The ZIMBABWE Situation | Our
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An image from a recent video shows a building being
demolished by a bulldozer in Harare.
Photo: Solidarity Peace
Trust
But there is little happiness here. The tape is a traditional sign representing a loss in the family, and while hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans have lost their homes, few have lost a daughter.
Charmaine was two years old and inside the family home when the police came with their bulldozers and levelled the house.
All that is left is the foundations, a pile of rubble and a small dirt grave with a wooden cross and a girl's name scrawled on the back of a piece of scrap metal.
"The police came. They had been sent to destroy the house," said Herbert Nyika, Charmaine's father. "They knocked down the building, the walls; they smashed everything. This was when our child was trapped inside. She died there."
Her mother, Lavender, said: "I blame the government because it is they who instructed the police to do what they did. It is terrible. I have lost my daughter in such a strange way."
She added: "Of course they have managed to clean up the city but at the same time they have brought suffering to the people - property destruction, homelessness and now the death of a child."
The family is poor and their home was a small building in the back garden of a bigger house.
The Zimbabwean government has spent the past few years targeting white farmers, those with land and wealth; now it seems it is picking on the poor.
The Zimbabwean press yesterday admitted that two toddlers had died in the demolition drive - Charmaine, two, who died two weeks ago, and Terence Munyaka, 18 months, who died on Sunday from head injuries.
As outrage rose around the world, the Zimbabwean police called on its officers to exercise more care.
In London Jack Straw, Britain's Foreign Secretary, said on behalf of the G8 countries: "We call on the government of Zimbabwe to abide by the rule of law and respect human rights."
Every day in Harare, in Bulawayo, in the towns and cities of Zimbabwe, police in riot gear are systematically moving from suburb to suburb forcing people from their homes. Bulldozers with their buckets raised are silhouetted on the skyline.
The scale of the clearance is so great there is too much work for the police to do - they are now forcing the people to destroy their own homes, or charging them a fee for demolition.
On the roads are wheelbarrows piled high, trucks overloaded with cupboards, beds, mattresses - thousands and thousands of people making their way somewhere, but there is nowhere to go. Many are living in the open - their furniture arranged around them as if the walls were still there.
In Bulawayo, under the cover of darkness, a group of people huddled around a fire, a large pot of maize meal bubbling away on a wood stove. "They came to my home and they burned it down," one man said as he took his turn stirring the pot.
"They say they have a strategy, they say they are clearing up the towns," he says, confused as to why his home was destroyed, but too scared to speak against the government.
Old women, sick men and young mothers drag their mattresses inside the church hall, their few blankets all there is to keep away the bitterly cold African winter air.
The churches are full, their lavatories are overflowing, the people have nowhere else to go and so the government has created a solution.
Well over 2,000 people have been moved to Caledonia Farm, a resettlement camp outside Harare, with no clean water, sanitation or access to food.
The entrance was blocked by police. Intelligence agents mingled among the poor and the homeless. We crept in through the bush to catch a glimpse of the camp, knowing to be caught would mean a two-year prison sentence.
Again people had arranged their furniture around them, huddled together under plastic sheets and blankets. A desperate mass of humanity forced from their homes by the government.
Some say the reason is political retribution, to punish the urban electorate for voting for the opposition; others say it will scatter the angry and dispossessed before the seeds of revolution can be sown; and others look even further ahead and believe that forcing the people to rural poverty will make them dependent on the state for food and blankets and buy political patronage.
Either way hundreds of thousands of people are homeless, cold, destitute and desperate.
- Alastair Leithead is a BBC reporter based in southern Africa. His dispatch was broadcast on BBC 10 o'clock news on Thursday.
The Telegraph, London
Monday
June 13th – Sunday June 19th 2005
Weekly
Media Update 2005-22
1.
GENERAL COMMENT
3.
INFLATION AND ECONOMIC ISSUES
THE media’s failure to adequately inform the public about critical issues affecting their lives was demonstrated by their failure to report and explain the authorities’ six-month extension to the life of the government-appointed commission running the City of Harare.
Except
for The Herald (9/6), the rest of the media ignored the issue and the
Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA)’s court application seeking the
termination of the commission’s term to facilitate the holding of council
elections.
