Zimbabwe is facing serious food shortages due to price
controls imposed earlier this month by the government in a bid to control
runaway inflation.
According to reports in the independent Zimbabwean media, price caps on basic
foodstuffs have forced many producers to operate at a loss, leaving them with no
choice but to go out of business.
The baking industry, which has been losing an estimated $33,000 a day, has
been hit particularly hard.
Rationing now in force
Basic goods including bread, wheat, maize, cooking oil and soap are reported
to be becoming increasingly scarce as a result, with rationing now in force in
many areas.
The Zimbabwean Government imposed the price caps on 10 October, citing the need to bring the country's inflation rate under control, which is currently running at over 70% a year.
Currency squeeze
The country's soaring inflation stems from the weakness of the Zimbabwean
dollar and its heavy reliance on imported fuel, priced in US dollars.
A slump in the world price of metals and agricultural commodities, the
country's principal exports, has deprived Zimbabwean importers of hard currency.
Grain shortages caused by the government's policy of seizing white-owned
farms have also fuelled a sharp increase in food prices.
Some observers in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, believe that the price
controls are a populist measure designed to shore up electoral support for Mr
Mugabe's government ahead of presidential elections next year.
"The government wants to be sure that it can rely on the urban vote, but the
policy is backfiring already. We are heading into serious shortages, and the
people are angry," said one local source.
Zimbabwe is due to hold presidential elections by April 2002, but no firm
date has yet been set.
Daily News
War vets impound maize
10/26/01 7:37:45 AM (GMT
+2)
Farming Editor
Suspected war veterans and the police are
impounding maize from travelers
from rural areas, and ordering them to sell
it to the Grain Marketing Board
(GMB).
Passengers and bus conductors
yesterday complained of police harassment,
saying the maize they carried was
in small quantities and had been given to
them by their relatives in the
communal areas for their own consumption.
“We have dropped hundreds of
passengers at roadblocks where they are forced
to sell the maize they have to
the nearest GMB depot,” said conductor Laston
Katungunde, whose bus plies the
Harare-Chiweshe route.
“As conductors, we have also been affected as we
also bring maize from the
rural areas for our families in
Harare.”
Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena refused to
comment.
Joseph Chinotimba, the Harare leader of war veterans, said the
veterans were
only impounding maize from cross-border traders intending to
export the
commodity illegally, not ordinary travellers. The veterans were on
the
lookout at Zimbabwe’s border posts, he said.
“It is not true that
war veterans are confiscating maize from travellers,”
he said. “If there are
people who are harassing rural travellers, then they
must be
criminals.”
But Katungunde’s colleague, Patrick Dombo, maintained the
situation was
particularly serious in Mashonaland as war veterans had joined
the crusade
of harassing travellers with maize in their luggage, saying all
the maize
now belonged to the government.
“No reports are written and
people are told just to surrender the maize to
the war veterans. Where there
are GMB depots, people are ordered to pay
fines of about $400 and the maize
is confiscated,” Dombo said.
Shacky Mativenga, a conductor on the
Harare-Gokwe route, said: “It is very
unfair that they say they are giving us
land to produce maize, but we are
not allowed to eat it or even carry it to
our families in urban areas.”
In Mt Darwin, a war veteran identified only
as Kambanje was said to be
terrorising travellers and bus conductors,
charging that urban residents
must be denied the maize because they supported
opposition parties.
The government declared maize a controlled product in
July and made the GMB
the sole buyer and seller. The order outlawed maize
sales countrywide,
including trade in small quantities of maize among
villagers.
Travellers, who for years cut costs by supplementing their
needs with maize
secured from their rural homes, were caught in the net.
Hundreds lost out to
the war veterans and police officers at
roadblocks.
Nyasha Chinyama, a conductor on the Karoi-Harare route, said
36 of his
passengers lost an unspecified quantity of maize to war veterans
camping at
Magunje last month.
Daily News
Shortage of basic goods hits Harare
10/26/01 8:36:22 AM
(GMT +2)
By Takaitei Bote Farming Editor
MOST retail shop
shelves that are normally stocked with washing soap and
cooking oil are
empty, heralding what looks set to become a serious shortage
of basic
commodities in Harare.
The Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries warned
early this month that there
would be food shortages in Zimbabwe following the
gazetting of price control
regulations on specified basic
commodities.
A Daily News survey in Harare yesterday revealed that
products whose prices
are now controlled such as cooking oil, washing soap
and salt were out of
stock, with shelves empty in most
supermarkets.
TM Supermarkets’ Nelson Mandela Avenue branch did not have
the popular Panol
and Olivine cooking oil brands on its shelves but had an
unfamiliar product
called TM Super Saver Cooking Oil costing $148,23 for a
750ml bottle.
