Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe
Monday February 23rd - Sunday February 29th 2004
Weekly Media update 2004- 8

CONTENTS
* General Comment
* ANZ situation has its roots in AIPPA- Media botch link
* Mugabe's monologue- interview, public media leave audience
blank

1. GENERAL COMMENT

Nothing more aptly demonstrates the government-controlled media's
hypocrisy in exposing government's disdain for the Constitution when
formulating self-serving laws than the manner in which they reported
Supreme Court Judge Vernada Ziyambi's ruling on James Makamba's
bail application.
Makamba, facing charges of externalizing foreign currency, was
arrested on February 9th and remanded in custody under the newly
gazetted Presidential Powers (Temporary Measures) (Amendment of
Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act) Regulations of 2004.
In her judgment, Justice Ziyambi ruled that the new regulations were
"patently unconstitutional" as they deprived judicial officers of the
discretion to grant the accused bail thereby reducing them to a mere
"rubber stamp to give a semblance of legality to the detention".
While The Daily Mirror, The Tribune and The Zimbabwe Independent
(27/2) gave prominence to this revelation, The Herald (27/2) buried it
deep in its story, Makamba bail application referred to High Court.
Worse still, the report was merely carried as a side story to a report on
Jane Mutasa's conviction for illegally dealing in foreign currency under
the same regulations.
ZBC and Chronicle (27/2) censored Ziyambi's ruling altogether.
Besides this, the government media continued to suffocate reports
exposing Zimbabwe's deteriorating human rights record.
For example, the government papers carried only three stories out of
the 17 reports on human rights abuses carried by the private Press
during the week.
Similarly, only the privately owned radios exposed the country's poor
human rights record by reporting on 14 of the 15 reports recorded in
the week.
ZBC carried the other one. Even then, the report appeared as a denial
of worsening human rights abuses leveled against government by the
international community.
Despite this denial, the situation on the ground proved otherwise.
For example, The Daily Mirror (25/2) reported that the police had
disrupted a Harare City Council meeting on the proposed 2004 budget
using the repressive Public Order and Security Act (POSA) as an
excuse. But as one councilor quoted by the paper pointed out,
"according to the provision of the Public Order and Security Act,
(it's) political gatherings, which the organizers ought to seek
police clearance for, not council meetings".
More worrying was the revelation in The Herald (26/2) that when the
council finally met, their meeting was held "under heavy police
presence amid concerns on the security of (acting mayor) Ms
(Sekesai) Makwavarara and town clerk, Mr Nomutsa Chideya."
In another related case of police harassment, Studio 7 & SW Radio
Africa (25/2), The Manica Post (27/2), and The Standard (29/2)
reported the arrest and detention of National Constitutional Assembly
chairman Lovemore Madhuku while on his way to address a seminar in
Mutare.
According to The Standard, state security agents still "trailed"
Madhuku "into the conference venue where he was presenting a
paper on the security of the nation and human rights" after the
police had released him.
The Manica Post however, seemed to justify Madhuku's arrest by
saying he "is well-known for organising anti-Government
demonstrations and is viewed as a security threat wherever he
would be".

2. ANZ SITUATION HAS ITS ROOT IN AIPPA: Media botch link

The government-induced ruin of the Associated Newspapers of
Zimbabwe (ANZ), publishers of The Daily News and its sister weekly,
The Daily News on Sunday, attracted considerable media attention.
This followed the ANZ's announcement that it was cutting its workforce
by 80 percent saying it would be unable to sustain its salary bill if it
were to meet its workers' demands of a 960 percent salary hike.
Notable however, was the narrow perspective in which the media,
especially the government controlled media and The Daily Mirror,
interpreted the unfolding events at the troubled publishing house.
They failed to relate the ANZ's massive retrenchment to the adverse
ramifications of the repressive Access to Information and Protection of
Privacy Act (AIPPA), which has since ensured that the ANZ's two
papers remain silenced. Their superficial coverage of the matter also
resulted in them twisting the facts by alleging that the ANZ problems
were self-inflicted. To support this claim they accused management,
particularly ANZ chief executive officer Sam Sipepa Nkomo, of being
insensitive to the workers' plight by allegedly refusing to register the
ANZ with the government appointed Media and Information
Commission (MIC) as required under AIPPA.
Amid this distortion, the objectives behind government's enactment of
AIPPA were totally lost: mainly to put journalists on a government leash
and police their operations.
The Daily Mirror and government media's glossing over of the real
problems besetting the ANZ was epitomised by ZTV (23/2, 8pm). It
blamed Nkomo for the publishing house's troubles, adding that the
developments at the ANZ confirmed "rumours that Nkomo was put
at the helm of the organization to bring it down".
No evidence was provided to support these claims.
Power FM and Radio Zimbabwe (24/2, 6am) carried similar reports.
And like ZTV, their accounts did not link ANZ's decision to retrench to
the hostile political environment it was operating in.
Similarly, The Daily Mirror, The Herald and Chronicle (24/2) ignored
this aspect. They simply dismissed ANZ's cost-saving measure by
pointing out that the company's majority shareholder, Strive Masiyiwa,
had promised to pay the workers for the next two years even if the
company was not publishing. They thus viewed the retrenchment as a
cover-up for management's machinations to close down ANZ.
This unsubstantiated perspective of the matter saw The Daily Mirror
carry a story under a untruthful headline; Nkomo shuts Daily News.
However, Studio 7 (23/2) provided a fresh angle to the matter. It
quoted an ANZ administrator saying the staff cuts were a result of the
company losing close to $15 million dollars a day in revenue ever since
it was forced to stop publishing its titles. Nkomo echoed the same
sentiments on Studio 7 (24/2) adding that the workers' demands for a
substantial increment "at a time . we are not operational." were
the last straw.
But The Daily Mirror comment (25/2), ANZ management betrayed
workers, continued with its simplistic attack on Nkomo and his
managerial team. It observed that "with the sky-rocketing inflation
and the. bad patch the economy is going through, it was
obvious that workers would require salary hikes now and then",
adding that the money Masiyiwa promised staff "could not be from
sales or advertisements generated" by ANZ "because the
assumption was that they would not be operating."
Interestingly, ZTV (23/2, pm) did quote Nkomo as saying Masiyiwa's
promises to pay workers for two years even if the company was not
operational was based on the assumption that there would be "no
demands for unreasonable increases in. salaries".
This obviously did not calm The Daily Mirror whose comment
continued to accuse management of being the "architect of the
current mess at the stable" because "they decided not to register
in accordance with the laws of the country".
Similar accusations were carried in The Sunday News (29/2). But both
papers still distracted their readers on how government, via the
draconian AIPPA, had literally hounded the ANZ off Zimbabwe's media
landscape.
This was only explored by SW Radio Africa (24/2), which traced ANZ's
downfall to 2002 when government promulgated AIPPA. The private
radio station quoted legal analysts as saying "it (AIPPA) was enacted
with one object in mind; to close the Daily News".
Besides directly linking the collapse of the ANZ to AIPPA, the station
also reminded its audiences about how government regularly terrorised
ANZ staff since the publishing house began operations in 1999. This
persecution also coincided with the bombing of the ANZ's printing
Press by yet-to-be-arrested culprits.
The Press and ZBC ignored this background.
The nearest any newspaper came to reporting it was when The
Sunday Mirror (29/2) quoted one of the ANZ workers as having said
"in as much as Information and Publicity Minister.was the force
behind the stable's fate, Nkomo was the 'conspirator from
within'".
The Financial Gazette merely added a conspiracy theory to the
tragedy. The paper quoted some unnamed ANZ workers as having
said Nkomo's decision to lay off workers was meant to "coerce
donors into throwing a lifeline to the faltering group".
The Chronicle (28/2) echoed this unsubstantiated claim. It quoted an
unnamed ANZ worker saying, "They (management) have climbed
onto the bandwagon of pro-opposition civic groups who are
exploiting the West's fixation with Zimbabwe to extract
donations".
Ironically, while The Daily Mirror and the government-controlled media
appeared oblivious to the havoc wreaked on the ANZ by AIPPA,
journalists in South Africa did.
Studio 7 (23/2) reported that SA's Justice Minister, Penuela Maduna,
had "shocked and angered" people at a Pretoria seminar on freedom
of expression when he said that he "saw nothing wrong" with
registering journalists.
The report duly noted Maduna's apparent out-of-touch statements in
relation to the ANZ saga and quoted SA media practitioners pointing
out that government's registration of journalists with a view to policing
them, as is the case in Zimbabwe, was incompatible with Press
freedom.
SW Radio Africa (26/2) reported South Africa's Deputy President
Jacob Zuma as expressing his government's wish to see the
Zimbabwean Press enjoying the same freedom as that of SA.
But any hope that government would respond to calls for it to relax its
media laws were shattered when SW Radio Africa (27/2) revealed that
the UN had failed to get a government response to freedom of
expression abuse charges laid against it by several local and
international human rights groups.
Meanwhile, the government's enthusiasm to use AIPPA against the
private media, through its hand-picked MIC, was again demonstrated
when The Herald (24/2) reported that MIC chairman Tafataona
Mahoso had "filed a complaint with the police" over a Standard
article, which claimed that High Court judge Justice Sandra Mungwira
had fled the country to Britain.
Mahoso contested that the paper's editors and writers of the story
should be charged with criminal defamation and abuse of journalistic
privilege because the report had "criminally defamed" Justice
Mungwira, the government and the entire judiciary.
But as the Zimbabwe Independent reported, Mahoso is seemingly
unaware of the Supreme Court's nullification of "abuse of journalistic
privilege" when it invalidated Section 80 (1), (a) and (c) of AIPPA, a
law he is supposed to administer.
Also notable is the fact that Mahoso has remained apparently silent on
the violations of the basic tenets of journalism by the government
media.
In fact, MIC's partiality and its over-arching role was clearly illustrated
when it interfered in a labour dispute in defence of The Herald's
decision to dismiss three of its senior journalists accused of freelancing
for Voice of America, (The Herald, Chronicle, The Financial Gazette,
26/2 and The Daily Mirror, 27/2). The MIC castigated ZUJ, which it
described as a "morally corrupt association", for condemning the
dismissal of their colleagues.
Mahoso claimed the dismissed journalists risked "national interest
and national security" because the Voice of America is a
"propaganda tool" and "an arm of the US State Department,
which is on record as seeking to overthrow the government of
Zimbabwe through unconstitutional means."

