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Daily Media Update No.30
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
April 18, 2008

Post election focus
The government-controlled press (The Herald, Chronicle and Manica Post, 18/4) used Independence Day celebrations today to whip up emotions of hatred against the opposition MDC and the West in their news stories and editorials. They carried one-sided and vague news reports on the court application by the MDC to "bar" the declaration of winners in the recounts, which is set to take place tomorrow, and on the police clampdown on MDC activists. Notably, the papers continued to insist that there was no crisis in the country as a result of the delay in the release of the presidential results. These papers carried 25 stories on the topic.

The Herald and Chronicle carried a report on the MDC's High Court application seeking an interim order barring the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) and constituency election officers from declaring as "duly-elected" those who would emerge as winners in tomorrow's recounts. The story was vague as government dailies did not present the basis of the MDC's case or link this to the provisions of the Electoral Act. Neither did they seek ZEC's response to the MDC's case. The papers also passively reported that the High Court would hear this case today including another one to stop the recounts. However, they did not explore the reasons why ZEC would proceed with the recounts when the case was still pending in the courts. Instead, they quoted ZEC's deputy chief elections officer, Utoile Silaigwana commenting on the security of the ballot boxes before the recounts tomorrow saying the "commission had not yet received any reports of ballot boxes being tampered with."

In addition, both The Herald and Chronicle quoted Bright Matonga, as deputy information minister, dismissing concerns by the United States over the recounts. Matonga was quoted saying, "the Bush administration's statements were hypocritical" as the US president George Bush had "won the presidency through the recounting process and the courts." The papers had reported the US State Department criticizing the country's electoral authorities for plans to recount the presidential vote as the State could have tampered with the ballots. The government-controlled papers did not conduct their own investigation to reassure its readers that the ballot boxes were secure.

The papers carried editorials which continued to justify the delays in the release of presidential election results and assert that there was no crisis in the country. For instance, in one opinion piece The Herald's unnamed correspondent argued that "the fast-tracking of the results was to let the MDC-T win through the back-door, a situation that does not auger well for such crucial elections." The writer also cynically noted that "it's amazing how the MDC-T can out rightly lie to the world that there is a crisis in Zimbabwe just because the results of the elections are some weeks late".

The official papers continued to justify the clampdown on MDC activists based on statements from the police, while at the same time, dismissing concerns of violence against opposition supporters from the international community. For example, The Herald and Chronicle, quoted police spokesperson, Wayne Bvudzijena claiming that MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai had called for the "intensification of political disturbances with the premise that when the security forces respond to lawlessness and violence this would lead to an international outcry which would justify international intervention". Bvudzijena also alleged that MDC-T had deployed youths in Murehwa, Mutoko and Masvingo to "terrorise villagers in new pick-up trucks supplied by their Western funders." The papers did not ask Bvudzijena what evidence he had to substantiate these claims.

They also reported on three cases of political violence and the arrest of 78 MDC-T youths in Harare. Notably, in one of the cases involving a Nyamweda Bus which was burnt on Tuesday, The Herald unquestioningly reported that its offices had been "inundated" with calls from passengers on the bus at the time of the incident, dismissing the newspaper's claims that "MDC-T hooligans destroyed the bus." The same story resorted to editorializing concerns about the incidents of political violence when it claimed that the US had "jumped to condemn" the arrests of MDC youths and activists as it raised concerns over "unsubstantiated allegations of violent retribution by the State against opposition supporters" while the international community, including Britain, the European Union and the G8 nations, were ignoring "the trail of destruction left by the opposition hooligans."

While, The Herald carried a statement from the British Embassy dismissing a letter of support allegedly from British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, to Tsvangirai as a "forgery" from yesterday's edition, the paper's report was embellished with editorial intrusions meant to discredit the statement. The papers did not present this as a retraction. The paper also carried a letter from the MDC's lawyers demanding that the paper retract all the stories it has published discrediting the MDC based on a document it had claimed had been signed by the party's Secretary-General, Tendai Biti. The letter describes the stories as defamatory and says "our client Tendai Biti and the MDC (Tsvangirai) totally deny authoring the document . . . "

The Herald has yet to comply with the letter's demands.

The paper's lead story passively reported the message in President Mugabe's address at a Children's Party to commemorate Independence, which promoted his obsessional distaste of Western countries. The paper reported Mugabe as saying "as long as he was still alive, he would not let the British or their Western allies colonise Zimbabwe again".

The paper carried an eight-page supplement on the country's Independence celebrations.

In contrast, the Zimbabwe Independent, which was published a day early yesterday, examined the electoral laws in light of the recounts of the presidential vote and the 23 House of Assembly constituencies. The paper quoted lawyers saying ZEC was not empowered to "unseat a previously declared winner in the legislative elections." It quoted Andrew Makoni, who noted that, "nothing in Section 67A expressly provides for changing the previously declared result of an election if a recount produces a different result from the original", adding that "only the Electoral Court has that mandate, but the new result can be used as evidence in challenging the previously announced result."
The paper also balanced the report and quoted ZEC's Silaigwana saying the commission did have jurisdiction to declare a new winner in the event that the result was reversed after the recount.

In another story, however without giving detail, the paper noted that the law does not allow for a recount of the presidential election votes and that the "filing of a court petition is the only legal remedy"

The Zimbabwe Independent, like other private papers, reported on six cases of political violence suspected to have been committed by war veterans and ZANU PF militia. It noted that 150 people had fallen victim to the violence since the election. In its comment, the paper argued that the violence, part of an "orchestrated campaign to reverse the electoral outcome", was the "most serious example of misrule in the country." In another editorial column by Vincent Kahiya, the columnist criticized the Southern African Development Community's failure to take a stance on Zimbabwe saying "the problem with African leaders is only believing that there is a crisis in the country when they see evidence in the form of blood flowing". The paper carried 19 stories on electoral issues and political violence.

Fig 1 and 2 illustrates the sourcing pattern in the government controlled Press (three papers) and the Zimbabwe Independent.

Fig 1: Voice distribution in the government-controlled press

Fig 2: Voice distribution in the Zimbabwe Independent

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