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Daily Media Update No.36
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
April 24, 2008

Post-election focus
While the two government dailies have only now woken up to the controversy surrounding the Chinese arms shipment destined for Zimbabwe, they continued to absent-mindedly drip-feed the public with official news of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission's vote recount in 23 constituencies.

The Financial Gazette also led its paper with its own angle on the Chinese weapons shipment, choosing to give this more prominence than news of the churches breaking their silence over the ongoing campaign of "organized violence" against Zimbabwe's rural and urban civilian populations.

The Zimbabwean's front page was dominated by pictures of terrible injuries of some of the victims of that violence and carried several reports inside about its preparation and execution, widely attributed to military groups and ZANU PF youth militia. Its front-page story reported details of "widespread tampering" with election material discovered during ZEC's recount.

As usual, The Herald and Chronicle simply relied on ZEC's deputy chief elections officer, Utloile Silaigwana, to tell the nation that the MDC-T had retained its Zaka West House of Assembly seat and its Senate seat for the senatorial constituency of Zaka. Incredibly, the papers said "he was still to receive the figures from the recounting" exercise in that constituency. It beggars belief that the papers failed to ask him how he could announce the results without the figures. The rest of the story was Silaigwana's passive progress report on the recount in other constituencies, vaguely referring to a completion date when he was quoted saying: "We hope we will be through by the weekend". No attempt was made to explain the agonizing slowness of the exercise beyond another vague reference to the "meticulous verification process".

The smokescreen raised by ZEC's extended recounting exercise has allowed the official media (including ZBC) to completely suffocate the controversy of the presidential election results, thus diminishing its importance in the public mind and subordinating it to the recounting exercise itself. None of the media (private or government controlled) have reminded the public that the presidential results in the 23 constituencies are also being recounted - and none of them have asked how these will be reconciled against the original figures that ZEC refuses to release.
Meanwhile, the two dailies continue to report the witch-hunt by the authorities for errant ZEC election officials and others, who are being charged with "electoral fraud" for what, in the main, constitutes minor administrative offences emerging from the original election. Today a policeman and a presiding officer were reported to have been arrested for "conniving" to allow nine unregistered people to vote, while a former MDC councillor and another person were also arrested for allegedly voting twice in Gutu.

The story reported the police investigating a number of other petty electoral misdemeanours. It was one of eight the papers carried on election issues.

Readers who confine their reception of news to that which is published by The Herald and Chronicle would have been surprised to read that "China has poured cold water on opposition and Western claims that an arms shipment to Zimbabwe was to be used in a clampdown on MDC-T supporters by pointing out that Harare placed the order last year." For a start it would have been the first time they would have read about the arms shipment itself and "the opposition and Western claims" about what the arms - mainly ammunition - was intended for. But reporting a controversial topic unfavourable to the government only when it can be told in the context of some defence, is a classic form of the government media's "defensive reporting" technique - even when ministers have been talking to other media about the issue that is being suppressed by the government media.

Thus it was surprising to read that "Justice Minister" Patrick Chinamasa had declared on Monday that Zimbabwe "had a right to arm itself to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity" - a comment that never saw the light of day in the government papers at the time...

In justifying the purchase of the military equipment, the papers, quoting unnamed observers, said it was "only natural that the country would increase such trade with . . . China" since the European Union and the United States had slapped an arms embargo on Zimbabwe in 2002. Interestingly, the story tried to minimize China's complicity in the global arms trade by reporting that Beijing was responsible for just two percent, while the United States was responsible for 30 percent.

The Herald seized on the comments of an unnamed lawyer to run a news story reinforcing government's perception that the Law Society of Zimbabwe had turned itself into a political party.The paper reported "some lawyers" accusing the LSZ of "'using them to justify a financial injection from Britain' in its anti-government agenda". The evidence to support this claim was a letter allegedly written by the LSZ's executive secretary inviting members to "attend and show support and solidarity" in a court case where lawyer Innocent Chagonda - "who often represents the MDC-T in court" - was facing charges of insulting a police officer.

The paper also responded rapidly to the international media's interest in an earlier Herald editorial suggesting the possibility of a government of national unity. Ironically, the editorial dismissed the idea as coming from "primarily opposition-aligned elements" and that "the Western media have been titillated, maybe even physically aroused, by the idea of . . . the MDC-T waltzing into Munhumutapa Building on the back of negotiations rather than votes." It ignored the fact that the Western media's interest was aroused by the fact that the suggestion had appeared in the government's own newspaper.

In contrast, The Financial Gazette and The Zimbabwean, carried disturbing updates on an upsurge in political violence against MDC officials and communities believed to have voted for the MDC in the March elections. The papers reported 21 fresh incidents of political violence, mostly committed by ZANU PF activists and uniformed groups, according to the papers' reports.

The Financial Gazette reported a joint statement by the Zimbabwe Council of Churches, the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops' Conference and others appealing to SADC, the African Union and the United Nations to intervene saying, "We warn the world that if nothing is done to help the people of Zimbabwe from their predicament, we shall soon be witnessing a genocide . . . " However, the paper strangely buried a report of the police assaulting a group of Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation workers in Chitungwiza on their way home at night in its Weekend entertainment section. And it didn't even tell us how many were in the group, or whether it was reported to the police.

The paper also carried several stories about Zimbabwe's growing political crisis and how it has affected the region, including the isolation of South African President, Thabo Mbeki, an increase in the number of Zimbabweans fleeing illegally into South Africa, and the political fall-out from the Chinese arms shipment destined for Zimbabwe. Its speculative story on the possibility of the government facing a "titanic" bill should it attempt to re-import the arms, unjustifiably received front-page lead status. But its analysis of how "a rusty Chinese ship . . . bearing 77 tons of arms destined for Zimbabwe" had suddenly turned SADC nations against the Zimbabwean authorities, was an altogether more informative piece of journalism.

The Zimbabwean, quoting a South African news agency report, broke the news that a second cargo that "more sophisticated Chinese weaponry" was due to be flown to Harare in the next week. It also reported the assault in Chitungwiza "by individuals wearing national army uniforms" of Matthew Takaona, president of the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists, and his cousin, in its story reporting the arrest and detention of other journalists.

Both private weeklies were littered with reports of political violence, even in Harare's high-density suburbs where a curfew has effectively been imposed.

Figs. 1 and 2 show the voice sourcing patterns in the respective print media

Fig 1: Voice distribution in The Herald and Chronicle

Fig 2: Voice distribution in the private press

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