3. MUGABE'S MONOLOGUE: INTERVIEWER LEAVES AUDIENCE
BLANK

The government-controlled media's professional timidity was glaringly
evident during the week when ZBC failed to get President Mugabe to
answer burning questions on matters of great national importance.
The interview, "President Mugabe at 80", broadcast on ZTV and Spot
FM on February 22 & 23 ironically left many questions unanswered,
chief among them the issue of talks between the MDC and ZANU PF.
In fact, not only did interviewer Tazzen Mandizvidza fail woefully to
follow up Mugabe's rambling comments with pertinent questions that
would have shed light on critical political and economic issues in the
country, the rest of the government media bungled the job too. They
either reported parts of the interview with little or no analysis at all, or
passively ran the full text of the interview, The Herald (25 & 26/2).
This is despite the fact that the interview was laced with useful political
snippets that begged to be critically analysed, such as Mugabe's
retirement plans, (Power FM, Radio Zimbabwe, 24/2, 6am) and his
unequivocal stance on his party's purported dialogue with the
opposition MDC, (ZTV 24/2, 7am).
But the government media downplayed these important issues and
instead highlighted the interview's bland aspects like the President's
esoteric wish for a better-educated population (Power FM 23/02, 1pm
& 8pm).
However, the private media attempted to interpret some of the crucial
revelations Mugabe made.
For example, while the government media seemed content to echo
Mugabe's sentiments that ZANU PF would not talk with the MDC until
they "sever their links with the forces that are opposed to
Zimbabwe" (ZTV 24/2, 7am), the private media were more inquisitive.
Studio 7 (24/2), SW Radio Africa (25/2), The Zimbabwe Independent
(27/2) and The Standard (29/2), for example, sought various opinions
ranging from political commentators to the MDC itself over Mugabe's
assertions.
In its report, SA churches push for Zim talks, the Zimbabwe
Independent quoted South Africa's Democratic Alliance official, Joe
Seremane, as saying Mugabe's statements had exposed Thabo
Mbeki's policy on Zimbabwe as "an embarrassing and costly
disaster", and that his claims that the MDC/ZANU PF talks were about
to take off were "untrue".
Studio 7 (25/2) quoted a political analyst with SA's Institute of
Democracy agreeing. He said: "I don't see anybody being able to
convince Robert Mugabe into coming to grips with realities other
than Mugabe himself. Silent diplomacy. smart sanctions did not
work. Mbeki has lost all credibility as far as the Zimbabwe crisis
is concerned."
The Zimbabwe Independent also quoted the MDC secretary-general,
Welshman Ncube, dismissing Mugabe's statement that the MDC has
"to cut ties with Western countries" as a precondition for talks as
"unfortunately and tragically delusional".
Similarly, Studio 7 (24/2) quoted Eliphas Mukonoweshuro, advisor to
MDC president Morgan Tsvangirai, describing Mugabe's demands as
a mere propaganda tool "to justify why (ZANU PF) does not want to
engage a legitimate political opposition party".
The same views were made by Tsvangirai on Studio 7 (25/2) and
political analyst Brian Kagoro on SW Radio Africa (25/2).
Interestingly, Studio 7 (26/2) aired ZANU PF Secretary for External
Affairs Didymus Mutasa adding more confusion to the talks saga
saying "talks will start, but we've not been told yet the modalities
in which they will be conducted".
The Standard also quoted Zimbabwean ambassador to South Africa
Simon Khaya Moyo insisting: "Talks are taking place with a section
of the MDC who believe in moving forward".
However, none of the two ZANU PF officials were asked to explain the
source of their optimism.
Meanwhile, Studio 7 (25/2), SW Radio Africa (27/2) and the Zimbabwe
Independent, revealed that SA church leaders and their Zimbabwean
counterparts were making concerted efforts to bring both ZANU PF
and the MDC to the negotiating table.
Ends

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be sent to the Project Coordinator, MMPZ, 15 Duthie Avenue,
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