Back to Index

Weekly Media Review 2011-23
The Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe
Monday June 6th - Sunday June 12th 2011
June 17, 2011

Download this document
- Acrobat PDF version (572KB)
If you do not have the free Acrobat reader on your computer, download it from the Adobe website by clicking here

State media peddle fibs about SADC summit

Claims by the government media that SADC leaders had "rejected" the decisions of the regional grouping's Troika on Politics, Defence and Security in Livingstone, Zambia, during their meeting in South Africa last weekend, sparked heated debate in the media.

The Troika condemned Zimbabwe's coalition parties for failing to stem political violence and being slow to implement the terms of the Global Political Agreement (GPA). These media based their claims on President Mugabe and Foreign Affairs Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi's perspective (The Herald, 13/6 and ZTV & Radio Zimbabwe, 13/6, 7am & 8pm).

Mumbengegwi said: "The summit went on very well, very, very well. Summit only noted the outcome of Livingstone, they did not endorse; Summit noted. And . . . in diplomatic parlance, you know what 'noting' means? It was noted, it was not endorsed".

It was on this basis that the government media misleadingly reported the SADC summit as having "rejected" the outcome of the "controversial" Livingstone meeting "that was fraught with procedural irregularities". Nowhere in their reports was Mugabe or Mumbengegwi directly quoted saying SADC had rejected the Livingstone report.

In addition to falsely informing their audiences, these media censored or suffocated the resolutions of the SADC summit itself, particularly its demands for the implementation of the GPA; the adoption of the SADC electoral roadmap reforms; and its decision to send a team to assist Zimbabwe's Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee (JOMIC) in discharging its duties in their news reports.

Instead, they gave prominence to ZANU PF's perception that the removal of Western sanctions was the major highlight of the summit, while it ignored calls for security sector reforms and concerns over political violence, as those issues were "nonsense" (The Herald, 13/6).

The private media presented a more accurate picture of what transpired.

They quoted political commentators, the two MDC formations, SADC officials and members of South African President Jacob Zuma's facilitation team dismissing claims attributed to ZANU PF that the SADC summit had rejected the Livingstone report, claiming that the summit had actually endorsed it (Radio VoP, the Daily News and NewsDay, 13 & 14/6).

Lindiwe Zulu, a member of the South African facilitation team said: "Whether you use 'noted' or 'endorsed', it means the same. As far as the summit is concerned, the Troika report presented in Zambia by President Zuma has now been fully endorsed by SADC" (NewsDay, 14/6).

Download full document

Visit the MMPZ fact sheet

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP