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Economic meltdown and service delivery decline
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2007-44
Monday November 5th - Sunday 11th 2007
November 16, 2007

The government media superficially dealt with the country's economic decline and the collapse in service delivery in 71 reports they devoted to the matter (ZBC 16 and government papers 55).The stories were mostly piecemeal and failed to holistically assess the problems. Although they reported the rise in the cost of some services, such as phone tariffs, transport fares and doctors' fees, these were reported in isolation of their root causes. For instance, the Chronicle (6/11) criminalized commuter omnibus operators for increasing their fares to at least $300 000 per trip in "defiance" of the gazetted $20 000, saying this "burdened commuters who were getting meagre salaries in the hyperinflationary environment".

No comment was sought from commuter operators on why they had raised the fares, nor did the paper link the increase to the country's inflation of nearly 8 000 percent.

In fact, The Herald (7/11) simply reported that the RBZ had raised the cheque limit to $500m "to ease the cash shortages in the country" without linking this to the rapid decline in the value of Zimbabwe's currency. In addition, the paper had not previously reported any cash shortage. Similarly, the next day the paper simply quoted permanent secretary in the Justice Ministry, David Mangota, "ordering" striking magistrates to return to work, "while their grievances are being addressed" despite not having reported the strike in the past. There was no in-depth coverage on the gravity of deteriorating service delivery except in the context of official promises to resolve them.

Only The Sunday Mail and Sunday News (11/11) made any attempt to measure the effects of government's failure to provide reliable power provision to industry and urban households.

For example, ZTV and Spot FM (9/11,8am), including the previous day's ZTV current affairs programme, 'Face the Nation' (8/11), simply allowed Zimbabwe National Water Authority (Zinwa) acting director Israel Wodzi to gloss over the country's water woes without providing any credible plan to end the problem.

Figs 5 and 6 show the voice distribution in the government media.

Fig 5: Voice distribution on ZBC

Fig 6: Voice distribution in the official Press

Only the private media's 39 reports (private electronic media [21] and private papers [28]) openly debated the problems.

The stories exposed worsening water and power shortages due to government's failure to source enough foreign currency to buy spares for repairing and upgrading existing infrastructure. They also highlighted negative effects of the declining service delivery, characterised by the outbreak of diarrhoea due to contaminated water.

For instance, the Independent linked the power scarcity to poor foresight by government on issues such as generating capacity, debt servicing and wrong priorities.

The paper quoted an unnamed engineer saying ZESA was closing some of its thermal power stations because it was unable to procure spares due to foreign currency shortages. However, ZESA was not cited confirming this.

Earlier, ZimOnline (7/11) reported an Econet official blaming power cuts for disrupting mobile phone services.

Unlike the government media, the private media updated their audiences on the magistrates' strike, which they said was forcing suspects to be held in police cells for long periods without appearing in court.

To cap a bad week, The Financial Gazette (8/11) reported that Zimbabwe had been ranked 129 out of 131 countries in a survey of economic competitiveness across the world conducted by the World Economic Forum.

The way in which the private media tackled the topic was reflected in the diversity of the views accessed in their reports as exemplified by the private Press' sourcing pattern (Fig 7).

Fig 7: Voice distribution in the private Press

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