued to steer clear of the confusion characterising government's clampdown on business. Nearly all 76 reports they carried on the topic (official Press [49] and ZBC [27]) simply rehashed official pronouncements justifying the exercise and avoided addressing the chaos inherent in the price-cutting crusade.

As a result, their audiences remained uninformed about how government planned to deal effectively with acute shortages of fuel and beef after it banned the private sector's participation in favour of state enterprises, the National Oil Company of Zimbabwe (Noczim) and the Cold Storage Company (CSC).

For example, there was no clarity on whether Noczim had already reassumed its monopoly or whether it was coping with demand. Neither was there any follow-up on the fate of the fuel coupons facility that government threatened to scrap more than two weeks ago on the grounds that it was fuelling the black market.

Except for The Sunday Mail (5/8), the official media also failed to examine the CSC's capacity to meet national demand for beef. For example, The Herald and Chronicle (30/7) merely reported that the government-run abattoir had raised its buying price for cattle from "$3 million up to $12 million" a beast in a bid to ensure adequate supplies of beef on the market without explaining why the product still remained unavailable.

A story carried by the Chronicle on the same day also failed to interpret revelations by Vice-President Joice Mujuru that government had decided "to vet some private abattoirs with a view to allow them to operate in the hope that this will reduce the shortages" as an admission of CSC's failure to deliver. Nor did the paper assess the imprudence of the authorities' decision to close private abattoirs.

However, The Sunday Mail (5/8) partly exposed this when it carried a story in which it quoted an unnamed CSC official admitting that "the company did not have the capacity to supply meat to the whole country" because it had only four abattoirs countywide.

The government weekly also noted the confusion surrounding government's annulment of the law limiting the quantity of basic commodities individuals are allowed to import. Besides reporting the government as having repealed the legislation on the basis that it was gazetted "years ago" and needed reworking so that it would be "user friendly", the paper exposed the confusion that surrounded its existence. For example, it noted that while Industry Minister Obert Mpofu had previously denied the existence of such legislation, the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority confirmed it during the same period, saying the authority was "going to implement the instrument at the beginning of this month".

But while the official papers reported on these issues, ZBC ignored them, choosing to swamp its audiences with stories that projected the clampdown as having successfully stabilised prices and the economy in general. For example, ZTV (30/7, 7am) and Spot FM (30/7, 8am) quoted Zimbabwe Tourism Authority boss Karikoga Kaseke claiming that the crackdown on the sector had "eradicated irregularities in the tourism sector". He did not explain what these were, and neither was he asked to. Instead, ZBC narrowly used sporadic deliveries to shops to paper over severe shortages of basic commodities. For example, ZTV (2/8, 8pm) showed pictures of stocked OK supermarket shelves and a long till slip of goods bought by the army commander's wife, Jocelyn Chiwenga, at Makro Wholesalers as proof that "most major shops in Harare had restocked".

The currency of the footage of the OK shelves remained unclear.

In line with such attempts to suppress the severity of commodity shortages and their causes ZTV's Face the Nation programme (2/8) did not seek to establish the truth of claims by police spokesman Oliver Mandipaka that the shortages were due to "panic buying" and businesses "deliberately removing goods from shelves to channel them to the parallel market". Neither did they balance his claims with business or alternative views. Also in this context ZTV (2/8, 8pm) simply dismissed observations by MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai that many shops were almost "empty" due to the price cuts as "efforts by the MDC to discredit the crackdown." The official media's failure to go beyond official pronouncements resulted in the Chronicle (2/8) and Spot FM (2/8, 8pm) merely announcing that government had extended the price blitz to December 2007 without explaining the original timeframe of the exercise.

The government media's superficial coverage was illustrated by their failure to balance the official position with independent views. For instance, although they sought comment from those outside government as shown in Figs.1 and 2, these largely endorsed the government position and avoided any critical examination of the blitz.

Fig. 1 Voice distribution on ZBC

Fig. 2 Voice distribution in the government Press

In contrast, the private media maintained a dispassionate assessment of the crackdown in the 30 stories they devoted to the subject. Of these, 20 appeared in the private papers while the private electronic media carried the remainder. Besides openly discussing the chaos characterising the crackdown, they also exposed its negative effects such as the scarcity of basic commodities.

For example, while SW Radio Africa (30/7) captured the gravity of shortages in Bulawayo, The Zimbabwean (2/8) and Zimbabwe Independent (3/8) carried follow-up analysis on the failure by CSC to supply beef as farmers continued to hold on to their livestock, saying the prices offered by the CSC were not viable.

The Standard (5/8) viewed the price blitz as having reduced Zimbabweans to "modern-day hunters and gatherers" of basic commodities. In addition, whereas The Financial Gazette (2/8), The Zimbabwean and the Independent exposed divisions in Cabinet over the implementation of the exercise, Studio 7 (30/7) quoted economist John Robertson interpreting government's decision to repeal legislation on the importation of goods as evidence that its price control policy was now "backfiring".

And contrary to the impression created by the official media that the public was happy with the blitz, Zimdaily.com (2/8) reported the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions secretary-general Wellington Chibebe denouncing the exercise as having caused "unnecessary and massive job losses" as many companies had closed due to "unviable pricing structures".

However, like the government media, the private media failed to clarify the fate of the banned fuel coupons. Only the Independent briefly observed that they had been extended for a year, adding that government "is in the process of purchasing large quantities of coupons from Caltex (fuel suppliers)". Similarly, the private papers inadequately handled the nullification of the import duty statutory instrument. The Independent, for example, merely referred to the matter in the context of a meeting between President Mugabe and business representatives over the government crackdown. It simply noted that the authorities had repealed the import regulations without giving any further details.

But despite such failures, the private media tried to balance the official perspective with views from those outside government as shown in Figs. 3 and 4.

Fig 3 Voice distribution in the private electronic media

Fig 4 Voice distribution in the private Press

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