In its
application, CHRA argued that it was illegal for government to extend the
commission’s expired term because according to the Urban Councils Act, a
commission can only be in office for a maximum of six months. Thus, the Harare
council commission’s tenure should have expired on June 10.
But
instead of openly discussing the provisions of the Act and the legality of
government’s moves, The Herald sought to justify the reappointment of the
Harare Commissioners. It argued: “Although commissions are normally
appointed for a period of six months, government indicated at the beginning that
the commission would operate for 24 months, implying it would periodically renew
the commissions’ mandate”.
Without
viewing this as proof of the authorities’ blatant disregard for the law, the
paper then gave Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo acres of space to
further try and legitimise government’s actions. Chombo claimed that it was
“untenable to have elections” because former Harare mayor Elias
Mudzuri was contesting his dismissal, adding that government was happy with the
commission’s “turnaround strategy” for the city.
“We
cannot disturb the momentum. We also cannot disturb the clean-up campaign just
to satisfy the whims of a few people”, he
added.
Notably,
the private media’s failure to pick up the story and expose the authorities’
disrespect for laws that attempt to entrench democratic practice and the blatant
violation of the citizenry’s rights to choose leaders of their choice was
tantamount to abdicating their professional role as watchdogs of
government.
Meanwhile,
the Zimbabwe Independent (17/6) revealed that despite calls on the
government to repeal repressive laws, the authorities were actually considering
stiffer penalties for journalists and civilians who violate various sections of
the draconian Public Order and Security Act (POSA). According to the proposed
amendment, fines for those found guilty of breaching some clauses of POSA, which
currently range from $20 000 to $200 000, would be increased by between 400 and
800 percent.
The
government media ignored the matter.
THE
government’s continued clampdown on the urban poor under its Operation
Murambatsvina continued to dominate the media. The newspapers carried 59
stories on the matter, 31 of which appeared in the government-controlled Press
and 28 in the private Press. The electronic media carried 99 stories. Of these,
64 appeared on ZBH (ZTV (38), Power FM (13) and Radio Zimbabwe (13) while Studio
7 carried 35 stories.
Although
the stories generally pointed to a continuation of the severe social upheaval
resulting from the exercise, all the stories from the government media
unquestioningly endorsed it. Only private media reported on local and
international condemnation of the programme, and exposed the brutal and inhumane
nature of the “clearances”.
The
passive nature of the official media’s coverage was illustrated by the way in
which they only echoed or amplified government’s justification for the
‘clean-up’ by mainly depicting the authorities as working flat out to ensure
that no one was disadvantaged by the operation. This unquestioning approval of
the crackdown saw Power FM (13/6, 1pm), ZTV (13/6,6pm) and the Chronicle
(14/6) using officials from the Zimbabwe Institute of Regional and Urban
Planners (ZIRUP) and the Urban Councils’ Association of Zimbabwe (UCAZ) to
suffocate the real scale of the human suffering caused by Operation
Murambatsvina with fatuous comments.
For
example, ZTV merely quoted ZIRUP’s Percy Toriro urging “environmental
stakeholders to maintain the glow that has been awarded to cities by the
clean-up exercise” without linking it to the humanitarian misery it has
caused.
Similarly,
the Chronicle quoted UCAZ president Fani Phiri defending the denial of
shelter and “survival means” of the victims because the clampdown
was like a “bitter medicine that healed the
people”.
But it
was comment from Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri that best illustrated the
authorities’ contempt for the victims of Murambatsvina. He was quoted in
The Herald (16/6) describing them as the “crawling mass of
maggots” that were “bent on destroying the
economy”.
To
justify the government’s harsh execution of the clampdown, The Herald (15/6) handily used an
isolated incident in which “80 pigs and 120 goats” were discovered
in one of the ‘illegal’ houses in Harare during the operation
as
“testimony to the extent to which our cities had deteriorated”. In addition, the government-controlled papers
carried nine stories – exposing alleged black market dealings in gold, fuel and
several other commodities – as proof of the benefits of the crackdown.
The
official media also portrayed government as caring for the victims’ plight by
providing alternative accommodation. For example, ZTV (15/6,6pm) and Power FM
(16/6) quoted Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo announcing that 30 000
stands were “awaiting allocation to those without homes”, adding
that the names of the beneficiaries would be published in The Herald on
Friday (17/6).