However, there were less than 10 bottles on the
shelves.
Familiar soap bars such as Dolphin, Brilliant, Sunlight and Big
Ben were all
out of stock in TM as was the case at OK as well. The few soap
bars that
were available were of unpopular brands.
There was no Panol
and Olivine cooking oil in OK Supermarket either.
Another unpopular 375ml
cooking oil brand costing $208 was available, but
supplies were also very
low. The government stipulated price for a 750ml
bottle of cooking oil is
$148.
A TM Supermarkets spokesperson said suppliers were producing
limited
quantities of cooking oil and washing soap and suggested this
reporter
direct further questions to the suppliers.
The major
producers of basic commodities, Olivine Industries and Lever
Brothers, were
not available for comment yesterday.
Industry sources said producers of
soap, cooking oil and bread had reduced
their output because they were now
operating at a loss following the
government directive to reduce the
wholesale prices of basic commodities.
The government introduced the
controls as a measure to counter rampant price
increases. Prior to the move,
the prices of basic commodities were
increasing on a weekly basis as
manufacturers passed on the high cost of
production to the
consumers.
Manufacturers say they have reduced their prices in line with
the government
directive but they are making huge losses as the prices are
below their
input costs.
Bakeries said while it cost them $54 to
produce a loaf of bread, they were
now forced to sell it at $48.
Some
bakeries have started producing lower quality bread, saying
producing
standard bread would force them out of business.
Invasions Threaten Peace Park
Mail & Guardian
(Johannesburg)
October 26, 2001
Posted to the web October 25,
2001
Experts warn that south-eastern Zimbabwe is sitting on a
foot-and-mouth time
bomb, reports Jenny Sharman
In the excitement
about the formation of the Gaza-Kruger-Gonarezhou
trans-frontier park, a
looming problem has been overlooked: land invasions
in the Zimbabwe section
of the park.
The planned "peace park" includes Zimbabwe's second-largest
game park, the
Gonarezhou National Park and its wildlife environs, along with
Kruger park
and a large slice of state-owned land in Mozambique's Coutada
16
conservation area - a total of 35 000km2.
Last November, as the
agreement was being signed to establish the park,
sections of Gonarezhou were
being occupied, cleared and set alight by
residents of neighbouring villages
and "war veterans".
The invasion of Gonarezhou is the latest in a line of
crises to hit
Zimbabwe's wildlife since the current "fast-track" resettlement
programme
moved into key conservation areas.
As a member of a proposed
peace park, it is ironic that historically
Gonarezhou has rarely been at
peace. In Shona gona-re-zhou means "abode of
elephants", but for the elephant
it has not been a safe abode; poaching has
long been prevalent in this
south-eastern corner of Zimbabwe.
In the late 1960s large-scale
agriculture began encroaching on the area, and
poaching, coupled with tsetse
fly controls that included bush burning and
shooting, resulted in the
destruction of 55 000 large animals. In response,
Alan Wright, a local
district commissioner, helped establish a wildlife
refuge and a poaching
control corridor along the Mozambique border. About
5,000km2 of prime
wilderness was designated as a reserve, and in 1975 this
corner of Zimbabwe
was declared a national park.
The local Shangaan people were forced to
resettle outside the park's
boundaries - an act that has caused major
discontent in the area ever since.
The formation of a park did little to
stop the unnatural deaths of the
resident elephants. During the war of
independence Gonarezhou was landmined
extensively and elephant and buffaloes
are still being maimed by the mines.
In the 1980s and 1990s poaching by
Mozambican guerrillas, fighting their own
civil war across the border, also
took its toll. It is estimated that
between 1987 and 1988 alone nearly 1,000
elephants and 200 black rhinos were
poached from the park. It is not
surprising that elephants in Gona-rezhou
respond to the presence of humans
with either fear or aggression.
Now Josiah Hungwe, the Governor of
Masvingo, who is already responsible for
the invasion of privately owned
wildlife conservancies, has been encouraging
families of the previously
evicted Shangaan, as well as opportunistic "war
veterans", to take over 11
000ha within Gonarezhou, north and south of the
Runde river.
The
situation escalated as Agritex (the Agricultural and Rural
Extension
Department) began demarcating and pegging out plots for allocation
within
the park.
The invasion appears to have been carried out without
the permission - or
knowledge - of the Ministry of Environment and Tourism.
In fact environment
minister Francis Nhema initially denied it: "What has
happened is that some
cattle strayed into the park but our guys from parks
are working on that.
There are no people physically within the park at all,"
he said as news of
the invasion began to spread.
It soon became
apparent that Nhema was wrong. A senior national parks
officer wrote the
following in a letter to his headquarters shortly after
the takeover: "The
Agritex officer stated that his teams pegged some 520
plots but the area had
capacity to take 750 settlers ... Cattle are being
grazed daily inside the
park. The numbers are never less than 500 in the
park per day. The cattle
fence has been put down, allowing free movement of
cattle in and around the
park."
The removal of fencing and driving of cattle into buffalo land
could result
in a serious outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. Mike Clark,
regional
chairperson of the Masvingo Commercial Farmers' Union, says "we have
no
foot-and-mouth vaccine due to the forex shortage. We are therefore
sitting
on a foot-and-mouth time bomb."
Clark has found evidence of
cattle in the park and substantial destruction
of natural
habitat.
"When we followed one of the cattle trails we came across people
building
elaborate Shangaan-style huts, about 6km into the
reserve."
Raoul du Toit of the World Wide Fund for nature's Zimbabwe
office has said
that the issues involved are more complex than simply a
threat to the
integrity of the national park. The Shangaan people do have a
serious land
claim to this area but, Du Toit says, "the issue needs to be
assessed in the
context of the land crisis which is engulfing the nearby
conservancies".
"The biodiversity value of the basalt plain that has been
invaded within
Gonarezhou is relatively low. If this land claim is to be
resolved, this may
act as a pressure-relief valve that would reduce the land
invasion threat in
conservancy areas with higher biodiversity value. However,
the resolution of
this land claim within Gonarezhou must take into account
the constraints on
dry-land agriculture and a wildlife-based land-reform
model must be
considered.
"The other crucial factor to take into
account is that any resettlement must
not cut off the wildlife corridors
between the park and adjacent private
wildlife areas such as Malilangwe and
Save valley."
There has been extensive poaching in the neighbouring Save
and Chiredzi
conservancies since the government's resettlement programme
began more than
a year ago. The poaching is clearly commercial in nature and,
it would
appear, politically motivated.
Recently, in response to the
arrest of nine poachers for having abducted a
game scout, the war veterans
began dropping off poachers by vehicle
throughout Save.
"One must
remember that this is not a spontaneous groundswell, but totally
orchestrated
by the party [Zanu-PF]," says Clark.
Malilangwe, Save and Chiredzi are
key areas adjacent to Gonarezhou. They,
and the communities involved in
various Communal Areas Management Programme
for Indigenous Resources and
trust projects, all stand to benefit from the
peace park as long as the
corridor that joins them with the park remains
free of human settlement. Once
the peace park is operational, there is
enormous potential in creating a
wider trans-frontier conservation area
extending into these private and
communal lands. The entire economy of
south-eastern Zimbabwe could benefit as
a result.
However, these issues are clearly not being debated - or even
considered -
in Zimbabwe's political scramble for land. Instead of limiting
the invasion
to a controllable area, it has now been extended along the park
boundary,
and along the boundary with Malilangwe. Derek de la Harpe,
Malilangwe's
director, reports that these plots have already been extensively
cleared. He
says that "any development isolating Malilangwe and the
conservancies from
the park will in the long term be to everyone's detriment.
Malilangwe is
committed to assisting with restocking the park once our own
wildlife
populations have been restored to an acceptable level. This will not
be
possible if the connection between the two areas is cut."
Residents
in the Chizvirizvi resettle-ment area were hoping to involve
themselves in a
wildlife and hunting/ tourism project based on the proposed
peace park. If
their land does not adjoin the park there is little chance of
it
happening.
The Zimbabwe government publicly abandoned its plans for
resettlement in the
Gonarezhou National Park in July after a meeting of the
trans-frontier park
ministerial committee. However, fires and bush clearing
within the park and
along its boundaries continues unabated. Hungwe continues
to insist that the
demarcated plots will be settled, despite official
promises to the contrary.
There are already suggestions that the removal
of the fence has been
disastrous for the region's livestock. Clark has heard
reports that "several
hundred head [of cattle] have died from suspected
theileriosis, as there are
no dipping facilities. Through my experience this
is transmitted by the
tick, Rhipicephalus zambeziensis, which occurs through
buffalo/cattle
transmission.
"The ownership dispute should urgently be
addressed by government so that
effective disease control barriers can be
erected."
Daily News - two items.....
Land invaders assault Nyabira farm
workers
10/26/01 7:40:15 AM (GMT +2)
Chief Reporter
A
GROUP of about 60 invaders yesterday stormed Umzururu Farm in Nyabira
and
beat up workers before stealing two tractors.
The invaders
demanded to see the farmer, Alister Smith, “dead or alive.”
However,
Smith was away when the group besieged the farm.
The gang then beat up
Maggie Christian, a worker at the farm, security
guards, the gardener and the
maid.
