"The hundreds of thousands who have been left homeless call this Zimbabwe's tsunami"

ITV reporters have risked two years in prison to bring the latest on Zimbabwe leader Robert Mugabe's attempts to crackdown on opposition supporters.

The UN estimates that more than 200,000 people have been left on the street as thousands of homes and even an orphanage have been bulldozed by President Mugabe's policy of Operation Restore Order.

Foreign journalists are banned from Zimbabwe, but working covertly and in defiance of the authorities, ITV News has learnt of the sheer scale of the destruction that has taken place over the past two weeks.

ITV Africa correspondent Neil Connery, who entered Zimbabwe illegally, said: "It is wasteland. Street after street after street razed to the ground.

"It looked like a natural disaster. The hundreds of thousands who have been left homeless call this Zimbabwe's tsunami. But man, not nature is to blame for the destruction enveloping this country

"The whole force of the state is busy destroying homes and lives. The Government calls this Operation Restore Order."

Children from Hatcliff Orphanage, many of whom have been left destitute after their parents died from Aids, were given 24 hours to get out.

Sister Patricia Walsh from the orphanage said: "It was one of the most painful experiences. I never thought I would see the day this would happen to Zimbabwe."

The Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe

Monday June 6^th – Sunday June 12^th 2005

Weekly Media Update 2005-21

CONTENTS

1. GENERAL COMMENT

2. PURGE OF THE URBAN POOR

3. COMMODITY SHORTAGES AND PRICE INCREASES

1. General comment

THIS week the government media censored news of the job stay-away announced by the Broad Alliance, a coalition of civic organizations and the opposition MDC, to protest the inhumanity of the government’s purge of poor urban inhabitants living in allegedly illegal homesteads.

This latest violation of Zimbabweans’ rights to be adequately informed – in this case about the sentiments of their compatriots – once again illustrates the government’s determination to suffocate any news that may reflect badly on its policies and activities.

Nothing demonstrates this better than the very titles used by the government media to describe the authorities’ evidently inhumane blitz on its hapless victims. “Clean-up” and “murambatsvina” merely portray a necessary technical operation devoid of any requirement for implementing a humane and civilized policy. That “murambatsvina” has caused so much destitution, homelessness and grief are facts that cannot be expected from media organisations that are obliged to defend government policies however cruel and inhumane they may be; which is why the sheer scale of human suffering caused by the blitz on Zimbabwe’s urban populations cannot be found this week – as in any other – in the government-controlled media.

This too, is censorship of the very worst order, particularly because government’s precipitous action is a burning issue that so seriously affects, at the very least, hundreds of thousands of people. All that can be gleaned from the government media are sterile piecemeal reports of the authorities “clearing” various urban sectors without any effort to assess the extent of the suffering; the numbers made homeless and destitute and the extent of the material losses incurred.

That the private media have not managed to tackle this topic successfully indicates lack of diversity, limited resources and a reluctance on the part of the authorities to provide such information, let alone a credible explanation for inflicting such an inhumane exercise on the urban poor.

It is the duty of the media, particularly the public media, to demand answers to these all-important questions. But the government media have only carried stories that ameliorate the devastation of murmbatsvina and have failed beyond measure to report fairly the extent of the suffering and why it was necessary.

Predictably then, Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings only reported on the planned stay-away when the protest had flopped. Even then, ZTV (9/6, 8pm) only made reference to the issue in the context of its attack on the MDC, which it accused of “deciding to dine and wine with the enemy while Zimbabwean issues are under discussion” by boycotting the official opening of Parliament.

Instead of fairly reporting the party’s reasons for boycotting Parliament, ZTV merely claimed the MDC’s decision “coincided with the party’s unheeded call for a stayaway over the current clean-up campaign in a bid to sabotage the economy”.

This unprofessionalism was also apparent on Radio Zimbabwe and Power FM, which also ignored the Alliance’s calls for the stayaway in their main news bulletins.

The Herald and Chronicle (6/6) adopted a similar stance.

The two government dailies also indirectly referred to the planned protest in the form of a police threat to deal “ruthlessly” with anyone who would participate in the “illegal” stayaway planned for “some time” during the week. No dates were provided as the papers claimed the details of the stayaway “still remained sketchy by last night”, although the previous day The Standard (5/6) had provided details of the civic protest.

