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Weekly Media Review 2011-1
The Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe
Monday December 6th - Sunday January 9th 2011
January 14, 2011

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This is a review of Zimbabwe's domestic media output over the holiday period since our last report on December 12th.

As the Christmas holiday beckoned, ZANU PF held its customary conference in mid-December, while a little known South Africa-based regional pressure group, Mthwakazi Liberation Front, was launched as a political party in Bulawayo on December 28. Soon after the dawn of the New Year, the smaller formation of the MDC staged its congress and chose a new leadership that saw Welshman Ncube take over from Arthur Mutambara.

The official media promoted ZANU PF's activities, particularly its annual conference, while discrediting the party's coalition partners by mostly exploiting leaked classified American diplomatic comments on local political and socio-economic figures and issues leaked by Wikileaks, a whistle-blower website.

The private media provided almost exactly an opposite view, largely portraying ZANU PF in a negative light and marketing its rivals, especially the main MDC formation, revealing the extent of the polarization in Zimbabwe's media.

Also prevalent in the media during the holiday period were statements of political intolerance uttered by politicians from across the political divide, which exposed high levels of tension among the parties to the coalition government that undermined the spirit and letter of the Global Political Agreement (GPA). This coincided with persistent reports of political intimidation and violence against a wide cross-section of Zimbabwean society, particularly ZANU PF's perceived opponents. See Fig 1.

Speculation over Zimbabwe's next elections, fuelled by President Mugabe's call for an early poll, and the ongoing debate over Zimbabwe's ability to conduct them, remained under spotlight too. Although the official media eventually hinted that the proposed elections were likely to be postponed to pave the way for the adoption of far reaching electoral reforms (The Sunday Mail, 2/1/11), they suffocated the fact that this sudden "change of mind" was a result of South African President Jacob Zuma's intervention.

Fig 1: Popular issues in the media

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