One of the invaders was armed with a pistol while others wielded axes
and
hoes.
Christian said: “Yes, we were attacked, but I do not want to
say much and
put myself to further risk.”
The farmer’s 18-year-old
daughter escaped the attack.
Sources said the invaders drove into the farm in
a mini-bus and a truck at
around midday.
They demanded to see Smith.
On being told that he was away, they started
throwing stones at the house,
shattering about 40 window panes.
Christian then called the Nyabira
police but failed to get immediate
assistance.
The invaders then beat
up Christian, the gardener and the maid.
One of the workers, who had a
heart operation about five years ago, is
reported to have trudged the 4km to
Lilifordia School to seek help.
Back at the farm, the invaders drove away
in two tractors saying they were
heading for their base at Lilifordia Farm
owned by businessman, Sam Levy.
Armed policemen later went to the farm
but the invaders had already left.
The police promised to recover the
tractors.
Umzururu Farm is said to have been taken off the designation
list and Smith
had continued with farming operations.
The farm has one
of the biggest dairy herds in the country.
The invasion of Umzururu Farm
took place at a time when a Commonwealth team
is in Zimbabwe to assess
whether the Abuja Agreement signed on 6 September
is working.
Under
the agreement, the Zimbabwean government undertook to curb lawlessness
and
remove invaders from undesignated farms.
In turn, the British promised to
provide money to compensate farmers whose
land would have been expropriated
by the government.
However, farm invasions and attacks on farmers and
their workers are
continuing.
-------------
Ministers snub
Bindura farmers
10/26/01 7:38:54 AM (GMT +2)
Staff
Reporter
MORE than 100 commercial farmers in Mashonaland Central
Province, who had
gathered in Bindura yesterday for a meeting with government
ministers over
the continuing disruption of farming operations, left the town
a
disappointed lot.
The ministers failed to turn up.
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe
Media Update # 2001/42
Monday 15th
October to Sunday 21st October 2001
CONTENTS
1. Summary
2. ESAP
& Price Controls
3. Land Abuja
4. Political Violence
5. Some
Missing Evidence- from a subscriber
1. SUMMARY
ª The
President's official announcement that his government had
"dumped" ESAP
dominated Zimpapers and ZBC during the
week, but none of them explained
that government had
effectively abandoned the policy years ago. The
government
owned media supported the President's sentiments by
portraying ESAP as an unworkable economic prescription
imposed on
developing countries by Western nations anxious to
protect their
neo-colonial interests. They provided no
independent experts to support
this view and linked the failure of
ESAP to the need for price
controls.
ª The private Press almost ignored Mugabe's announcement,
except to say that it was an admission of failure and
demonstrated the president was prepared to do anything to hang
on to
power at any cost. The private Press was replete with
stories predicting
economic disaster as a result of price controls
and the president's
threat to nationalize loss-making companies
that closed down.
ª
The survival of the Abuja agreement also found considerable
space in the
media ahead of a visit this week by the
Commonwealth Ministerial Action
Group. The government owned
media sought to accuse Britain of
undermining the accord, while
the private press reported continuing
violence on the farms, the
scale of the economic damage it was causing
and that the
agreement was all but dead. Notably though, reports of
political
violence declined significantly during the week. The Daily
News,
for example, only carried six (6) stories on the topic compared to
fifteen (15) the previous week.
2. ESAP AND PRICE
CONTROLS
President Mugabe announced the death of ESAP during the funeral
of Clement Muchachi at Heroes' Acre (ZBC, 15/10, 8pm). While
describing
ESAP as dead, the President re-affirmed his
government's re-introduction of
price controls and threatened to
take over any businesses that closed due to
the controls. In the
four minutes that ZTV and Radio1/3 gave to his speech,
the
President was quoted as saying, ".those companies which
want to
withhold products or close down may go ahead and
do so.We will, as the
state, take over any businesses that are
closed.They are our businesses
anyway. We will re-organize
them with the workers and .the socialism, which
we had
wanted, can start."
Despite the fact that the funeral took place
in the morning, no
comment was sought from the business community or
independent
economists on the implications of the President's promise to
return
to socialism and his threat to nationalize private enterprises.
It
was only at the other end of the week that ZTV (21/10) quoted
CZI president,
Jacob Dube saying on its Insight programme,
".ESAP has been dead for a long
time. After ESAP we got
ZIMPREST. Then after ZIMPREST we got the Millennium
Recovery Programme."