The Herald (8/6) only provided the dates for the protest the day before it was due to take place - buried in its article on murmbatsvina on page two.

The Sunday Mail (12/6), which had ignored the matter the previous week, led with the failed stay-away claiming that its failure had resulted in the organisers dissociating themselves from it. But there was no evidence in the article to substantiate this. 

2. Purge of the urban poor

THE government’s demolition of houses, makeshift industries and market stalls in urban areas ostensibly to clean up the cities continued to dominate the media.

The broadcast media carried 70 stories on the matter. Fifty-seven were on ZBH (Power FM [17], Radio Zimbabwe [13] and ZTV [27]) while 13 were on Studio 7. The Press featured 59 stories on the subject, 24 of which were in the government-controlled Press and 35 in private papers.

All the stories carried by the government media however, were largely premised on three main objectives:

• To legitimise the purge as a noble exercise whose virtues the shack dwellers had also acknowledged by “voluntarily” demolishing their own dwellings
• To portray government’s compassion for the affected people
• And to magnify the purported benefits accruing from the exercise as reflected in the numerous “scams” involving illegal dealings in gold, fuel and basic commodities unearthed by the operation.       

For instance, 13 (54%) out of the 24 stories the government Press carried focused on these themes. The rest were mere “technical” updates on the exercise in various urban and residential centres countrywide. Similarly, 28 (49%) reports of the 57 stories ZBH carried were devoted to presenting the authorities as making efforts to provide alternative accommodation and vending stalls to the victims of the operation, while the rest slavishly endorsed it.

Consequently, the colossal human suffering, mainly characterized by massive internal displacement of hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans, was hardly covered. The official media, for example, did not provide statistics on the exact number of people displaced and its effects on workers and school-going children. Neither did they measure the cost of the exercise to the economy or explain how the cash-strapped government would finance the resettlement of those that it had dislodged.

Rather, in one of its reports portraying government as caring for the victims, ZTV (6/6, 8pm) passively quoted Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo and Science and Technology Deputy Minister Patrick Zhuwawo saying government had demarcated nearly 10,000 residential stands at Whitecliff farm for allocation to “deserving people”.

There was no attempt to inform viewers about the criteria government intended to use to allocate the stands.

This disregard for any socially responsible journalistic instinct was also apparent in Power FM’s reports (7/6, 6pm) and again on ZTV (7/6, 8pm) that about 1,000 people who had been successfully vetted as informal traders were to resume operations at legal structures provided by the authorities. Again the stations did not question how these people were “vetted” or the fate of thousands of other informal traders who had lost their only source of income.

The government Press was equally unquestioning in the six stories they carried on government’s commitment to provide vending and residential stands to the clean-up victims. For instance, the papers did not question whether the authorities had the financial and logistical capability to see out their plans, especially in the midst of crippling, fuel, electricity and food shortages in the country.

Instead, these papers irrelevantly reported that Britain was conducting a similar operation in an effort to portray murambatsvina as a normal activity. While they did note that Britons had been given two years’ notice, there was no reference to the lack of notice urban Zimbabweans were given.

The official media’s professional incompetence in handling the issue was reflected in their dependence on the authorities as shown by the voice distribution on ZBH in Fig.1. 

Fig 1 Voice distribution on ZBH

Although the voice distribution in the government papers also appeared fairly diverse as illustrated in Fig 2, most of the comments were used in the context of legitimising the exercise.

Fig. 2 Public Press voice distribution

But the government media was not alone in endorsing Operation Restore Order. The Financial Gazette (9/6) columnist Denford Magora also simplistically justified the exercise on the basis that “the illegal structures, flea-markets and roadside vendors were nothing but dens of iniquity”.

However, the story was the only variation in the 48 reports that the private media carried on the operation. Thirty-five were in the private Press while the remaining 13 were on Studio 7.

Even though the private media also failed to provide estimates of material losses, they did carry informative revelations about the extent of the displacement and the inhumane implementation of the operation. For example, the private papers put the figure of those who have been displaced so far at 200 000. In addition, the private media also publicised the local and international criticism of the operation.

Notably, they recorded the first tragic consequences of the operation that has since resulted in three deaths. For instance, The Standard (12/6) reported that a two-year old was killed by the debris from a collapsing house in Mabvuku, while in another incident, it reported the police ordering mourners to remove a corpse from a makeshift building before they torched it.

