The Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe
Monday August 9th – Sunday August 15th 2004

Weekly Media Update 2004-32

CONTENTS

1. GENERAL COMMENT
2. INTERNATIONAL CRITICISM SUFFOCATED

3. EDUCATION – DECLINING BY DEGREES

1. General comment

THE urgent need for additional alternative daily sources of information, including an independent national broadcaster, was further confirmed by the government-controlled media’s censorship of reports disproving claims that the country had produced sufficient food.

These only appeared in the private media.

The Zimbabwe Independent (13/8) for example, reported that the World Food Programme (WFP) had asked the Zambian government to mobilise maize for Zimbabwe in light of growing fears of looming food shortages in the country. This, according to the paper, coincided with the South African Grain Information Services revelations that about 40,000 tonnes of maize had been brought into Zimbabwe through South Africa between April and July this year. Studio 7 (12/8) carried a similar report.

More evidence of food shortages appeared in The Standard (15/8) which reported that three governors from Matabeleland North, Matabeleland South and Masvingo had written to government seeking food aid as their provinces had run out of food. Masvingo governor Josiah Hungwe was quoted confirming the report.

The government media ignored these reports.

Instead, these media sought to present a rosy picture of the country’s food situation, particularly ZTV (9/8, 8pm), which quoted the chairman of the government’s Taskforce on Food Procurement and Distribution and State Security, Minister Nicholas Goche, claiming that, “Maize deliveries to the GMB are high, indicating that levels of production are high.” However, Goche let the cat out of the bag when he stated that only 125,000 tonnes of maize had been purchased so far from the farmers, two months before the onset of the new farming season.

Even more revealing were his projections that between 600,000 and 700,000 tonnes of maize would be delivered to the government-run Grain Marketing Board (GMB).

This was in stark contrast to Agriculture Minister Joseph Made’s assertions earlier this year that the GMB would receive about 1,2 million tonnes of maize this season, almost half of what he claimed the country had produced.

ZTV did not subject these conflicting projections to analysis. Rather, it diverted attention from Goche’s startling revelations by showing footage of maize stacks at one GMB depot in a bid to buttress official claims that the country had produced enough food.

Although the private media did expose these discrepancies, their effectiveness was compromised by the fact that they are niche market sources of information that are not readily accessible to most of the people subjected to official propaganda in the dominant government-controlled media.

It is against this background that civic organisations should intensify their lobbying for the repeal of repressive media laws, which have severely curtailed citizens’ rights to access information through media of their choice.

2. International criticism suffocated

THE government media’s reluctance to cover criticism of the authorities’ human rights violations manifested itself in the manner in which they tried to stifle reports on renewed international pressure on President Mugabe’s government to restore civic and political liberties ahead of the March 2005 elections.

These media avoided a full discussion on the concerns of the international community. Instead, they accused Western “imperialists” led by Britain of conspiring with civic organisations and the MDC to oust the ruling party from power. As a result, the substance of the critical views on the country’s poor governance remained elusive.

In fact, the official media’s claims that Zimbabwe was under siege from the West were reinforced by President Mugabe’s Heroes Day rhetoric. He was quoted on ZBC (9/8, 6 & 8pm), The Herald and Chronicle (10/8) calling on Zimbabweans “to defend and protect” the country’s independence from “imperialists”, adding that “the country was prepared to go back to the trenches to defend the gains of independence if the need arose”.

However, the private media cited regional and international bodies noting that it was actually Zimbabweans who were under threat from their own government, which, among other deprivations, had stripped its citizens of their basic freedoms through authoritarian laws.

The Financial Gazette (12/8) and The Zimbabwe Independent (13/8), pointed out that the international community’s intervention was aimed at forcing government to adopt fundamental democratic reforms.

However, the government media was reluctant to accurately identify the source of Zimbabwe’s problems. This was illustrated by their failure to fully explain the reasons behind Greece’s decision to bar Education Minister Aeneas Chigwedere from attending the 2004 Olympics. The move is in line with the European Union’s (EU) targeted sanctions against the Zimbabwean leadership, which stands accused of gross human rights violations.

Instead of fairly explaining the reasons for Greece’s decision, ZTV (11/08,7am) attributed the ban to the EU’s attempt to “extend its focus from politics to sports.”

The Herald and Chronicle (12&13/8) followed suit.

They also censored the full reasons behind Chigwedere’s ban thereby giving the impression that Greece’s move was malicious. Neither did the papers acknowledge that besides Chigwedere, Brigadier Thura Aye Myint of Myanmar had also been barred from attending as part of the EU’s sanctions against leaders it accuses of human rights abuses (The Daily Mirror 12/8).

Instead, the papers passively quoted Chigwedere vilifying government’s favourite punch bag, Britain, of having influenced Greece to bar him from the Olympics.

The Daily Mirror (12/8) quoted him as saying government would object to the ban, while the Chronicle’s comment (13/8) claimed that “Zimbabweans will never miss the so-called glamorous cities built using stolen resources such as Athens”.

A sober coverage of the matter only appeared in the private media.

They reported the public condemnation of the human suffering in Zimbabwe.

For example, SW Radio Africa (12/8) reported that about 30 Roman Catholic Bishops “from four different countries in Southern Africa” who recently met in South Africa had “condemned the suffering in Zimbabwe and called on various organisations to impose targeted sanctions on the Mugabe regime.”

Studio 7 (12/8), SW Radio Africa (13/8), the Zimbabwe Independent and The Standard cited the Human Rights Watch (HRW) report which criticised government’s “lack of transparency” on the food situation in the country. HRW noted that this threatened “citizens’ access to food”.

SW Radio Africa (11/8) also reported that an international human rights organisation, Redress, had accused government of “a widespread, systematic and planned campaign of organised violence and torture to suppress normal and democratic activities…” Redress revealed that, “almost 9,000 human rights violations (occurred) between 2001 and 2003.”

In an effort to counter these reports, the Chronicle (13/8) accused the MDC, the Southern Africa Catholic Bishops’ Conference and NGOs of issuing “damning statements” about Zimbabwe “in a co-ordinated effort tailored” to “foist the Zimbabwean issue onto the agenda” of the annual SADC summit in Mauritius. The paper dismissed Redress’ torture claims as “a regurgitation of numerous old ‘torture’ reports” but did not explain how these civic calls for a democratic Zimbabwe translated into an “anti-Zimbabwe” campaign.

The Standard (15/8) reported US Secretary of State Collin Powell attributing Zimbabwe’s problems to government’s political intolerance, which had seen the country become “a drain on the region and a calamity-in-the-making for the international community”. Powell reportedly noted that solutions to Zimbabwe’s problems included the restoration of the rule of law, a free Press and Zimbabwe’s former pluralistic political life.

The Financial Gazette also revealed that growing concerns over government’s “gross human rights abuses” was likely to see the intervention of the United Nations (UN) “amid revelations the world policing body is on the verge of tightening its stance against Harare”. The Gazette reported that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was expected in Harare before the end of the year to “gauge the political temperature” in the country and “hear it from the horse’s mouth (the Zimbabwean government)”and other major stakeholders, including the MDC.

The paper also reported that government’s non-reformist culture might be put to the test after an electoral commissioner from Namibia, a key ally of Zimbabwe, made “a surprise call” for the establishment of a tribunal to punish errant SADC states that fail to conform to regional electoral standards during a SADC electoral reforms conference in Victoria Falls recently.

The Zimbabwe Independent meanwhile, reported on the MDC’s efforts to lobby SADC leaders at their regional summit in Mauritius to step up pressure on Mugabe’s government to accept regional electoral standards. And it quoted the party’s deputy secretary-general Gift Chimanikire saying it was “too simplistic and indeed deeply misleading to assume Mugabe has the support of all African leaders.”

In fact, claims of a shift in African opinion on the Zimbabwean situation appeared to have compelled the Sunday News (15/8) to bemoan the death of SADC “brotherhood that we had grown accustomed to”.

The paper accused “some African countries” that were now vocal against government’s human rights record as being “manipulated” by the West against the “interest of fellow Africans”.

A more vitriolic attack however, was reserved for Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, whom The Sunday Mail (15/8) accused of being used by the British to clandestinely fund the MDC’s campaign ahead of the 2005 parliamentary election.

The attacks, carried in two stories written by the paper’s columnist William Nhara and its political editor, Munyaradzi Huni, were conspicuous by their coarse language rather than facts.

