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Weekly Media Update 2010-27
The Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe
Monday July 12th - Sunday July 18th 2010
July 23, 2010

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ZBC displays slavish loyalty to ZANU PF

THE return of ZANU PF propaganda songs on all stations of the national public broadcaster, ZBC, graphically illustrates the extent to which the country's sole broadcasting station remains ZANU PF's propaganda tool despite it losing the 2008 elections.

This torrent of offensively partisan publicity that falsely promotes ZANU PF as still the only ruling party under President Mugabe's leadership, trashes the spirit of the Global Political Agreement, which recognizes all three parties to the coalition to be equal partners in the Government of National Unity. It also makes nonsense of ZBC's public service mandate to provide its audiences with fair, balanced and accurate information and confirms the broadcaster's slavish loyalty to one political party instead of to the people of Zimbabwe.

The ZANU PF propaganda songs are the product of the Mbare Chimurenga Choir whose eight-track album was officially launched during ZANU PF's Central Committee meeting on July 9th after being presented to Mugabe at ZANU PF's headquarters two days previously.

Both these events received unprecedented publicity on ZTV's main evening news bulletins before ZBC started peppering its programming with three of the songs from the album without any explanation the following Monday (July 13th).

MMPZ's monitoring and independent estimates suggest that ZBC flooded its airwaves with at least one of the tracks from the album, Nyatsoterera, every 30 minutes during prime-time across all ZBC stations. This included both television stations that broadcast videos accompanying the songs glorifying Mugabe and ZANU PF, which themselves invoked nightmarish memories of ZANU PF's violent 2002 election campaign publicity managed by former Information Minister Jonathan Moyo.

It can be no coincidence that Nyatsoterera was produced by the Mahendere Brothers, architects of Moyo's notorious 2002 Pax Africa publicity campaign that did so much to damage Zimbabwean society by its promotion of political intolerance, division and hatred.

The Chimurenga choir even graced the official opening of the Third Session of Zimbabwe's 7th Parliament by Mugabe where they sang their ZANU PF songs before the multi-party audience. ZBC presenters also used the songs as signature tunes in their previews of the Mid-Term Fiscal Policy Review just before its presentation by Finance Minister Tendai Biti on July 15.

Despite private media reports (NewsDay and The Financial Gazette, 22/7) claiming that Cabinet had agreed at its meeting on Tuesday July 21, to have the songs stopped, ZBC has continued to air the offensive political propaganda, confirming the contempt ZANU PF holds for the GPA and the intentions of the unity government to reform the media environment.

ZBC has again proved it is a slave to partisan political interests and MMPZ believes there can be no free and fair election without first removing all senior management at the public broadcaster and replacing them with a nonpartisan, professional broadcasting management free of political influence.

Even now, the constitutional reform outreach consultation exercise will have already been contaminated by this shameless act of political favouritism.

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