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Daily Media Update 57
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
July 01, 2008

Summary
Enjoying a monopoly on the local news market again today, the government dailies, The Herald and Chronicle took the opportunity to distort the critical verdicts of all three African observer missions and downplay almost universal condemnation of Friday's presidential run-off, particularly by regional leaders attending the African Union summit in Egypt. Instead, the papers continued to pervert any truthful interpretation by focusing on the few selective statements endorsing Robert Mugabe's return to the presidency.

They also continued to parrot the government's regime-change mantra, publishing conspiracy analyses in defence of the controversial poll from which the MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, withdrew citing a sustained, nationwide campaign of state-sponsored violence against his party's supporters, and a corrupted electoral process. Since the election result, the papers have also adopted Mugabe's suddenly conciliatory approach to the idea of inter-party dialogue without comparing this position with his belligerent pre-election statements. Between them, the papers carried 16 stories on Zimbabwe's post-election crisis, although that is not how they interpreted developments. Of these, 14 were reports on issues arising from the election, while two were official statements claiming that the post-election period was peaceful.

Post-election focus
Both government papers avoided reporting objectively the events at the AU summit, which ends today, and even failed to discuss what the summit was about. Instead, they dismissed the fact that pressure was mounting on Mugabe over the fraudulent poll by portraying him as enjoying popular support from regional leaders. The Herald's report on the AU summit headlined, "AU shuns debate on Zimbabwe", narrowly focused on the point that Zimbabwe was not on the official agenda of the summit "as had been wished by its detractors," and was evasive about the critical statements made about the presidential vote by various leaders, such as Kenya's Prime Minister, Raila Odinga. Instead, the papers reported that although speakers at the summit did mention Zimbabwe, "their comments were not hostile but encouraged dialogue between the major political parties in the country".

To support this they prominently exploited diplomatic statements such as that by AU chairman Tanzanian President, Jakaya Kikwete, and AU Commission chairman, Jean Ping, urging the parties' to work together "because it (Zimbabwe) was facing serious challenges". There was no attempt to explain what these "serious challenges" were.

The Herald also bragged that China had refused to join the anti-Zimbabwe crusade and impose sanctions on Zimbabwe and had instead given the "thumbs-up to President Mugabe's call for talks between his party and the opposition". The paper made no effort to give an honest explanation for China's observation that a crisis existed in Zimbabwe that required "stabilization" and dialogue.

In defence of the paranoid fear of recolonization, The Herald carried an editorial stating that "the ghost of Sharma El Sheik was likely to haunt generations of Africans to come if the continent's leaders do not stand up to a new wave of neo-colonialism disguised as some mild form of liberal interventionism by the self-appointed policemen of the world". But the author failed to state that the African continent aspires to democratic values and that the observer missions that condemned the recent election were not the "self-appointed policemen of the world" but Africans bearing the standards of the African Union - which the AU observer mission precisely found wanting in Zimbabwe. It was that statement that was perversely distorted by the government dailies giving the wrong impression of its findings, which were: " . . . in the context of the AU Declaration on the Principles Governing Democratic Elections in Africa, it is the considered view of the African Union Observer Mission that the Election process fell short of accepted AU standards."

This conclusion was censored by the government papers. Instead, The Herald selectively quoted the AU mission statement as saying the poll itself was "peaceful" and held "in accordance with the electoral laws of Zimbabwe".
In the same vein, The Herald suffocated the conclusion of the SADC Election Observer mission, whose report declared, "the elections did not represent the will of the people of Zimbabwe".

Although the SADC team's condemnation was censored, the alleged division within the group over its findings was considered by an unnamed analyst to be "proof that the regional grouping had been infiltrated by Britain and America" to push their regime-change agenda, a sentiment reflected by the author of the editorial, which took time to insult Odinga and others who found Zimbabwe's election "illegitimate". But he remained silent on ANC president Jacob Zuma's comment that the situation in Zimbabwe was "out of control", another comment missing from the papers' news pages.

According to The Herald, SADC's Angolan team leader, Jose Barrica, refused to endorse the document. The Herald quoted an unnamed Namibian observer saying: "The real problem was with the conclusion in relation to the campaigning period. Both sides agree that there was violence but they differ on the extent to which it impacted on the polling on voting day".

The group also raised concerns over allegations that people had been forced to vote, but these concerns were also dismissed.

An offensive, dishonest and insulting news analysis, in The Herald accusing the BBC of carrying false reports of the crisis in Zimbabwe, suggested that widely publicized pictures of the victims of violence in the run-off campaign were "road accident victims" included to support fictitious claims of state-sponsored violence. The author, Dambudzo Mapuranga, also dismissed the abduction of MDC activist Tonderai Ndira as an "incredible . . . the dog-ate-my-homework" fairy tale. He accused Ndira of petrol bombing a Marimba police station, an offence for which he was never convicted, and accused him of living "the life of a thug". This appalling nonsense included the only reference to his brutal murder as being "those who live by the gun die by the gun" - presumably a reference to justice in Zimbabwe today.

In making this primitive and crude argument, Mapuranga exposes himself to the very crime he accuses the Western media of committing: that they are "nothing more than public relations offices of their countries' foreign affairs ministries."

Both dailies also quoted the president of the Chiefs' Council, Chief Fortune Charumbira, congratulating Mugabe for "winning" the elections and "commended" him for agreeing to inter-party talks which showed that he was a "true Zimbabwean who wants to see peace and unity prevailing".

Political violence
The two government papers continued to deny the existence of post-election violence against the electorate that has been widely reported in the private electronic media. Instead, the papers carried two reports, which were passive statements by the police reinforcing the notion that the country was enjoying "peace and tranquility".

Fig 1: Voice distribution in The Herald and Chronicle

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