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Election Watch Issue 5 - 2012
The Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe
April 27, 2012

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Mangwana hits back at Moyo

As this report was being compiled, the privately owned Daily News (25/4) carried a robust response from Constitutional Parliamentary Select Committee co-chairman Paul Mangwana to senior ZANU PF officials led by Politburo member Jonathan Moyo, who has been spearheading a propaganda campaign in the state media to discredit Copac's work.

This propaganda crusade appeared to intensify after The Herald leaked a provisional draft constitution last February containing a clause that appeared to disqualify President Mugabe from contesting the post of president. The Daily News (25/4) reported Mangwana describing Moyo and his colleagues as "workers of the devil", bent on derailing Copac's work for selfish reasons.

This followed what appeared to be Moyo's strongest expression of contempt for Copac to date, which appeared in one of his regular articles in the state controlled weekly, The Sunday Mail of April 8th.

In this article, headlined: Copac mafia uses devolution for regime change, the Tsholotsho MP accused Copac leaders of "abusing" the constitutional reform exercise to "block or delay elections"; having "polluted" it "to the level of utter corruption"; being "treacherous"; and attempting to "smuggle their dirty" draft constitution for adoption.

In response, Mangwana said: "We are not going to be commenting on him (Moyo) because it is the work of the devil. They are messengers of evil as they wanted to distract our work as Copac" (Daily News, 25/4).

The ZANU PF Copac co-chair, described Moyo as "crazy" and driven by a "sinister agenda" in his efforts to destabilize Copac. He added: "We are glad that we have finished it (the draft). We did not respond to Jonathan Moyo because he did not deserve the dignity of our response on what he was talking about on the draft. It did not make sense at all".

Reports on the conflict between Moyo and Copac constituted 41 of the 155 reports the media carried on the administration of the constitutional reform process and elections. Thirty-eight were on other developments in the constitution-making process, such as the latest order by the coalition principals for Copac and its management committee to conclude drafting the new constitution and deliver the document to them the following week (ZTV, 24/4, 8pm and The Herald, 25/4).

The remaining 76 (49%) were on other electoral issues, such as concern over the state of Zimbabwe's voters' roll and warnings by the region and international community that the country was not yet ready for democratic polls (News Day, Daily News and Zimbabwe Independent, SW Radio Africa and Radio VoP, 9, 10, 11, 13 & 15/4).

Of the 155 stories, 85 (55%) appeared in the government media, while the remaining 70 featured in the private media.

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