Back to Index

This article participates on the following special index pages:

Daily Media Update No.31
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
April 19, 2008

Post election focus
The government-controlled papers (The Herald, Chronicle 19/4) continued in their cheerleading role for ZANU PF and President Mugabe in the 17 post-election stories they carried today.

Enjoying a monopoly on the market today, the two dailies gave extensive but passive coverage to yesterday's Independence Day celebrations' rhetoric by President Mugabe and ZANU PF while insisting that there was no political crisis in the country. The papers also carried a court report on the MDC-T's bid to bar the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission from recounting the votes in 23 constituencies, which was contaminated by news of a late night attempt to petrol bomb the offices of the Gutu district administrator where the ballots for three constituencies were being held.

The papers reported that Justice Antonia Guvava had dismissed the MDC-T application with costs and quoted her saying "I have gone through the Electoral Act. I find no merit in the application. Accordingly, the application is dismissed with costs." But there was no effort to explain how she had come to this conclusion, particularly in view of the MDC's argument that the requests for a recount by ZANU PF were not made within 48 hours of the announcement of results. Nor did they link this to the provisions of the Electoral Act. Neither of the papers gave any prominence to the vote recounts to be conducted today. They simply tagged a list of the affected constituencies onto the end of the court story.

However, they provided massively prominent coverage to Mugabe's Independence Day speech, and the rhetorical echoes from those other ZANU PF officials presiding at various Independence Day celebrations at regional centres around the country. For example, the papers passively quoted Mugabe attacking the MDC-T and Britain saying attempts by the British to colonize Zimbabwe through their local puppets would never succeed. He added that, "we, not the British, established democracy based on one-person-one-vote, democracy which rejected gender and racial discrimination and upheld human rights and religious freedoms."

There was no effort to compare this bizarre claim with ZEC's failure to release the presidential election results three weeks after polling and the increasing concern this has given rise to around the world.

Mugabe made promises that government was working on the economic problems facing Zimbabweans, although these were not viewed in the context of the intense economic crisis gripping the country.The Herald reproduced the full text of Mugabe's speech and carried full colour pictures of the celebrations.

Both government papers quoted senior ZANU PF officials such as Industry Minister in the dissolved Cabinet, Obert Mpofu, and the Mashonaland East governor Ray Kaukonde urging Zimbabweans to "remain vigilant" and to "defend our land and resources" against the British.

The usual unverified and sensational conspiracy claims also found space in the two dailies. For example, the Midlands Governor in the old government, Cephas Msipa, was quoted in the Chronicle telling farmers in Gokwe to vote for President Mugabe to ensure that they continued to enjoy the fruits of independence. He alleged that, "our enemies are working hard that even the maize grain does not get to the intended people."

Columnist Nathaniel Manheru, in The Herald endorsed this allegation claiming that Zambia had deliberately delayed the maize consignment bought by Zimbabwe and this had "very deep significance in bringing out the Zambian government's politics towards Zimbabwe." Unwittingly revealing that the importation of maize during the campaign period was a vote-buying gimmick by the ruling party, Manheru said during the election "it was the stomach, not a free future, which decided matters. ZANU PF had entrusted its voting stomach to the Zambians who fixed it by dilating."

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. For instance, The Herald gave prominence to a South African Press Association (Sapa) report that quoted South African President Thabo Mbeki saying "loud diplomacy" was no diplomacy. Mbeki added that ZEC should not be rushed into completing its work and that he had been misquoted on his famous "no crisis" assessment of Zimbabwe. Mbeki was quoted saying his declaration was in response to a question about "the elections . . . not about the socio-economic conditions or anything like that." The paper said Zimbabwe's economic and social problems were "largely a result of illegal economic sanctions imposed by the West - at the instigation of Britain, the European Union and the United States . . . ." Both papers used the comments of the Democratic Republic of Congo Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Mawampanga Mwanananga, to reinforce the authorities' claim that there is no crisis in the country.

Mwanananga said all "progressive forces in Africa" should open their eyes and be alert as "our former colonizers are now trying to teach us on how we should conduct our elections." He gave the example of Belgium which delayed releasing its election results for eight months "but there were no attempts by the West to put the country on the UN Security Council agenda." He was not asked to give the context to those elections.

Fig 1 illustrates the sourcing pattern in the government controlled Press.

Fig 1: Voice distribution in the government-controlled press

Visit the MMPZ fact sheet

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP