Turmoil in the Postcolony: Post-Independence Electoral Violence in Zimbabwe and the Relevance of Peace Journalism

o Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

o NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.

o ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.

How to cite this thesis

Surname, Initial(s). (2012). Title of the thesis or dissertation (Doctoral Thesis / Master’s Dissertation). Johannesburg: University of Johannesburg. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/102000/0002 (Accessed: 22 August 2017). Turmoil in the Postcolony: Post-independence Electoral Violence in Zimbabwe and the Relevance of Peace Journalism.

Allen Munoriyarwa

215067501

Doctor of Philosophy

A Doctoral Thesis submitted to the Department of Journalism, Film and Television, School of Communication, Faculty of Humanities in fulfillment of the requirements for the award of:

PhD in Journalism

2019

Supervisors:

Professor Jane Duncan

Professor Pier Paolo Frassinelli

ABSTRACT Between the year 2000 and 2013, Zimbabwe held seven elections and two constitutional plebiscites. Many of these elections have been condemned by local and international observers as unfree and unfair because of election violence. In the post-2000 period, election violence has increased in both qualitative and quantitative terms as electoral contestations increased. Lives have been lost, political trust destroyed and citizens’ belief in the electoral system has, arguably, been shaken. On many occasions, the press has been fingered as failing to speak out against election violence by adopting alternative news reporting models like peace journalism. They have also been accused of failing to provide credible election news, enabling them to be objective, non-partisan conduits of election news in the country, and critics of the country’s election practices. Critics easily point at the ideological divide and subsequent polarisation of the press as the main cause of the press’ failure to be useful spaces of election information, and their subsequent failure to muster a unified voice against rampant election violence. This study is a qualitative research that explores press discourses of election violence in post-2000 Zimbabwe and the relevance of peace journalism. This study utilises qualitative framing analysis and CDA of news texts from The Sunday Mail and The Independent - to ascertain their alignment to peace journalism practices. In addition to textual analysis, the research utilises in-depth interviews with political reporters who covered election violence news for the two weeklies, to establish why news frames and discourses appear the way they are in both newspapers. The study observes that generally, there is no peace journalism practice in the two newspapers. Journalists expressed ignorance of the practice despite its obvious relevance to the Zimbabwean volatile electoral environment. I find that hate- spewing, racist, confrontational, polarising and divisive discourses on electoral violence make it difficult to understand the extent of election violence, its subsequent consequences and how, in the long term, it can be arrested. I argue that in some instances, the two newspapers went beyond reporting news on election violence to participating in election violence. I propose a peace journalism news reporting model that can be utilised by the press in case election violence arise again.

Key words: election violence, peace journalism, press, Zimbabwe, news

Declaration I Allen Munoriyarwa, declare that this thesis is my own original work. It is being submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Journalism at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. This work has not been, in substance, submitted previously nor concurrently, in candidature for any degree at any other University. ………………………………………. ………13…….day ……of…February……………., 2019

iii

Dedication

For Anesu

You pushed me to this

Acknowledgements

A study of this magnitude could not be completed without the contribution of many people. Countless people contributed to the completion of this thesis and I wish to acknowledge them all for their efforts.

First and foremost, I would like to express my profound gratitude to my two Supervisors, Professor Jane Duncan and Professor Pier Paolo Frassinelli. I am still surprised why the two never lost hope in me even when I felt like I wanted to quit. I am indeed grateful to both and I will forever be grateful to them. Throughout my study, I stood on the shoulders of these two academic giants.

I would like to thank the University of Johannesburg Research Council for the funding I received for this research. I am indeed grateful to the University. I could not have come to UJ if they had not supported my research.

I am grateful to Canon Collins Scholarship for awarding me a research grant to complete my research. I am also grateful to the Canon Collins for enabling me to connect with many scholars around the world who are interested in peace and journalism. I would also like to express my profound gratitude to my family – my mother, my brothers, sisters, all their children, to Vachihera - Netsai, little Nikita, Willy, Nyasha Marambi – You are a true family! Thank you for being there.

I will not forget my friends – Collen Chambwera, Mukanya, Dr Lyton Ncube, chizukuru, Dr Albert Chibuwe and Dr Mugari for the advice and insights. To my classmate, Kudakwashe Limited Keche, thank you very much. You are the reason why I could do my interviews. You are a special friend.

Refilwe and Tsholofelo, thanks for pushing me. Thank you also for reading my work. You are the best! Special thanks to Professor Dumisani Moyo, Professor Sarah Chiumbu and Professor Gilbert Thatayaone Motsaathebe. You always asked how this thesis was shaping up. Thank you Amy Maphagela for all the support. I cannot thank you enough. I will miss you!

Abbreviations

AMH Alpha Media Holdings

AU African Union

CCJP Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace

CDA. Critical Discourse Analysis

CIO Central Intelligence Agency

CPIA Centre for Peace Initiatives in Africa

ESAP. Economic Structural Adjustment Programme

EU European Union

MDC. Movement for Democratic Change

MISA Media Institute of Southern Africa

MMPZ Media Monitoring Programme of Zimbabwe

MPOIZ Mass Public Opinion Institute of Zimbabwe

SADC Southern Africa Development Community

UN United Nations

ZANU-PF. Zimbabwe African Union-Patriotic Front

ZEC Zimbabwe Election Commission

ZIMPAPERS Zimbabwe papers (Pvt) (Ltd)

ZNA Zimbabwe National Army

ZPP Zimbabwe Peace Project

ZRP Zimbabwe Republic Police

ZANU PF Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front

List of Figures

Figure 3:1. Galtung’s Peace Journalism Model…………………………Page 34

Figure 3: 2. Aslam’s Inverted Trident of Peace Journalism Model…… Page 37

Figure 6: 2. An Integrated Peace Journalism Model for Zimbabwe……Page 218

vii

List of tables

Table 6: 1. Axis, Actions and Deliverables of a new Peace Journalism model….. Page 215

viii

Table of Contents

Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. ii Declaration...... iii Dedication...... iv Acknowledgements...... v Abbreviations...... vi List of Figures...... vii List of Tables ...... viii Chapter 1: Preface………………………………………………………………………………………….1

1.1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………1

1.2. The research problem………………………………………………………………………………….2

1.3. Research objectives……………………………………………………………………………………3

1.4. Research questions…………………………………………………………………………………….4

1.5. Justification of the study………………………………………………………………………………4

1.6. Locating the study in peace and journalism discourses……………………………………………….5

1.7. Delimitations of the study…………………………………………………………………………….7

1.8. Limitations of the study………………………………………………………………………………8

1.9. Outline and structure of thesis………………………………………………………………………..9

Chapter 2: The political and press context of post-2000 Zimbabwe…………………………………….11

2.1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………….11

2.2. Zimbabwe’s election history: An overview…………………………………………………………11

2.3. Post – 2000 Zimbabwe: the rise of a labour-based opposition………………………………………12

2.4. Understanding election violence in Zimbabwe through Mamdani’s post-colonial perspective…….14

2.5. The press in post-2000 Zimbabwe: A chequered history of press-state relations……………………21

2.6. Explaining the press context using the Linear City Theory…………………………………………..23

2.7. Understanding Zimbabwe’s press context as a polarised pluralist model………………………….24

2.8. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………….28

Chapter 3: Literature review……………………………………………………………………………29

3.1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………….29

3.2. Defining the concept of peace journalism……………………………………………………………29

3.3. Features and premises of peace journalism…………………………………………………………..32

3.4. Existing models of peace journalism practice………………………………………………………35

3.5. Conceptualising peace journalism as a departure from normative journalism practices……………37

3.6. Conceptualising peace journalism as agenda setting ……………………………………………….45 3.7. Operationalising peace journalism practice…………………………………………………………50 3.8. Obstacles to peace journalism……………………………………………………………………….60 3. 9. Traditional news values as obstacles to peace journalism………………………………………….62

3.10. Criticisms of peace journalism……………………………………………………………………..65

3.11. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………….69 Chapter 4: Research methodology………………………………………………………………………..70

4.1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………….71

4.2. The interpretivist paradigm…………………………………………………………………………..71

4.3. The units of analysis………………………………………………………………………………….73

4.4. Purposive sampling ………………………………………………………………………………….74

4.5. Methods of data analysis…………………………………………………………………………….77

4.6. Qualitative framing analysis…………………………………………………………………………77

4.7. Critical discourse analysis (CDA)……………………………………………………………………79

4.8. Thematic analysis……………………………………………………………………………………..82

4.10. Interviewing journalists: the fieldwork experience………………………………………………….83

4.11. A community of bad memories: the emotional dimensions of interviewing journalists…………….83

4.12. Related experiences noted during the interviews…………………………………………………….86

4.13. Ethical considerations………………………………………………………………………………..87

4.14. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………...88 Chapter 5: The newsification of electoral violence in the press: competing frames and discourses………89

5.1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………….89

5.2. Demonising frames: press constructions of the “saintly us” and “devilish other”……………………90

5.3. The conflict frame in the construction of electoral violence news: from coverage of violence to participation in violence…………………………………………………………………………………102

5.4. Prevalence of the human interest frame in electoral violence news…………………………………112

5.5. The attribution of responsibility frame in election violence news……………………………………125

5.6. The “Zanufication” of electoral violence: the myths and metaphors of evil in election news discourses of The Independent………………………………………………………………………………………………….130

5.7. Press contestations on the prevalence of election violence ………………………………………….139

5.8. The deterioration of news discourses on electoral violence………………………………………….144

5.9. Some attempts at peace journalism: The case of The Independent …………………………………150

5.10. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………….154

Chapter 6: Obstacles to peace journalism practices in the coverage of electoral violence: journalists’ perspectives………………………………………………………………………………………………155

6.1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………….155

6.2. The meso-level obstacles to the practice of peace journalism………………………………………157

6.3. The disruptive and toxic influence of press ownership and market forces to the practice of peace journalism………………………………………………………………………………………………157

6.4. Newsroom structures and routines as obstacles to peace journalism………………………………166

6.5. The micro-level factors hindering the practice of peace journalism……………………………….172

6.6. In the grip of politics: “the personal is political”: journalists’ ideological predilections fail peace journalism practices……………………………………………………………………………………..172

6.7. Power, politics and performativity in the newsroom……………………………………………178

6.8. Lack of peace journalism education and training amongst journalists…………………………..182

6.9. Practising peace journalism in a polarised press environment: moving beyond the journalism of ventriloquism and the “Towers of Babel”…………………………………………………………….188

6.10. “The false idols of peace”: journalists’ perceptions of other players in election violence……….194

6.11. Rethinking peace journalism practices for the Zimbabwean press……………………………….198

6.12. The problems of existing peace journalism models………………………………………198

6.13. Towards an integrated peace journalism practice model for the Zimbabwe press………………..200

6.14. Key axis of a Zimbabwean peace journalism model……………………………………………..201

6.15. Axis 1: expanding news voices in electoral violence news coverage: towards a “blue-collar” approach to news sourcing and reporting………………………………………………………………………….201

6.16. Axis II: the peace journalism desk in the press newsrooms……………………………………….206

6.17. Axis III: provision of peace education for journalists……………………………………………209

6.18. Axis IV: harnessing the dormant potential of Zimbabwe’s community press for peace journalism………………………………………………………………………………………………211

6.19. Axis V: pushing back the negative influence of state control of the public press: reviving the Mass Media Trust……………………………………………………………………………………………213

6.20. Axis, action lines and expected outcomes of an integrated peace journalism model for the Zimbabwe press…………………………………………………………………………………………………….215

6.21. Strengthening the integrated peace journalism model …………………………………………..219

6.22. Conclusion……… ……………………………………………………………………………….220

Chapter 7: Conclusion: Rethinking election violence news coverage in post-2000 Zimbabwe……….221

7.1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………221

7.2. The “priestly” versus the “prophetic” press…………………………………………………………222

7.3. What Zimbabwe journalists need to un-learn………………………………………………………223

xii

7.4. Re-focusing election violence coverage: Towards a “public logic” in news coverage …………..223

7.5. Reporting election violence and the democratic accountability gap………………………………225

7.6. Recommendations…………………………………………………………………………………..230

7.7. Pathways for possible further research……………………………………………………………....232 References……………………………………………………………………………………………..…233

xiii

Chapter 1 Preface

“There is no higher ground from which to observe the world of violence with relative detachment”. (Robben and Nordstrom 1995: 5).

1.1. Introduction

This research is located at the intersection of electoral violence in postcolonial Zimbabwe and the emerging field of peace journalism inquiry and practice. It seeks to apply peace journalism to an analysis of the coverage of election violence news in two mainstream newspapers in Zimbabwe. Peace journalism is a solution-oriented type of journalism whose main ideal is to promote conflict resolution and peace through news reporting (Galtung 2000). The media, the world over, is central to processes of mediatisation – defined as a process in which the media shape and frame discussions of political communication in societies (Hjarvard 2011).

This thesis pursues three lines of enquiry. Firstly, using archived news texts, I seek to dissect the linguistic and discursive strategies used by two leading mainstream newspapers – The Sunday Mail and The Independent – and establish the extent to which they adopted tenets of peace journalism. Secondly, through semi-structured interviews with journalists, I seek to ascertain the factors that hinder peace journalism in the Zimbabwe mainstream press. In this respect, I seek to explore the extent to which operational pressures like editorial influence, financial pressures, proprietary and deadline pressures, and the actual dynamics of news production, like professional values, among other issues, have had a bearing on peace journalism practices. Thirdly, I propose a peace journalism model that can be harnessed to establish and consolidate peace journalism practices by dampening down tensions during violent elections in post-2000 Zimbabwe. The thesis is premised on the peace journalism theory (Galtung 2000; and Lynch and McGoldrick 2005). For data analysis, the thesis utilises Faircloghian (2005) critical discourse analysis (CDA) together with qualitative framing analysis (Entman 1993; Pan and Kosicki 1993; and D’Angelo 2010) and thematic analysis of interviews (Braun and Clarke 2006).

The study contributes to literature on election violence and peace journalism in three ways. Firstly, it builds on the existing peace journalism model by Galtung (2000), further supported by Lynch and McGoldrick (2005) and Aslam (2016), to generate a new model that suits a particular form of violence – electoral violence – in a particular context – Zimbabwe, where this form of violence is ubiquitous. Secondly, it tests existing peace journalism assumptions in dissimilar scenarios (violent elections as opposed to insurgent wars, civil wars and inter-state war where peace journalism models have largely been applied). Thirdly, it highlights the importance of peace journalism as a relevant intervention mechanism to influencing election information dissemination in violent- ridden election contexts like post-2000 Zimbabwe.

1.2. The research problem

On 22 January 2008, The Sunday Mail ran a headline story entitled, “ZANU PF has degrees in violence”. This was towards the March 29 elections in which Mugabe was defeated by his arch rival Morgan Tsvangirai in the first round of voting. In one of its editorials, the paper also declared, “The MDC-T and its candidate, are like snakes running out of the zoo… there is need to catch them, cut their heads off and burn them…’’ Its sister paper, The Herald, declared soon after the announcement of the rerun election date, on 29 April 2008, “ZANU PF youths and war veterans need no lessons on how to deal with MDC-T traitors… and the fact that the Army Commanders have made their voices count is instructive… it is time the guns count as we roll out the campaign…” Such news discourses show that the press helps other players like the army, police youth militias, that sit at the centre of election violence dogging Zimbabwe’s post-2000 elections, through its inflammatory, hate-spewing, divisive, polarising, and provocative language. The press is, therefore, not simply observing and recording elections and related electoral events as they unfold; it is helping fuel the election violence crisis by operating like “psychological warfare departments of the Zimbabwe crisis” (Mlambo 2005). The press can play a role in creating peaceful and non-violent elections. It can do so by adopting alternative news reporting approaches like peace journalism (Galtung 2000; Lynch and McGoldrick 2005; Mogekwu 2012; and Youngblood 2017). Peace journalism puts emphasis on conflict resolution through analysis of the underlying causes

2 of conflict, the use of alternative news sources, and the use of language that does not over-emphasise or play up the conflict (Galtung 2000; and Lynch and McGoldrick 2005). In order to achieve this, they need to use news discourses and frames that are not bellicose, inflammatory and violence-condoning (Youngblood 2017). The press cannot, therefore, pretend to maintain a detached position during moments of election (Robben and Nordstrom 1995).

I, therefore, want to explore whether the press in Zimbabwe can embrace peace journalism discourses in covering election violence. The press in Zimbabwe is, relative to radio and television, more plural and diverse. With over thirty newspapers in circulation, the press exerts a great deal of influence on public opinion building in the country. By so doing, the press can influence society to think more responsibly about the scourge of election violence. At the same time, I acknowledge the controversy surrounding the effects of the media on audiences (Klapper 1975; and Lazarsfeld 1984). It is now generally held that the press (and generally, the media), reinforce views rather than act as agents of change (McQuail 1998). With this mind, I seek to explore the extent of application and relevance of peace journalism frames and discourses during moments of election violence in Zimbabwe.

I hence, seek to achieve the following objectives and answer the following research questions:

1.3. Research objectives

 To establish whether or not The Sunday Mail’s and The Independent’s mediatisation of electoral violence promotes peace journalism practices and to ascertain the extent to which these practices were adopted in the context of recurring episodes of electoral violence in Zimbabwe’s political landscape.  To compare the frames and discourses associated with coverage of electoral violence and the journalistic rationale behind such frames in The Sunday Mail and The Independent newspapers.

 To propose a peace journalism model that can be used by Zimbabwe's press, either to strengthen existing peacebuilding initiatives or establish such initiatives during instances of electoral violence.

1.4. Research questions

 To what extent did The Sunday Mail’s and The Independent’s coverage of electoral violence between 2000 and 2013 display tenets of peace journalism?  In what ways did operational pressures within these two institutions – like journalists’ ideologies, history and other exigencies, etc. – enable or constrain the practice of peace journalism?  How far did the prevailing political environment impact on journalists’ production of news stories on electoral violence in The Independent and The Sunday Mail?  To what extent are existing models of peace journalism relevant to the Zimbabwean election violence contexts? 1.5. Justification of the study

This research seeks to contribute to an understanding of peace journalism in Zimbabwe by establishing a nexus between electoral violence and peace journalism which is mostly missing. This link is crucial in that it widens current debates and studies on violence from political and sociological realms to journalism. Furthermore, I seek to make a theoretical intervention by proposing a peace journalism framework which practising journalists can refer to in conflict situations in Zimbabwe. Galtung's (1997) model of peace journalism has been cited as the classic example (Fawcett 2005). However, I contend that changing journalism cultures and professional practices may mean that existing theoretical explanations like that of Galtung (1997) should be challenged. In new journalism environments, different press proprietary conditions, different political contexts, a new framework can be developed. I, therefore, break two new grounds. Firstly, I pioneer a new study that explores press coverage of electoral violence from a peace journalism dimension. Secondly, I propose a reporting model that can influence electoral conflict in contexts like Zimbabwe.

At a methodological level, I seek to present a new approach to the study of peace journalism which utilises media texts analysis, combined with in-depth interviews. The use of these methods is new in Zimbabwe and it will provide the research with an opportunity to orient to the perspectives of the journalism practitioners. This is important in that new insights can be drawn on peace journalism, rooted in the practical and professional experiences of the journalists themselves. Hence, the model proposed here is based on everyday realities of journalism practices, making it applicable to the Zimbabwean context. More so, applying a corpus-based CDA and news frame analysis will enable me to discover the ideational distinctions that go beyond the level of manifest content in the coverage of election violence. These ideational distinctions can be evaluated against existing peace journalism models.

The study makes a contribution to an ever-growing field of peace journalism in Zimbabwe. Mainstream journalism practices and academic research in Zimbabwe, are still to embrace peace journalism as both as professional training and as a scholarly undertaking. This is possibly because of the relative newness of peace journalism (Hackett 2006; and Lynch 2007). In Zimbabwe, there are a few works on peace journalism (Mare and Tsarwe 2018; Chari 2016; and Chuma 2017). This is despite electoral violence being at the centre of the Zimbabwean crisis, which has been intensively discussed in both the local and global media. Thus, a study of the press and electoral violence is justified.

1.6. Locating the study in peace and journalism discourses

This study is located within journalism studies, with particular reference to the mainstream press in Zimbabwe. Mandelzis (2007) has argued that the press has not adequately conceptualised the notion of “peace”. She further claims that in her studies of the Israeli news media, there is ample proof that “studies on press and peace discourses are exceedingly rare and peace itself is not strongly emphasised in the media'” (Mandelzis 2007: 88). This view is further buttressed by Groff and Smoker (2002) who note that the term “peace”, while increasingly popular in political and UN discourses, has not been equally popular in other settings like in journalism practices. Peace journalism still sits at the periphery of mainstream media practices and research.

It is this lack of a wider perspective on peace that explains the scarcity of literature on peace on the one hand and journalism on the other. Bratic and Schirch (2008: 112) say that the theoretical argument for the press' impact on peace (and peace journalism practices) is “underdeveloped, practical projects in this regard are vastly scattered, and a systematic analysis of the practice is missing”. Two main reasons have frequently been averred as the causes of this dearth of press and peace journalism discourses compared to other discussions. Firstly, as Bratic and Schirch (2008) have pointed out, whenever debates on media, press and peace journalism are opened up, they tend to reiterate the press's social responsibility model – that the press ought to serve society, and are supposed pursue profit in a natural process believed to support democracy (Siebert 1956; and Schudson 2002).

Consequently, this has a tendency of diluting and diverting the discussion to emphasise the universal and philosophical nature of the social responsibility role of the press, eclipsing its role as peace builder. Secondly, Hawkins (2011) has argued that this debate of the press and peace journalism practices is easily defeated as it does not sit well in juxtaposition with the press's profit needs. Most of the mainstream press are profit- oriented entities and whatever role they play for society, should ultimately take into consideration, their profit-generating considerations (Baker 2004). Thus, the business of constructing news in the mainstream press is not in sync with the practices of peace journalism because violence sells more than peace (Wolfsfeld 2008). Wolfsfeld et al., (2008:45) summed up the argument thus, “A successful peace process requires patience, and the media demands immediacy. Peace is most likely to develop within a calm environment, and the media have an obsessive interest in threats and violence. Peacebuilding is a complicated process and the news media deal with simple events.” The “thrill” and drama created by violence rarely exist in peace processes. Peace news sometimes provide ‘'fascinating news and ceremonies'' (Mandelzis 2007:109). However, conflict makes a lot of news and conflict news sell more than peace news (Wolfsfeld 2008; and Keeble 2010). It is encouraging to note that recently, as from the turn of this century, scholarship on peace journalism is gradually increasing. There is growing number of academic researches that situates violence and peace has begun to be churned out and

6 research centres that study peace journalism and violence are sprouting, for example in Asia, Australia and the United States of America (USA).

1.7. Delimitations of the study

This study is only limited to exploring press coverage of electoral violence through a peace journalism lens. For feasibility purposes, it is only limited to two weekly newspapers – The Sunday Mail and The Independent – based in Harare, in a country with about thirty- two papers spread across the length and breadth of the country.

Both weeklies have the highest readership figures in the country (ZAMPS 2014). The Independent's readership figure stands at fifty-five thousand copies a week, while The Sunday Mail’s figure stands at sixty thousand copies a week (ZAMPS, February 2014). The high circulation figures is testimony that The Independent has considerable influence in politics compared to other private newspapers in the country (MMPZ, 2014). On the other hand, The Sunday Mail is an official paper carrying government communications, articulating government policies and intentions as well as official views on fundamental political, social and economic issues (Mukasa, 2011). Both newspapers have developed distribution networks that extend into Zimbabwe's rural areas, which mean that their circulation is wider than other urban-based papers, including dailies. Zimpapers, a publicly owned company, is the single shareholder of The Sunday Mail, while Alpha Media, a private corporation, is the sole shareholder of The Independent.

This means the findings of this research may not be generalisable to other newspaper since two newspapers can hardly be a representative sample of a population of about thirty-two. It would have been desirable to explore how civil society-owned newspapers, community newspapers and non-governmental organisations' press covered electoral violence in this period. However, this can constitute an independent research on its own. Including many newspapers would have created a maze of a corpus that could not realistically be dealt with. This research is anchored in peace journalism. It is not, hence, concerned with media theories like political economy and, by extension, institutional political economy. A fusion of these ideas could have been desirable, since it would have allowed for a wider discussion of the political economy in general, probably yielding

7 different results. However, the objectives of this study will be adequately met without delving into political economy issues.

The present research does not explore broadcasting channels, both radio and television, to ascertain their coverage of electoral violence. In Zimbabwe, like in its predecessor state of Southern Rhodesia, broadcasting is tightly controlled by the ruling ZANU PF party. There is only one publicly-owned television station, four publicly-owned radio stations two privately-owned radio stations, owned by ZANU PF-aligned proprietors. So, focusing on broadcasting media would have lost the comparative inquiry intended in this research. The state-private comparison is important in ascertaining whether the media set an agenda for peace during those moments of electoral violence. More so, a research on broadcasting media would be best served as an independent line of inquiry in the future, too. For example, a systematic, qualitative and quantitative analysis of broadcasting coverage of electoral violence would constitute a good independent study.

This research is limited to the post-2000 period. The post-2000 period in Zimbabwe is replete with electoral violence compared to any other period of post-colonial Zimbabwe (Makumbe 1999; Masunungure 2009 and Sachikonye 2011). There have been other violent elections, like the 1985 elections and the 1995 “siege of ZUM’’ (Makumbe 2009; 13), but they cannot compare with the post-2000 period. For the first time since 1980, there was an opposition in Zimbabwe that could field candidates across the whole country to contest every election. This research limits itself to electoral violence as a variant form of political violence. This is because electoral violence in post-2000 Zimbabwe has been the most virulent and recurring form of violence compared to other forms of violence obtaining in the country (Makumbe 1999), having occurred in almost every election after 2000. In some elections (for example in the June 2008 election), it has been more intense than in others It is electoral violence that sits at the centre of the much talked about “Zimbabwean crisis’’ (Makumbe 2009 and Sachikonye 2011).

1.8. Limitations of the study

While there is abundant literature on political violence from political science, psychology and sociology studies (for example, Masunungure 2011; Makumbe 2009 and Raftopoulos 2009), none of these works are linked to press coverage of electoral violence, at a time

8 when electoral violence has become rampant in Zimbabwe. This research is, hence, one of the pioneer studies in this field in the Zimbabwean context. As such, issues of feasibility loom large in the framework of this study, particularly the legitimising concern that the research had to be broad enough to capture the pertinent issues surrounding press coverage of electoral violence without being too wide to compromise the depth of the findings and to be unmanageable.

The availability of little research on press and peace journalism in Zimbabwe means this research has to be conducted in a nearly “academic and scholarly vacuum”, a near void, with limited possibilities of referential scholarship or body of scholarly work on which the findings of this research can be corroborated against. While South Africa has produced works on press and peace journalism (Rodney-Gumede 2016 and Hyde-Clarke 2015), which are close to this research, it will be difficult to support the findings of this body of work produced in South Africa because press and journalism conditions obtaining in Zimbabwe and South Africa are different. South Africa has not witnessed the levels of electoral violence like those witnessed in post-2000 Zimbabwe.

The sensitivity of the subject under study in this research, electoral violence, is another significant limitation. Electoral violence is a divisive and emotional issue (Wood and Apter, 2000). It generates fear, ignites collective emotions because frequently, it involves victims and perpetrators known to each other, and mobilises the electorate with polarising and inflammatory narratives of victimisation, revenge and hate. These facts made it hard for journalists to open up especially during interviews that were used in this research, considering that they may, in the process of news-gathering, have interacted with victims in such situations. However, my experience as an interviewer was useful in obtaining as much information as possible. The fact that some of the journalists have left the newsrooms they worked for in the period under study can made it possible for them to open up during interviews with some prodding from the researcher.

1.9. Outline and structure of thesis

Chapter Two provides a brief contextualisation of the research. It attends to two issue pertinent to this research. These are: the media context of post-2000 Zimbabwe, and the

9 political context of the same period. The press and political context of post-2000 Zimbabwe is important for an understanding of peace journalism practices in this period.

Chapter Three reviews the literature pertinent to this research – peace journalism. It discusses peace journalism literature. In this chapter, I review literature on peace journalism’s genesis as an approach, as agenda setting, and the critiques of peace journalism as an alternative news practice are discussed. In addition, I discuss instances where it has been applied across the world, and the results thereof.

Chapter Four discusses the research methodology. It attends to five issues. Firstly, it explains the data gathering methodology of the thesis; that is, archival research and semi- structured interviews. Secondly, it discusses the data analysis methods of the research: CDA and framing analysis. Thirdly, it discusses how the methods of data gathering and data analysis interact in this thesis, which means how they link with each other. It also provides a section my experiences during the gathering period, particularly with interviewees. The ethics of this research and research reflexivity are discussed in this chapter too.

Chapter Five is the first chapter on data analysis. Its focus is presentation and analysis of data from newspaper texts on electoral violence gathered from the two newspapers selected for this research. This chapter utilises framing analysis complemented by CDA as it analyses these newspaper texts.

Chapter Five is the second part of the data analysis. It reports on data collected through interviews. The last section of chapter Five will present a proposed framework for peace journalism practice that can be used by press journalists during instances of electoral violence in Zimbabwe.

The final chapter, Six, will make recommendations and conclusions drawn from the research findings. It discusses the implications of the findings made in this research. For example, it discusses how the findings impacts on Zimbabwe as a “democracy” and press practices in the country. The conclusion discusses recommendations for the press and journalists working in Zimbabwe.

CHAPTER 2

The political and press context of post-2000 Zimbabwe

“Beyond what some considers to be the harsh reality of Mugabe’s personal longevity, political interpretations of Zimbabwe are terribly muddy” (Bond and Manyanya 2003: 67).

2.1. Introduction

This research demands, right from the onset, an understanding of two issues: Zimbabwe’s electoral politics after 2000 and, the post-2000 press context in the country. This chapter provides an understanding of these two issues. The first section will provide an understanding of Zimbabwe’s electoral politics in this period. The chapter deploys Mahmood Mamdani’s (2005) post-colonial argument as explanatory trajectories of election violence in Zimbabwe. In so doing, I raise a number of issues on election violence. I argue that the genesis of election violence lies in the rise of competitive political opposition rooted in trade unionism and the subsequent involvement of state institutions in Zimbabwe’s electoral practices. The unchecked metamorphosis of rent-seeking youth militias further inflames this violence. The second section of the chapter articulates the state of the press in post- 2000 Zimbabwe. I argue that Zimbabwe’s polarised press environment has divided the press into two hostile camps.

2. 2. The genesis of political violence in post-independence Zimbabwe – A brief synopsis

Post- independence Zimbabwe has always been a violent polity. While before 2000 the violence was not electoral, the country’s independence journey was still rocked by other debilitating forms of political violence. For a start, in 1984, the country was plunged into a civil war pitting the then erstwhile allies – ZAPU, led by Joshua Nkomo and ZANU, led by the then prime minister Robert Mugabe. The violence, now referred to as the Gukurahundi (see Ndlovu-Gatsheni 1992; Alexander 1997), is said to have claimed about 20 000 civilians (CCJP 1989). The civil war ended after the warring parties signed a unity agreement on 23 December 1987.

The Gukurahundi atrocities should be understood as having nurtured a culture of political violence and impunity in post-colonial Zimbabwe. It is a sad legacy that, hitherto, has not been adequately dealt with, and that Mugabe has wielded as a real threat to his opponents. Political violence does not just happen to a society (Jackson and Dexter 2007). It is ontologically embedded in the discourses, practices and conditions of that community. In Zimbabwe, political violence has been enabled by what I call the weight of legacies, and takes place within a broader local setting of contingency. In Zimbabwe, it has been the interaction of institutions, agents and discourse mechanisms which has created an environment in which violence becomes a practice. From when the Gukurahundi violence ended in 1987, political violence has become ingrained in the political practices of the country. The ruling party, ZANU PF has before 1980, been involved in a bloody war liberation against British settlers in the country. The ruling party exploited the “infrastructures” of violence bequeathed to it by the colonial masters. The violent institutions meant to defend colonial rule were not reformed. The coercive style of colonial rule was not abandoned (Makumbe 2009). Thus, the post-colony transformed only in name- the colonial fetishisation with coercive governance continued. However, after the year 2000, political violence morphed into election violence as opposition to ZANUPF’s rule grew and economic deterioration added layers and layers of resistance to the former popular ruling party.

2.3. Zimbabwe’s election history: An overview

Before 2000, Zimbabwe’s elections have been violent. But, pre-2000 violence pales into insignificance when compared to the post-2000 period. A number of factors explain why election violence was relatively contained in the pre-2000 period. Compared to post-2000, ZANU PF was still a popular party pre-2000. There were opposition parties, like PF ZAPU and ZUM, but they were isolated and cast as ethnic- based (Makumbe 2009). They also failed to field candidates across the whole country to be serious contestants. ZANU PF merged, in 1987, with its major opponent, PF ZAPU. In the 1990 elections, the opposition Zimbabwe Union Movement (ZUM), under Edgar Tekere did not pose a formidable threat to ZANU PF hold on power. It could not field candidates across the country and remained strong in Manicaland province, in the east. Even in 1995, there was still no formidable

12 opposition to challenge ZANU PF despite the rising public anger with the Economic Structural adjustment Programme (ESAP), adopted in the early 1990s, massive corruption and growing unemployment.

Part of the success lies in the neopatrimonial nature of ZANU PF’s rule since 1980. Neopatrimonialism exists when political loyalty is maintained through state resources (Solhjell 2013). In a neopatrimonial system, economic goods and resources are distributed from high political offices down to individuals in the village (Bach 2013). ZANU PF’s ability to fend off political opposition to its rule up to 2000 can be explained by its neopatrimonial politics. There is hardly a facet of economic life uninfluenced by ZANU PF. The party, through government parastatals controls seed, grain, agriculture inputs among other resources. This has successfully maintained voter loyalty through occasional threats of withdrawing these benefits, threats that exert real terror amongst the poor rural peasants who see the party as benevolent. Thus, before 2000, election brutality was less as campaigns were largely augmented by the party’s patronage machinery that in turn, fed from state resources. Bond and Manyanya (2002) add two more factors that explain the relatively limited brutality of the pre- 2000 period. These are: the power and dominance of ZANU PF’s nationalist discourse. With full control of electronic broadcasting in the country and control of most of the newspapers, ZANU PF ensured that this narrative of liberation and its invincibility as a party was propagated with unparalleled abundance across most of the media platforms. Secondly, they identify the party’s “ever more sophisticated electoral trickery” (2000: 71). These tricks include, “…distorting political perceptions through the state-owned media…prohibiting alternative media and arresting private journalists … gerrymandering voting districts…submitting bogus votes…” (Bond and Manyanya 2002: 76). But in the year 2000, Zimbabwe’s electoral landscape changed for ZANU PF.

2.4. Post – 2000 Zimbabwe: the rise of a labour-based opposition

The events of the year 2000 can be considered to be a revolution for Zimbabwe’s politics. A new and formidable political opposition - the MDC came into being. For a clear understanding of election violence in Zimbabwe after 2000, there is need to relate it to the rise of the opposition, MDC party.

It was ESAP which, more than anything else, made the ruling party deeply unpopular especially in the urban areas. ESAP was an International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) prescribed economic programme meant to stabilise Zimbabwe’s balance of payments, liberalise the economy, cut the fiscal deficient and kick-start economic growth by re-channeling government’s financial resources towards the productive side of the economy (Mutwira 1999). The urban class felt the pain of these adjustments more than the rural folks, as they lost transport subsidies, food subsidies and jobs. ESAP worsened the economic status of the mainly black working class whose wages could not cope with galloping inflation and huge cuts in once subsidised social services like education and health. It is no wonder that even global scholars of the ESAP project scorn it for perpetuating existing relational imbalances between the predominantly white West and the rest of the world (Stiglitz 1991 and Anderson 2015). In a way, the new independent government by adopting ESAP, was perpetuating structural violence and widening inequalities inherited from the colonial era. Resultantly, the urban working class turned decidedly against ZANU PF. The economic hardships fed into students’ uprisings, workers’ strikes and general despondency by the public. This “bourgeoisie violence” (Bhila 2000: 41), created a fertile ground for a well-supported political alternative. As such, the MDC came as a welcome home for all forces ranged against ZANU PF.

The MDC was founded in February 1999. It was a broad- based, pro- poor coalition of labour, students and civil society under the stewardship of the charismatic trade unionist, Morgan Tsvangirai (Nkomo 2018). Bond and Manyanya (2002: 67) characterise the MDC as a “… young, fresh, democratic and pro-Western gale gathering to blow away Zimbabwe’s old-fashioned, proto-Stalinist “socialist’ rulers”. The opposition became more popular as the economy declined. Immediately after its formation, the MDC campaigned against a government-sponsored referendum for a new constitution in February 2000. The government draft was rejected, much to the chagrin of Robert Mugabe and his ruling ZANU PF party. This was the first electoral defeat ZANU PF had faced since 1980. The referendum defeat happened four months before a national parliamentary elections, scheduled for June 2000. Mugabe and ZANU PF’s reaction to the MDC’s dramatic rise in popularity was predictable. Mugabe unleashed violence on the opposition. By June 2002, about 5 000 cases of election violence and about 80 deaths have been recorded (Bond

14 and Manyanya 2002). This violence involved youth militias, war veterans (former fighters of the 1970-1978 liberation war against settler colonialists), state institutions like the army, the central intelligence agency and the police. In addition to election violence, Mugabe employed a violent rhetoric that certainly stoked the fires of violence already burning, blaming the whites in Zimbabwe, the British, the opposition, gays, lesbians, the IMF and many other perceived enemies. But the opposition MDC cannot be totally absolved of election violence, as some of its supporters unleashed their own violence especially in their urban strongholds. One way of understanding electoral violence in postcolonial Zimbabwe is to deploy the critique provided by Mahmood Mamdani (1996, 2004 and 2009) as lens to understand political violence.

2.5. Understanding election violence in Zimbabwe through Mamdani’s postcolonial perspective

Mamdani, through various scholarly writings on political violence in general (2004) and the Rwandan genocide in particular (1996 and 2009), provides a critique of postcolonial institutions that can be useful to understanding the frequent resort to electoral violence in post-2000 Zimbabwe. Mamdani’s (2004) argument is that the frequent resort to political violence is a legacy of oppressive colonial domination under coercive and non- representative state systems. It is this historical experience of colonialism that is spilling over into post - colonial political practices. Mamdani argues thus, “At a deeper level, the colonial legacy transmitted specific mentalities and ways of articulating and justifying actions and policies’’ (2009: 34). Mamdani (2009: 35) continues: “Admittedly, postcolonial dynamics might have shaped conflicts, but the historical (colonial) context cannot be ignored… these conflicts have their roots in deeper historical experience…’’ (Emphasis mine). Mamdani (2004) identifies the coercive and authoritarian style of postcolonial governments as a colonial inheritance. The post-colony, Mamdani (1996) argues, is a continuation of the colonial fetishisation with coercive governance. He further argues that colonial politics has shaped society-wide military norms, values, identities, institutions and practices which enable and legitimise political violence by giving it meaning and materiality. Mamdani (2004) argues that colonial and postcolonial institutions are two sides of a coin. Hodgson (2005) notes that there is an endless dispute

15 as to whether institutions are organisations, or the rules that govern both organisations and individual behaviours? I understand institutions in the way Mamdani (2002) has articulated them with regard to Rwanda – as systems of established and prevalent social rules that structure social interactions embodied within organisations. I mostly refer to security and election institutions. In Zimbabwe these institutions fall under Chapter 12 of the constitution.

Furthermore, Mamdani (2009) argues that the colonial era bequeathed the postcolony a climate in which political violence can be perpetrated and perpetuated, and in which narratives justifying violence are articulated. Mamdani (2005) accounts for this by arguing that the “Speedy exit from the empire might have contributed to the weak institutions created by post-colonial states, bounded by a deep sense of entitlement and reward, not matched by service, duty and accountability” (2005: 68). Mamdani’s argument here can be controversial. What exactly would constitute “speedy exit” from the colony? Can it be said that “slower exit” rather than “speedy exit” could have guaranteed strong, robust postcolonial institutions? Slower exit would possibly mean, in this sense, a gradual disentanglement from colonialism. How would this guarantee stronger institutions? This might be problematic. In his analysis of the Rwandan genocide (2005) Mamdani observes that the scourge of political violence is entrenched in state institutions and he attributes this to what he calls a “fractured post-colonial landscape” (2005: 44), “where soldiers kill with impunity and where institutions of law and order are grounded into deadening collapse”. At the center of this deadening collapse is postcolonial regimes’ use of formal state institutions like the army, police intelligence agencies for personal clandestine purposes. Mamdani (2002:183) averred that in instances of political violence like those that occurred in Rwanda in April 1994, “the government and state institutions (supporting the government) prepared the population, enraged it and enticed it”.

An equivalent of inciting the population can be noted in Zimbabwe in 2008. When Mugabe lost the first round of the presidential election, he, on 23 April, declared: “This country came by the gun, it shall not be lost by the pen… I urge you to take your guns, raise your arms for the war as we prepare for June 27… we fought for this country… it is ours… never ever…” (The Independent, 23 April 2008). This exaggerated sense of entitlement,

16 like President Mugabe’s, Mamdani (2002:23) argues, “explains the large scale nature of violence and the way it is often evenly spread across the land’’. Political violence, Mamdani (2004) argues further, is characterised by government and state institutions mobilising populations for their cause, and it is a result of both planning and participation at the highest levels of power. However, Mamdani (2002:24) admits that the active participation of the populace was what the elite planners banked on, “the agenda imposed from above by the government becomes gruesome reality to the extent that it resonates with perspectives from below…. A true picture of political violence would arrive at a state- centered or a society-centered explanations, but a complete picture would take account of both”. Furthermore, Mamdani states that “political violence… is not a result of a popular jacquerie gone berserk” (2002: 24). Rather, in postcolonial Africa, it is cultivated within government institutions. In the Zimbabwean context, the “subaltern character” of electoral violence cannot be underestimated. The word “subaltern” is used here in its Gramscian (1980) and Spivakian sense (1985), as the lower class, low in political, social and other hierarchies. Spivak (1985) defines the subaltern as consisting of the (oppressed) masses, those whose voices are difficult to, if not altogether impossible to recover because they are excluded from hegemonic economies of representation (e.g., academic, political or official discourses). Subalterneity is associated with ordinarinariness, and ordinary people are “not newsworthy for any other reason” (Carpentier and Hannot 2009: 602). The rural, unemployed youth and war veterans were very instrumental in the execution of electoral violence (Sachikonye 2012). They formed “youth bases” where opposition supporters were tortured (Mkandawire 2009). The most notorious youth groups in post-2000 Zimbabwe like Chipangano in Mbare, Al Shabaab in Kwekwe, Jochomondo in Hurungwe comprise of unemployed, poorly educated, elite- sponsored and war veteran-led youths (ZPP 2008 and Sachikonye 2011). This underlines the centrality of the economically marginalised groups in the execution of electoral violence. The fact that they reigned with reckless abandon illustrates the acquiescence of formal law and order institutions in the execution of electoral violence. It is important therefore, to establish the extent to which mainstream newspapers afforded these groups any space in their coverage of electoral violence, identified their links with elite centres of power, the acquiescence of formal law

17 and order institutions and whether the press discourses associated with them promoted peace.

In a way, the manifestation of electoral violence in post-2000 Zimbabwe lies primarily in the historical continuity of colonial behaviours, which can be discerned by understanding colonial structures and practices. The legacy of colonial rule is the critical factor which should be linked more broadly to the coercive and oppressive character of postcolonial regimes, especially the securocrats. In this discussion, the researcher uses Duncan’s (2014:4) definition of securocrats as “officials located in the security establishment – the police, intelligence services or the military” with decisive impact on national policy. On top of these institutions, there are other non-security institutions in postcolonial Zimbabwe that have been influential in deciding the direction of elections by failing to perform their constitutional duties (e.g., the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission [ZEC]). For example, in colonial Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, the military had enjoyed a privileged role serving as important cogs of the political system rather than acting as the guardian of state sovereignty (Sithole 1989). The Rhodesian Army was openly partisan, performing duties beyond their constitutional normatives of protecting the state (Sacchranetia 2009). Both the army and police were central to the suppression of black African nationalism (Sacchranetia 2009). The kind of institutions inherited from the colonial regimes could not be relied upon to act independently and to safeguard even the voices opposed to the ruling elites. The new ruling elites did not make an effort to reform the system. These institutions, hence, are partisan at best, and partakes in election violence, at worst.

Marxists, however, disagree with the above conceptions of institutions, acknowledging that institutions like the army, the police are elite biased (Offe 1993). This means they are inevitably aligned to those in power. In any contest between the ruling elites and the poor, they are bound to align themselves with the ruling class. Zimbabwe’s institutions seem to sync with this Marxist beliefs. This Marxist view is poignantly expressed by Duncan (2014: 3) in an analysis of South Africa, a case geographically closer to Zimbabwe, when she argues thus: “One would think that professional intelligence service would busy itself with rooting out real threats to national security, rather than spying on political critics of the country’s current leaders…. spies seem to be meddling in things they should not be

18 meddling in and aren’t meddling in things they should be meddling with”. Marxist interpretations argue that security institutions are conduits through which economic and political power is (re)produced. However, I favour a liberal-democratic conception of institutions, which argues that the coercive institutions of the state ought not to interfere in electoral processes in favour of certain candidates, “because [if] they can arrogate to themselves the power to subvert democratic processes to entrench their own power or the power of their favoured leader(s), and use the armed mighty of the state to suppress opponents of their political project…. the democratic life of a country can be threatened” (Duncan 2014: 4).

Scholars of electoral violence in Zimbabwe concur that the scourge of electoral violence has been caused and worsened by pliant, manipulatable and ineffective institutions (Sachikonye 2011 and Makumbe 2009). The institutions frequently cited in this argument are the Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF), the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP), the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) and the ZEC. Alexander (2000) mentions the judiciary too, as part of the compromised institutions in postcolonial Zimbabwe. These institutions, according to Makumbe (2009) have become partisan in their dispensation of duties such that their administrative acts no longer confer legitimacy to those in power. For example, Makumbe (2009) points out that elections in Zimbabwe can no longer confer legitimacy to the victors because of the partisan nature of the security institutions in threatening opposition supporters and openly campaigning for the then incumbent, Robert Mugabe. Thus, these institutions are captured and now exist in attenuated forms. As such, they have failed to nip electoral violence, especially when perpetrated on ZANU PF’s behalf.

Thus, using a Mamdani’s (1996, 2004 and 2009) critique, I argue that Zimbabwe’s transition from colonialism to independence was rickety in the sense that it was not buttressed by an aggressive pursuance of civil rights. Rather, an elite (Zanu PF) clique aggressively pursued primitive wealth aggrandisement and accumulation ignoring rights and the creation of effective institutions that would help in the construction of a more just society by safeguarding laws and holding the rulers to account. Zimbabwe has poor

19 institutional arrangements that create an environment with increased impunity, thus providing incentives for violent groups to perpetuate violence.

Consequently, Zanu PF, the ruling party, now acts crudely against opposition parties knowing that control of these institutions means little to no legal constraints on its actions. Institutions should restrain actors (like electoral participants) from acting outside set guidelines (like unleashing violence on other electoral contestants).Thus, as Mamdani (2004) has argued, post-independence institutions like security institutions in Zimbabwe are not different from the colonial ones. They are not centripetal agencies capable of processing divergent interests and preferences into positive outcomes. This is worsened by the fact that these institutions are led by individuals with a historical association with both the 1962-1978 liberation struggle that brought independence to Zimbabwe and Zanu PF to power. Their professional and economic interests are safeguarded by a continuation of the status quo. This explains why, for example the ZDF actively campaigned for Mugabe during the 2008 rerun election, launching an operation named “Operation Mavhotera papi’’ (who did you vote for). It also explains why senior military officers have been implicated in the abduction, torture and murder of opposition supporters (ZPP 2009). Raftopoulos (2009) argues that Zanu PF depends on these institutions for coercion, enabling it to hang on to power in the face of declining popularity.