Studio 7 (8/6) also reported the death of the child and that of an elderly man who died of shock following the demolition of his shack. Earlier, The Daily Mirror (7/6) reported that a man made homeless had committed suicide.

The private media also carried four stories reporting international criticism of murmbatsvina. For example, the Zimbabwe Independent (10/6) carried a report in which the United Nations and the European Union urged the government to stop the blitz, which they said constituted human rights violations. The paper quoted UN special rappoteur on the right to adequate housing, Miloon Kothari, describing government’s exercise as “a form of apartheid”. Studio 7 (6/6), The Financial Gazette (9/6) and Sunday Mirror (12/6) also carried Kothari’s comment.

The analytical manner in which the private media handled the issue was reflected in the private Press’s balanced sourcing pattern. All official voices, including those of the police, were quoted defending the operation while the rest of the voices mostly criticised it. See Fig 3.        

Fig. 3 Voice distribution in the private Press

While the private papers sought comment from the authorities in their stories, Studio 7 compromised its coverage by failing to balance independent views with official comment.

3. Commodity shortages and price increases    

THE government’s month-long campaign against the urban poor appeared to divert media attention from other pertinent developments such as commodity price increases and shortages. As a result, these topics received inadequate coverage in the media during the week.

For example, none of the media gave a holistic picture of the situation regarding commodity shortages and skyrocketing prices and service charges.

Instead, ZBH glossed over such matters by carrying 41 stories, which sought to present a glowing image of the country’s agricultural productivity and assuring the public that the authorities had taken adequate measures to avert food shortages.

For example, Radio Zimbabwe (6/5,1pm), ZTV and Power FM (7/6, 8pm) passively quoted Grain Marketing Board boss, Samuel Muvuti, saying the parastatal was “sourcing enough food to feed Zimbabweans” as “50 trucks…come into Zimbabwe with food” per day. But Muvuti was not challenged to explain the tonnage the trucks were bringing and what percentage of the required 1,8 million tonnes the amount imported so far represented.

ZTV’s reluctance to discuss the scale of commodity shortages manifested itself in 6pm bulletin (10/6) which carried an isolated report on bread shortages in Mutare. But it evaded the causes of the scarcity claiming “it was not clear why there are shortages”. No attempt was made to relate the situation in Mutare to the nationwide state of affairs.

This uncritical stance was reflected in ZBH’s over-reliance on official comment as shown in Fig 3.

Fig 5 Voice distribution on ZBH

Like their broadcasting counterparts, all but two of the 13 stories the official Press carried on the matter absolved government of any economic mismanagement while invariably blaming it on the country’s detractors, corruption and the black market.

This blame-game occasionally assumed absurd levels with The Manica Post, for example, noting in its editorial: “…the drive to self-enrich that had gripped Zimbabwe until the recent clean-ups is not an indigenous phenomenon, but a derivative of Western corporate capitalism”.

The paper seemed to be amplifying President Mugabe’s speech made on the eve of the opening of Parliament, reported in The Herald (9/6) We’ll never collapse. The Herald passively reported Mugabe narrowly blaming Zimbabwe’s economic problems on drought and the evil machinations by “some people… European Union countries, the United States and Australia” who were “always contriving to bring down Zimbabwe”.

Besides blaming others for the country’s economic problems, the government-controlled papers also carried six stories that portrayed Zimbabwe’s agriculture as on the mend and that government was importing sufficient grain to ward off starvation.

However, The Herald Business (8/6), like the private Daily Mirror (7/6) and Studio 7 (7/6) reported that the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe (CCZ)’s month-on-month cost of living basket had jumped by 28 percent from about $2.3 million in April to over $3 million in May. These two reports were part of the 18 stories the private Press carried on the subject.

Although the private media, like the official media, also failed to fully update their audiences on the commodities in short supply or those whose prices had gone up, their stories were more informative. For instance, they continued to expose government’s distribution of food relief on party lines (The Standard) and the adverse effects of government’s land reforms on food production (The Daily Mirror, 8/6 and Zimbabwe Independent).

And while The Sunday Mail reported that the shortage of dairy products was artificial, The Daily Mirror (8/6) disputed this by quoting a commercial farmers’ leader saying, because of the botched land reforms, it was likely to take three years for the dairy industry to produce adequate milk for the country.

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: monitors@mmpz.org.zw

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