Immediately after the programme, ZTV's 8pm news
bulletin
continued to celebrate Mugabe's announcement by devoting four
minutes 45 seconds to a report that "some Zimbabweans have
welcomed the
announcement by Robert Mugabe that ESAP is
dead". Relying on Mugabe's
original speech, viewers were only
treated to the reporter's propagandist
analysis of ESAP's demise,
citing well-known critics of the policy,
Tafataona Mahoso and Jane
Mutasa, but without directly quoting anyone. This
lengthy opinion
piece passing as news ignored the fact that the government
had
abandoned ESAP years ago and made no attempt to explore why
government had adopted ZIMPREST and later replaced it with the
Millennium Recovery Programme.
In fact, none of the media provided any
useful historical analysis of
Mugabe's announcement, although the private
Press devoted many
column centimeters to discrediting the socialist ideal of
a
commandist economic policy, its failure locally and globally, and
the
disastrous effects of price controls.
Zimpapers exonerated the government
of any blame for ESAP's
failure, which was attributed to external factors.
The IMF and World
Bank were accused of imposing ". a simplistic economic
model on far too many countries" (The Herald, 17/10). The local
business
sector was also accused of benefiting from ESAP at the
expense of the
majority.
According to The Herald comment ". the structural adjustment
programmes that became the rage in the 1990s were not
tailored to suit
individual states and societies and did not take
into account special local
programmes".
It pointed out that the "free market" encouraged by the IMF was
inapplicable to "small landlocked countries like Zimbabwe".
And it
concluded by saying: "Finally you dump theories and
look for pragmatic
solutions to your own real problems.
Zimbabwe is starting to think
seriously, and to act, to chart its
own way forward. We need to look at our
problems, and then
fix them ourselves rather than submit to the text-book
writers
of the IMF."
The following day The Herald (18/10) carried a
commentary
criticising ESAP as being a neo-colonialist weapon in the hands
of
Western countries to keep Zimbabwe underdeveloped. The same
edition
carried a simplistic analysis of ESAP, saying: "On the
whole, the programme
has been a disaster that brought more
suffering to the people." But it
didn't analyse whether this was
actually true compared to the previous
decade of commandist
economic policies, or why ESAP had failed, beyond
sourcing a
comment from economist John Robertson, who claimed the
government had failed ESAP because it did not stick to the terms
it had
agreed with the IMF.
The story sought a semblance of balance by reporting
ZANU PF
businessman Phillip Chiyangwa dismissing Robertson's criticism
as "rhetoric" and expressing his dismay "at how manufacturers
and
retailers had teamed up with financial institutions to
continuously and
unjustifiably increase prices.
"No wonder (the) pricing of goods has now
become a serious
political issue." Chiyangwa was quoted as saying.
The
next day, The Herald (19/10) reported that government was
establishing a
panel of experts to chart a new economic policy to
replace the IMF's
reforms, but made no mention of Zimprest, the
country's "indigenised"
version of ESAP, and the Millennium
Recovery Programme that was supposed to
replace it.
The story also dwelt at length on ESAP's faults, quoting
"economic analysts" as saying the policy had major structural
defects
".which made it least susceptible to market dynamics
because it is dominated
by oligopolies."
It quoted unnamed sources saying: "What is needed.is to
bring
indigenous people into the mainstream economy through
empowerment." But the article didn't ask what had happened to
the
government's affirmative action policies. The only named
commentator was
Information Minister Jonathan Moyo, who
misinformed The Herald's readers
when he said: "The Labour
Party is introducing socialism in Britain. If it
is good for them,
why is it bad for us?"
Moyo appeared again in The
Sunday Mail (21/10) justifying the
dumping of ESAP.
The private press
blamed government's "half-hearted" commitment
to ESAP and chaotic economic
policies for the failure of market
reforms and linked these to the ruling
party's political imperative to
stay in power. Price controls were an
admission of failure, they
claimed, that would accelerate Zimbabwe's
economic decline.
But while The Herald and The Chronicle (16/10) led with the
President's Heroes Acre speech under the headline, ESAP
dumped, The
Daily News only referred to his comments in the
course of reporting
criticism of the President by the family of the
hero being buried for using
the occasion for political gain. However,
an editorial in the same edition
criticized the government and ZANU
PF for ". experimenting with the running
of this country". It
dismissed price controls as a political gimmick and
accused the
government of being the architect of Zimbabwe's
misfortunes.
The lead story in The Daily News the following day (17/10),
Hundreds laid off as bread war continues, extensively quoted
industry
sources in its report on the consequences of controlling
the price of
bread.