On top of the security institutions, the electoral administrative institutions like ZEC and Delimitation Commission have also failed to act independently and ensure a peaceful election (ZESN 2009, Makumbe 2009 and Sachikonye 2011). The effectiveness of institutions in administering nationally and internationally acceptable elections is noted by Lijphart (1995:412) who avers that institutions are by their nature “the most effective instruments through which to alter the behaviour of election contestants”. Through legally assured consequences, electoral institutions can either elicit positive election conduct or punish rogue election behaviour. It is this ability of institutions to elicit good electoral conduct or punish violent behaviour during elections that is absent in postcolonial Zimbabwe. This failure reached its crescendo in the 2008 elections. In the 2008 elections, electoral violence was worse than any other election year in the history of elections in Zimbabwe (SPT 2008; and CSVR 2008). Zimbabwe’s electoral system – ranging from the

20 institutions governing elections, and the regulations guiding the administration of elections collapsed in failure, as a result of a political onslaught from the incumbent Zanu PF party which had been defeated in the first round of the elections (Makumbe 2009).This failure opened up a yawning electoral administration vacuum, allowing strong groups frequently linked to the ruling party to engage in serious electoral violence. Hence, Makumbe (2009) and Sithole (2001) are right to refer to these institutions as corrupted, compromised and blatantly partisan institutions at the centre of the post-2000 crisis in Zimbabwe.

This has consequently led to a contagion of electoral violence. The 2008 election violence was probably worse because that is when crucial institutions like the law and order, security and media institutions wobbled more than any other time. Zimbabwe’s postcolonial political institutions lack what is referred to as “positive habit” (McDougall 2004:3) – the tendency to perform positive acts (i.e., fairness and standard treatment of political players) in order to elicit positive behaviour from contestants. This lack of positive habit consequently robs them of the enhanced durability, power and normative authority that are the life-blood of institutions. When normative authority lacks, there is no mechanism for these institutions to exploit to ensure conformity and normative agreement between or among political players.

Therefore, understanding electoral violence in post-2000 Zimbabwe can be achieved through an understanding of the conflation of political institutions and actors as enablers of electoral violence as Mamdani (2002, 2004 and 2009) has argued. North (2004:15) asserts that when (political) institutions are functioning well for societies, they “structure, constrain and enable the behaviours of other institutions… and they mould the capacities of agents in some ways. For example, they can change the aspirations of political participants rather than just constraining them”. What Zimbabwe requires is an “institutional regeneration”, an “institutional metamorphosis” – where institutions like the army, the police - the securocrats in general, are remodelled in such a way that they are “fenced off” from the reach of political elites keen on using them as instruments of political survival. Once these institutions are free from the elite clutches, they can hence, not bring their whole weight down on society on behalf of selected political groups. Zimbabwe’s postcolonial political institutions in their current structures, do not create stable

21 expectations amongst all electoral contestants and do not impose their superiority as rule makers to ensure consistency of electoral conduct amongst all players.

2.6. The press in post-2000 Zimbabwe: A chequered history of press-state relations

Mugabe’s post-2000 press, and generally, policies have almost succeeded in decimating the private press. Since 2000, as opposition to his rule mounted, Mugabe’s ruling regime has legislated draconian scorched-earth press laws that have impacted negatively on the operations of the press by creating an atmosphere of fear and limiting access to information. These laws include the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) and the Public Order and Security Act (POSA) among other such legislations. The adoption of such laws has led to scholars arguing that the post-2000 Zimbabwean media and the colonial media are two sides of a coin (Moyo 2011 and Moyo 2009). The colonial regime had stamped out critical voices and closed newspaper like The African Daily news (1965) and Umbowo (1972) using harsh regulations like the Law and Order Maintenance Act (Saunders 2004). .

In post-2000 Zimbabwe, Mugabe has made use of laws like AIPPA to whittle down any source of critical voices against his regime. Freedman (2008) notes, “Media laws do not develop in a vacuum; they are purposefully created by competing political interests that seek to inscribe their own values and objectives on… the personality of media systems”. Furthermore, the regime has acquired majority of shareholdership of the then Rhodesian Printing and Publishing Company (now Zimpapers). The acquisition of the majority shares in this company has ensured that the government now owns 23 of the 32 circulating newspapers in the country (that is about 75% of the press in Zimbabwe). This has ensured its domination of the press industry in the country. The methods of stifling the press have largely been extra-judicial, though in some other instances, they have been judicial. For example, the closure of The Daily News in 2003, came after the Supreme Court ruled that the paper was in violation of the law but should be given time to comply with legislation (Feltoe 2012).

Laws have poisoned the relationship of the government, the press and journalists. For example, Section IX (38) of AIPPA, which prescribes for the formation of a government appointed press commission (ZMC) has been one of the most contentious clauses of the

22 press laws in Zimbabwe. Journalists and proprietors see ZMC as a government “monster” that acts like a big brother against their interests. Section 50 of the same Act which authorises that Commission to restrict or stop the disclosure of certain information on state security grounds, has also been equally contentious. Section 7 (a) and (b) prescribe that the press houses domiciled in Zimbabwe will pay fees to access information from public bodies. This has been interpreted as a deliberate attempt to hinder access to information by small struggling newspapers or even well –established newspapers who may not find it easy to fund access frequently (Veritas 2010). Section 66 (1) which provides for the registration of newspapers in Zimbabwe has been subject to numerous legal challenges so has been sections 79 (1) which says no journalists shall operate without accreditation. Section 79 (2) reads, “No journalist shall be accredited who is not a citizen of Zimbabwe, or is not regarded as permanent resident in Zimbabwe by virtue of the Immigration Act (Chapter 4; 02)”. This effectively shuts out foreign journalists from Zimbabwe. Certain clauses of the Official Secrets Act (OSA) have also been contentious. For example, Section 1 (a) (ii) which prohibits unlawful disclosure of cabinet deliberations and other state held information. This clause has been condemned by organisations (Kubatana 2014 and Veritas Zimbabwe 2015) for its attempt to shield the state and its officials from scrutiny. The Independent once remarked, ‘’[OSA] has been used as a thick wall by government officials against public scrutiny … as it does not distinct between what constitutes a state secret and which information is in the public interest’’ (13 August, 2010). These are but examples of certain clauses scorned as extremely Orwellian. Otherwise the whole press regulation in Zimbabwe has been condemned as falling below international standards that clamor for a free operating environment with little legal hindrances (Feltoe 2012).

The restrictive regulatory regimes are a result of the political and economic crises. The Zanu PF government is battling a crisis of legitimacy as a result of its electoral malpractices (Masunungure 2011). It is equally battling an economic crisis characterised by cash shortages, low industrial productivity and unemployment (WB 2010). In order for the party to remain in power it has to win the battle of the minds by robustly articulating its policies and ideologies. Zanu PF reckons that winning hearts and minds is not easy without the control of the press and other media like television and radio. The result,

23 particularly in the public press, has been that these newspapers have been reduced to the party’s apparatus carrying Zanu PF voices through and through. Consequently, the public press and journalists, have been reduced to nothing more than mimicry and “parroting of Zanu PF and Mugabe’s pervasive and elitist jingoism” (Moyo 2008: 14). The brutal hand of the government has led Mazango (2005: 19) to ask, “Is government’s strengthening of egregious media laws a defence of ‘communicative sovereignty’ or a manifest reversal into authoritarianism?” Booysen (2003: 19) says, “Zimbabwe after 2000 has witnessed the co-existence of a strong duality of constitutionalism and legality alongside a complex combination of paralegal, supralegal and brutal political action”. Thus, media laws have reversed the country into authoritarianism. Hutchinson (1999: 11) asserts, “Effective media policies are always ultimately judged by how they directly and indirectly influence content, which is a key test of media behaviour or misbehavior…media content is perceived as providing the forensics of not only the policy impact on agency but also the broader ideological configurations that inform the given policy regime”. From the foregoing discussion, I note that media laws in post-2000 Zimbabwe have seriously undermined the role of the press as public spheres, by impacting negatively on the general practice of journalism like news gathering and access to sources. I argue that there are two models - Harold Hotelling’s theory (1929; 1969 & 2007), and Hallin and Mancini’s (2004) polarised pluralist theory that largely explain Zimbabwe’s post-2000 press panorama.

2.7. Understanding the press context using the Linear City Theory

Hotelling’s theory embodies four principles of business structure and behaviour that suit the Zimbabwean press conditions. Firstly, Hotelling (1929: 41) observed that “there is an undue tendency for competitors to imitate each in the production of goods, in location and in other essential ways”. Secondly, Hotelling (2007:54) argues that businesses locate near rivals. Thirdly, the theory asserts that business locations much of the time are minimally differentiated, “but so too are products and politicians, for example, in a two- party election, each party strives to make its platform as much like the other as possible”. Fourthly, because of insignificant product differentiation, price changes of one product

24 does not necessarily cause a dramatic movement of consumers from one product to another.

Hotelling’s theory syncs neatly into the press conditions of post-2000 Zimbabwe. As noted earlier, the economic downturn has decimated the press with newspaper like The Star, The Masvingo Mirror shutting down. This has left on the market, big companies like AMH, Zimpapers and ANZ which are now concentrated in the big cities like Harare and Bulawayo. In terms of location, all big newspapers are now situated in big cities particularly Harare and Bulawayo.

Secondly, in terms of products, Zimbabwe’s press news is almost about the same issues with very little variation except in framing and presentation. MMPZ (2012) notes that three stories have been mainly reported about in Zimbabwe’s largest newspapers since 2000 - the land reform programme, elections and politically motivated violence, and the economic crisis. These issues have dominated press coverage since 2000 and have only varied in frames and positioning in the press. Moreover, the major newspapers compete for the same urban middle class readers. In instances where the press have developed effective distribution structures, like the case of The Sunday Mail and The Independent, they equally compete for readers some of whom are in rural areas – teachers, nurses and others. Another similarity that suits Hotelling’s theory is that Zimbabwe’s newspaper costs a dollar. There is no publication in 2016 and 2017 which costs more than US$1 dollar, be it a tabloid, broadsheet or a magazine. Thus, pricing is similar, probably to forestall loss of readers. The absence of other forms of economic support and intervention from the state to the press, for example, in the form of grants and loans to encourage a greater measure of diversity has not bettered the situation. For example, in neigbhouring South Africa, the Media Development and Diversity Agency (MMDA) provides such financial help to newcomers in the media or struggling media houses. Such an arrangement is absent in Zimbabwe. There is hence, no assistance for upstarts or existing but struggling newspapers. The absence of anti-concentration restraints means such strugglers can be swallowed, with negative consequences for diversity.

2.8. Understanding Zimbabwe’s press context as a polarised pluralist model

The press landscape in post-2000 Zimbabwe shares two characteristics that form the major tenets of the polarised pluralist model (Hallin and Mancini 2004). These are: (a) (a) close relationship between the press and political parties; and (b) considerable intervention by the state in the domain of the mass media. Zimbabwe’s press exhibits very strong tendencies of political parallelism. This means it tends to represent distinct political cleavages, with the public press representing the state. The ruling party’s hand of interference is discernible and heavy as part of its post – independence ritualised ZANU PF-dominated politics.

During elections, the press in Zimbabwe tend to play an activist role of mobilising readers for a political cause. Ncube (2014) even asserts that most journalists working in the public media have political ties or alliances to the ruling party. This political instrumentalisation of the media is, perhaps, expected, (though not desirable from a libertarian perspective) considering that the country has been under a vapid but ineffectual Stalinist type of dictatorship since independence in 1980 (Makumbe 2001 and Sachikonye 2011).The Herald exhibits a good example of this instrumentalisation of the public press by its openly pro-ZANU PF headlines like, “Let us bury opposition politics once and for all” (20 July 2013). The intense grip of the public media by Zanu PF shows the extent of its fear for alternative and diverse voices that may challenge its hegemony. Zanu PF is under no illusion about the degree of challenge to its power and therefore, a press that does not spread its ideological values would not be the best ally in these times. One can discern that the public press in post-2000 Zimbabwe has generally played four crucial roles for Zanu PF. It has provided positive messages about the regime. It has acted as a rallying point for support for Zanu PF. Thirdly, it has been crucial in generating and diffusing feelings of patriotism, a rallying point of the regime. Fourthly, the press has been central in echoing Zanu PF’s brand of nationalism. Zimbabwe’s public press is fraught with flattering stories of the activities of “Dear Leaders” like Mugabe and patriotic stories emphasising unity. The public press has been used as a monopolised space of public communication by ZANU PF “an important instrument of veto” (Mazango 2005: 8). To the ruling Zanu PF party, the control of the press like CNG, NewZiana and Zimpapers is the equivalency of acquiring a flag or a monetary currency – it has huge political and ideological implications and meanings.

As a result, the press is highly polarised in post-2000 Zimbabwe. Political polarisation is defined as the deep divisions on many issues and the ideological chasm that exists between, or among the major political parties of a given country/polity (Gentzkow 2016). In the Zimbabwean case, there is serious polarisation between the ruling ZANU PF and the opposition MDC-T. The polarisation existing in the Zimbabwean press has led to the adoption of variegated types of journalisms or distinct approaches, practised in the media. These types of journalisms have been amply described in earlier scholarship (Chuma 2007 and Ranger 2005).

The state controlled public press has practised what Ranger (2005:13) calls “patriotic journalism”. This kind of journalism purveys Zanu PF’s narratives of patriotic history. Patriotic history is in itself a hegemonic project of the ruling party Zanu PF (Chuma 2007:4). So the public press, in advancing patriotic journalism, will be hailing Zanu PF’s revolutionary credentials and perpetuating its hegemonic project. It purveys a nationalist- conservative position which resonates with the Zanu PF’s government political ideology. Journalists of the patriotic fold see Zimbabweans as divided into patriots and sellouts. Patriots are led by Zanu PF while the MDC-T and other opposition parties are sellouts. Patriotic journalism rests on what I call “national mythologies” generated by the ruling elites and perpetuated by the public press. This national mythologies rest on two contested myths. The first one is the constant claim that Zimbabwe’s achievements in every sphere (political, economic and social) and even its existence as a unified polity rests upon constant vigilance against an ever-growing array of powerful foreign enemies led by the USA and Britain. The second myth perpetuated by patriotic journalists is that Zanu PF is the only party which fought for independence from the whites and which can successfully thwart foreign machinations to recolonise Zimbabwe. The “patriots” in the public press newsrooms and the ruling elites foster these myths as they can possibly confer legitimacy upon ZANU PF’s challenged political system. Patriotic journalism also attacks the private press on many transgressions from intrusion into matters that are not of public concern, inaccurate reporting, irresponsibility and impertinence. The “patriots” see the private press as intrusive, embarrassing the government and nation, disruptive of order, vulgar, brash and other accusations they can conjure.

The second distinctive approach discernible in everyday journalism practices in Zimbabwe is oppositional journalism (Chuma 2007). This type of journalism is practised by most of the private press. This variation emerged as a counter-hegemonic response to patriotic journalism during the late 1980s and early 1990s (Saunders 1991 in Chuma 2005). Chuma (2005) posits that the closure of democratic space for the press the regime in the post-2000 period strengthened oppositional journalism. Oppositional journalism seeks to delegitimise the ruling Zanu PF regime. Its emphasis is on the economic and political blunders of the regime. “It adopts the nothing-can-ever-come-out-of-this- wretched-government attitude… and it is the behaviour of the aggrieved’’ (Mano 2005: 27). In a way, oppositional journalism adopts a “liberal-reformist position”, agitating for those values that their “patriotic” counterparts at the public press treat as non-essential These are human rights, gay/lesbianism, government’s reduced role in business and an end to citizen surveillance by arms of the state. Oppositional journalism should also be understood as an attack on patriotic journalism practised by the public press. Often times, the private press criticises the public press, accusing it of unprofessional behaviour and harboring a deliberate agenda to misinform the public, imposing themselves as the rightful custodians of public knowledge, instead being facilitators and conduits of public debate. But oppositional journalism has easily come under attack from the ruling class for pandering to the West. Moyo, L (2010:15) says oppositional journalism suffers from a crises of independence and legitimacy , he says, “the private press faces the dilemma of how to be critical of its government without necessarily playing into the hands of other manipulative global forces that may not be fascist in orientation but in motive”. For example, Moyo (2010: 16) criticises oppositional journalists for not adequately covering the land reform programme. “The land question in particular has never been well told in the private press because the history behind the problem has always been emphatically ignored’’.

Independent nationalist journalism is the least practised of the forms of journalism in practice. This variation might have ended with the folding of The Mirror newspaper. This kind of journalism tried to stir a middle-of-course approach in newspaper. Independent Nationalist journalism identifies itself with Zanu PF ideology on nationalistic grounds (Chuma 2007) and agrees with the opposition on its reformist agenda especially the

28 economic agenda (Chuma 2007). The nationalistic newspapers – in particular the now defunct Daily Mirror and The Mirror on Sunday tried to provide coverage to all parties opposed to Zanu PF “cherry-picking” from all sides the policies they agreed with. Independent nationalist journalism was not as positioned as the first two variations. Foucault (1980) asserts that knowledge has to fall within the accepted epistemic order. This is true of the adoption of these forms of journalisms in post-2000 period in Zimbabwe. The adoption of any of these forms has to sync neatly within accepted and policed boundaries within newsrooms. The application of these distinct approaches has been a culmination of the relationship between the press and the state. Chuma (2007) further argues that these competing journalisms models manifested themselves during the 2000 elections but continued thereafter as a result of the deep divisions and polarisation existing in Zimbabwe’s society today.

2.9. Conclusion

The historical synopsis of the press and political context made in this chapter raises a number of issues going forward. The major questions flowing from this discussion would be whether the practice of any of these forms of journalism has been useful in the promotion of discourses of peace journalism in post-2000 Zimbabwe? Adoption of any of these practices might have affected news gathering routines like sourcing, voice in the press and what gets to be covered, but did this help push a peace journalism agenda? These noted journalism practices discussed, are a culmination of seemingly irreconcilable agendas of the major political parties. Has the press mediated these differences in ways that sync with peace journalism practices – for instance, through civil debates that promotes political accommodation and peaceful election practices and outcomes? To answer these questions, we need an understanding of what peace journalism is. The next chapter provides this understanding.

CHAPTER 3

Literature review

“Journalism can contribute to the peaceful settlement of conflicits, but we should still recognise the limits of its potential…” (Hackett 2006: 23).

3.1. Introduction

The previous chapter laid out the context of this research by exploring the background of electoral violence in post – 2000 Zimbabwe. It also explicitly detailed the press context in post-2000 Zimbabwe – detailing the state of journalism practice, press-state relations, press ownership and control in the country among other issues. This chapter focuses on the concept of peace journalism, which it examines within the frameworks of existing normative journalism practices. The chapter reviews literature on, among other issues, the origins of peace journalism, the premises of its practice and obstacles to its practice. It also reviews the practical contexts in which peace journalism has been practiced.

3.2. Defining the concept of peace journalism

Since its inception in the 1970s, peace journalism has never commanded an agreed upon definition. Though normal for any discipline in the humanities, the range of definitional differences the discipline has conjured is, nevertheless, wide. Galtung (1999), the widely accepted founder of peace journalism defines it as a kind of news reporting where journalists focus on root causes of conflict such as poverty and prior abuse not merely report on the surface events associated with violent political encounters. This definition has been complemented by other researchers in the field. Lynch and McGoldrick (2005) modified this definition of peace journalism by adding that it is when editors make choices about what to report, and how to report it – that creates opportunities for society at large to consider and to value non-violent responses to conflict. This modifies Galtung’s by asserting that the urgency for peace journalism in the newsroom lies with editors. This definition, however, needs thorough interrogation in political environments where states have a strong grip on the media and directly appoint news editors, as in Zimbabwe. Under these circumstances does urgency lie with state-appointed journalists or somewhere between the newsroom and the appointing authority? Cottle (2011) agrees with Galtung

30 that peace journalism practices seek to mitigate conflict by avoiding inflammatory rhetoric in the media.

Other scholars have disagreed with these conceptualisations of peace journalism. Lee (2009:334) disagree with both Cottle (2011) and Galtung (1999). In Lee’s view, avoiding inflammatory rhetoric, while a noble intention, rests on a lower moral foundation of “doing no harm”, yet, the higher moral foundation should be “doing good”. On these grounds, Lee (2009) disagrees with Galtung’s (1999) foundational definition. The often-quoted definition of peace journalism by Lynch and McGoldrick (2005) has also been contested by Suchenwerth and Keeble (2011) who dismiss it for being vague and making it difficult to measure what peace journalism outcomes are. But both complement Lynch and McGoldrick (2005) for providing a clear list of the professional activities of peace journalism though lacking on the exact deliverables.

Other scholars see peace journalism as a radical reconceptualisation and re-alignment of journalism practices. Litchen (1996) sees peace journalism as advocative, creative and involving a radical deviation from objectivity in order for journalists to be influential in the peace-making process. However, Litchen’s (2015) understanding of peace-journalism as a radical reconceptualisation of journalism has been disputed. Hieber (1998:7) rejects this, arguing, “There need not be a contradiction between solid, “objective” journalism and the production of programmes which aim to promote peace rather than war”. Ross (2007) argues, “Peace journalism does not involve any radical departure from contemporary journalism practice. Rather peace journalism requires numerous subtle and cumulative shifts in seeing, thinking, sourcing, narrating and financing of news” (in Shaw et al 2011; 170).

Youngblood (2016) has asserted that the term peace journalism is an emotive one. He says it “conjures distorted images of the 1960s style long-handed, pot-smoking, tree- hugging hippies” (2016:5). It is, perhaps, for its emotive nature that scholars like Howard (2009) have avoided using the term peace journalism instead preferring conflict-sensitive journalism. Howard (2009) argues that instead of referring to peace journalism, we can refer to it as conflict-sensitive journalism. This position, however, has not found many adherents. Galtung (2010) argues that to understand peace journalism as conflict-

31 sensitive journalism is a narrow conceptualisation of peace journalism as it hides a part of the story by making the reader aware of the conflict itself and not other peace- related initiatives around it. Youngblood (2016:19) disagrees with Galtung (2010) and Howard (2009). He sees no difference between peace journalism and conflict-sensitive journalism except that the former (conflict-sensitive journalism) is less emotive. He argues thus, “The checklist for conflict-sensitive journalism aligns almost exactly with peace journalism lists”. For example, both sets of practices aim at avoiding victimising and emotional language in news reporting, avoiding turning opinions into facts, balancing stories through sourcing routines and reporting fairly about solutions and peace proposals.

Thus, the points of convergence amongst peace journalists critics and adherents is that: it seeks to avoid inflammatory rhetoric; it seeks to widen its news sourcing routines from being elite- centred to being ‘people-centred’ and makes journalists more responsible to society in covering news, knowing that they wield power, through the pen to mitigate tensions. In addition to this, both adherents and critics agree that peace journalism helps promote conflict resolution and reconciliation and gives platforms of articulation to victims of conflict. The major point of contention on peace journalism has been the question of whether the practice adheres to the principles of objectivity. This argument has taken three major dimensions. Firstly, there are adherents who claim peace journalism is not a negation of objectivity (Lynch and McGoldrick 2005 and Galtung 1999). There are fervent critics who argue that peace journalism has no place in modern journalism because it is not objective and yet objectivity is the backbone of journalism (Lyons 2005; Hanitzsch 2004). There are those who insist that even if peace journalism negates objectivity does that really matter? (Iggers 1998 and Hackett 1989). The latter’s argument is that objectivity in contemporary news gathering is now anachronistic. Iggers (1998:91) explains it lucidly, “Although few journalists still defend objectivity, it remains one of the greatest obstacles to their playing a more responsible a constructive role in public life”. Hackett (1989:10-11) adds further, “Objectivists journalists respect for prevailing social standards of decency and good taste likely mutes reportage of the brutality of war and the suffering of victims, helping to turn war into a watchable spectacle rather than an insufferable obscenity’’. This understanding of the need for journalists to intervene

32 through news coverage in the mitigation of conflicts is becoming a common cause in peace journalism research.

