In the rush before elections on 29 March 2008 in Zimbabwe the presidential candidates, along with senators, house of assembly representatives and town councillors, are making their last campaigning efforts. However, the Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ) has indicated that the people of Zimbabwe may only see glimpses of what the oppositional candidates are doing in their run for office.
Incumbent President Mugabe, 84, is running for his sixth term in office. Up against him is Simba Makoni, a former ruling party loyalist and finance minister, and Morgan Tsvangirai, the head of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
As Mugabe has been in office since the 1980s the country is well aware of who he is and how he has run the country. Nevertheless, Mugabe's relentless campaign and strong influence on the media has led him to be in the media spotlight. According to the MMPZ, a confluence of biased and one-sided state run media and constraints on the independent media are the culprits of this seemingly one man's show.
The MMPZ has well documented that coverage of the elections on the state media, including the national TV station the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC), is heavily biased, leading to a severely uneven playing field. In the MMPZ report on the week of 3-9 March they found that the ZBC had 148 positive reports on ZANU-PF (Mugabe's party) contrary to 19 for all opposition parties. In terms of air time this translates to 1 hour 9 minutes for Mugabe and his co-runners and 17 minutes for all others running.
These discrepancies follow new rules for better and fairer coverage of politics that were introduced on 7 March 2008 . According to the new electoral rules, “[the Zimbabwe Election Commission] (ZEC) is mandated to monitor the media's election coverage to ensure fair and equitable publicity to contesting parties as stipulated under domestic and regional guidelines.” ZEC deputy chairman Joyce Kazembe relayed to several media institutions that the laws were created with the intent of pre-emptively ensuring a “violent-free event.”
Though, the MMPZ inferred that while the new rules slightly widened the playing field they did not have enough clout in changing the type of exposure broadcasted on each candidate. Continuing after the new rules, the MMPZ noted to Reporters Without Borders (RSF) that coverage on Makoni has been clouded with references to his opposition of the ZANU-PF and accused “betrayal” of the ruling party.
Alongside state administered ruling party propaganda, RSF reports that the independent media in Zimbabwe has been stifled with repression and surveillance. RSF suggested that authorities in Zimbabwe “not content with draconian legislation, [the authorities] have ensured that a climate of suspicion and fear of arrest prevails among Zimbabwean and foreign journalists.”
In particular, the murder of freelance cameraman Edward Chikomba on 31 March 2007 and the still closed privately-owned Daily News (it was forced to shut down in 2003 after its printing press was bombed and they were faced with prosecutions) continues to loom over journalists and private media houses. Accreditation and registration fees pose more obstacles. The MMPZ referred to a new set of registration fees that journalists would have to pay in order to cover the elections.
The government has also blacklisted a handful of journalists. RSF reported that in September 2007 the Zimbabwean press published what appeared to the first page of an intelligence service memo that listed at least 15 independent news media journalists who were to be subject to “strict surveillance,” arrest and other unspecified “measures” during the pre-election period.
In this context, a debate on whether the country is ready for the upcoming elections has emerged. On 21 March RSF urged the Southern African Development Community (SADC) observer mission to pay more attention to the government's unyielding control over the media. RSF stated to the SADC, “even if there is a logic to not confronting President Robert Mugabe and his government head on if you hope for change, you cannot act as if the conditions are in place for these elections to be free and fair.”
Culled from WAN's RAP 21
