Speaking at a workshop on reporting on elections last week, Takaona, who is a former reporter and now sits on the Zimbabwe Media Commission, to name and shame those who will try to use violence to sway the vote.
Go after them, expose them and traumatise them,” Takaona told workshop participants. “There is a lot of hate speech, intrusion into privacy and grief. As a commission we find this earth shattering.”??
Both Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and President Robert Mugabe have called for elections next year to choose a new government to replace the uneasy coalition administration.
But there are growing fears that political violence resurgent in many parts of the country could worsen once a new vote is called, especially because the unity government has done little or nothing to achieve national healing and reconciliation or to reform the security forces blamed of masterminding violence in previous elections.
Meanwhile Afro Barometer says its field officers are being harassed by Zanu (PF) politicians and supporters following the release of results of survey that showed President Robert Mugabe trailing Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai in the popularity stakes.
Our findings have been challenged, mainly by supporters of the Zanu (PF) supporters and in certain areas they have tended to threaten our field workers, because there is suspicion that they are being sent by the opposition party,” said Afro Barometer Southern African Development Community region outreach manager Mxolisi Sibanyoni.??
Afro Barometer is an independent, non-partisan research instrument that measures the social, political and economic atmosphere in Africa.?? A recent poll by the Mass Public Opinion Institute showed that Tsvangirai was more popular and regarded as more trustworthy than Mugabe.
The Zimbabwean government has been very critical of the findings mainly because it records the views of the public. Like many governments when opinions do not favour the government, it tends to be critical and this has been the same situation here, he said.??
But a former researcher from the institute, Anyway Ndapwadza said the same political parties critical of the findings of the polls run by the Institute came back in private to demand the results.??
We see them knocking our doors asking for the full research results so that they go back and amend the anomalies we would have highlighted, despite disputing the results in public. They come and ask us where we are in terms of our political support and which areas are we needed most.”
Post published in: News