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Decline in service delivery
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2007-42
Monday October 22nd - Sunday October 28th 2007
November 01, 2007

The official media made little effort to critically inform the public about Zimbabwe's deteriorating service delivery, underlined by persistent water and power shortages.

They failed to assess the impact of these shortages on households and industry and avoided providing a coherent explanation for their causes. Neither did they ask the authorities what measures they were taking to resolve them. For example, ZBC simply reported an announcement by the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) that the country faced a "significant increase" in load shedding (25/10, 8pm) due to "reduced generation" at Kariba Power Station while it underwent "critical corrective maintenance, which . . . is now long overdue . . . " without asking the authority any questions.

The official media also ignored investigating the causes of persistent water shortages bedevilling urban centres. ZBC only referred to the crisis in the context of fact-finding visits to some of the affected areas in Harare by the Parliamentary Portfolio Committees on Local Government and Health. As a result, ZTV (25/10,8pm) failed to reconcile the committee's commendation of "efforts being taken by the Government to address the water and sewer reticulation challenges in cities and towns, especially Harare" with remarks by a sister-in-charge at a Budiriro clinic that most patients visiting the centre were "suffering from . . . diarrhoea and other communicable diseases, which are being compounded by the erratic water supplies and burst sewer pipes"

Earlier, the Chronicle (23/10) passively reported United Bulawayo Hospital chief executive officer Nonhlanhla Ndlovu chronicling a list of the $300 billion worth of new equipment needed to replace the hospital's "obsolete" equipment without even exploring why such a situation had been allowed to develop or how it was affecting the hospital's operations. Neither did the paper investigate whether other hospitals around the country were experiencing similar problems, or view this as symptomatic of a deteriorating health sector.

The government media largely used the voice of the authorities as the bedrock of their reports as shown by Figs 5 and 6.

Fig 5: Voice distribution on ZBC

Fig 6: Voice distribution in the government Press

Although the private media barely paid any attention to the water crisis, they carried informed updates on the negative impact of electricity shortages and the poor performance of state-run companies. They linked the deteriorating service delivery to government mismanagement. The private media highlighted the suffering experienced by Harare's residents during a recent 10-day power cut in many of the capital's suburbs as illustrated in the Zimbabwe Independent's Muckraker column (23/10).

It noted that the blackout had "seriously inconvenienced citizens, left billions of dollars worth of food rotting in refrigerators and property exposed to crime".

In addition, The Financial Gazette (25/10) reported Air Zimbabwe boss Peter Chikumba revealing that the airline was battling "acute inefficiencies" associated with flight delays, cancellations and frequent breakdowns.

At the weekend, The Standard (28/10) reported that such was the poisoned economic environment in the country that British Airways, the sole remaining foreign long-haul airline in Zimbabwe, would be "pulling out of the Harare-London route" this week citing viability problems. Earlier, the Zimbabwe Independent (26/10) also reported Ethiopian Airlines as considering withdrawing its Harare route citing similar reasons. The reports were part of the 20 stories that the private media carried on deteriorating services [electronic media (7) and private papers (13)].

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