Peace journalism has taken many variations. In fact, there are many journalisms created in the name of peace journalism. For example, the concept of solution journalism (Weir 2009) is a variation of peace journalism practice. Solution journalism agrees that media can cover social problems like election violence (Martins 2009). However, it goes beyond this mere coverage by arguing that the media, which practice solution journalism should report the solution to any problem reported too. Therefore, like peace journalism, solution journalism argues for solutions instead of an over-arching focus on problems only.

3.3. Features and premises of peace journalism

Peace journalism proposes a number of approaches in the coverage of conflict news. It clamours for the exploration of backgrounds and context of conflict formation, presenting causes and options on every side, not necessarily two sides that traditional journalism favours (Galtung 1999). It insists that in news coverage, the voices of rival parties ought to be heard at all levels. It also proposes that, in news coverage during conflicts, the media should expose cover-up attempts, culprits on all sides, reveal excesses of the conflict committed by all sides, and the suffering inflicted on people of all sides (Shinar 2007). Hanitzsch (2004:2) asserts that “peace journalism takes sides with the victims of war”. More so, peace journalism pays attention to peace stories and post-war construction (Kempf 2014). In addition, peace journalism opens up multiple meanings to inspect propaganda and other self- serving representations from the conflicting sides (Galtung 1998). In order to achieve this, it means peace journalism should look, “beyond stated positions toward interests and needs of the parties. Such kind of reportage assists disputants and conflict resolvers to get to the bottom of the conflict and inform the reader what the conflict is really about” (Botes 1996: 30). And relating to victims of violence, Lederach (1997: 39) argues, “People often have their own version of peace emerging from their own experiences in the conflict, but they are often overlooked and disempowered either because they do not represent official power or because they are written off as biased and too personally affected by the conflict…” Thus, peace journalism

33 strives to give voice to the voiceless, the victims of the conflict. Giving victims an opportunity to tell their stories of victimology, depends on the intensity or complexion of the violence. When it is brutal, intense, sadist, it may, as De Forges (1999: 23) asserts, “leave none to tell the story”, by not affording them a chance to narrate it in the maze of the conflict.

One other notable feature of peace journalism is its avoidance of demonising language in the news. Peace journalists consider the use of language as very central to inflaming or mitigating conflicts. They insists that carefully chosen words in the media, have the potential to communicate the right message and negative, inflammatory words, and can be destructive to the cause of peace. Baumann and Siebert (2001:320) support this, “Language has enormous power; we use it intentionally and unwittingly. Words can do a lot of damage, creating and perpetuating stereotypes and division…. They tend to lock us and our readers into narrow mind sets…” One can imagine Mugabe’s widely quoted statement, “Strike fear in the heart of the white men” and how it may have served as a rallying point amongst the ZANU PF youth militias during the 2002 elections? Or, Morgan Tsvangirai’s rally statement, “Our message to Mugabe today is go peacefully or we will remove you violently”. Peace journalists argue that this kind of language especially from the elites, legitimises the victimisation of other groups and is anti-peace. Press discourses should serve two purposes during violence – they should de-escalate and depolarise by highlighting peaceful resolution to the conflict at hand. This is not an easy task. The production of news takes place within huge structures. Some of these structures may not be for peace. For example, state-owned media may support violence in a war that is willed by the ruling elites. Also, some advertisers may want quick sells and quick profits and hence are not agreeable to peace which is not readily interesting to readers, viewers and listeners. Peace journalism can “wriggle through” these structures and make a contribution to peace through serious, inquisitive, professional reporting that makes conflict more transparent (Galtung 1969 and Rees 2013).

Peace journalism is premised on certain assumptions, most of which have drawn controversy in the field and in academic scholarship. First it is premised on the assumption that the media and its journalists should be facilitators of positive social

34 change, rather than a disinterested observer (Tehranian 2002). From this point of view, the media have a responsibility to explore conflicts, understand what they are about, what the goals of the protagonists are, what may be the deep roots of the conflict and the visions about the outcome that may exist. Journalists have an “ethic of responsibility to take into account the foreseeable consequences of their behaviour and adjust their actions accordingly” (Tehranian and Dente 2011: 67). The media should be involved heavily in the promotion of peace and this is despite conservatives who decry what they say is a loss of objectivity associated with peace journalism (Shinar 2004). It is also despite the theoretical and practical questions surrounding the practice of peace journalism – for example which version of peace journalists should promote and despite the economic and political -institutional constraints built within the media structures. Hence, in times of violence, ruthless political leadership, journalists cannot afford to be passive, neither can they afford to be become instruments of propaganda, conflict and hate. Lynch and McGoldrick (2005) and Ross (2006) agree that this is part of journalism’s human responsibilities; peace journalism is an affirmation of this role. Peleg (2006: 6) asserts thus, “news media are participants, not detached observers in conflict situations, notwithstanding western journalism’s “regime of objectivity”, their presence unavoidably affects the course of conflicts”.

3.4. Existing models of peace journalism practice From around 2000, there has been a proliferation of different models that have sought to explain peace journalism. Two of the (arguably) popular ones include Galtung’s (2000) model and Aslam’s (2014) inverted trident pyramid model. What does a Peace Journalist do? This is the Original Peace Journalism Model by Johan Galtung The model below is one of the foundational models of peace journalism. It largely differentiates peace journalism from other news gathering and reporting practices, especially the opposite of peace journalism – war journalism.

PEACE/CONFLICT JOURNALISM WAR/VIOLENCE JOURNALISM

I. PEACE/CONFLICT-ORIENTATED I. WAR/VIOLENCE ORIENTATED explore conflict formation, x parties, y goals, Focus on conflict arena, 2 parties, 1 goal z issues (win), war general “win, win” orientation general zero-sum orientation open space, open time; causes and Closed space, closed time; causes and exits outcomes in anywhere, also in history/culture arena, who threw the first stone making conflicts transparent making wars opaque/secret giving voice to all parties; empathy, “us-them” journalism, propaganda, voice, for understanding “us” see conflict/war as problem, focus on conflict see “them” as the problem, focus on who creativity prevails in humanisation of all sides; more so the worse war the dehumanisation of “them”; more so the worse weapons the proactive: prevention before any violence/war weapon occurs reactive: waiting for violence before reporting focus on invisible effects of violence (trauma focus only on visible effect of violence (killed, and wounded and material damage) glory, damage to structure/culture) II. TRUTH-ORIENTATED II. PROPAGANDA-ORIENTATED Expose untruths on all sides / uncover all Expose “their” untruths / help “our” cover- cover-ups ups/lies III. ELITE ORIENTATED III. PEOPLE-ORIENTATED Focus on “our” suffering; on able-bodied elite Focus on suffering all over; on women, aged males, children, giving voice to voiceless being their mouth-piece Give name to all evil-doers give name to their evil-doers Focus on people peace-makers focus on elite peace-makers

IV. VICTORY ORIENTATED IV. SOLUTION ORIENTATED Peace = victory + ceasefire Peace = non-violence + creativity Conceal peace-initiative, before victory is at Highlight peace initiatives, also to prevent hand more war Focus on treaty, institution, the controlled Focus on structure, culture, the peaceful society society Leaving for another war, return if the old Aftermath: resolution, reconstruction, flares up reconciliation again

Galtung’s model can be considered as “the classic model” as it was the first model presented to explain peace journalism (Hackett 2007). The model basically sets out the differences between peace journalism and its nemesis, war journalism. I consider this one of the greatest strengths of the model – providing a clear outline of how peace journalism differs from war journalism and other journalisms is a useful distinction for conceptual clarity. Yet, this model does not go beyond these differences. It is not answering the question, how do we do peace journalism after making the distinction? Aslam (2014) provides an inverted trident model that goes beyond Galtung’s (2000) model.

The inverted trident model (Aslam 2014) moves beyond Galtung’s model by providing a series of steps and players that are central to the practice of peace journalism. It brings together factors and players that can be strategically deployed to achieve peace during conflicts. These, according to the model, include the media, journalists, and peacemakers on the ground. These two models are very useful as explanatory lens through which we can understand peace journalism as an alternative practice. However, both models do not address the issue of context. These models do not “travel” – so they are not a one- size-fit-all. Every conflict raises its complexities which a single model cannot address. Some conflict are violent, some are not while others are persistent. So, “generic” models may not apply in different types of models. Also, a close look at Aslam’s inverted trident model shows that it depends on peacemakers who “are visible on the ground during conflicts” (Aslam 2016; 2). But, it is not every conflict that raise “visible” peacemakers.

Some conflicts raise opponents of the conflict and these should not be confused with “visible peacemakers” Thus, some of the elements of the models may not exist in some conflicts. The inverted trident model of peace journalism is illustrated below. One other major weakness of both models is that they do not answer an important question in relation to the press: What do we do with the press before and during conflicts? Again, the models assume that by nature of their training, journalists can “naturally” report on conflicts in a peace journalism-related way. Both models do not factor in how, in the long run, journalists ought to be prepared for conflict eventualities.

The inverted trident of peace journalism model. (Source: Aslam, 2014, p. 183).

Aslam’s model (2014) above shows the values sharable among researchers, peace workers and researchers. It shows where these players meet to try and reduce conflict. It

38 also illustrates points of convergence amongst players as they unify to build peace and prevent further conflict

Having outlined what peace journalism is, its features, the premises around which it is justified and the models in this field, it is important to understand how the practice has been conceptualised in scholarship and practice.

3.5. Conceptualising peace journalism as a departure from normative journalism practices

Normative journalism refers to those philosophical practices of journalism consistent with other values and arrangements in a society (Josephi 2005). Normative journalism practice evaluates journalists’ behaviour according to given and accepted expectations and outcomes internalised within the practice (Hanitzsch 2007). Normative theory in any field, including journalism, has its own flaws. It is too prescriptive and as such, injures creativity in preference for straight-jacketed approaches to understanding phenomenon. This explains why normative theory “…is always challenged by new actors…” (Christians et al. 2009:118). But normative theory in journalism offers many advantages. It gives a common ground for understanding a phenomenon and its deviations from the set parameters. It provides a starting point for the debate around issues like in this case, how peace journalism may be similar to or deviate from, established normative journalism theories.

Much of the discussions on how peace journalism differs from normative journalism has centred on its difference with war journalism (Lynch 1998; Galtung 1998; Lynch and McGoldrick 2005; Lyon 2006; Hackett 2006; Keeble 2010 and Ugangu 2010). War journalism, deemed in scholarship as the antithesis of peace journalism, has been explained as a kind of news reporting with a camouflaged or explicit preference for war (Lynch and McGoldrick 2005). But war journalism is not entirely what normative journalism is all about. But in trying to conceptualise how peace journalism differs from normative journalism, one has to content with many controversies, the least of them being the frequent juxtaposition of peace journalism to war journalism. First of all, some scholars have questioned the existence of anything in journalism that can be called ‘normative

39 journalism’ (Irvan 2006 and Rigot 2007). Deuze (2003) contends that there is no journalism practice that can be pointed to as normative. His argument is that it is not easy to pin down exactly what normative journalism is because, journalism as a profession is constructively refined and reproduced such that there is hardly any consensus on what ‘’real’’, ‘normative’ journalism is about. Rees (1990:56) even claims that journalism contains ‘’self-contradictory oppositional values’’ to be pinned down as normative, conventional etc. However, these claims, arguably, may not reflect journalism. The fact that it has mutated, it has been refined and metamorphosed as Deuze (2003) admits, is no testimony to the fact that there is nothing like normative journalism. Before these mutations, refinements and reproductions, probably wrought by globalization, media institutions’ alignment with political elites, the market and integration of media institutions, there has been a journalism practice which should be treated as normative. Schudson (2000; 153) defines normative journalism as ‘’cultural knowledge that constitutes news judgement rooted deeply in the communicators consciousness’’. Perhaps for the sake of clarification, the concept of normative journalism needs to be explained more in this instance.

Journalism is an “ism” and as such, it is a belief system defined by appropriate practices and values of news professionals (Nerone 2012a).This practice has evolved over time and other journalisms have arisen and have been designated various names as development journalism, tabloid journalism, nationalist, sensationalist and, particular to this research, peace journalism. The ‘hegemonic’ model of journalism that appeared in the Western Europe in the late 19th century and early 20th century questions whether these other journalisms (e.g. development and peace journalism) are real journalisms. But, it does not deny their existence as news practices. It is this Western European type of journalism that has assumed the title of normative journalism (Mott 1962; Chalaby 1998; Mancini 2004 and Christians et al 2009).

Using these similar definitions as referential frameworks, it is important to ascertain, how can peace journalism be conceptualised as different from normative, conventional journalism practices? But before delving into this conceptualisation, it is important to highlight Irvan’s (2006) argument concerning peace journalism and normative journalism

40 practices. Irvan (2006) argues that peace journalism is a normative journalism practice which claims that the media ought to play a more positive role in promoting peace. Irvan (2006) says, peace journalism is normative because it brings obligations to journalists about what to do and how to do it. He stresses thus, ‘’Peace journalism is a normative practice because it requires journalists to act on certain obligations’’ (2006:1). This orientation by Irvan (2006) can be traced to social responsibility theory (Siebert 1953 and Peterson 1963) stating that the press is obliged to be responsible to society for carrying out certain essential functions of mass communication in contemporary society. However, I disagree with Irvan (2006) and concurs with Tehranian (2002) Philo (2002) Lee and Maslog (2006) and Cottle (2011) that peace journalism entails a deviation from normative journalism practices because it prescribes certain behavioral practices for journalists that are contrary to daily, taken- for-granted practices by journalists and the press.

One of the major differences between normative journalism practices and peace journalism lies in how both sets of practices treat conflict news. Seow and Maslog (2005) assert that in normative journalism practices, conflict news, and especially news about violence is often sensationalised and manipulated as mere devices to boost newspaper circulation and ratings. Gory figures of beheaded victims dead bodies and fleeing refugees boost newspaper circulation and readership. Seow and Maslog (2006). Youngblood (2016) supports Seow and Maslog (2006), asserting thus, ‘’traditional (normative) journalism overvalues violence and reactive response to conflicts while undervaluing nonviolent, developmental responses’’ (2016: 19). Jayakumar (2014) notes in her content analysis of newspaper coverage of the Boko Haram conflict in North- Eastern Nigeria, that journalists preferred military sources that valued the military responses and the attacks, not the solutions on the ground. She further notes news coverage was coloured by military discourses, based on winning language and not reconciliatory frames. On the other hand, peace journalism is an advocacy and interpretive kind of journalism that, like normative journalism, concentrates on the violence but, unlike normative reporting, highlights possible peace initiatives. Galtung (1998) says peace journalism, in this regard, sees conflict reporting as a self-conscious working concept for journalists covering violence.

Thus, peace journalism is an attempt to tone down on conflicts and/or prevent further violence. But peace journalism focuses, too, on the structure of society in order to promote conflict resolution, reconstruction and reconciliation by creating empathy and understanding during conflicts. This observation flows from the understanding that conflicts, especially of a political nature, are deeply embedded within the structures of societies. Hence, if peace journalism intends to assist in achieving peace through the media, it should seek an understanding of the structure of the affected societies. If the structure of a society is understood, most likely the genesis of a conflict is better grasped. For example, is it religion, is it the distribution of wealth and comforts, or is it about ethnicity? The Centre for Global Peace Journalism (2012) has described normative journalism as differing from peace journalism in that the normative journalism is usually ‘’irresponsible, superficial, distorted, sensational and inflammatory when it comes to war reporting’’ (2012:2). This definition is a bit too wide and extravagant because it encompasses under one umbrella, all forms of conflict reporting as normative journalism. This might not be true since not all normative reporting is superficial, distorted and inflammatory. While normative reporting of violent conflict may not be peace journalism, it may not be inflammatory and sensational, either.

Peace journalism equally positions itself differently from normative journalism in that it rejects normative journalism’s dichotomist framing and simplification of conflicts coverage through its (peace journalism’s) advocacy for conflict coverage which ‘’reincorporates events and protagonists into the social structure that shaped them…’’ (Tiripelli 2016: 6).The reincorporation of events and protagonists into the social structure that shaped them is important because, as suggested by Seaga Shaw, (2011: 10), ‘’it moves the responsibility for violence away from perpetrators and the “Other” towards social factors and within the ‘’interaction game’’. Galtung and Vincent (1992) further suggest that this reincorporation is important because it recast crucial events that define conflicts, but taking “place behind the scenes of conflict coverage” (1992: 126-127). As Seaga Shaw (2011) and Galtung and Vincent (1992) suggest, this reincorporation may allow groups to look for alternative visions and solutions focused on changing those aspects of social structures and cultures that cause conflicts and, in the process, make a contribution to peace. It is in light of these intentions of peace journalism that it is different from normative

42 journalism practices. The latter is not concerned very much, with the solutions than the conflict. Where peace journalism says, ‘’all sides in a conflict are responsible for the solution(s) of that conflict’’ (solution-oriented), normative journalism says, “Can we have the facts about the conflicts – the death, suffering atrocities…please!” (Conflict-oriented).

The advocates of peace journalism (Galtung, McGoldrick, Lynch, Ugangu, Tehranian, Kempf and others) make claims for its adoption from a critical evaluation of the current state of normative journalism. Galtung and Vincent (1993:7) criticise, “the criteria of news selection practices of traditional journalism such as negativism, personalisation and proximity to elite countries and elite people”. Schicha (1991) complains about the mono -causality within normative journalism descriptions of the origins and causes of conflicts – where conflicts are perceived as a result of two sides only. In agreement, Galtung and Vincent (1993) and Schicha (1991), Jacobsen (2000) argue that normative journalism focuses on a particular conflict only when violence is about to occur.

The media has no particular interest in simmering conflicts until and unless they erupt into serious violence. Normative journalism is focused on “hot” conflicts and may return if the old conflict flickers again. To buttress this argument, Nolan (2013) gives the example of the Iraq War. Prior to the war, the media were obsessed with the Iraqian leader, Saddam Hussein (Leow 2013). After his downfall, attention shifted to other “hot’’ conflicts especially Libya, Syria and Yemen. When the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria rose in Iraq, the media rushed back to Iraq, again. Normative journalism is, from this observation, obsessed with fully blown conflicts and not very much interested in the peace initiatives which happen before, during and after conflicts. The same observation can be noted of Zimbabwe. During the massive electoral violence of 2008, there was a “media stampede” that put the country onto the global limelight. But, the same cannot be said of the Global Political Agreement signed after the violence in September 2008.

Furthermore, scholars of peace journalism argue that normative journalism obsession with win- lose scenarios in violence has led the traditional press not only to dichotomise conflicts, but to simplify conflicts too (Wolfsfeld 2001; Philo 2002 and Tehranian 2002). Win-lose scenarios emphasises victory for warring parties and not possible reconciliation. Perez (2010) notes this win-lose kind of reporting in her study of the USA media coverage

43 of the Iraq war. She notes that the USA media were more interested in the victory of the USA than any other possible ways through which the conflict could be avoided and peaceful measures found. Protagonists in conflicts are demonised as the press adopts the usual “us – them” dichotomy (Shinar 2004). Wolfsfeld (2007) assert that in the coverage of violence, the media in general often get involved in a negative way which demonises protagonists, destroy any little goodwill that can be manipulated as springboards for peace and, consequently, increase and inflame further tensions. Wolfsfeld (2004) asserts that normative journalism tend to give more voice to the extremists of “both” parties whereas peace journalism gives voice to all, not necessarily two. Wolfsfeld (2004) view is supported by Irvan (2007) who argues that normative journalism often neglects the creation of an understanding between and amongst warring sides; it does not encourage reconciliation between rival parties – that is why Lynch and McGoldrick (2005) have straightforwardly accused normative journalism practices of having a camouflaged preference for war.

This claim by Wolfsfeld (2007), Lynch and McGoldrick 2005 and Irvan (2006]) miss a very important issue – they discount the many voices of peace that often sprout in a conflict. There is nothing like a “faceless conflict”, hence every conflict raises voices of peace, even in the media. Not all media reporting of the normative type is pro- violence. Zelzier (2016) notes that in Yemen, for example, the media has generally been against the war in the country. Zelzier (2016) sampled about 62 Yemen newspapers for the research and notes that they all write in favour of peace. In Afghanistan, Kayoed (2014) notes that after the ouster of the Taliban in around 2001, the media there were generally united for peace. Thus, the idea that normative journalism has a war orientation is difficult to sustain given these examples. But, still, it cannot be discounted in its entirety.

Another fundamental difference between the practice of peace journalism and normative journalism lies on news sourcing. Normative journalism depends largely on the views of elite sources - politicians, experts, government officials and other elite actors when covering violence. Elite sources are perceived as authoritative, knowledgeable and powerful (Tuchman 1978; Paletz and Entman 1981). Peace journalism clamours for the

44 incorporation the perspectives of non-elites sources – those non-official sources not related to power and the inclusion of ordinary citizens’ sources.

The inclusion of non-elite voices is a significant step forward because this would ensure that all voices, especially the voices of the victims are heard on the public sphere. This is important considering that most forms of political violence have an elite origin while the fighting and suffering is experienced by the ordinary people. Elite sources have the problem that they are already positioned in the conflict –siding with one or more of the protagonists. This presents a challenge for the journalist, because he/she may get inaccurate, distorted information. Youngblood (2016:19) claims that the use of such sources has caused traditional reporting to continue its, “inaccuracies, distortions and occasionally inflammatory, hate-mongering, (which) proves the need for a more responsible approach that emphasises context, perspective and accuracy...” Peace journalism, however, needs to attend to an important question in this regard; does the inclusion of non –elite sources and voices take the story significantly beyond the ordinary ‘’reporting of facts’’ which normative journalism claims is its trademark? The question may not be answered with certainty, but that might be the case because those ordinary voices may bring in new information about conflicts and violence that elite sources may as well want to censor.

It is important to highlight what Galtung, one of the founders of peace journalism really said separates peace journalism from normative journalism practices. Galtung (1998) notes that there are four salient features that separate peace journalism from normative conflict reporting. These are (a) avoidance of emotive language through news framing, (b) non-partisanship, (c) a people orientation and (d) a multiparty orientation. But, Galtung’s four features as outlined above can be problematic. One of those problems is that these four features share a common foundation in journalistic objectivity which in itself, is premised on one important credo – the reporting of facts as a neutral observer. Yet they do not demonstrate a major break on which peace journalism is anchored on – as a proactive journalistic duty seeking peaceful solutions to conflicts. This central role of a peace journalist is not abundantly (as it should be) demonstrated in those four indicators. This ‘misnomer’ as one may call it, may render credence to critics’ claims that

45 peace journalism as a practice is self-contradictory and its claim to do things differently is not based on news gathering and reporting realities (Lyon 1999; Bell 2002 and Mashy 2002).

Leouw (2016) notes that the main differences between peace journalism and normative journalism lie in their observance of news ethics. Leouw (2016) is unconvinced that peace journalism believes in ethical news values like balance – where points of views are sort across a range of competing voices, independence – where journalists ought to be independent from the influence of proprietors, sources, funders advertisers and objectivity – journalists should ensure a sufficient level of detachment from their stories so as not to influence them. To Leouw (2016), peace journalism cannot convincingly be detached since it already aligns itself with peace. Secondly, it is not objective in the sense that it seeks to suppress voices of war when they should, rightly be represented in the news, too. The fact that peace journalism openly aligns itself with peace means that it won’t maintain the required degree of professional independence from peace advocates. I agree with these criticisms but for different reasons. It should be noted that the values of independence, objectivity and detachment that Leouw (2016) insists peace journalism is devoid of, are only possible if the conditions to practice them are amenable. If they are not, as they may be during war/violence periods, they can be problematic, even mischievous, to abide by. For example, the value of balancing points of views, a form of objectivity, can be difficult if the competing views are not relatively commensurable. But, it is a useful concept if the questions of rightness and wrongness in conflicts are to be avoided and social justice, propagated by peace media is to be promoted. Again, the intended balance becomes difficult to achieve if the news system under which the journalists are working is not sufficiently consolidated to provide ways through which points of views can be coordinated. The same applies to the value of independence. Journalists operating in oppressive environments do not have enough occupational independence to support their prescribed professional independence. Yet, journalists should, according to peace journalism advocates, strive to set an agenda for peace.

