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

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