The
Herald (17/6)
itself was unhelpful. It passively reported that government had named 4 470
people out of 20 477 who would be allocated housing stands at Whitecliff Farm
without questioning the criteria used to select the beneficiaries, or even
whether they had been victims of the evictions. Nor did it provide any
information about the stands except to say that the beneficiaries would only be
allowed to occupy them once “basic services are put in place and until
they are issued with a certificate of occupation”. The
Herald did not ask how long this might take or why the authorities had
not first serviced the stands and allowed the beneficiaries to build homes
before flattening their existing dwellings.
ZTV
(15/6, 8pm) and the Chronicle (18/6) also steered clear of asking
pertinent questions.
Only the
private Press reported estimates of between 200,000 and a million people who had
lost their homes as a result of the clearances. Studio 7 (14/6) and The
Financial Gazette (16/6) however, also quoted Information Minister Tichaona
Jokonya disputing these figures. The Gazette quoted him as having said
there “were much less than 20,000” affected.
The
official media’s uncritical nature was illustrated by their reliance on the
authorities and pro-government commentators at the expense of other pertinent
sources. See Fig 1.
Fig. 1
Voice distribution in the public Press
Alternative |
Govt. |
Ordinary
People |
Police |
Local
govt. |
Business |
Unnamed |
2 |
8 |
14 |
15 |
7 |
1 |
4 |
All 51
sources quoted by the official Press endorsed the operation. In addition, they
carried five editorials and opinion pieces that also approved government’s
action.
Similarly
ZBH relied more on government/officials as their primary sources of news,
quoting them 41 times, with only two from ordinary people.
However,
except for The Daily Mirror’s comment (17/6) supporting Operation
Murambatsvina and calling on government to extend it to illegal gold
panners, the rest of the 62 stories the private media carried continued to
expose the human suffering caused by the exercise. They also carried local and
international criticism from Australia, the US, the United Nations, European
Union, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR), health experts and church
leaders.
The
Standard
(19/6) also revealed that even some senior members of ZANU PF had reservations
about the operation. The
government media dodged these developments by maintaining its one-sided positive
portrayal of Murambatsvina.
For
example, ZTV (18/6,8pm) and Power FM (19/6, 6pm) announced that “efforts
to transform Caledonia Farm into a planned, structured and well organized
transit camp are now at an advanced stage” without comparing how this
squared with Chombo’s earlier comments on ZTV (16/6, 6pm) that the exercise had
been “conceived and planned by government” after “elaborate
consultation” and “not initiated on the spur of the
moment”.
Neither
did the station (16/6, 8pm) question why government was only now setting up
“committees to systematically execute resources to people affected by the
clean-up exercise”.
Instead,
Power FM and ZTV (18/06,8pm) reported on families at Caledonia Farm now having
access to “clean water, better shelter and hygienic
conditions…”
ZTV
showed footage of the farm, where 13 small tents had been put up, with six big
ones still to be erected. A police officer was quoted saying the people there
were happy. None of the “residents” was interviewed to comment on conditions at
the farm.
The
official media ignored the public outcry arising from the purge. For example it
was silent on the outbreak of riots in Bulawayo’s Makokoba suburb and the
lawsuit brought against Chihuri by informal traders in Bulawayo “over the
confiscation of their merchandise” as reported by Studio 7 (14/6 &
16/6) and the Independent.
In
addition, the Independent
revealed that government had barred humanitarian groups from assisting thousands
of families who were affected by the exercise because they feared that donors’
intervention would be an acknowledgment of the humanitarian crisis the operation
has caused.
The
critical manner in which the private Press handled the operation was reflected
in their more diverse sourcing pattern as shown in Figs 3 and 4.
Voice |
Total
|
Government |
5 |
MDC |
4 |
Police |
7 |
Local
government |
1 |
Alternative |
13 |
Lawyer
|
1 |
Business |
1 |
Foreign |
3 |
Ordinary
people |
16 |
Unnamed |
3 |
Station |
Government |
ZRP |
ZANU
PF |
MDC |
Reporter |
Ordinary
People |
Studio
7 |
4 |
1 |
0 |
6 |
6 |
22 |
The
private papers also carried four editorials and opinion pieces critical of the
exercise.
3. Inflation and economic issues
THE
official media’s preoccupation with portraying government in a good light was
not confined to Operation Murambatsvina as symptoms of further economic
decline did not get due prominence in the 42 stories that they carried on the
matter (ZBH 27 and government papers 15).
