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Daily Media Update No.33
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
April 21, 2008

Post election focus
The Herald and Chronicle (21/4) continued to passively report the country's political crisis, resulting in the vote recount in 23 constituencies, as normal electoral procedure in their eight stories on the subject. They remained silent on the fate of the presidential election result. The papers also carried editorials that continued to claim evidently false and unverified conspiracies against ZANU PF by Britain and the MDC-T while censoring incidents of politically motivated violence.

Today, the government-controlled dailies carried an official perspective of the recounting process, noting that, "recounting of votes in 23 constituencies might take longer than the three days initially projected" because the respective party agents "are raising issues which they would want attended to and clarified." They made no effort to question the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission about how they had managed to process the initial counting of 207 constituencies in three days and that the recount in 23 constituencies would take longer. The two dailies blamed the MDC-T for the delays in the recounting process saying these were "a result of the refusal to participate by the MDC when the recounting process started alleging that the ballot boxes had been tampered with".

The Herald and Chronicle exposed the MDC-T's apparent confusion over its participation in the recount, as they quoted MDC-T spokesperson Nelson Chamisa saying, "the national executive committee of the party made a resolution that we will not participate in the recount or run-off." However, they quoted ZEC officials confirming the party's participation in the recount in all the centres where counting is being conducted.

The Herald carried unverified claims of conspiracies against ZANU PF in two editorials. For example, in one, the paper inserted unsubstantiated allegations that the MDC-T's Giles Mutsekwa was linked to the Rhodesian security forces, alleging that they are "inseparable" as they "share insidious fond memories of the massacres they committed at Nyadzonia in Mozambique and Mulungushi in Zambia". The paper also claimed that the MDC-T was a manifestation of the "Rhodesia forces disguised as a political grouping".

Incidents of politically motivated violence that emerged in the private online news agencies were censored. Again, the government-controlled dailies did not report on the Chinese ship loaded with arms destined for Zimbabwe that is now reportedly on its way to Angola.

Fig.1.Voice distribution in The Herald and Chronicle

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