The Sunday Mirror, (15/08) reported that a “diplomatic row” had erupted between (the) erstwhile buddies” over the matter. The paper cited unnamed diplomatic sources dismissing earlier Sunday Mail allegations (8/8) that Britain was funding the MDC through Nigeria as based “on faulty intelligence, which the paper and relevant state organs did not bother to check”.

The Sunday Mirror claimed that the Nigerians had been infuriated by the report, which resulted in their foreign minister Olu Adeniji, summoning Zimbabwe’s Charge d’Affairs in Abuja to explain the government paper’s onslaught against their country.

Adeniji was also reportedly sent to the SADC summit in Mauritius to meet with his counterpart, Stan Mudenge, over the matter.

3. Education – declining by degrees

THE authorities’ penchant for exerting a stranglehold on all spheres of Zimbabwean life under the guise of defending the country’s sovereignty was underscored by continued government interference in the administration of private schools and President Mugabe’s pronouncement that his government was considering revamping the country’s education system to produce “patriotic” students.

But the most absurd development was the Zimbabwe Independent’s revelation that Education Minister Aeneas Chigwedere had outlawed “extra lessons during school holidays without the ministry’s approval”. Quoting a circular to parents by a Harare primary school headmaster, the paper reported that anyone defying the ministry’s directive would be arrested.

Said the document: “Authority can be sought in writing by parents through the school head. Any teacher or child doing extra lessons will be reported to the police.”

But while the private media questioned some of these bizarre education policies, the government media were more notable for their passivity. For example, ZTV (11/8, 8pm), Power FM & Radio Zimbabwe (12/8, 6am) and The Herald (12/8) simply quoted Chigwedere defending his ministry’s objections to the “compulsory donations” demanded by some schools to supplement government-fixed school fees and failed to challenge government interference in the day-to-day running of private schools.

Power FM quoted Chigwedere saying: “The economic environment has been improving for the past six months…there is no reason why the schools should be raising school fees.” But the station failed to relate this misleading reasoning to economic realities.

None of the government-controlled media provided a detailed background to the donation problem, which emanated from Chigwedere’s decision to slash fees at these schools to unviable levels.

But The Financial Gazette comment was categorical in blaming Chigwedere for the education sector’s demise.

The paper accused him of destroying private schools on the basis of his “ruinous ‘wisdom’” that they were a “bastion of capitalistic privilege and racial discrimination” despite evidence that the majority of the pupils at the schools were black.

It argued that Chigwedere’s stance had resulted in the schools facing the “spectre of bankruptcy”.

The Zimbabwe Independent agreed in its Editor’s Memo. It noted that Chigwedere had embarked on a systematic policy to ensure that well-run and well-equipped schools were reduced to the same condition as other dilapidated non-performing government institutions.

In addition, the paper quoted Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce (ZNCC) president Luxon Zembe lashing out at Chigwedere, saying he had no right to meddle in private schools’ fees as long as the parents were prepared to pay for the quality facilities offered by these schools, which the government ones did not have.

However, The Sunday Mirror, quoted an adamant Chigwedere arguing that contrary to the parents’ “ignorant” perception that his ministry was “interfering” in the management of private schools, it was merely “enforcing” the Education Act.

Meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s education system was thrown into further disarray following President Mugabe’s Heroes’ Day announcement that his government was considering overhauling the education system to ensure it produced “patriotic students who cherish the gains of independence”, ZBC (9/8, 6 & 8pm), The Herald, Chronicle and The Daily Mirror (10/8).

Mugabe claimed that “in the past they (education institutions) produced graduates who became enemies of the struggle. If our institutions have a capacity to produce enemies of the struggle, then they are ill-equipped or do not deserve to be there.”

While the government media buried this revelation in the main body of Mugabe’s address, The Daily Mirror gave it greater prominence, drawing parallels between this plan and government’s earlier creation of a similar programme under the National Youth Training Scheme, which critics charged was designed to indoctrinate youths with ZANU PF propaganda.

Ends.

The MEDIA UPDATE was produced and circulated by the Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe, 15 Duthie Avenue, Alexandra Park, Harare, Tel/fax: 263 4 703702, E-mail: [email protected]

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