These
media’s reluctance to fully discuss the causes of the continued economic
meltdown was reflected by the manner in which their stories glossed over
Zimbabwe’s highly inflationary environment characterised by crippling fuel
shortages.
For
instance, the government Press – which carried seven stories on these issues –
failed to view these problems as indicative of the general economic decline as
illustrated by The Herald and Chronicle (15/6), which simply
attributed the rise in inflation from 129,1% in April to 144,4% in May to “surprise price increases effected by
retailers and manufacturers in the post-election period”.
In fact,
The Herald (16/6) even saw conspiracies behind the rise in inflation,
opining that it was a consequence of “the haphazard price increases by
retailers and manufacturers”, driven by other “motives”
aimed at “derailing the economic turnaround programme”.
To
reinforce the notion that commodity shortages were artificial, the
Chronicle (14/6) gave the impression that the on-going
Murambatsvina had resulted in most basic commodities emerging on
supermarket shelves “as people operating the black market turn away from
illegal dealings”.
While
ZIMPAPERS blamed the commodity price increases on the alleged machinations of
the business community, they justified the hike in the selling price of their
newspapers saying this was due to the increase in “production costs and
raw materials”.
ZBH did
no fare any better. ZTV (14/6,8pm) also announced the increase in inflation that
the Central Statistics Office attributed “to the rise in food
prices”, but carried no analysis on the development or reasons for the
hikes as is its custom when the rate of inflation falls. Rather, Power FM and
Radio Zimbabwe (17/6, 1pm) merely reported the RBZ governor’s assurance that
“Zimbabweans have been assured that the recent rise in inflation will be
arrested by year end.”
It was
not clear how the governor would do this.
The
official media’s superficial handling of the topic also manifested itself in the
way they largely paid lip service to the scale of fuel shortages. The closest
The Herald (18/6) came to addressing the matter was when it
unquestioningly reported Energy Minister Mike Nyambuya saying his ministry would
present to Parliament the Petroleum Bill, which is meant to regulate the oil
industry, as part of government’s short-term measures aimed at ensuring adequate
fuel supplies.
There
was no detail about the Bill or exactly how it would resolve the
crisis.
Further,
despite revealing that the shortage was partly due to the rise in international
oil prices, which had resulted in the country “receiving less fuel than it
used to buy”, the paper failed to challenge the authorities on why they
had not adjusted their pricing too.
Rather,
the paper drifted into its typical blame-game and seemed to attribute the
shortages to the “fuel industry” that was diverting “the
product onto the parallel market”.
This
vague and intimidating reporting reflected comments from Energy and Power
Development Minister Mike Nyambuya who declared that “his ministry and law
enforcement agents will intensify monitoring and inspection of the fuel supply
system to ensure equitable distribution…”(ZTV, 17/6,8pm; Power FM and
Radio Zimbabwe, 18/6,1pm).
The
report did not question how much fuel government was importing, if any.
The
official media’s professional ineptitude in handling the topic was illustrated
by their reliance on official comment as shown on Fig 4.
Fig. 4
Public Press voice distribution
Alternative |
Govt. |
Ordinary
people |
Police |
Professional |
Business |
Unnamed |
Lawyer/Judiciary |
2 |
10 |
1 |
3 |
1 |
3 |
2 |
1 |
Notably,
alternative and business voices that were quoted echoed official views. The
papers also carried four editorials that approved of government’s economic
policies.
In
contrast, the private Press was analytical in its 23 stories on inflation, price
increases and other economic issues although Studio 7 inexplicably ignored these
issues altogether. For instance, The
Standard, which related the
increase in inflation to the country’s poor economic performance, quoted
analysts as having said the recent hike in inflation had sounded a “death knell” to government’s
economic turnaround efforts.
The
paper quoted economist Tony Hawkins actually projecting a further increase in
inflation saying the imminent hikes in electricity tariffs and fuel prices will
“fuel the rampaging inflation scourge”.
The
paper also claimed that the country’s economic woes were set to worsen following
the printing of money by government to “finance an overshooting Budget
deficit after failing to extract about $6 trillion dollars from local credit
markets”.
The
report was part of the 11 stories that the private papers carried on commodity
shortages and price increases, all attributed to government’s failed economic
policies.
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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