3.6. Conceptualising peace journalism as agenda setting

Agenda setting is grounded on the principle that mass media have the capacity to either positively or negatively influence public perceptions on given issues (Cohen 1963). Cohen (1963:13) coined the often cited foundational definition of agenda setting, stating thus, “The press is significantly more than a purveyor of information and opinion. It may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about. And it follows from this that the world looks different to different people, depending not only on their personal interests, but also on the map that is drawn for them by the writers, editors, and publishers of the papers they read”

Agenda setting has been attributed as an original proposition by Lippmann who proposed that media messages have a tendency to “create pictures in our heads” (1922:8). The agenda setting theory was further expounded by researchers (e.g. McCombs and Shaw 1972) who, after conducting widespread studies on the effect of media campaigns on the USA political voting decisions, noted that through their choice (media’s) of displaying news, they play a key role in defining and influencing political reality. Baran and Davies (2006:13) notes, in support, “Readers learn not only about a given issue, but how much importance to attach to that issue from the amount of information in a news story and its position”. Thus, when the media presents certain issues frequently and prominently, there is the likelihood that “large segments of the public (would) come to perceive those issues as more important than others” (Coleman, McCombs, Shaw and Weaver 2009:168). But, as McCombs (2004:46) enunciate, agenda setting, “is not the result of a diabolical plan to control the minds of the public… it is an inadvertent by-product of the necessity to focus the news”. For peace journalism practitioners the definitions of agenda setting raised above have two consequences to its practice. Firstly, it means the peace journalist should set an agenda for peace when covering conflicts. It means s/he has to be active in the construction of news stories that promotes peace during violent conflicts. A survey carried out by Vieking (2014) notes that in 2014 more than 90% of Yemen’s media were opposed to the civil war, Saudi Arabia intervention and Houthi militia aggression in the South and

47 set an opposing agenda to the war. In the same year, a survey by the International Peace Corps showed that 80% of Yemenis were opposed vehemently to the war. I argue that the public opposition to the war might have been a response to media agenda which also opposed the war. Of course in proffering this argument, I am aware not to over-emphasise the power of the media in influencing the public opinion. In Rwanda, Thompson (2002:9) argues that during the 1994 genocide, Rwanda “was a few journalists away from peace”. While this is a bit extravagant in that it shifts causality to media and overemphasise journalists’ agency during the genocide, it is nevertheless a valid argument that the media can influence peace or war if they set the agenda. Again, for the press, it means making choices of whose agenda should be set – the elites’ voice or the ordinary people’s? The assertion that framing is an extension of or an aspect of agenda setting (Iyengar and Simon 1994) means the journalist has to make conscious lexical choices if s/he is to contribute to peace. It is, therefore, about the particular words that will be used during violence coverage. It is important to assess whether the linguistic frames adopted in the Zimbabwean press promoted peace. For, example, Mugabe’s 2007 infamous statement, “ZANU PF has degrees in violence” (The Sunday Mail, 29 September 2007). How can such statements be interpreted in the light of peace journalism? These are some of the pertinent issues requiring interrogation in this thesis. Agenda setting, logically, thrives on selection of news. This means what the news media choose to emphasise or not to emphasise will be “condemned” “to secondary status or in some cases, to relative obscurity” (Berger 1995:63). But, agenda setting is rarely a neutral process. Acknowledged at the micro-level of agenda setting is the individual journalist’s role and his/her biases and prejudices that affect their interpretation of events being relayed onto the public agenda, thus, their own subjective perceptions (Reynolds 2002).These subjective biases are a result of many factors that include the individual journalist’s upbringing, values, his/her political views and the level of exposure among many factors (Tuchman 1978; Mrogers and Dearing 1988; Shoemaker and Reese 1996 and Golan 2006). Rukhsana (2010:339) enunciates this point further, “When reporting the news, it is the journalist – the individual – whose words are read or heard, whose images are being seen and whose interpretation of the events forms “the first draft of history”. This process enunciated by Rukhsana (2010) is closely linked to the “gate –keeping” role

48 of the mass media journalists – the view that journalist in the newsrooms largely determine the issues and the personalities that would make specific episodes of news and the importance each of those individuals or episodes would be accorded (Janowitz 1975; Shoemaker and Eichholz 2001; Cassidy 2006). For Zimbabwe this raises some issues. Some senior journalists in the public press have openly declared their allegiance to the ruling party ZANU PF. It is insightful to establish, whether their close links to power allowed them to “gate-keep” for peace and whether they actually adopted peace journalism considering that ZANU PF has been accused of “benefitting’’ from electoral violence (Sachikonye 2011). This is because these subjective biases might have had an influence in the adoption of peace journalism practices. Bringing the theory of agenda setting to peace journalism, it should be noted that peace journalism is a form of agenda setting (Lynch and McGoldrick 2005). How to cover conflicts, that is, what to include and exclude in the news stories is, according to Lynch and McGoldrick (2005) entirely dependent on the choices made by journalists. When the media set an agenda for peace, they can alter violent conflicts by altering public perceptions about the conflict and build peaceful responses to it. The UN Rwanda Mission Commander in Rwanda during the genocide of 1994, General Romeo Dallaire once attested, “I was let down by the media” (in Thompson 2002:9). He further asserted, “I felt that one good journalist on the ground was worth a battalion of troops because I realised I could bring pressure to bear”. Rwanda has frequently been noted as a notorious case where the media (in particular the radio station Radio- Television Libre de Mille ([RTLM] and the magazine Kangura) are often cited as extreme cases of “machete journalism” – which encouraged the genocide perpetrated mainly by machetes (Roth and Olson 1997; Des Forges 1999; Thompson 2007; Steward 2016). The fact that magazines like Kangura and radio stations like RTLM published and broadcasted in popular languages like Kinyarwanda and French made their broadcasts and publications popular among Rwandans and reached a broad audience of both victims and perpetrators. Radio Rwanda, is accused of carrying such victimising, anti-peace and inflammatory rhetoric too (Mellen 2000). It is important to note that while there are numerous examples of commercial media that neglects peace journalism practices, there are a few on state controlled press that spread inflammatory rhetoric. This largely because there fewer

49 cases of state controlled newspapers than there are of radio and television. This makes it imperative for the Zimbabwe case to be investigated as it is one case where the state still controls many newspapers. In relation to post – independence Zimbabwe, Mazango (2005) notes that as the ruling party ZANU PF increasingly come under domestic and international pressure to reform, the regime has consistently and strenuously, “played media games’’ (2005:3), in order to disrupt information dissemination that seems to undercut its autonomy and grip on power. The regime, Mazango further explains, sees the media as “both a crucial setting and a tool of power struggle” (2005:2). Where it can set its preferred agenda, “with the boundaries of freedom of expression coming under attack as the vulnerable regime attempts to influence public opinion in its favour”. This attempt has largely been influenced by the desire to manage information in order to be able to manage the political space favourably. Moyo (2011) agrees with Mazango (2005:12), stating that ZANU PF’s “crumbling hegemonic edifice” has led it to manipulate the media to the extent of using coercive measures of regulation in order to be able to set the agenda, control the media agenda and articulate in the mainstream media, its version of the Zimbabwean crisis. Moyo (2011:13) further argues that, “The constitutional referendum of 2000 and the presidential elections in 2002 became early warning occasions to the government, signalling in particular that it had lost the confidence of the electorate and that oppositional discourses had caught the imagination of the citizen”. This has prompted the government to rearrange the public information deck in such a way that the oppositional agenda is grossly curtailed in the mainstream media, the growing chorus of opposition to the regime is held back from mainstream communication channels and government’s own version of the crisis takes centre-stage. Thus, in the public media, government of Zimbabwe has seized the agenda setting role initially entrusted to the journalists (Mandaza 2015) in order to counter the opposition and foreign media’s version of the crisis. This research also interrogates whether promoting peace is also part of the government intention in the public media, since it now controls the process of agenda setting. It is crucial to ascertain the kind of election discourses the government tolerates in the public media – how it allows its public press editors and journalists to frame the opponents of

50 the ruling regime and whether the kind of framing associated with the opponents of the government promotes peace during elections. The underlying assumptions of agenda setting have been challenged. The research processes leading to the proposition of the theory lacks thoroughness and accuracy (Adams, Harf and Ford 2014). It apportions a passive position to the audience, a position Hall (1997) and Fisk (1998) challenged. But, that the media set an agenda is largely accepted as part of its role in society (Leouw 2002). In understanding the mainstream press’ coverage of election violence, I intend to discuss the nature and extent of the agenda they set on this subject. At this juncture, it is important to understand where and how peace journalism has been implemented, highlighting the attendant successes and problems. 3.7. Operationalising peace journalism practice I choose to discuss the cases of Kenya and Uganda where scholarship on peace journalism has relatively burgeoned and where it has been operationalised. Together, these countries are in the same geographical location (Africa) with the case of this research, Zimbabwe. Considering that there is little scholarship known to this researcher on peace journalism in Zimbabwe, these cases can amply fill the gap and be subjected to some discussion to illuminate on the practicalities of peace journalism. Secondly, Kenya experienced serious electoral violence after the 2007 Presidential Elections, a kind of violence similar to what Zimbabwe has always experienced since 2000. So Kenya will provide a very clear synopsis of how peace journalism can be practised under the very similar conditions experienced by post-2000 Zimbabwe. For this reason, the bulk of the discussion on operationalisation of peace journalism will centre on Kenya. While Uganda has not experienced very high levels of electoral violence, it has experienced a long debilitating civil war. The implementation of peace journalism, especially in Uganda and Kenya, was not a media initiative alone. The media had to obtain assistance from peace journalism organisation like the Institute of World Peace Reporting (IWPR), Conciliation Resources Media and Conflicts in Africa (CRMCA) and other organisations. Equally important were individuals dedicated to the cause of peace, like Steven Youngblood of the USA, a peace journalism professor who dedicated time and resources to train journalists in peace

51 reporting in Kenya, Uganda and other parts of Africa. As Powers (2015) noted, NGOs and CSOs bring expertise like investigative and photographic expertise which the peace journalists can make use of effectively. Wairuki (2009) notes that such expertise was brought in. But there is a danger that they may also infect their agendas which may not necessarily be the news media’s agenda, in the process. Such dangers were not documented in the Kenyan example, however. Another danger of relying on these organisations is their “inward looking” tendencies when it comes to diagnosing the causes of conflicts and violence. There is a general belief that conflicts and violence in Africa should be located in African institutions which need reforms. They do not critic the continued underdevelopment of Africa by Western countries, nor the continued use of war by the USA and its allies against other countries in the name of “fighting terror”. But, despite these shortcomings, these NGOs and CSOs were able to make a contribution to peace journalism in this instance. Media houses needed the training in order to operationalise peace journalism. The will and passion of individual journalists for the successful implementation of peace journalism cannot be discounted. Many scholars of peace journalism (Galtung 1998; Fawcett 2000 and Lynch & McGoldrick 2005) have frequently noted that the success of peace journalism lies in the passion and will of the individual journalist towards peace. The journalist should be prepared to advocate for peaceful solutions during conflicts. Thus, the success of peace journalism is a “happy conflation” of factors ranging from the availability of willing CSOs who offer the training, passionate individuals with the know- how, the individual journalist himself/herself and the collective cooperation of the media houses involved. In Kenya, political violence started on 27 December 2007 when the Electoral Commission announced the results of the Presidential elections giving Mwai Kibaki of the Party of National Unity (PNU) the victory over his fierce rival Raila Odinga of Orange Democratic Movement (ODM). When the results were announced ODM officials immediately rejected them and vowed to defend what they called “the vote and their victory” (Wairuki 2009:34). On its part, the PNU vowed to defend “all Kenyans and the legitimacy of the election” (Menedy 2009). The result was a wave of deadly violence that uprooted ethnic groups, displaced many and led to the death of about 2 000 people (Human Rights Watch 2008).

The violence spiralled from the central regions of Kenya where it was largely confined to, to the remotest Eastern parts of the country. It was characterised by beatings, torture, displacement, killings threats on the politically different other. The UN, the African Union and the European finally intervened, putting pressure on the antagonists. Finally, the two parties formed a unity government which left Kibaki as the President and brought in Odinga as Prime Minister. During the crisis, the media played an important role, through peace journalism, that is thought to have assisted in calming the environment and promoting peace (Wairuki 2009 and Lafargue 2009). There was a general agreement by the press and broadcasters in Kenya to diversify their news sourcing to ensure the inclusion of ordinary and non-elite voices (Fortner and Fackler 2011). This is also in line with one of peace journalism’s principals – to diversify news sourcing to include the ordinary voices of the victims of violence presumably ignored by elitist-oriented sourcing (Galtung 2002 and Lynch & McGoldrick 2005). Of course, critics have quickly noted that a deliberate exclusion of subaltern voices smacks of some form of news censoring through deliberate manipulation of sourcing routines. But, it is hard to imagine how journalists can source their news without rendering themselves to this kind of criticism. The media in Kenya also vowed to change the framing of news into ways that avoided confrontational and hate language and based, rather, on conciliatory language. Lee (2009) has argued that for peace journalism to be successful, the media should admit that it is their framing of stories that lies at the centre of the problem. How they frame the violence is central to how the public generally understand it. But, journalists in Kenya, have not been used to such changes in both reporting and sourcing routines and had to undergo training. Training the journalists for peace journalism went hand in hand with its implementation during the violence of 2007 -2008 (Waikuru 2009). Training was done by NGOs, peace journalism experts and in some instances, it was in-house (Waikuru 2009). IWPR, the London-based peace organisation and CRMCA were instrumental in the training of peace journalists (Waikuru 2009). In the course of training, they made use of already existing literature on peace reporting, especially The Observance of Guidelines for Conflict Sensitive Journalism (Howard 2003). This document has become almost “the peace journalism bible” (Litchen 2010: 53) for the practising journalist. It spells out how

53 journalists can help in mitigating violent conflicts through their framing of news, sourcing and promotion of dialogue between and among antagonists. Training focused on journalists’ framing of the news stories on political violence (Youngblood 2016). Journalists were trained to avoid the adoption of pessimistic descriptions of the recently concluded election (Fortner and Fackler 2011). Peace journalism in violent – ridden Kenya also targeted the vernacular press (Lee 2009). The inclusion of vernacular language newspaper journalists was possibly done to widen the reach of the peace message by ensuring the message spread through most of the newspaper. However, Wairuki (2009) hazards that the inclusion of vernacular language newspapers in the practice of peace journalism in Kenya was a result of the fact that they, more than any other media, have been responsible for inciting political violence by inciting ethnic hatred. Editors, especially of the press, were obliged in the course of the violence, to write joint editorials, “urging reconciliation, focusing on common ground rather than on vengeance, retaliation and differences’’ (Lee 2009: 7). Vernacular newspaper were persuaded to avoid reference to ethnic groups. Perhaps, this lesson had been learnt earlier in Rwanda in 1994. According to scholars of the Rwandan genocide of April 1994, the ethnic bifurcation of Rwanda between Hutu and Tutsi was central to the perpetuation of the genocide and the extremely gothic character it assumed (Thompson 1999; Mamdani 2000 and Des Forges 2002). As an example, one of the most influential newspapers in Kenya, The Standard, undertook to avoid hate language amongst ethnic groups in its coverage of the violence and it also vowed to reject articles – letters to the Editor, opinion pieces, comments etc. that carried such language. Eventually, at the height of the post-election violence, most media houses in Kenya agreed to a blanket ban on reference to ethnic groups. Waruru, the Chairperson of the Kenyan Media Council (2008) admits that this initiative was adopted to promote peace reporting. The reasoning was that when violence was framed as ethnic, there was a dangerous tendency to create the “us vs them” scenario which, according to Galtung (1998) is not favourable to peace and inflames tensions. One peace journalist working in Kenya during this time remarked, “We made a deliberate effort to avoid certain framing techniques that would emphasise strong tribal feelings and loyalty. We felt such framing would divide the Kenyans (Fortner and Fackler (2014:23). So reference was supposed to

54 be to Kenyans, not tribal groupings like Kikuyu, Kalenjini”. This view is supported by Fortner and Fackler (2014:638) who note that the root of Kenya’s post – election violence is “… the tribalization of the media… leadership herding people into tribal cocoons”.

There was an agreement by media houses owners to adopt a two-pronged approach. Firstly, they resolved not to hire untrained journalists especially for the broadcasting media. Waikuru (2012) notes that the habit of making use of untrained journalists has been prevalent in the Kenyan media as a way of reducing labour costs (untrained personnel being cheaper to pay). Secondly, there was a resolution, which was later implemented, to retrain those journalists already hired to practice peace journalism. This was after the realisation that people who were hired in local language television and radio stations and “stringers” for newspapers (also known as correspondents) were not trained properly. Fortner and Fackler (2011:640) assert that these untrained individuals, “were paid only for what is published or broadcast, thus creating an incentive for the spectacular (and mostly sensationalist) story”. One Kenyan journalist further added, “Most of these (media practitioners) do not know about the repercussions… do not know the history which enables journalists to cover particular issues and ask the right questions…. The (untrained) people behind the microphones do not know how much power they had… they do not understand how the community interprets (what they hear)…We only know how to do the easy story…. Whip up emotions …. That is what we excel in….’’ (Unnamed journalist quoted in Fortner and Fackler 2011: 640)

Radio and television stations spend designated days talking about peace. Similar messages were prepared across radio and television speaking of peace. For example, on 6 January 2008, all radio and television stations across Kenya carried the same message of peace under the headline “Save Our Beloved Country”. The message was followed by a similar programme across the broadcasting media headlined, “A prayer for peace”. Earlier, on 3 January 2008, the press had carried a similar message under the same headline, “Save Our Country’’. Both the press and broadcast initiative has been the initiative of The Kenya Media Council, The Media Owners’ Association of Kenya and Kenya Religious Council (Lafargue 2009). Between 6-7 January, pastors, priests, Imams

55 and artists in Kenya appeared across Kenyan television and radio stations appealing for peace. Lafargue (2009) notes that individual television stations added their own regular programs meant to preach peace news. Lafargue (2009:123) notes, “Still in the interest of promoting peace at a time of conflict, NTV ran a series of special programs from 3 January 2008 entitled, ‘Saving Kenya: Voices of Reason”. Fortner and Fackler also notes in relation to the role of the media in Kenya’s violence, “There was a parliament reporter… and somebody asked him… ‘Why did you guys all have the same headline…’Save Our Country’?” He said, “Let’s be realistic… It’s not that we are really concerned about that, because conflict sells… The reason we did that is we realized … we couldn’t do business with the dead.” While there might have been an underlying reluctance to engage in peace journalism in Kenya, the escalation of political violence and the deadly levels it assumed jolted the media into action. Another television station, MNG televised five minutes clips on peace at regular intervals (Lafargue 2009). As violence increased, the media became more confrontational against perpetrators. For example, they agreed not only to jointly condemn violence whenever and wherever it occurred, they also agreed not to offer platforms for politically divisive analysis. Lafargue (2009:96) Furthermore, the Kenyan media started to issue blanket blame on perpetrators of violence. Lafargue (2009; 99) notes, “Journalists laid blanket blame on perpetrators on both sides of the political divide – the PNU and the ODM - who had played an instrumental role in instigating violence. Most of the culprits from the PNU who have played a role in ethnicising the violence were condemned…’’. By repeatedly appealing for calm and pointing fingers at perpetrators, the leading media transmitted themselves into ambassadors of the national interest and national unity, wanting to play a more positive role for peace and opposition to violence. There was also a general strategy to include the voice of women in the media. This, is in line with peace journalism proposition that for peace journalism to be successful, multi –party sourcing from non-elitist voices can help (Lynch and McGoldrick 2005). The Nation Newspaper later remarked, “The Swedish Embassy called us and asked us to rally around and get the senior women editors of the papers…and report the voices of women and the impact of this on the ordinary people… use their pen before even the editors chose the stories…Get the message out that enough is enough and get ordinary women to speak on how they have

56 suffered and how peace was paramount… The impact was immense… And it was called the White Ribbon Peace Campaign… So this led the way for other women groups to rally … the interventionist movement.” The inclusion of women is a strategy from peace studies itself. Scholars of peace, and not necessarily journalism (for example, Adams 1999 and Ferris 2000) have argued that women tend to be more peace loving than men, and they are better peace makers. Ferris (2000: 18) asserts, “Women tend to be more peace -loving than men, there has always been a relationship of women’s maternal roles to their predisposition towards peace”. It can, therefore, be hazarded that peace journalism might have borrowed this principle from peace scholars. In Kenya, conclusively, it can be noted that peace journalism targeted three main aspects of journalism practices. Firstly, it targeted the content – the framing of the stories. The target was the media output which the audience finally read as news. Secondly, it targeted the practitioner himself/herself so that he/she be aware of the responsibilities to peace. Thirdly, the target was also the broader media institutions so that they were supportive of individual journalist efforts for peace, taking into cognisance Giddens’ (1999) assertion that the production of news takes place within huge structured arrangements. It was mainly the manipulation of these three factors that helped the media implement peace. One comes to the conclusion that the practice of peace journalism in the Kenyan context, represented a new chapter for the media who have never practised it. As Waikuru (2016) notes, it defines positive work for the media in Kenya. The “Kenyan model” if I can call it that, of peace journalism practices after the 2007 election violence, differs slightly with the practices of peace journalism in Uganda. Uganda is an East African country whose Northern region is embroiled in a long winding conflict that started in around 1986 (Lindemann 2011). It is an ethnic-religious conflict pitting the government, currently led by Yoweri Museveni and the Lord Resistance Army (LRA) led by the elusive Joseph Kony. The civil war broke out when the country was still trying to steadily recover from the turmoil of both Idi Amin and Milton Obote dictatorships which were accompanied by economic decline and regional economic inequalities (Branch 2007 and Annan, Blattman and Mazurana 2011). Museveni established his own version of a dictatorship and the Northern groups like the LRA fighting him have refused

57 to lay down their arms. The consequences have been dire for many people who live in this part of Uganda. Many lives have been lost, massive abductions of children, killing of civilians, defilement, rape, landmines and many other problems (Collier and Hoeffler 2004). Generally, there is a palpable and enduring sense of anarchy and insurrection in the North (Collier and Hoeffler 2004). It is under these circumstances that peace journalism can be useful in mitigating the conflict, give voice to the voiceless in the conflict and to advocate for peaceful resolution to conflicts (Ugangu 2014).

Uganda has about three mainstream English language daily newspapers. These are: The New Vision, The Monitor and The New Age. Like Zimbabwe, there is a state – controlled newspaper – The New Vision whose circulation is estimated to be close to thirty thousand copies (Goretti 2007). Other mainstream newspapers include The Monitor whose circulation stands at around twenty six thousand copies and the Red Pepper whose circulation stands at around eighteen thousand copies (Goretti 2007). There are also vernacular language newspapers with high circulation figures for example, Bukedde published in Luganda language has an estimated circulation figure of about fifteen thousand copies (Robins 2007). As for broadcasting, there are about one hundred and fifty frequent modulation (FM) stations in Uganda (Robins 2007). However, Radio Uganda, which is a public broadcaster is the biggest radio station in Uganda (Goretti 2007). Although its broadcasting equipment is obsolete, Robins (2007) and Goretti (2007) comments the station for still being able to broadcast in twenty eight vernacular languages across Uganda. The biggest television station is Uganda Television in terms of audiences and financial resources (Robins 2007). For a long time, it was the only television station in Uganda (Robins 2007). But after the liberalization of the Ugandan airwaves in the 1990s, it was joined by ten other stations that are already broadcasting (Dowmunt 1993).