The Financial Gazette's front-page comment (18/10) criticized
Mugabe for plunging Zimbabwe ".back into the lost decade of
his
command-style economics of 1980-1990, dramatically
reversing market reforms
which promised to heal and lift a
shattered land". The comment stated that
the reforms could have
succeeded, but failed because of their half-hearted
implementation,
and that scrapping them now was part of a campaign in
support of
Mugabe's effort to hang on to power. In a news analysis story
headlined, "Price controls ploy set to backfire", The Financial
Gazette
reported that Mugabe had "cunningly re-introduced
price controls in a
last-ditch effort to split and throw into
disarray the opposition's urban
stronghold ahead of next
year's presidential ballot ." To support this, the
article quoted
an array of analysts.
In similar vein, The Zimbabwe
Independent comment (19/10)
complained that government ". is determined to
inflict policies
that are causing hardship and even starvation in order to
spite
the opposition and punish perceived critics".
The comment noted
that: " ZANU supporters have been burning
crops across the country. But they
are unable to see - or
choose to ignore - the connection between wheat
destruction
and increases in bread prices."
Food shortages and famine
was a theme the private Press also
highlighted during the week. The Daily
News (15/10) quoted
bewildering statistics by its own reporter and the
Famine Early
Warning System Network which also said the country needed to
import hundreds of thousands of tonnes of grain to avert serious
food
shortages. The paper followed up the story the next day with a
report from
the SADC Early Warning System also predicting
massive food shortages. But
the paper didn't make it clear whether
this was an entirely separate report.
The daily then carried a report
about the World Food Programme assessing
Zimbabwe's food
security (17/10), which also quoted the SADC report again
saying
the government had set up a Disaster Recovery Measures
programme
which included $15 billion for its Agricultural Inputs
Support programme.
The Herald (18/10) reported that $6.5 billion of
this would be released to
help thousands of resettled farmers. But
nowhere did it mention that it was
part of a disaster recovery
programme. The story merely gave the impression
that government
was fully supporting its resettlement
exercise.
Ironically, The Daily News' initial story reported the Famine Early
Warning System Network as corroborating a later Herald story
(18/10)
that some commercial farmers were withholding some of
their grain stocks in
the hope of getting better prices. But the
Herald's story claimed other
reasons for the farmers' action without
providing any evidence: "Fears
abound that farmers want to
create social discontent against the government
by creating
false shortages." the paper stated.
In its efforts to justify
price controls, ZTV (16/10, 8pm) enlisted
CZI's Jacob Dube to help balance
an interview with government's
National Economic Consultative Forum
spokesperson, Nhlanhla
Masuku posing as "an economic commentator". But
newsreader
Obriel Mpofu repeatedly interrupted Dube's efforts to explain
what
might have been an informative comment on the costs involved in
producing bread. Mpofu cut him short before Dube could make
sense of the
figures he was providing and switched to Masuku, who
evaded the questions he
was asked and waffled on in support of
price controls for two minutes
thirty- three seconds without being
asked to clarify his vague
assertions.
To its credit though, ZBC did provide its audiences with a chance
to hear the unfettered views of the business community during its
television current affairs programmes, Issues and Views (19/10,
6.15pm),
Insight (21/10, 7.20pm) and the Kingdom Financial
Holdings-sponsored
programme, Making Money Make Sense (ZTV,
21/10, 9pm). However, all three
programmes relied entirely on CZI
officials to explain why retailers were
not happy with price controls.
The comments of other organizations
representative of the
business community, such as the ZNCC, or even
representatives of
companies affected by price controls, were missing. In
all three
programmes CZI officials highlighted the fact that business would
make losses on bread if they were to implement the gazetted
prices. It
was in Issues and Views that viewers finally got an
informative breakdown of
the costs of producing bread, courtesy of
CZI vice-president Anthony
Mandiwanza.
The production costs of other controlled commodities, however,
have not received the same attention.
2. LAND AND
ABUJA
ZANU PF officials continued to use the government-controlled
media as a platform to threaten white commercial farmers and
accuse them
of misinforming the public and the international
community about the
situation on the ground in order to derail the
Abuja Agreement. The initial
warning to commercial farmers was
issued by President Mugabe (Radio 1/3, 1pm
& ZTV, 8pm 15/10)
who stated that " no amount of misinformation will put
us off
course." This reappeared buried in Zimpapers' reports of the
President's Heroes' Acre speech the next day. And when the
Commercial
Farmers' Union issued a gloomy situation report of
ongoing farm violence and
new invasions Minister of Agriculture,
Joseph Made, launched into a scathing
attack on the farmers in an
interview with ZTV (19/10, 8pm). Made, who was
accorded about
five minutes, said: ".They (the farmers) are now irrelevant
to
our society, they continue to cause despondency and (it's)
time for
them to pack their bags, they must go. We will take
the production into our
own hands". The CFU was not
accessed for comment, even though the news item
was based
entirely on the CFU report that was not itself, reported in the
state
media. The Herald (20/10) echoed these sentiments in its crude
editorial headlined, Kick out stubborn farmers.
