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Daily Media Update 46
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
June 20, 2008

Election focus
There was no improvement today in the government papers' coverage of next week's presidential election run-off between President Mugabe and the winner of the initial poll, Morgan Tsvangirai. They gave ZANU PF's election preparations widespread favourable publicity while censoring MDC campaigns, presented a lopsided picture of political violence gripping the country, and carried little useful information on electoral authorities' readiness to conduct the vote. This was evident in the 21 reports these papers carried on the topic: political violence (5), party campaigns (9) and poll management (7). Only the private papers provided critical updates on these issues in 23 stories. Of these, 17 were on political violence, party campaigns (4) and electoral administration (2).

Political violence
The government papers dishonestly reported on the incidence of political violence by narrowly attributing it to the MDC, despite private and international media reports that ZANU PF was responsible for most of it. The Herald and Chronicle (20/6) reported police claiming that the violence had actually declined but failed to independently investigate the truth of this. They approvingly recorded police spokesman Oliver Mandipaka claiming that incidents of violence had "gone down countrywide although there are a few cases still reported", without challenging him to provide figures to substantiate his claims. The two dailies also attempted to discredit the MDC's claims that government was behind an organized and systematic campaign of violence against its members. They merely reported Mandipaka as having "dismissed claims by the MDC that four of its supporters have been murdered in and around Harare". The MDC was not given the opportunity to comment.

In contrast, the private papers gave more detailed accounts on the violence and assessed its impact on the electoral environment. They recorded nine incidents, including seven murders, committed mainly by ZANU PF militia, war veterans and state security agents against MDC members. To support their claims, the private media reported eyewitness accounts, as well as the stories from some of the victims.

The Zimbabwe Independent, for example, reported the MDC saying seven of its activists had been killed this week while many others had been seriously injured. The opposition said several houses belonging to its members had also been petrol-bombed as the violence, which was initially largely confined to rural areas, spread to urban centres.
The seven activists allegedly killed included four of the party's youths from Chitungwiza, a primary school teacher from Zaka, a headmaster from Mutoko, and the wife of MDC councillor-elect in Hatcliffe, Emmanuel Chiroto, who had just been elected by fellow councillors as the capital's new mayor.

Earlier, The Financial Gazette quoted the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights saying they had attended to more than 1 000 victims of violence in May alone. ZADHR noted "the rising numbers and severity . . . of systematic violent assaults and torture" was of a scale that "threatened to overwhelm (their) ability to cope (and) manage the burden of serious physical trauma".

In addition, the private media recorded the international community expressing their outrage over the violence, which they argued undermined the credibility of the run-off. These included South African president, Thabo Mbeki, whom the Gazette claimed was "alarmed that the run-off campaign has been marked by a wave of murders, abductions, assaults, torture and arson countrywide."

Party campaigns
The government dailies remained impervious to Zimbabwe's electoral laws and SADC guidelines governing democratic elections by covering only the electoral activities of ZANU PF. None of the nine reports the papers devoted to the parties' campaign activities were on the MDC.

In their coverage of ZANU PF's campaign, the official papers passively recorded senior party officials uttering highly inflammatory and inciting language against the MDC and its leader Tsvangirai, who they persistently portrayed as agents of Western imperialism, without providing a shred of evidence to support their claims.

The Herald and Chronicle gave front-page status, including a full colour picture, to Mugabe's campaign rallies in Matabeleland North where he told his supporters that he "will only retire from office when he is satisfied that the land is truly and safely in the hands of the black majority". Instead of analyzing this statement as undermining the democratic process, the papers went on to report him threatening the electorate with war if they voted for the MDC because Zimbabwe was not born as a result of an election but through the barrel of a gun. Said Mugabe: "Zvino ballpoint pen icharwisana neAK? Is there going to be a struggle between the two? Ipapo munoona kuchirwiwa zvakakomba. Asi kana ma'x' achitevera nzira yakatarwa nepfuti? Is that alright? (Can a ballpoint pen fight an AK? Is there going to be a struggle between the two? If that happens there will be serious fighting. Is it alright if an X undermines what was achieved by the gun?)

Meanwhile, the private papers criticized the uneven electoral environment, citing ZANU PF's use of intimidation, vote-buying and hate language against its opponents to coerce the electorate to vote for Mugabe. The Gazette also quoted senior ZANU PF politicians and military officers threatening the electorate in Masvingo with war if Mugabe loses the run-off.

Addressing mourners at a funeral wake of the late national hero, Retired Lieutenant General Amoth Chimombe, in Zaka East last Friday, Major General Engelbert Rugeje said ZANU PF came to power after a protracted war and therefore it would not let go of the country unless defeated by the MDC in a war. Rugeje promised the villagers a helicopter-full of bullets when he returns to the nearby Jerera growth point: "Today, I came here by helicopter with the late Chimombe's body. The next time I will come to Jerera, the helicopter will be full of bullets. You know what you did".

The Independent meanwhile, reported that the MDC had filed an urgent High Court application challenging the ban by the police on its rallies and the refusal by the public media to accept its campaign material. It quoted the party's spokesman, Nelson Chamisa, describing the run-off campaign as a "nightmare" arguing that the public media's censorship of MDC's campaign activities violated SADC guidelines on democratic elections, which provides for equitable coverage of all contesting parties in an election. Analyst Lovemore Madhuku concurred, telling the Independent that the playing field "is not even, the MDC has no access to rural voters, there is massive intimidation and propaganda is being splashed in all the public media".

Administrative issues
Once again, the government papers failed to test the sufficiency of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission's measures to ensure a credible election next Friday. For example, they failed to ask the commission to explain the conduct of postal balloting, particularly in view of the fact that private and international media reports accused the process of being riddled with irregularities. Instead, the government papers relied on official statements presenting preparations for the election as progressing smoothly as exemplified by the conclusion of the training of constituency election officers and their deployment throughout the country. They also reported ZEC as having accredited 370 local and foreign observers so far, and 154 journalists. There was no attempt to ask why the commission had accredited just 10 local observers only a week before the election.

Despite devoting only two stories to this topic, the private papers interrogated Zimbabwe's electoral process.
One of the stories appeared in the Independent exposing the flaws in the country's postal voting system, reporting members of state security agencies as having been "forced" to cast their ballots this week in favour of Mugabe.
It quoted unnamed sources saying that the officers "voted in front of their superiors" in the absence of election agents or observers. The source cited Harare Central police station, where senior members of the police turned away SADC observers who went there to witness the process. The Gazette carried a similar story. In addition it reported that Tsvangirai had complained about ZEC's militarization, among other things, to Mbeki and to UN envoy Haile Menkerios, who was in the country to assess the political situation ahead of the run-off.

Figs 1 and 2 show the sourcing patterns in the government papers and the private Press.

Fig 1: Voice distribution in government papers

Fig 2: Voice distribution in private Press

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