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Weekly Media Review 2011-18
The Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe
Monday May 2nd - Sunday May 8th 2011
May 13, 2011

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ZANU PF rhetoric poisons Press Freedom Day

As Zimbabwe joined the rest of world in commemorating World Press Freedom Day, the event reignited fresh media debate on the authorities' failure to deliver a free and diverse media as promised in the Global Political Agreement (GPA).

Comments by some officials from the ZANU PF arm of government were clearly aimed at scuttling Zimbabwe's media reform agenda by advocating even more control over journalistic activity, which triggered particular criticism in the private media.

Spearheading this resistance was Information Minister Webster Shamu who tried to unilaterally outlaw media reforms proposed in Zimbabwe's election roadmap document at an event celebrating the arrival of transmitters for eight "pilot" community radio stations.

The Herald (30/4) quoted him saying "Let negotiators please read the law so that they do not make suggestions that are lawless, or which require my ministry to behave unlawfully."

Apart from professing ignorance on the definition of "state media" or "public media", claiming he was "still to be educated" on what that meant, the minister was reported downplaying the prominent role these media play in the dissemination of hate messages against ZANU PF's perceived opponents and criticising the "selective" plans to transform them into genuine public media as envisaged under the GPA.

The media reform proposals call for independent boards and management of public media institutions and licensing of independent broadcasters, among others. But Shamu insisted the state media institutions were "regulated by statutes" with "constituted boards" that looked after "their affairs".

The private media interpreted Shamu's stance as a negation of Press freedom and media reforms in the country and "hardly believable coming from a whole minister" (NewsDay 2/5). They quoted media reform activists and commentators identifying this as a lack of "political will" from some "sections in the inclusive government" for media reforms, citing the continued existence of hostile media laws such as the Access to Information and Privacy Act and the illegal monopoly of the national broadcaster, ZBC (Studio 7 3/5; NewsDay 2, 3, 4/5; Daily News 4/5 and The Financial Gazette 5/5).

The Daily News (4/5) also reported Shamu as having defended repressive media laws at a function to commemorate World Press Day hosted by the statutory media regulatory body, the Zimbabwe Media Commission. It quoted the minister: "If the pen is indeed mightier than the sword, then it requires a national management and control system far more elaborate than that which has been developed over several millennia to manage security forces."

The paper (12/5) also drew attention to recent claims by ZANU PF's former acting minister of information, Bright Matonga that government was not yet prepared to issue new broadcasting licences because it had no capacity to monitor them - an echo of unreformist comments made last year by the Permanent Secretary for Information, George Charamba.

It reported Zimbabwe Association of Community Radio Stations (ZACRAS) contesting Matonga's claims saying it was being used as "an excuse not to free the country's airwaves".

The Daily News (12/5) quoted ZACRAS chair Kudzai Kwangwari: "Right now they are commissioning ZBC community radio stations, but they are saying no licences should be issued to private players. This is just self contradictory."

The official media basically ignored civil society's calls for extensive media reforms, limiting themselves to lobbying for the removal of targeted Western travel embargoes imposed on some of their journalists for alleged dissemination of hate speech (ZTV 3/5, 8pm and The Herald 3/5). They also publicised Charamba's threats to ban Western and European journalists from covering events in Zimbabwe in retaliation after ZBC chief correspondent Reuben Barwe was denied a visa by the Italian Embassy in Harare to travel to the Vatican with President Mugabe to witness the beatification of the late Pope John Paul II.

The Herald (3/5), for example, decried the "needless" censorship of the state media journalists "for daring to write and report contrary to the dictates of EU foreign policy".

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