In a subsequent report
ZBC (radio & ZTV, 20/10, 8pm) Made was
also quoted repeating his earlier
statement that claims by the CFU
of fresh farm invasions were a ploy to give
the wrong impression to
the visiting Commonwealth ministers. As has become
the norm,
police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena was quoted corroborating
Made's allegation that there had been no fresh farm invasions. But
again
the CFU was not accessed for comment, even though the
report was voiced over
the press conference in which the CFU
presented the figures of new
invasions.
In support of Made's tirade, ZTV (21/10, 8pm) quoted 'ordinary
people' in Bindura saying whites were sabotaging the Abuja
Agreement
because they didn't want to share land with black
Zimbabweans. However, the
political affiliation of the 'ordinary
people' quoted came under suspicion
since they appeared to be
part of the crowd that had gathered for a ZANU PF
rally in Bindura.
One of them, Temba Mapuranga echoed President Mugabe's
comments after the signing of the Abuja accord when he said:
"They
(white farmers) would want to sabotage the agreement
because.ZANU PF and
government have supported
Abuja.But the Abuja agreement is there to support
the
whites. In fact it's the whites who need the resources so that
they
are compensated for the land they bought."
Mapuranga's observation that farms
had actually been bought was
never questioned by ZTV and must have
astonished viewers who
have been made to believe the false notion created by
government
and its media that all the land currently owned by whites was
forcefully taken from blacks.
Foreign Affairs minister, Stan Mudenge,
summed up government's
continued anti-Britain propaganda when he was
reported on
television and radio (20/10, 8pm) as saying that Britain should
stop
meddling in the affairs of Zimbabwe if Abuja was to work,
buttressing the impression given by Zimpapers the same morning
that
Britain was responsible for undermining the agreement.
The private and
government-owned press, especially the weeklies,
devoted considerable space
to examining conditions affecting the
Abuja Agreement ahead of a
fact-finding visit by the
Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) to
review
progress on its implementation.
Both sectors expressed
reservations about the agreement's
chances of success, but differed
radically in their reasons for their
doubt.
The public media blamed the
British - without supporting evidence -
for delaying in the implementation
of their part of the deal, while the
private press continued to cite the
on-going anarchy on farms, for
example, as the ultimate undoing of the
agreement.
The Zimbabwe Independent (19/10) set the tone of what was at
stake with its lead story, Donors, govt in new clash, which claimed
that
the UNDP "had again proposed an alternative approach
which in effect
requires Harare to drop the internationally
condemned fast-track
policy".
UNDP administrator Mark Malloch Brown was quoted confirming
having written to government "laying out international
expectations
before multilateral donors will fund the land
reform programme" and to which
"the (Zimbabwean)
government did not answer all issues raised in the
letter".
He also admitted asking government to allow the UNDP to send
another technical team to assess the fast-track exercise.
Said the paper:
"The move is thought necessary as an air of
mistrust between Harare and
London has started to build up
again with Zimbabwe saying Britain is not
moving to
implement the Abuja Agreement.
The UNDP however says the
successful implementation of the
agreement hinges on the willingness of
Zimbabwe to be
flexible and accept recommendations from the international
community."
However, The Sunday Mail (21/10) interpreted the same
development differently. In UNDP committed to speedy
implementation of
Abuja Accord, the paper said the UN agency
"does not have any problems with
the way Zimbabwe has
been implementing its land reform programme".
No
facts were presented to support this except for a vague
reference that it
"has emerged that the Zimbabwe Government
has maintained constant dialogue
with the UNDP" through a
letter Brown wrote to government and a meeting he
held with
Zimbabwe's Ambassador to the United Nations, Tichaona
Jokonya.
Brown was not accessed for comment to support this suggestion.
Rather, the paper merely quoted an unnamed government
spokesman saying:
"Zimbabwe had complied with all the
provisions of the agreemnent." The only
problems, said the
spokesman, were "some incidents where commercial farmers
had provoked resettled farmers, who are protected by the
Rural Land
Occupiers and Protection from Eviction Act."
The Standard (21/10), Mugabe
back in the frying pan, did not
share The Sunday Mail's optimism.
The
story, basically an announcement of the pending visit by the
CMAG
delegation, quotes an unnamed diplomatic source as
saying the Commonwealth
was already convinced that government
had failed to adhere to the agreement
and that their visit was
merely meant to make that position official.
In
its comment, Come Clean on Abuja agreement, The Sunday
Mail squarely blamed
Britain for the delayed implementation of the
Abuja Accord. The paper
accused Britain of "equivocating" over
the agreement and accused British
High Commissioner to
Zimbabwe, Brian Donnelly, of "pandering to the whims
of the
media and farming forces".