In Uganda, the practice of peace journalism has been a mixed effort by peace advocacy groups and networks in liaison with the media (Unjere 2014). McChesney (2004) and Hackett & Carroll (2006) argue that in many countries at global level, advocacy groups and networks have arisen with the aim of democratising the media as a distinct institutional field. The overt involvement of advocacy groups in the Ugandan media for

58 peace journalism should be seen within McChesney’s (2004) observation. After all, one of the claims made by peace journalism advocates is that it democratises the media by giving “voice to the voiceless” (Galtung 1998) and widening sourcing routines to include those who have traditionally been left out (Tehranian 2004). But, the intervention of advocacy groups and other networks can point to a media which cannot carry out its own initiatives without assistance – like a peace journalism in times of conflict. Yet, on the other hand, it shows the determination of NGOs and CSOs in helping broaden the operations of the media for particular societal causes that the media may be reluctant or hesitant to engage in, like peace issues (Patel 2008). Powers (2015) warns that there are inherent dangers when NGOs and CSO become involved in journalism, or, as he aptly puts it, “taking on a number of journalistic functions” (2015:1) like in this case of Uganda. Powers (2015: 2) argues this point further asserting, “On the other hand, such developments may augur a worrisome conflation of the lines separating advocacy from journalism with deleterious consequences befalling both sides”. This can be true, but scholarship should not lose sight of the fact that such an involvement has a greater possibility of expanding the reach of news and information into domains where journalists may not venture. For example in conflict zones, a network and liaison between CSOs and NGOS on the one hand and media house can be useful in expanding the reach of news and widening its sourcing as the Uganda case demonstrates.

The first stage towards peace journalism practice in Uganda was an agreement by the media to produce the news on the conflict themselves rather than to rely on information supplied by stringers and opinions of unqualified personnel. The idea, like in Kenya, was to reduce sensationalised reporting with the potential to spur the conflict further. So, the media houses agreed that the use of stringers and unqualified personnel had to be stopped. This had been in rampant use among media houses because of its cost cutting appeal. In extremely difficult economic environment, media houses find it difficult ‘to be there when it happens’. Thus they rely on those already on the ground. There was also a habit in the Ugandan media noted by Ugangu (2014) where news producers tended to rely on information officers for news. These are government officials spread across the country (Nyirazi 2014).In addition, there was also an entrenched system of news media

59 houses relying on other government appointed personnel for news (Nassanga 2007:6). Nassanga notes, thus “District and government officials were second highest sources of news for both, with The New Vision and The Monitor. In order of importance of the sources… the Uganda People’s Defence Force and government came first”. Such elite- oriented sourcing of news presents challenges for peace journalism. Government information officers would also likely to produce pro-government information, which may not fall within the demands of peace journalism. The New Vision, in line with peace journalism, agreed to reduce its over-reliance on the military for news about the conflict. Military sources are elite sources. Again, the military gives a military version of events which does not align with peace journalism.

On the other hand, The Monitor, which made use of local residences’ sources more than the former, started to vary its sourcing routines to include both elite and none elite alternatives. It was also agreed during training session for peace journalism, that very little space has been accorded to the LRA, the protagonist in the north. Therefore, to remedy this, contacts were to be established to seek news from the LRA. Nassanga (2007:12) further notes, “Most newspapers, radio and television stations, had little on the LRA and even fewer quoted it as their primary source”. In terms of influencing language use for peace journalism, Ugandan journalists adopted the “Kenyan approach” where media houses started toning down the rhetoric they used in their coverage of the conflict. Editors would meet regularly to compare aspects of news reporting on the conflict in the North. Issues that were noted included how confrontational was the language that has been used in the reports? Did the language used make an attempt to tone down the confrontation? How represented are the victims of the conflict in news reports? The strategy worked well for peace journalism, overall. 3.8. Obstacles to peace journalism In presenting the obstacles to peace journalism, it is vital to highlight two models that can help in understanding factors that stand in the way of peace journalism. Shoemaker and Reese (1996) note that news-making follows five hierarchical levels. These are: individual, ideological, media routines, organisation and extra-media levels. Tilic (2001) proposes a “media system functioning model” while exploring the decision-making

60 processes of Greek-Turkish journalists. For Tilic (2001), there are five interrelated levels of decision making: the media atmosphere, media ownership, media institutions, the journalist and the receiver. Shoemaker and Reese’s (1996) and Tilic’s (2001) models can be reduced to three common levels of news making practices – the individual, level, institutional and ideological levels. I assert that these levels present serious obstacles to the practice of peace journalism. Firstly, individual level obstacles present a serious challenge to the practice of peace journalism. Researchers (e.g. Weaver 1999 and Irvan 2006) have noted that during conflicts, journalists assume the role of neutral disseminators of information. It should be noted that how journalists conceptualise their role during conflicts strongly influences their choice of stories and their choice to adopt or not adopt peace journalism practices. Some journalists may perceive peace journalism as harming the practice of professional journalism. Lyon (2003:2) for example, states that peace journalism is bad journalism practice, “our task is always to find out what is going on not carrying any other baggage. If there is conflict resolution, we report it in the context. We do not engage in it” Thus, the professional value of objectivity which as argued earlier, has been the point of difference between peace journalism adherents and its critics is a major obstacle to the practice of peace reporting. Galtung (2000:163) makes a noteworthy point on objectivity pointing out thus, “I would like to see objective journalists: who are able to cover all sides of the conflict”. Lyon (2003:67) disagrees, noting that peace journalism stands in the way of objectivity, “I want to appeal for more traditional values such as fairness, objectivity and balance the only guiding lights of good reporting….objectivity has to remain a goal, the only sacred goal we have …” Bell (1995) disagrees with Lyon (2003), arguing that objectivity in journalism should be abandoned in favour of “a journalism of attachment” - where journalists get attached to the cause of peace (in Hanitzsch 2004:12). Shinar (2004: 2) supports Bell (1995), asserting that, “Objections about the loss of objectivity can be countered with the argument that the transition of media roles from reporter/observer to participant/catalyst in international relations are part of the ongoing erosion of a mythical “objectivity” and the acceptance of subjective reality construction concepts” Thus, the way individual journalists perceive of their roles during conflicts can act as an obstacle to peace journalism.

The nationalistic tendencies in media presents an ideological challenge to peace journalism. Bennett (1990) notes that it is easy for journalists to follow the official line, or they “index” themselves to “official politics”. Irvan (2006) justifies this culture, asserting that it protects journalists from criticism and helps them to frame the conflict in a consensual manner. Wolfsfeld (2004) states that the media usually foster an ethnic- centric view of the world. “The stories are mostly about us, the good guys, and they are represented mostly as the bad guys” (Irvan 2006:6). Wolfsfeld further argues, “News editors assume . . . that the public has very little interest in learning about the life and society of enemies. Enemies are only of interest as threats . . . Even journalists who support a peace process will avoid writing stories that offend ‘local sensitivities’…this ethnocentrism becomes especially blatant in times of crisis. When a peace process breaks down, the news media of both sides emphasize their own righteousness and the other’s evilness” (2004: 22-23). Ozgunes and Terzis (2000: 464) note this of Turkish journalists, “I am always thinking of our national interest and the interest of my newspaper when I am reporting Greek-Turkish affairs. At the end of the day I don’t want to criticize my government because my ‘objective’ reporting might be used wrongly by the other side.” A former editor of The Sunday Mail in Zimbabwe, Brezhnev Malaba once said, “We support the current government because it is nationalistic in orientation. We are also products of this nationalist project… we cannot be the Trojan horses of neo-colonialism….” (The Sunday Mail 19 January 2007). How far, one would wonder, did this ideological stance influence the adoption of peace reporting during instances of electoral violence which are common in post-2000 Zimbabwe? It is vital to establish how ideological factors might have influenced peace journalism practices in the Zimbabwean press. The nature of normative journalism itself, is an obstacle to the successful implementation of peace journalism. Journalism is a social system (of public communication) (Gjelten 2001). Public communication operates self-referentially and self-organisingly (Hanitzsch 2008). Thus, (normative) concepts like peace journalism which emerged from a perspective (peace and conflict perspective) extended to public communication may not be easily accepted by the internal structures of journalism. More so, the provisions of peace journalism are seen by opponents (e.g. Randal 1999 and Lyon 2007) as seeking

62 to alter journalism and not sharpen it. Above all, peace journalism’s relationship with social responsibility – by its assertion that journalists have a responsibility to society, presents even serious problems. Gjelten (2001) asserts, “Journalists as individuals instinctively resist arguments claiming that they should be more socially responsible, having seen how authoritarian governments around the world have used that demand to muzzle an irksome free press” (2001: 76). Thus, resistance to its practice remains the main obstacle to peace journalism. Some journalists and scholars insist that there is no reason why journalist should “re-imagine” their work to help prevent conflicts around the world. They simply need to do their work job better by the already existing standards of journalism (Mahitir 2007 and Cottle 2008). In addition, the ruling elites remain a major obstacle to the practice of peace journalism. Wars are by and large, elitist endeavours (Mansfield and Snyder 1995). When war breaks out, the ruling elites try to manipulate and control the press discourses around which the war is discussed and debated (Ussanga 2000). Althusser (2008) notes that the ruling class always sees the press as a key factor in their ideological struggle and would therefore want to control media and to promote “the ideology of the ruling class” (Althusser 2008: 20). This is a significant obstacle to the practice of peace journalism considering that peace journalism seeks to resist government propaganda, expose lies, cover – up attempts culprits on all sides of the conflict and the suffering of the victims of the war (Lederach 1997). Peace journalism, with its rejection of state propaganda, will not augur well with these broad objectives of the ruling class. A peace press may reject to be soothed and lullabied into an instrument for the (re)production of elite propaganda. To counter “insubordination”, the state elites, during war times, may make strenuous attempts to discipline its press opponents. Hirondele (2009) notes that in the Central African Republic (CAR) peace journalism initiatives by the RNL radio station endured massive intimidation from the Bozize government. Its efforts at peace journalism, “put it at odds with the political authorities, security forces and pressure groups. Its journalists have suffered much intimidation by government and military officials. Hardly a day passed without a telephone call or interference from the military over its coverage of the war” (Human Rights Tribune 2007:66). Zimbabwe’s ruling elites are notorious for intimidating journalists as well. In February 2016, the president,

Mugabe accused private media journalists of lacking in Ubuntu and being obsessed with ZANU PF misdemeanours. The then Army commander, Constantine Chiwenga in 2017 said journalists were Zimbabwe’s number one national security threat. It is important to ascertain from practising journalists whether these blatant, and overt threats might have influenced the practice of peace journalism.

3. 9. Traditional news values as obstacles to peace journalism

The everyday practice of news gathering and dissemination is based on news values that have been treated as commonsensical and essential across newsrooms. Allan (2004:67) define news values as determinants of news coverage and “… the everyday practices journalists engage in when constructing news accounts as truthful ‘reflections” of reality. News values according to Bell (1991) help journalists to make and justify his/her selection of specific events as “newsworthy” and discarding others as not newsworthy. Allan (2004; 57) says these values “…are embedded in the every procedure used by reporters to impose some kind of order and coherence on the social world”. They are treated not only as uniform, but with little to minor variations across the journalism world, to make the world reportable. News values are also embedded in journalism training institutions as part of the journalism curriculum.

There are many of these values in the production and dissemination of news. These include; power elites, celebrity, oddity, magnitude or impact, follow-up, timeliness, conflict and emotional impact (Shoemaker and Reese 1996 and Yopp and McAdams 2013). According McIntyre (2011), the most prominent news values are conflict, immediacy, negativity and preference towards the elite. When there is conflict in society, or a dispute, a sense of immediacy is created which generates interest and this interest is enhanced through dramatisation and sensationalism (Wiener 2011). Unexpectedness is another very prominent value in news gathering and reportage. An event which looks out of the ordinary is likely to be “novel”. In this case, news gathering and production follow the old cliché’, “Dog bites man isn’t news, man bites dog is”. News should also make reference to elite people and nations. It is about prominent politicians, sports persons, corporate leaders and political governors like monarchies. News is not about the “ordinary men”.

Negativity is another prominent news value. Bad news is ordinarily favoured over good news. Bad news is favoured because, according to Allan (2004) bad news usually contains all other prominent news values - immediacy, negativity and conflict. McLuhan once remarked that advertisements constitute the only good news in a newspaper (in Allan 2004). This was earlier confirmed by Shoemaker and Reese who say bad news is naturally newsworthy than any other news variety.

These news values are, however, not in sync with the demands of peace journalism practices. This is why some scholars, for example, Litchstein (2002) have argued that peace journalism is a radical rethinking of traditional journalism practices. It entails a negation of these news values towards a journalism that values peace, reconciliation, engagement and negotiations. To understand this argument with clarity, it is important to account for these news values. Why are they like this in the first place? McIntyre (2013) says that news values, especially for the commercial media, are market-driven. They are driven by the profit imperatives of media organisations. The first principle is that news, while serving a social purpose, also should serve an economic purpose for the very same organisation that produce it. So news producers are always eyeing the market, to sell as many newspaper copies as can be sold and attract high valued advertisers. Thus, news production should ultimately reflect value for money.

The emphasis on commercial imperatives in news organisations can affect an editor’s judgement of news values and have a “corrupting” influence that emphasises money over peace values. For example, an adverse editorial piece that affect revenue inflows can be removed yet, it can be useful as an appeal to peace and negotiations for warring parties. Hence, positive news – “those items reflecting social cohesion and cooperation” (Greber 1999; 55) – rarely get covered at the expense of conflict. This explains why in the commercial media, peace journalism will be difficult to sell as a sustained approach to news coverage. War, and its disturbing pictures and stories is news. Peace does not contain negativity and hence, it is difficult to sensationalise, like violence. Peace journalism more so, rejects the overt focus on elites that other journalisms adhere to (Galtung 2000 and Lynch 2005). Therefore, peace journalism lacks a major value of news – conflict.

In his study of the Intifada (Palestinian Uprising against Israeli occupation of the West bank), Tiripelli (2016) notes that voices of peace in this conflict were hugely neglected in the global mainstream media, even in the local Israeli and Palestinian media, they did not feature prominently. “The voices remained unheard and hidden, weakening the impact of their different effects on peace initiatives…” (Tiripelli 2016: 104). Tiripelli (2016) further notes that the coverage of the Oslo Accord on 13 September 1993, which was meant to facilitate peace between Israel and Palestine got far less attention in the media than the Intifada. This might be a confirmation that profit-oriented mainstream media have little considerations for peace efforts. They obviously stick to the old mantra – what bleeds, leads. Peace, by its nature, is an arduous process, involving a torrid process of dissecting “the complexity of the conflict and the communities involved or the stories which focus on…suffering” (Tiripelli 2916:77). Obviously, this is not a profit domain for the media and it’s a negation of long-standing news values.

These findings by Tiripelli (2016), relating to the Intifada are replicated by Samuel and Abayomi (2016) in their study of the Boko Haram conflict in Nigeria and its coverage in the news media. They note that there is a quantitative leap in stories of despair, hopelessness graphic violence, vigilante activities and beheadings etc., stories that emphasise the violence, whenever the insurgents launches an attack in North- Eastern Nigeria. They further note that there was little attempt by the media to proffer peace solutions and cover peace initiatives on the ground that can help quell the violence. This may justify a proposal that in times of extreme violence like obtaining in Northern Nigeria, violence elections in Kenya and post-2000 elections in Zimbabwe, peace voices may have to find alternative spaces for peace journalism. In Uganda, for example, there is Radio Pacis, Mega FM and Radio Ijambo all of which are dedicated to peace journalism and peace initiatives (Ugangu 2012). In Afghanistan, there is Afghan Radio Peace (Sada- i-Sulh) station which specialises in peace journalism. These are non-commercial stations majoring in peace journalism, funded by a myriad of individuals and organisations interested in peace and conflict resolution. Therefore, the disinterest in peace journalism displayed by commercial media makes a strong case for non-commercial media specialising in peace. There are many challenges of course. For example, sustained funding is an issue. Again, considering that commercial media usually tap into a huge

66 audience, how best can it be utilised for peace journalism in order for peace voices to tap into these huge audiences?

3.10. Criticisms of peace journalism

One of the main criticisms levelled against peace journalism is that it views journalists as a peace-keeping force (Lyon 2003:12). Lyon stresses that, “peace journalism could compromise the integrity of the journalists and confuse their role as peacemakers”. He further stresses, “Our task is always to seek out what is going on … if there is conflict resolution… we report on it… we do not engage in it” (2003: 13). This weakness of peace journalism should, in my opinion, be traced to the nature of peace journalism itself. As a news gathering and reporting alternative, peace journalism is rooted too much in the discipline of peace. This is a strong criticism raised by Hanitzsch (2004). Hackett (2006:2) supports Hanitzsch (2004) arguing thus, “It is a normative model, rooted into the discipline of peace research that fails to take into account the constraints imposed by the actual dynamics of news production(including professional values and organisational imperatives) and hence, may have little to offer journalists in practice…”.

This criticism is strengthened by the works of the Berghof Foundation for Peace Support (BFPS) in the Aceh province of Indonesia in 2005. BFPS, in 2005 attempted to implement peace journalism utilising both Christian and Muslim newspapers in the region. This region of Indonesia has been devastated by a religious and separatist civil war for decades with no sign of abetting. In a bid to foster peace, BFPS encouraged local newspapers to implement peace practices like carrying joint editorials, avoiding inflammatory framing of the conflict and stereotypical representation of religions that fosters conflict. Aspinall (2005) notes that the project collapsed into extreme partisanship and self- censorship. Aspinall (2005) argues that this failure was a result of BFPS’s mistaken attempt to utilise newspapers as part of the peace-making process. Aspinall (2005) notes that during the implementation of the peace journalism, newspapers could not mention “sensitive” issues like statements that Muslims do not eat pork, that Christians did not like the Muslim culture of concubines and polygamy. BFPS officials reckoned that such statements were inflammatory and could stoke further conflict between the Christians and Muslims. But these are statements of fact and how

67 mentioning them could stoke tension is difficult to tell. Aspinall (2005) notes that there was extreme self-censorship which compromised factual reporting, objectivity and balance in news reporting. Thus, peace journalism challenges not only the generally held, sacrosanct news values, but also the generally held ethical considerations of news reporting. Carlson (2002) notes that in journalism practice facts are sacred and objectivity remains key.

Peace is a specialised field of politics, international relations and diplomacy. It is a no-go area for ill-trained journalists (Hanitzsch (2004) and Hackett 2006). But, Rodriguez (2000) disagrees with both Hanitzsch (2004) and Hackett (2006). Rodriguez (2000) argues that both media and citizens should be active participants in the peace-making process. Journalists should not pretend to be disinterested in processes of peace. Such a disinterest is a denial of the reality of their existence. Rodriguez (2000:150) asserts thus, “only when citizens and the media take their destiny in their own hands and shape it using their own cultures and strengths will peace and social change be viable … power has to be diffused from being concentrated in a few peace experts into the everyday lives and cultures of civil society”. It is plausible to agree with Rodriguez (2000). There are valid reasons for the media to be involved in the peace-making process especially through peace journalism. One of the reasons being that journalism does not, and should not work against society. Again, their involvement gives “voice to the voiceless” (Galtung 2000:11:18). I mean those denied a voice or deliberately silenced or denied access to the platforms of communication.

Another criticism levelled against peace journalism is that it unnecessarily make journalists deviate beyond their normal routine practices in order to report conflicts in a more constructive and peace- building way. Fawcett (2002) confirms this criticism in her study of the conflict between the Royalists and Unionists in Northern Ireland. Fawcett (2002:2) boldly declares after studying the Northern Ireland conflict, “Peace journalism is not news”. Through her case study of two Irish newspapers – The Irish News and News Letter, Fawcett (2002) notes that journalists practising peace journalism can rarely be “authentic and serious” newsmakers because the text itself is largely constraining. Secondly, the rhetorical and narrative forms of peace journalism which emphasise certain

68 peace frames, like the reconciliatory frame and certain discourses that promote peace close off some alternative ways of understanding a raging conflict, ways which are equally necessary if the particular conflict is to be understood holistically. Fawcett (2002) notes that The Irish News and News Letter agreed to produce joint editorials that promote peace. But Fawcett (2002) notes they ended overdoing the practice. In the process, they ended up closing off “other narratives of compromise and reconciliation…” (2002: 12). In the end, peace journalism practices failed to bring an understanding or to highlight alternative dispute resolution processes in the conflict.

These findings in Northern Ireland are also confirmed in Africa, in Kenya. Maweu (2017) in his study of the media in Kenya after the 2013 elections, notes that they became fearful of aggravating election violence to the extent that they engaged in, “extensive self- censorship” (2017:2). In the 2007/2008 post-election violence, the media were roundly blamed for instigating and encouraging the attacks. In 2013, fearful of such accusations, the media adopted peace reporting. Maweu (2017:12) notes that in the 2013 elections, as a result of the adoption of peace journalism, “Journalists and media in general engaged in excessive self-censorship in the name of peaceful elections thereby neglecting their watchdog role…” (Maweu 2017: 12) further notes that media avoided, “contentious electoral issues for fear of flak and relied on the IEBC [Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission] and other government agencies as official sources of critical election information”. This observation by Maweu (2017) and Fawcett (2002) underlines the fundamental weakness of peace journalism – it can easily go down to peace propaganda. In the process failing to serve the interests of society as a viable alternative to war journalism, which peace journalism is frequently compared with.

Peace journalism has also been criticised for its lack of objectivity, balance and for it being a “journalism of attachment” – attached too closely to the cause of peace. Maltby (2010) cites Radio Oksigen in the Balkans and Rana FM in Afghanistan used by North Atlantic Treaty organisation [NATO] in the country for peace journalism as examples of peace journalism’s lack of objectivity and balance. Radio Oksigen was set up in post- conflict Bosnia – Herzegovina, “to unite audiences towards a peaceful, multicultural state” (Maltby 2010: 228). Rana FM on the other hand, was launched in Afghanistan to support NATO

“peace-building and counter-insurgent operations through peace journalism” (Maltby 2010: 226). Maltby (2010) criticises both radio stations for being too propagandistic, lacking objectivity and balance in the coverage of the conflicts and being attached to the peace issues to the extent of ignoring other nagging issues relating to the conflict. But, Bell (1997) sees nothing wrong about this drift towards outright propaganda in the name of peace. Bell (1997:7) argues, “Journalism is not a neutral and mechanical undertaking but in some sense a moral enterprise”. But, Bell (1997) clearly argues against Chadwick (1992) who insists that adherence to balance and objectivity in news cannot be up for discussion as they form the bedrock of news reporting. But, in agreement with Bell (2007), in times of crisis, like during moments of violence, journalists cannot be quite. Violence is both a political and moral crisis. It highlights a crisis in ethics within a community (Sisk 1993). And it is difficult to see how an influential institution like the press can choose to remain neutral in the name of objectivity under such depressing conditions. As Luther (1967:33) puts it, “Our lives begin to end when we cease to talk about the things that matter…” If journalism detaches itself from peace initiatives, the profession can, arguably be damned as well. Silence can easily be interpreted as a form of collusion.

