WN CORRESPONDENT
HARARE – A major new feature of reportage by the state-run media is to portray Zanu (PF) plans to extend Robert Mugabe’s tenure to 2010 as an innocent mechanism to save funding separate parliamentary and presidential polls – rather than something that will prolong Zimbabwe’s isolation and its people’s suffering.
Only the private media exposed the dire implications of prolonging the ageing autocrat’s hold on power.
The Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ), in its report for the week December 4-10, said the private media mainly interpreted the proposal as an indication of widening differences in the ruling party ahead of the Zanu (PF)’s annual conference, and also linked these differences to tussles over who gets to be Mugabe’s successor.
The private media, reporting on the continuing scramble for the presidency, mentioned party heavyweights John Nkomo, Joice Mujuru, Emmerson Mnangagwa and Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono, said MMPZ.
However, New Zimbabwe.com reported Gono excluding himself; the Financial Gazette revealed that Mnangagwa wanted to sue Nkomo for defamation for saying he was involved in a 2004 plot to get rid of Mugabe and other senior party officials.
The Zimbabwe Independent revealed that while other Zanu (PF) members were advocating ‘harmonisation’ of elections, party secretary Didymus Mutasa went even further, urging an indefinite term for the octogenarian.
The paper reported Mutasa as having told an online agency that there was a realistic chance that ‘someone among the (conference) delegates or one of the provinces could up with a proposal that should make him president-for-life and … the party’s presidential candidate until Amen’. However, Mutasa denied to the paper that he made such comments.
The Standard, getting to the heart of the matter over the so-called ‘harmonisation’, reported observers noting that a prolonged term for Mugabe ‘would only serve to prolong the standoff with the international community’ and ‘result in the further impoverishment of the people of Zimbabwe’.
Naturally, the state-run mouthpieces glossed over all this.
“For example, ZBC’s morning bulletins (8/12) simply reported the ‘harmonization’ campaign as a spontaneous development emanating from Zanu (PF)’s annual provincial meetings,” said MMPZ. “Although the official papers gave greater attention to the subject, their reports were equally piecemeal and barely assessed the likely impact of the planned postponement of elections.”
The Herald interviewed Zanu (PF) spokesman Nathan Shamuyarira and allowed him to get away with simply justifying synchronised elections as the ‘best way to run our parliamentary system’. He was not asked why the process should be delayed until 2010.
Reflecting the regime’s determination to maintain its stranglehold on the free flow of information, SW Radio Africa reported that security agents were confiscating radios from rural people. The sets had been donated by a civic body, Radio Communications Project, to enable rural communities to access independent news broadcasts.
Another independent radio station, Studio 7, reported Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe leader Raymond Majongwe saying that security agents had confiscated radio sets from teachers in the Midlands province.
“Such crudely authoritarian measures expose the authorities’ fear of free expression and their evident attempts to condemn Zimbabweans to ignorance about important issues affecting their lives,” MMPZ said.
News headlines via SMS
BY GERRY JACKSON
SW Radio Africa has just added a new service to the range of information options that it offers – news headlines, via SMS, into Zimbabwe on a daily basis.
The station began offering the free service on 8 December and already nearly 4,000 people are receiving daily news. On average we are receiving 50 new requests a day from people who would also like to subscribe.
At the moment we’ve had to limit the service to mobile-phone users in Zimbabwe, although we realise that many of the four million exiles in the diaspora would also like to be updated about news from home. If costs allow we’ll certainly expand the service as soon as we can.
The response has been overwhelmingly positive and feedback indicates that Zimbabweans are thrilled to have daily news delivered direct to their phones.
The radio station has been broadcasting into Zimbabwe on shortwave for the past five years, from the UK. Zimbabweans in the diaspora can listen to the programming via our website.
Stopped from broadcasting in Harare, we had no choice but to set up offshore. But last year the government began doing everything it could to stop people back home listening to the station. With Chinese help and equipment, they began jamming broadcasts in advance of Operation Murambatsvina. There are many areas in the country that are outside the ‘footprint’ of the jammers who can still hear us clearly and those with computers can still listen to us online.
But as the government continues to make it so difficult for Zimbabweans to receive independent news and information, we thought it was about time we tried other options – with the firm belief that our country’s crisis cannot be resolved without informed and open debate and discussion, and a free media.
We’re also looking at podcasting, having recently experimented with this increasingly popular format. It allows listeners to download a soundfile of a radio programme to their computer or MP3 player – then they can listen at a time most suitable to them. The lack of internet broadband in Zimbabwe will make podcasting more suitable for the diaspora, than for Zimbabweans at home.
If anyone would like to receive the free SMS news headline service please email talk@swradioafrica.com and we’ll happily add you to our list. But don’t forget that for now we can only offer this service to mobile users in Zimbabwe – so if you live in the diaspora but have friends or family back home, send us their numbers.
□ SW Radio Africa broadcasts into the Southern African region and Zimbabwe 7-9pm every evening SW 4880kHz and online 24 hours a day at www.swradioafrica.com. Gerry Jackson is the Station Manager.