The UK must send correct signals,
carried in the same issue of
The Sunday Mail, merely restated the
recognition at Abuja that
land was at the core of the crisis in Zimbabwe,
but conveniently
failed to reconcile that with other equally crucial demands
such as
the need to restore the rule of law in the country.
However, the
paper did allow Donnelly the chance to reply to its
propaganda piece of the
previous week, Abuja: UK drags feet
(14/10).
The Zimbabwe Independent's
Abuja hangs on C'wealth team visit,
strengthened the idea that the success
of Abuja rested on the
"goodwill and the spirit of those that signed it".
This could only
be measured after CMAG's fact-finding mission.
Donelly is
quoted in the story: "The agreement is about the rule
of law and other
factors and the foreign ministers will tell that
once they have met all the
stakeholders on the land issue in
Zimbabwe."
3. POLITICAL
VIOLENCE
Reports of political violence declined significantly in the week
and
those that were covered ranged from one-off events to follow-ups of
previous cases and overviews of the situation in the rural areas.
One of
the six stories of political violence carried by The Daily
News (15/10)
reported that suspected war veterans had attacked
borehole drillers. The
following day (16/10), the paper reported that
a school in Gokwe had been
closed because of political violence.
Court cases involving alleged MDC
supporters also featured during
the week.
The Herald (17/10) reported
that suspected MDC supporters
attacked mourners at a funeral accusing the
bereaved of being
ZANU PF supporters.
The Daily News (18/10) reported
that the Attorney-General had
released four MDC supporters because of lack
of evidence. In the
same edition, the paper reported that the AG had also
ordered
investigations into the deaths of two MDC members.
The Financial
Gazette carried two stories: ZANU PF readies for
war, and a story under the
woefully slack headline, AG orders
probe into MDC men's deaths, the latter a
story about the murder
of two MDC activists - a man and a woman - who were
murdered
in Buhera by suspected ZANU PF and government functionaries
during last year's parliamentary election campaign.
The article entitled
"ZANU PF readies for war" alleges plans by
government to unleash violence
against its opponents during the
presidential election campaign.
Only one
incident of political violence was reported on ZBC (ZTV,
15/10, 7am). The
"public" broadcaster reported that ZANU PF and
MDC supporters clashed in
Kambuzuma, but only quoted two
ZANU PF officials. The report did not make
it to the main news
bulletins of the day. Radio (Radio 2/4, 18/10, 6am) only
picked up
the story when the police announced that 15 MDC supporters had
been arrested for starting the violence. Strangely, this piece of
news
never appeared on television.
4. PRICE CONTROLS DEBATE: SOME MISSING
EVIDENCE,
From a subscriber
Usually the Zim Media Monitoring Project
is balanced and even-
handed, and they offer tough, implicitly amusing
commentary on
the always-bizarre official press, and also tweak the
independent
press when necessary.
They are screwing up their analysis of
price controls coverage,
however.
The Herald did its spin-doctoring
of the ZCTU endorsement of price
controls, which MMPZ noticeably ignores in
its Update # 2001/41-
but that may have happened after this MMPZ issue went
to press.
Most importantly, there is a gut reaction against price
controls by
the independent media that relies on big business (or the MDC
neo-
liberal faction) for its analysis. Better would be for analysts to look
at the fine print in SA corporate news, where there's pretty open
admission of SA firms profiteering--"quite" nicely--in Zimbabwe.
Here's
Business Day's report late last week:
".In spite of the difficult trading
conditions, Barrett said that there
was no "financial risk on (the group's)
investment". Massmart did
not bring back the profit made by its Makro stores
to SA. He said
that Zimbabwe's shortage of foreign currency was the main
reason
for this. Ironically, the stores were quite profitable when measured
in Zimbabwean dollars. High inflation meant the stores
merchandise were
gaining value "by sitting on the shelf", Barrett
said.And when the goods sit
on the shelf, they get marked up
again and again..."
From MMPZ- We
appreciate your observations. MMPZ's reports
focus on the week covered,
although reference is made to stories
outside the week where this is
required.
We invite our subscribers to submit their observations on these
and other issues to MMPZ. Please keep your letters brief.
Ends
The
MEDIA UPDATE is produced and circulated by the Media
Monitorng Project
Zimbabwe, 15 Duthie Avenue, Alexandra Park,
Harare, Tel/fax: 263 4 703702,
E-mail:
monitors@mweb.co.zw
Previous MMPZ reports can be accessed at
http://www.icon.co.zw/mmpzSend all
comments and queries to the Project Coordinator.
Please feel free to
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