3.11. Conclusion Research on peace journalism in Zimbabwe is still budding. Hitherto, from the researcher’s knowledge, there has been little effort in this regard, though one would hope more is on the way. Tsarwe and Mare (2018) note that the mainstream press – The Financial Gazette and The Sunday Mail do not abide by peace journalism practices in covering the often violent elections in Zimbabwe. They further note that coverage of elections reflect the polarisation and divisions already existing in the Zimbabwean press. Tsarwe and Mare (2018) recommend an adherence to ethics as a solution to this obsession with conflict. But they do not go further to problematise the role of individual journalists’ ideologies and newsroom pressure, factors that may stand in the way of peace journalism. This is a gap this thesis also seeks to fill. Yet, their work is very foundational in the study of the relevance of peace journalism in Zimbabwe. Chuma (2017) agrees that the press in Zimbabwe largely fails on peace journalism. He argues that a cursory look at news shows a lack of context and interpretation. The press ends up parroting elites power structures. Chuma (2017), therefore, agree with Tsarwe and Mare (2017) about the

70 absence of peace journalism in the Zimbabwean press. Chuma (2017) suggests the need for peace training among journalists. Chari (2016) argues for the need for peace journalism in Zimbabwe’s often violent elections. These works remain the only known works on peace journalism in Zimbabwe as of now. And they constitute a genesis of research into that field. This chapter has reviewed the literature relevant to the problem under investigation. The discussion of this literature presented in this chapter has shown that while there is a lot of literature on peace journalism, Africa in general, and Zimbabwe in particular, still have yawning gaps in this regard. A survey of the literature has revealed that the practice of peace journalism is steadfastly spreading across conflict and violent-ridden environments of the world. Recently, scholarly works sprouted on peace journalism in Uganda, Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria, but this is still relatively little compared to output in other parts of the world. Using the cases of Uganda and Kenya, the chapter has demonstrated that the media ought to be used deliberately to promote non-violence. But there is still little literature on peace journalism and electoral violence in this surveyed literature. Only recently has literature in this regard emerged from violent-ridden elections in Kenya. But none has emerged from Zimbabwe, a unique case of sustained electioneering accompanied by electoral violence since 2000. The chapter has also highlighted the fierce resistance peace journalism has encountered among academics and practitioners. It has been noted in this chapter that those who oppose peace journalism have two things in mind. Firstly, they fear that the media and journalists, if attached to peace journalism, risk being lapdogs (of peace) rather than watchdogs. Secondly, they fear that peace journalism might disintegrate into “feel good journalism”, exhorting news reporters to accentuate only positive news about peace and eliminate negative news about violence, ultimately losing objectivity. This “angry dismissiveness” by critics is, however, based on an entire misconception of peace journalism. Peace journalism, as demonstrated in this chapter, is about journalistic initiatives rather than reactive coverage of conflicts, and moves beyond the detached reporting of problems involving important public issues like peace. It is also about the long term commitment to a peaceful society. If critics understand peace journalism from this perspective, their dismissive heuristics such as loss of objectivity, attachment to a cause could have toned down.

This study is positioned as an investigation of the press’ adherence to peace journalism in violent-ridden post-colonial Zimbabwe. In the next chapter, the researcher provides the methodology of this research.

CHAPTER 4

Research methodology

“The worst thing that contemporary qualitative research can imply is that, in this post-modern age, anything goes. The trick is to produce intelligent, disciplined work on the very edge of the abyss.” (David Silverman1999:74)

4.1. Introduction

This chapter outlines and discusses the data gathering and analysis methods used in this research. In this research, I adopted a qualitative design, and an interpretivist paradigm. This chapter is structured into five major sections. The first section addresses the research paradigm. The second section deals with the data gathering methods. The third section discusses the data analysis methods. The fourth section addresses the field work experiences of the researcher as he interacted with his interview respondents. The ethical concerns of the research are discussed in the fifth section.

4.2. The interpretivist paradigm

A research paradigm is “a set of assumptions and perceptual orientations shared by members of a research community” (Given 2008: 620). Paradigms determine how researchers view the general phenomena of the particular communities they are studying (White 1995). They also determine the research methods that can be employed to understand those phenomena (Putman 1982). .

This research is situated within the interpretivist paradigm (Putman 1982; Denzin and Lincoln 1994 and White 1995). The paradigm acknowledges that research is based on real- life world ontology in which all observation is both theory and value-laden (Hill and Harrison 2010). Investigation of the social world is not, and cannot be the pursuit of a detached objective truth (Leitch et al 2010). Epistemologically, the viewpoint of the interpretivist paradigm is that our knowledge of reality is a social construction of human actions. Interpretivism is, hence, characterised by the need to understand the world as it is from a subjective point of view, and seeks an explanation within the frame of reference of the participant rather than the objective observer of the action. As in the case of this thesis, part of its concerns lies with why news stories on election violence assumes

73 violently polarised, war-like frames, and adopt violent, hurt-spewing, divisive, generally non-peace discourses in the press. What I seek to understand is to interpret news texts and the accounts of the text producers. At an axiological level, the interpretivist paradigm is the interview, while secondary data from other sources (like newspapers in this case) are collected too (Schulze and Avital 2011).

Interpretivists argue that the paradigm promotes the generation, discovery and construction of knowledge through its acknowledgement of the unique, “… entanglement of the researcher with the research and the researched” (Yanow 2018; 9). Guba and Lincoln (1989:16) assert that Interpretivism, “makes an effort to get into the head of the subjects being studied”. The idea of interpretivism as adopted in this thesis is, therefore, to seek an understanding of what the subjects are thinking about the subject under research, or the meaning they are making in particular contexts. Interpretivism seeks to understand the viewpoints of the observed (in this context, journalists and their individual understanding and interpretation of the world of election violence around them). Thus, the paradigm enabled me to view and understand the world through the perceptions and experiences of the researched. Given (2008: 494) sums up the advantage that interpretivism gives to this research by asserting thus, “Central to Interpretivism is the notion that there are no ‘facts’ in research…only interpretations”. This thesis is interested in the “world of election violence”, as it is understood from the subjective views and experiences of journalists, through textual interpretations and interviews. News is, more so, culturally derived and produced material and historically situated. Thus, interpretivism fits neatly in as a paradigm in this research.

This interpretivist paradigm was adopted within the broad field of qualitative research. A qualitative dimension allowed me to produce rich and contextualised findings which are generally non-numeric. Since I sought to engage in conversations with my participants in their natural settings, qualitative methods are deemed necessary. The major questions of this thesis are descriptive, analytical and explanatory in nature. Thus, they can best be answered qualitatively.

4.3. The units of analysis

The research focused on two sites of news production, The Sunday Mail and The Independent. The Sunday Mail was chosen as one of the two longest surviving newspapers (together with The Herald) with very close ties to the ruling regime. It was vital to establish the ways in which it influenced election violence coverage and, among other issues, whether the paper’s close relationship to the regime had an influence on its discursive construction of electoral violence news coverage. The Independent was selected because it is one of the longest surviving private newspapers (together with The Financial Gazette) and, as Mukasa (2005) assert, is generally reputed for its trustworthiness and as an influential source of political news in Zimbabwe. It would be critical to establish whether it attempted to use its influence in the coverage of electoral violence through peace journalism practices. It is also reputed as an investigative paper (Mukasa 2005). There is a need to ascertain whether it attempted to use its investigative prowess for peace journalism practices. Tehranian (2009) argues that for peace journalism to thrive, the media should be prepared to deepen their coverage of political violence through investigative journalism. Beyond the cases under investigation, the research does not seek to generalise its findings to other newspapers. Instead, it seeks to develop a full description of the way The Sunday Mail and The Independent covered electoral violence during the elections in Zimbabwe through the lens of peace journalism. More so, it sought to establish the influence of journalism cultures, daily news production routines and organisational practices among other factors on the adoption of peace journalism practices and the ways through which these pressures were exerted.

Semi-structured interviews with journalists who covered electoral violence news for these two newspapers in the post-2000 period constitute yet another set of units of analysis. I chose semi-structured interviews because I wanted to retain control over what would be discussed. I also wanted to use open-ended questions to elicit a wide range of responses on the subject. I had an interview guide, applied uniformly among the interview participants for interpretive validity. But, it served as just a guide, with pointers derived from my research questions and the objectives of these research. To retain interpretive validity, I also wherever was possible, largely avoided “what” questions as they do not solicit for a wide-range of responses and evaluations. Trustworthiness and rigour of the study was enhanced by interviewing a big number of journalists (14) to ensure

75 corroboration from different viewpoints and experiences. Using a huge corpus of textual data (about 36 articles) ensured rigour and trustworthiness of this research.

Interviews were held over a period of three months from December 2017 to February 2018, with additional interviews done in the month of August 2018 as follow-up to the first ones. Each interview lasted approximately 45 minutes, and there were 14 respondents altogether. Only two were female, perhaps highlighting a dearth of political reporters in the two media houses. Semi-structured interviews allowed me to establish a rapport with my respondents, follow-up on non-verbal cues that required further questioning and build trust with them. Interview settings varied from offices, homes, shops football grounds. Interviewees were keen to know my background, the purpose of the research and the interviews. This gave me the chance to clarify issues of confidentiality, anonymity and voluntary participation, informed consent and the option to withdraw from the interview at any point of the interview as per my University Research Guidelines. At this juncture, I also requested permission to record and take notes for accuracy and verification.

4.4. Purposive sampling

The textual data and the journalists interviewed were purposively sampled. Also known as judgmental sampling, purposive sampling is a procedure in which the researcher relies on his/her own judgement when choosing members of the population to participate in the study (Palinkas et al 2016). Purposive sampling allowed me to pick stories relating to election violence within the post-2000 period. It was also used in picking up the 14 respondents used for this research. The strategy helped me select information-rich cases related only to what informs this research. For this research, purposive sampling involved three stages. Firstly, I had to decide on which newspapers to select the texts for analysis from that would best expose the researcher to news on electoral violence. The Sunday Mail and The Independent were deemed appropriate for this. Press texts were sampled from articles appearing 30 days before elections in the middle of the campaign period and ended 14 days after polling day when all election activities cease. This means six editions of each of the two weeklies per each election. This means 96 editions for the period under study. Again, purposive sampling was used to enable the researcher to further narrow the press texts to work with selected data particular to electoral violence, since the 96 copies

76 are likely to generate a huge corpus. More so, its flexibility as a sampling method enabled me to select and discard press texts based on the purpose of this study and knowledge of what the researcher wants to find out. At the end, I was left with about 36 news stories.

The next stage was which sections of the newspaper stories to select. For this, the researcher settled for features, hard news stories and editorials. Editorials were selected because they give an overview of the newspaper’s position on the issue of election violence and afford editors more liberty of expression than other news genres like hard news which are formulaic. Features, relative to hard news, give a longer and immediate cover of events and more background to a story, which is important in providing the required depth, enabling the researcher to assess a paper’s conformity or non-conformity to the principles of peace journalism. Hard news stories were also selected because, despite being formulaic, they can be used to test an individual journalist’s commitment to peace journalism through their framing of stories.

The third and last stage of sampling involved the selection and recruitment of informants for in-depth interviews. For this, the subjects were purposively sampled on the basis of three criterions. Firstly, that they had covered electoral violence news for the two newspapers between 2000 and 2013. Secondly, that their experience in this regard exceeded at least a year. The third reason is obvious – they were willing participants. Fourteen journalists who have worked as political reporters, editors and sub-editors for these two weeklies were interviewed. I chose reporters who gather the news I wanted and editors and sub-editors were chosen in their capacity as gatekeepers. They are largely responsible for what finally filters through as news on election violence. Some of the questions asked were:

 To what extent were journalists aware of peace journalism as an alternative news reporting practice?  To what extent have they tried to implement it in the newsrooms? And what is the extent of its acceptability amongst senior journalists and editors?  Do journalists think there is enough being done to implement peace journalists (For those who know it)

 Do they think it is relevant in the context of Zimbabwe with a culture of election violence?  Which other institutions can help in restoring peaceful elections? And to what extent have they helped in ensuring peaceful elections?

 In what ways does routines embedded in organisational practices, like sourcing routines, affected their roles as reporters covering election violence episodes?  To what extent did political pressure, like influence of senior political elites, shape how they framed conflicts?  What is the extent of pressures exerted by institutions, like editorial and shareholder pressures which might have influenced their coverage of election violence and peace journalism practices?  Were there any newsroom policies, like deadline and news sourcing policies that had a bearing on their news production of election violence stories? If so, did they make an attempt to resist or bypass such policies, how and why?  In what ways did journalists’ professional norms, training and orientation contend with their ideological predilections and perspectives in determining how they covered election violence?  Which factors influenced the text they produced on election violence more, decisions made in the newsroom or events outside the newsroom? These questions clarified pertinent issues like the agency of the individual journalist in the production of election violence news and the extent to which this journalistic agency and intervention determined either the modification of text frames to emphasise peace reporting or spur conflicts.

As I conducted these interviews mostly in Harare, Bulawayo and Mutare (where some of the respondents are now based), I was aware of the constructed nature of results to be obtained. Fontana and Frey (2005) points out clearly, thus, “Interviews are not neutral tools of data gathering but rather active interactions between two or more people leading to negotiated and contextually based results. The fact that I had a clear interview guide a

78 clearly laid out questionnaire means that the interviews did not necessarily escape a degree of artificiality and self-consciousness in the way of their conduct.

4.5. Methods of data analysis

The use of mixed approaches to data gathering as explained above also entails a mixed method of analysing the data. In this section, the different methods of data analysis techniques used to make sense of the data gathered for this research are outlined.

4.6. Qualitative framing analysis

In analysing textual data gathered from The Sunday Mail and The Independent, I chose to use qualitative framing analysis, complemented by CDA. Linstrom and Marais (2012) note that there is no single accepted definition of framing. It has been defined as an angle or a perspective from which a news story is told (Goffman 2004). Oosthuizen (in Fourie 2001:265) adds that news “is a frame or window on reality that seeks to or can only reﬂect part of this reality.” One of the widely used definitions of framing analysis, which I adopt in this research is, “[the selection of] some aspects of perceived reality and making them more salient in a communication text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation and or treatment recommendation” (Entman (2003:52).

The fact that there is no agreed single definition of framing analysis points to the complexities of the methodology as a research tool. Yet, the absence of a unified, single definition is the least of framing analysis’ complexities. One of the most enduring issues of framing analysis has been how to identify frames (van Gorp 2005). Neuman et al (1992) assert that there are five generic frames in news stories across the different news divide, regardless of culture and context. These are: human impact frames, moral values frames, economic frames, conflict frames and powerlessness frames. These are “universal” frames transcending thematic and contextual limits. Hertog and McLeod (2001) disagree, arguing that each study would logically raise its own frames, though they admit that this actually is a weakness as it makes the method open to a variety of interpretations that may not have “universal validation”. Thus, in their argument, each

79 research generates issue-specific frames that are unique to the content subjected to analysis.

I agree with Hertog and McLeod that each research raises its own frames. In this research, I sought to find out those frames that hinder the practice pf peace journalism. These are conflict –encouraging frames, blame frames, hate-spewing frames and many others. News texts that carry such frames tilts away from peace journalism, towards war journalism. I also sought to find out peace frames like reconciliatory frames, victim frames and others that arose from the data. These frames can be identified through the headlines, words within the story itself, sourcing routines preference and choice of voices in particular news stories. During conflicts, like electoral violence in Zimbabwe, the media have a tendency to attribute conflicting parties with either positive or negative frames which create an impression in the readers’ minds about these parties engaged in conflict. This is achieved through repetition of certain attributes, frequent references that link a party to an event, associating a party or parties with certain symbols and many other such strategies. This attribution tends to lead to the apportionment of stereotypes such as hero, villain and an assignment of responsibility for the violence. Agenda setting and gatekeeping processes generally decides what a medium covers or does not cover. On the other hand, the frame is the overarching angle which determines how a story or the various stories are treated once they are covered.

Furthermore, in doing a framing analysis, I looked for aspects in the news story like the pattern of language used to describe the conflicting sides and whether this pattern of language was consistent with peace journalism practices. Goffman (1974) adds that framing involves persistent selection, emphasis and exclusion. William et al (1989) assert that framing achieves its effects by the use of a variety of techniques. These, according to William et al (1989) include metaphors – these are tropes, analogies or comparisons commonly used in news relating to individuals, parties or organisations, historical examples – some comparisons made to earlier personalities, events etc. For example comparing Robert Mugabe to Hitler, catchphrases – well-known ideas in the news associated with political parties or individuals, and depictions. Thus, in framing analysis, choice of words and their organisation in news stories are not trivial matters. Gamson

(1989) identifies three types of news framing. Motivational framing rallies the troops behind the cause while diagnostic framing clearly defines a problem assigning blame for the problem to an agent/agencies (Gamson 1989). I ascertained whether frames were prognostic, which is in line with peace journalism because it provides possible solutions to an existing problem (Bernstein 2005), or diagnostic framing negates peace reporting because it links a problem to a cause without providing a solution (Bernstein 2005). I also established if these two newspaper’s framing of electoral violence, attribution of agency and their assumptions about electoral violence causes were in sync with the demands of peace journalism practices. Continuous attribution of agency to the specific players without clarity on causality, can drive antagonists apart and close any possible path to peace. Also, unfounded assumptions of causality can cause stereotypes and self-fulfilling prophecies that are dangerous to peace efforts.

Framing is embedded within the structures of news production and is ideological (Johnson (2001). Johnson (2001) asserts that framing is an elite-influenced process. This explains why I preferred complementing qualitative framing analysis with another textual analysis method-CDA to strengthen the data analysis process.

4.7. Critical discourse analysis (CDA)

In addition to applying qualitative framing analysis of textual data, the selected newspaper stories on electoral violence were subjected to CDA. The term discourse should be understood to mean those instances of meaning – making through news texts. Deacon et al (2007:152) assert that the term discourse refers to language in use in which “different social categories, practices and relations are constructed from and in the interests of a particular point of view, a particular conception of social reality.

CDA in this research is taken to mean “The role of language in the production and reproduction of power abuse and domination and doing so in the best interests of the dominating groups” (Van Djik 2001:96). Added to this definition, is Fairclough and Wodak’s (1997:101) definition of CDA as “Language use in speech and writing as a form of social practice”. If discourse is understood as social practice, this implies a dialectical relationship existing between a certain discursive event, institution(s) and the social situation(s) that frame the particular event(s). Thus, “discourse is socially constitutive as

81 well as socially conditioned” (Wodak and Meyer 2009:6). CDA is “critical” in the sense that it critiques the subtle ways in which unequal power relations reproduce themselves in language (Fairclough 2005).

I draw on Fairclough’s three dimensional analysis focusing on 3 levels of analysis. Fairclough (1995) suggests a systematic dissection of the text and inter-textuality. That is, the form and function of the text, its relationship with other texts that it enters into conversation with, its relationship to the context of its production as well as the broader social practices shaped and influenced by it. Fairclough’s analysis pays close attention to the linguistic features of texts such as lexical and syntactical choices, rhetorical and semantic styles deployed in a text with a view to unpack and uncover the ideological purposes implicit in them. Fairclough’s CDA engages the text from a materialist conception – that it is not produced in a (political, economic and social) vacuum. Texts, like news stories, as instances of language in use are anchored in and undergirded by a, “broad social and political context anchored in concrete arrangements for the production of our common existence” (Mugari 2016:280).

CDA is relevant in this research because its theoretical orientations and methodological tools stand at the intersection of (press) language use and societal issues (like electoral violence) (Fairclough, 2004). While CDA is not specifically concerned with peace journalism, it is employed in this research to do a textual analysis of the newspaper stories complementing qualitative framing analysis. It targets texts for aspects like naming, rhetorical structures like exaggerations and overstatements which make unfavorable comments about other groups likely to make them targets of violence. CDA is important in this research because it is critical in four ways: it criticises the positioning of the media text; it criticises the interests served by this positioning; it criticises the interests that are negated by texts; lastly, it criticises the consequences of this positioning in relation to political power and peace journalism reporting. It is preferred in this thesis as an analytical method because it deals with social phenomena (like electoral violence) with particular focus on the entanglements of power and language (Van Djik 2000). Hence, it will be useful here as a particularly interpretive approach to language use in the press. So, basically, CDA was used to dissect the news texts strategies used in the press to report

82 electoral violence that conceals their ideological orientation under the cloak of facticity and objectivity.

I acknowledge that the use of language in news stories is not ideologically innocent or value-free. Using CDA in this research unpacked how ideology operates through these texts to either stabilise or subvert hegemonic domination. Van Djik’s (1999) concerns that the media, especially in Europe, minoritise and exclude certain voices rather than others is very crucial to the analysis of news practices in the coverage of electoral violence. For instance, in the coverage of electoral violence, who get quoted by the media? Whose voices do we hear in the press, and whose voices are closed off from the readers? And central to peace journalism also, are the discourses of those accorded space in sync with peace promotion? CDA acknowledges that news as a cultural production embedded in ideology has a tendency to mask unequal power relations. Within interpretivism, there are many instances which acknowledge that structural arrangements in society can be both enabling and constraining. Thus, there is need to critically look at language (discourse) and how it enables or constraints power, ideology, or assist in the reproduction of inequalities. Thus, CDA aims to draw out power relations and ideologies that appear “neutral”, “natural” and “commonsensical”. I also asked questions about how the texts could have been constructed differently and making mental comparisons to related peace journalism news texts.

4.8. Thematic analysis

To analyse the interview corpus produced with editors and journalists, I used thematic analysis. Thematic analysis is “a method of identifying, analysing and reporting patterns and themes within data” (Braun and Clark 2009: 2). It offers several advantages if applied to analysis of semi-structured interviews transcripts. Braun and Clark (2009) note that as a method, it offers accessible and theoretically flexible approaches to analysing qualitative data. Secondly, Boyatzis (1998) asserts that thematic analysis helps organise and describe the data set as well as interpret the various aspects of the research topic.

Thematic analysis can be applied as an essentialist method – which is used to report individual respondents’ experiences, their meanings and the everyday reality of participants. But, at the same time, it can be used an interpretivist method where events,

83 reactions and experiences of participants are examined (Braun and Clark 2009). Thus, thematic analysis can be a method which works both to reflect reality and to unpack and unravel the surface of ‘reality’ (Braun and Clark 2009: 10). Thus, it is explicit in the way it is analysis-driven. Braun and Clark (2009:13) note that this method, “tends to provide less a rich description of the data overall, and more a detailed analysis of some aspect of the data”. I preferred an inductive approach to thematic analysis with its thick descriptions of the data collected. The data coding for this research was manual. This is because the data corpus the researcher deals with is manageable. Strauss (1987) argues that when the data relate to one project – like a single dissertation and when the corpus collected is relatively manageable and does not involve a lot of extended fieldwork, manual coding is recommended.

In doing thematic analysis, I followed the six stages prescribed by Braun and Clark (2009). Firstly, I familiarised myself with the data, what Braun and Clark call immersion into the data. In the case of this research, it means I familiarised myself with the interview data gathered by reading and re-reading the data. The second stage was manually developing labels, or codes on the hardcopy transcriptions of the data. This was done to identify the important features in the data. The third stage was examining the codes in order to identify the broader patterns of meaning. The fourth stage involved reviewing the themes. The generated themes were checked against the coded data corpus and the research questions. Themes were refined by dropping insufficiently supported themes and splitting some when necessary. I was looking for themes like: the ideological predilections of journalists as a hindrance to peace journalism, the role of newsroom practices in hindering peace journalism, political economy influences and others. The themes were, in the fifth stage, named and defined. This was done by determining the story they told. The last stage was writing up. According to Braun and Clark (2009) this is about choosing compelling extract examples and telling an interesting story relating the extracts to the research questions and incorporating existing literature.

4.9. In-depth Interviews

The production of media content takes place within wider structures (Schudson 2003 and Giddens 2003). So, in the case of this research, in-depth interviews complemented

84 archival data by establishing the institutional factors, among other issues, that have a bearing on the practice of peace journalism. Such pressures are better unraveled by interviewing the editors, senior and junior journalists involved in the day to day production of media discourses relating to electoral violence. Selecting two popular newspapers gave the research focus and depth. Thus, a textual analysis of press stories can effectively complement and interact with semi-structured interviews targeting the text producers.

