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Daily Media Update No.34
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
April 22, 2008

Post election focus
Reports in today's Herald and Chronicle, reinforced the impression that the dailies were being used by their former government managers to step up their propaganda war against MDC, white farmers, western countries and the international media. Most prominent among these was The Herald's lead (page 2 in the Chronicle), a response by the authorities to MDC and civil society accusations that ZANU PF supporters and state security agents were responsible for a widespread campaign of violent retribution against communities believed to have supported the opposition in the March elections.

In a typical propaganda ploy reminiscent of that used by the Rwandan authorities in 1994, Patrick Chinamasa, identified as the country's Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister, acknowledged the violence by suggesting that the MDC was responsible for it in order to attract international attention. MDC officials, he said, were "gallivanting all over the world lying through their teeth that there was genocide in Zimbabwe and that the country was in a state of war."

He challenged anyone who had proof that state agents were responsible for the violence to present their evidence to the police, despite numerous reports in the privately owned media quoting victims identifying ZANU PF militia and state security agents committing the violence.

Chinamasa dismissed some of the pictures published in the private media of those injured as dating back to injuries caused in the year 2000, and was reported warning the MDC-T to "desist from agitating for war because ZANU PF does not want war but would use its resilience to weather any such outcome."

The paper made no effort to interpret this alarming threat. And it passively reported Chinamasa making another absurd claim; that while the MDC "were on the forefront of accusing ZANU PF of rigging the elections . . . it was clear they were the ones who had rigged the elections." He made no attempt to provide any proof for this evidently false allegation.

On page 2 the paper carried news of two more election officers being arrested in Bindura for "electoral fraud", although the alleged offences could not be attributed to any attempt at rigging an election.

They carried one-sided reports that were government reactions to the international community concerns on the political crisis in the country and MDC's allegations of widespread state-sponsored violence. The official papers, in their 16 stories also continued to publish falsehoods and conspiracy stories against the MDC without providing evidence.

The Herald also carried news of the court appearance of 25 suspected MDC-T activists arrested on various charges, mainly arising out of the MDC's call last week for a national strike. These included the burning a bus, blockading roads, stoning vehicles and circulating "inciting" messages.

Also prominent in the government dailies' 16 stories on election-related matters and Zimbabwe's subsequent political crisis was a report that SADC had rejected calls by the MDC-T to replace South African President Thabo Mbeki as its mediator on the Zimbabwe issue. The papers also reported SADC's resistance to calls by the European Union to have Zimbabwe placed on the agenda of its scheduled summit in Mauritius over the weekend. But the two dailies failed to question the continued relevance of Mbeki's negotiating skills in view of his policy of "quiet diplomacy" that led him to the conclusion that "there is no crisis" in Zimbabwe. Instead, the Chronicle celebrated these developments in a story headlined "Zimbabwe scores another victory", which editorialized its report by claiming that "Western powers . . . have intensified their political onslaught on Harare over the country's land reform programme. They have tried to paint a false picture of a nation that is engulfed in a 'crisis' following the elections."

In another story, The Herald reported Ignatius Chombo, ZANU PF Secretary for Lands, Land Reform and Resettlement, warning that the government intended to acquire more land for resettlement following "a massive threat from white former farmers ..." He made the entirely unsubstantiated claim that "more than 750 white former settler farmers" had returned to Zimbabwe "in anticipation of an MDC-T electoral victory which had promised a reversal of the Third Chimurenga . . . " Clearly identifying these individuals as second class human beings and the racism inherent in ZANU PF policies, he said: "We want it categorically . . . stated that white former farmers will never be tolerated on farms legally acquired. Allowing such to happen would be a negation of the liberation struggle and tantamount to surrendering our sovereignty."

The papers carried passive updates on the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission's recounting of votes in 23 constituencies, although the Chronicle provided some detail of the problems plaguing the process. The two dailies continued to discredit Western countries and the international media through the use of propaganda in their editorials. For example, the Chronicle claimed that international news agencies and publishing houses were being used as "regime change" tools, and cited the British Broadcasting Corporation, which it accused of having a mission to "tarnish the image of, and overthrow, the legitimate government of Robert Mugabe." The paper accused the BBC of broadcasting stories without verifying its facts.

Fig 1 illustrates the sourcing pattern of the government-controlled papers.

Fig.1.Voice distribution in The Herald and Chronicle

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