From this perspective, the three methods fall neatly into place by complementing each other in a field likely to be muzzled by a lot of data archived already. Editors, senior journalists’ and junior reporters’ interviews answered questions archival data was not be able to answer. Interviews generated data on certain specifics like the influence of internal and external forces and other factors in the media’s coverage of electoral violence. Such information cannot be found in the press texts themselves. When juxtaposed in a research as I do here, CDA, framing analysis and thematic analysis enriched the depth and scope of the findings. I made a choice of mixed methodology that I can describe as “between-method triangulation”, encompassing CDA, framing analysis and semi- structured interviews. This was done to strengthen the credibility of the study. Jick (1979: 602) says, “More than one method should be used in the validation process to ensure that the variance reflected that of the trait and not of the method.” Bouchard (in Jick, 1979, p. 602) said that the convergence of two methods “enhances our belief that the results are valid and not a methodological artifact”

4.10. Interviewing journalists: the fieldwork experience

This section covers my experiences during the gathering of data. While the collection of textual data from the archives was not much of a challenge, the interviews with journalists had their own peculiar challenges that ought to be captured in this section. I have divided this section into two to vividly capture my experiences. The first section will capture what I noted was the emotional dimension of interviewing political reporters. The second section is a brief outline of the observations to take note of during the interviews.

4.11. A community of bad memories: the emotional dimensions of interviewing journalists

Interviewing journalists can be an emotional affair. Some of my respondents pointed out that in the course of gathering news, they have encountered traumatising moments of violence, its victims and perpetrators. Some said that in some instances they saw victims assaulted by youth militias and war veterans. One respondent said, “I saw people beaten up and I saw some injured and maimed.” Another one said, “When I went to Hurungwe district, I visited the hospital. There were people beaten and severely tortured for being opposition supporters. In some villages, the injured were not allowed to seek medical help”. A female respondent who is a political reporter in one of the two newspapers said, “I cried one day when I saw a little girl who had been sexually assaulted by a group of vicious youth who could not find the father. The crime was that her father has been a polling agent for the MDC in the past election”. Conduct with violent groups was a traumatising experience that journalists saw as important to express during the interviews. One journalist said he was himself assaulted by MDC youth because he belonged to a ZANU PF aligned paper. “I was saved by Morgan Tsvangirai himself who called me to sit in the VIP tent…”

These emotions however, were useful as sources of data too. For a start, as journalists related their traumatic experiences in covering election violence, they simultaneously exposed the nature and dynamics of the violence that always engulf Zimbabwe during elections. One of those dynamics is that its targets can shift at any time, to include journalists. Also, the traumatic narratives showed that militia groups made no distinction between their opposition targets and professional journalists performing their jobs. The experiences of terror these journalists had, and subsequently narrated, were important as first-hand information on the difficulties of gathering news in violent conflict. One journalist said he was warned not to travel to certain parts of Mashonaland West province because a notorious militia group called Jochomondo was rampaging the rural hinterland. He said, “I was warned not to go deep down. There were many victims. But I was told I may not come back”. These anxieties and well-founded fears would automatically colour the stories we read as news. One journalist said he was sent to do a feature story about the violence in Kwekwe by another notorious group called All Shabaab. He ended up talking to a few friend outside the town. It was a no-go area. In his own words, “the group would have finished with me”.

To conduct productive interviews with journalists, the emotional dynamics of the journalists could not be ignored. I had to understand that fear was a big factor that had to be understood through empathy with journalists. The fear assumed multiple dimensions. On the one hand, there was this trauma of being exposed to violent context that exerted many bad memories on journalists. There was also fear of being victimised, fear of losing their jobs if they reported “wrong news” about election violence. One journalist, said, “You do have to understand the particular slant accepted here. If the violence you see does not fit the slant leave it! Or write for an online or international news organization”. But some could not clearly articulate their fears, but were aware of a fearful working environment. So, for some, it was fear of antagonising editorial standards or being caught up in the violence, that was pervasive amongst them, and it was ever-present during the interview process. But when asked questions around newsroom relations, this fear became apparent. My insistence that I was a mere researcher offered little protection nor comfort to them. To me the fear was a culmination of general climate of “professional oppression” within certain newsrooms.

One journalist intimated that his continuous coverage of election violence left him feeling like a vulture. “Occasionally, we have to share that horror with victims and their relatives. Witnessing the worst as it unfolded, especially in 2008, there was just too much of it” I argue that in a way, continued witnessing of these tragic events and daily immersion in the suffering of victims has made some of the reporters insensitive to the production of election violence news capable of engaging the citizens by relieving journalists of the empathy needed to create such stories. Another journalist said, “Most of the times, we see the worst, but we have little time to think deeply about it because we fight deadlines that are almost impossible to meet” We sometimes become sick of a constant flow of bad news”

One reporter noted, “I think in 2008 we were suffering compassionate fatigue as families piled into Harare where they had been displaced by election violence”

One journalist, reporting for The Independent, who covered the removal of Tonderai Ndira’s body said, “I was an emotional wreck. I could not stand seeing the extremely tortured body of a person who just thought differently about the future of this country. It

87 was hard talking to the family. Emotionally I was not ready for it. But there was no way to raise my hand and say to the editor I am overwhelmed”. The culture of the newsroom itself does not accommodate emotions (Underwood 2011). As a result, journalists covering emotionally wounding stories like those of violence, have to keep a stiff upper lip. Underwood (2011: 4) asserts, “News is exploitative of human tragedy as they sync with the opportunistic system of the scoop”. Thus, journalists should handle traumatic experiences as an occupational hazard and part of successful news coverage in an age of industrialised news production.

To mitigate the impact of these fears on the interview process, a number of steps were taken. I allowed them to select interview settings of their own choice, where they felt free, or sites that would not become a lingering component in the interviewer- interviewee relationship. Most of them preferred places where there was little interruption from workmates, comrades and family members. Some chose their homes. Two senior editors chose their homes. One junior journalist said, “I prefer a place where less-trustworthy people at work do not pop up” (sic). The main reason for this choice, I noted, was the fear of work superiors as one of them said. The other one at The Sunday Mail pointed out that there are many enemies at work. This confirmed my earlier finding of “professional repression” within newsrooms. There was an occasional question about whether a copy of the interviews will not be sent to their bosses. I had to quell these concerns through assurances that the process would be confidential, the writing process would not contain their names if they did not wish to. Thus, over the cause of interviews, the respondents’ trust had to be continuously won. One of the cardinal rule I noted was: Do not be “disarmed” by subversions of emotions.

4.12. Related experiences noted during the interviews

Journalists come in different types. Some journalists are slow, carefully and distinctly laying out their thoughts. The interviewer needs to be alert to such respondents as they may make valid points late into the conversation. Some stop talking to watch you make notes. Others want to read the notes too! But one characteristic that endured was the difficulties of extracting information from journalists. I asked two of my respondents why it is hard to get information from journalists. One of them said, “We think academics do

88 not hold us in high regard, except as informants for their dissertations and papers” The other one echoed the same view, “You see us as data and we do not like it. This year alone I have been interviewed more than four times…We do not hold academics in high regard. You people are interested in theories, and your theories are devoid of reality of news production. Sometimes we feel you just come to impose and flex your superiority on us”. However, it was lost on them, maybe, that some journalism academics are actually former journalists from the same newsrooms. So the spirit may not be one of “mutual contempt” but of mutual respect since I believe academics themselves do not have an inferior view of journalists. There were also other minor aspects that I found important. Arriving early for the interview is good. Journalists prime themselves as good time- keepers. Also pronouncing your respondent’s names correctly is a good starting point. One of my respondents did not take kindly my unintentional mutilation of his name. It is never going to help your cause to ask for a pen, a spare battery for your recorder or a notepad from your respondent. Also, if the respondent says its off-record, switch off your recorder, some may walk away or threaten to.

4.13. Ethical considerations

Biber (2017) emphasises the centrality of ethical observance in the course of research – that is, before, during and after the research. Both the Code of Academic Research Ethics (2012) and the Standard Operating Procedure for Ethics (2014) of the University of Johannesburg emphasise respect for human dignity, privacy and confidentiality in the course of the research process. Both guidelines emphasise that free and informed consent of subjects should be sought during research.

I noted that some my respondents did not want to go on record. This was a very difficult challenge for me. Journalists, especially junior reporters were not comfortable with being named. But with specific assurances that this was for research, some agreed. Yet, some still insisted on not being named. I assured those who did not want to be named that they indeed would not be named. There was also the question of recording. Some of my respondents insisted that they did not want to be recorded. I requested writing from my notebook and we agreed on that approach. Then there were some who agreed to be recorded but had to listen to the recording after. This was agreed to. Others agreed to me

89 recording them, but to switch off my recorder whenever they wanted to explain what they deemed “sensitive information”. I agreed to abide by the rule. I had to switch off and use my notebook whenever I was asked to. In fact, I had little choice because most of them insisted on doing the switch-off themselves. Sometimes I had to disengage especially with my two female reporters who sometimes were emotional. I had to stop insisting on answers whenever I noted that the emotions had changed. Others, especially senior editors and reporters from The Sunday Mail, would flatly refuse to answer some sections of the questions. My approach was not to insist as these might have been sensitive aspects for them.

4.14. Conclusion

This chapter has articulated the paradigmatic positions of this research. The methods of data gathering and sampling procedures were justified in this chapter. I also laid out the methods of data analysis. To ensure validity and dependability of the claims made, I have availed a clear outline of how data was gathered and analysed. The interaction of both data collection and analysis methods was outlined. The ethical issues encountered and fieldwork experiences of the researcher were also outlined. The next chapter is the first of two chapters that present and discuss the findings of this research. Precisely, it deals with data mined from the archives of the two newspapers being researched – The Sunday Mail and The Independent. It is the chapter that subjects these press texts to a qualitative framing analysis complemented by a critical discourse analysis to ascertain their adherence to peace journalism practices of news coverage.

CHAPTER 5

The newsification of electoral violence in the press: competing frames and discourses.

Framing plays a major role in the exercise of political power, and the frame is really the imprint of power. It registers the identity of actors or interests that compete to dominate the text (Entman 1993: 55).

The process of selection and inclusion, and by implication, of exclusion contradicts the view that news media give a full and comprehensive account of “world events”. They offer only a selection of world events. This has major implications for the “news” and its claims of “truth” (Negrine 1989:140).

5.1. Introduction

This chapter isolates for closer analysis, the frames that emerged in news discourses on electoral violence in the two newspapers under study. Keyssar (2017) calls the process of producing news on important and controversial issues in society like racism, homosexuality and violence – newsification. Scholars of news frames (Goffman 1973; Modigliani et al 1998; Tuchman 1999; Entman 2003 and Van Gorp 2005 etc) have pointed out that news institutions always produce atypical news frames that suits their preferred explanations of events and processes, and that are determined by their own circumstantial imperatives. The two quotations above offer a vivid summation of how the two newspapers studied in this thesis – The Sunday Mail and The Independent made use of news framing techniques in the coverage of electoral violence between 2000 and 2013. These quotations also sum up the key arguments sustained in this chapter. This chapter’s key arguments are that: based on the corpus of archival textual data and the examination of news discourses from the two newspapers, both newspapers, through careful selection, inclusion, sourcing routines, word choices and many other linguistic and representational devices, created contrasting regimes of truth and diametrically opposite and competing versions of (news) reality on electoral violence that were not in sync with the principles and practices of peace journalism.

These frames are interlinked to each other, hence, frames existed in relation to the other. One frame, for example, the demonisation frame, extended into the conflict frame. Dominant frames are defined as the frames receiving the most attention in the news stories analysed.

The following are the recurring, leitmotif frames that dominated news production on electoral violence in the press:

 The demonising frame  The conflict frame  The attribution of responsibility frame  The human interest frame. This chapter will proceed firstly by outlining the frames that were manifest in the corpus. Then, it will note the trends that the corpus assumed. Some attempts to practice peace journalism that were noted in the corpus sampled will be discussed too.

5.2. Demonising frames: press constructions of the “saintly us” and “devilish other”.

In both newspapers, frames that demonised either the ruling ZANU PF or the opposition MDC parties were prevalent. Dichotomised absolutes in news reporting consist of antithetical terms and ideas with no middle ground (Davies 2013). Burke (1969: 403) says dichotomous constructions consist of, “The placement of one thought or issue in terms of its opposite”. The Sunday and The Independent reported electoral violence in simplistic moral judgements about the major parties involved. The Sunday Mail saw the MDC as an evil party responsible for the violence. On the other hand, The Independent saw ZANU PF as the culprit and the MDC, much of the time, as a saintly victim duressed by a rapacious blood-thirsty political bully in the mould of ZANU PF, its youth wing and its war veterans.

The demonisation of the other was achieved through a gamut of derogatory discourses. The news stories sampled showed a systematic and, arguably, well-orchestrated selection of these derogatory discourses. For example, both newspapers preferred lexical choices like “mobs”, “thugs”, “gangs” and many others of this nature. The Independent

92 used these labels on ZANU PF and The Sunday Mail used them on the MDC. The predominance of such words foregrounds the prominence of chaos. More so, they strengthen pervasive stereotypes that already exist in Zimbabwe between the two main contestants – MDC and ZANU PF. Both parties scorned each other for being violent and disruptive. The press is expected by society to report truthfully and objectively (sparks 1992), but surely, it can be useful in demystifying existing stereotypes in conflict-ridden communities. This role becomes even more central when the stereotypes perpetuate chaos, hatred, and increases the possibility of fermenting further violence (Wolfsfeld 1997 and Tehranian 2009). Such discourses, as true as they might be, should be noted for their polarising consequences.

Towards the 2002 Presidential election, the first post-independence election in which the incumbent, Robert Mugabe faced a formidable opponent- Morgan Tsvangirai, the following demonising headlines were noted in the corpus:

 Rural folks flee ZANU PF youth gangs wrath (The Independent, 10 February 2002)  ZANU PF gangs on looting spree (The Independent, 24 February 2002)  ZANU PF youth militias seek poll revenge (The Independent, 3 March 2002)  MDC thugs unleash orgy of terror (The Sunday Mail, 17 February 2002). Lexical discourses like “orgy of violence”, “unleash terror” evoke crude senselessness and inexplicable barbarism that do not serve the cause of peace journalism. No doubt, the press should, “tell it like it is”, which involves calling out people for their activities. When the press resorts to pejorative lexicalisations, they entrench negative schemas in readers about the other. In the process, they create persistent “orientation maps” on which political actors view each other on the subject of violence, and maps which facilitate sets of responses from actors, and specific positioning on the issue. Much of the time, Milioni et al (2015) note, the orientation maps created by the press do not serve the interests of peace and harmony because they are fomented from negative stereotypes. In the ensuing news discourses, victims are portrayed as deserving public sympathy. A more peace-oriented frame would avoid such emotive lexicalisation, and can thus be, “ZANU PF youth in post-ballot violence”. There is no stereotypical lexicalisation in this example, because not all ZANU PF youth are violent. Another alternative framing which

93 would not dilute the much needed truth and objectivity in news would be like, “Mashonaland Central ZANU PF youth in post-poll violence”. This kind of framing localises rather than generalise the violence. Each of the two newspapers attempted to portray its favoured political party as an innocent party haplessly decimated by a brutal and uncontrollable violent force of “the other side”, acting with impunity and with no fear of the law. For example, The Independent (27 January 2002) reported thus:

Headline: MDC appeals for help to end violence

The Story:

The besieged opposition MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai has appealed to the international community for intervention to quell violence as the country heads for the March 9-10 presidential election. This appeal comes as mobs of youth and ex- combatants loyal to Robert Mugabe stepped up their reign of terror and decimation of the opposition in the rural areas. President Mugabe’s supporters have declared all rural areas no-go areas for the MDC campaign… MDC supporters are being hounded, hunted down, kidnapped and killed by ZANU PF militias…” (Emphasis mine).

In another article, The Independent reported:

Headline: ZANU PF youths go on the rampage

Story: A group of ZANU PF youths went on the rampage on Saturday destroying homes and leaving families homeless in the Odzi area of Marange district west of Mutare…

In a related article, The Independent reported:

ZANU PF youth militias went on the rampage at Juru growth point, destroying family homes and burning business properties belonging to suspected MDC supporters.

How the word “youth” is juxtaposed with the undesirable word “militia” in this construction robs the former of the positives of being youths and activates the negative ones. Van Dijk (1998) calls this “ideological squaring” – when opposing classes of concepts are built up around participants (in Meyer and Machin 2007). Structural opposites may mean that

94 participants are clearly labelled “bad” or “good” as in this case. In the whole story it is not told why they went on the rampage, what had happened early? There is no context. This is an example of an overt evaluation of participants as evil. Attacking family homes draws wide moral outrage. Family discourses are always protected and thought of as safe. Again, families are common to everyone and are always seen as stable and common (Machin and Meyer (2007). However, families can also be very demanding, overwhelming, and oppressive and in some instances destructive too. A moral outrage stance does not engender a rational debate about electoral violence and especially one that informs the public about the destructive tendencies of electoral violence to electoral democracy. Beyond moral outrage, the so what questions are not tackled in this kind of reporting. Not that it is inherently wrong for the press to report on events without providing solutions, but when the scourge becomes a motif, like violence during Zimbabwe’s elections, surely citizens legitimately look at the press for debates on the solutions.

But corresponding articles in The Sunday Mail evaluates the MDC through the same opposites. For example, one article read:

The Officer commanding Bindura province police, Senior Assistant Commissioner Ngonidzashe Matutu has launched a blitz targeting unruly MDC youth terrorising peace-loving Zimbabweans in the province…

The text is not overtly pointing at the MDC as an evil party in this particular case, but terms like “unruly” “terrorising” express how the MDC should be evaluated. The police officer is professionalised – and this is a positive naming strategy. Terms like “targeting” makes the MDC youth passive recipients, and words like “unruly” – delegitimise them. “Unruly” denotes chaotic group indiscipline. The police are represented as agents who “launch”. This in itself conveys a sense of magnitude and drama on the part of the police, but, at the same time what they are involved in, in concrete terms, is glossed over. For example, what were the police- the agents, doing to these “unruly” opposition supporters? ZRP itself is notorious for its partisan approach to law and order maintenance, in the interest of ZANU PF (Makumbe 1999: Madhuku 2009: Sachikonye 2011). “Blitz” suggests some careful planning and professional decisiveness and behaviour, contrary to what ZRP is known for. In this particular text, at no point is it made clear how readers should

95 interpret the MDC action and police reaction. But through lexical choices there is the creation of opposition between a police force that “launches a blitz” and some unruly youth that “terrorise peace-loving” Zimbabweans. It is still not said in the text why in the first place they are unruly? Are they not fighting back against an even more evil militia possibly a ZANU PF one, that is allowed free reign by partisan law and order structures? Thus, at the level of motives, broad values and activities’ sequence, this text suppresses information. In another example in which news coverage suppressed information, The Sunday Mail (03 February 2008) reported thus:

In a major blow to the MDC, SADC and the UN have condemned electoral violence … ZANU PF has welcomed this move by SADC and the UN and it has castigated the MDC for its acts of violence…”.

This text omits a lot that can be seen as peace journalism which seeks to provide context and the peaceful positions of actors in any conflict. For example, what is a major blow? What is the extent of this blow? These are important questions if citizens ought to know who is contributing to electoral violence and what are the consequences to them at regional and international levels? Manning (2007b) says news construction sometimes reinforce moral evaluations instead of rational debates on issues. The way electoral violence is newsified therefore, is what Manning (2007: 162) calls, “a call for the evil individual seeking to lead the innocent astray”. Facts are suppressed, so are participants in some instances and only moral outrage is foregrounded. Facts and processes are replaced by abstractions and generalisations. Van Leeuwen and Wodak (1999) say when this done, it means there is ideological work taking place within text. Fairclough (2013) notes that there is need to ask serious questions about why certain participants are omitted or excluded from texts. The clear stance of the journalist is exposed.

Instead of dissecting the causes of electoral violence, the two newspapers overemphasised the devilish behaviour of the party they did not like and foregrounded how angelic their party of choice was in the face of crude evil. Lynch and McGoldrick (2007) assert that during moments of extreme violence, such as those obtaining in Zimbabwe, the media should focus its coverage on the underlying causes of the violence rather than the consequences only. Emphasis on causes helps society find solutions,

96 while foregrounding consequences has a great potential of stirring feelings of revenge further fueling the violence. This kind of news framing strategy contradicts Galtung’s (1999) peace journalism tenet that during moments of conflict, the media should not rush into simplistic conclusions that apportion blame on one party in ways that further inflame the conflict.

But, in the case of The Independent and The Sunday Mail, there was a deliberate attempt to “othering”. The Sunday Mail consistently informed its readers that the MDC was violent. In one editorial (20 January 2002), the paper asserted that:

Patriotic Zimbabweans are aware that the MDC is a creation of Western powers opposed to the successful implementation of the land reform programme… it is a Trojan horse of known Western powers, meant to create mayhem in Zimbabwe’s elections and provide justification for Western military intervention… plan through puppet regional governments… This violence by the MDC, coming as we head for a defining presidential election, is meant to tarnish ZANU PF image and galvanise regime change agents within the country… they are running dogs of Western imperialism…fighting to give power to the foes of this revolution…

The use of word choices like “dogs” and phrases like “Trojan horse” serves the purpose of demonising the opposition party. In this kind of framing, known Western powers are not only conflated, but written about as one. They are also textually vague, but pragmatically referred to as “foes of the revolution”. The discourse strategy in this extract is to maintain maximum vagueness which helps in foregrounding the existing (ideological) fault lines between the MDC and ZANU PF, which in turn is contributing to electoral violence as the latter sees them as irreconcilable.

The Independent, on the other hand, persistently asserted that electoral violence was a ZANU PF creature, with the potential to plunge Zimbabwe into a genocide (The Independent, 25 May 2008). Both newspapers were, however, correct in diagonising the prima facie potential catastrophe of electoral violence. But they missed an opportunity to engage with more serious questions of why, in the first instance, was Zimbabwe frequently bedeviled by such violence? Answering this question would have drawn them closer to a diagnosis of the problem and not the evident preoccupation with demonisation

97 of the other. As an alternative form of reporting, peace journalism clamors for solution- oriented reporting of violence (Galtung 1999: Keeble 2007 and Lynch and McGoldrick 2005). What The Sunday Mail and The Independent gave to Zimbabweans as news about electoral violence was nothing short of fear-instilling news coverage of electoral violence, dichotomised between saints and sinners. Numerous reports have pointed out that both ZANU PF and the MDC instigate and perpetrate violence with ZANU PF being responsible for much of this violence (SADC 2008: AU 2008: UN: 2000: EU; 2002 and ZPP 2008).

The two newspapers newsified victimhood in such a way that there was a creation of what Herman and Chomsky (1989:41) call “worthy victims” who were being persecuted for their political beliefs. This kind of framing goes against peace journalism news framing which both papers could have practiced if they so wished, which states that, “By identifying what the problem is about and what its causes are, a frame at least implies, if not stated outright, what should be done to solve the problem…” (Berns 1998:8). The Independent and The Sunday Mail failed to spotlight the deep and varied cause of electoral violence in Zimbabwe – for example, partisan law and order institutions, lack of political will, the role of senior political party leaders, access to economic goods and comforts (Bond and Manyanya 2005: Makumbe 2005: CPIA 2008 and ZPP 2009).

Accounts of electoral violence are given in blow by blow chronicles that do not aid peace journalism but exacerbates emotional responses to electoral violence. One-sided biased narratives and discourses of electoral violence are provided to draw sufficient sympathy from readers and portray the other side as evil. Goran and Otsman (2013) argue that the watchdog function of the media has two functional hallmarks – negativity and aggressiveness. If one is to take Goran and Otsman’s (2013) assertion, then the use of denigrating, derogatory and demonising frames in reporting election violence might be in sync with this watchdog function? It might have been in line with journalists performing their professional function of capturing the reality on the ground and exercising objectivity. Yet, in relation to The Independent and The Sunday Mail, it effectively bludgeoned any attempts to peace journalism practices. This is not to argue that peace journalism and serious watchdog journalism are uneasy bedfellows. Far from that, peace journalism is

98 an exercise in press watchdog role, which just go beyond “digging and exposing the dirty” (Spiess 2011), to the press playing a positive and active role in peace-building through framing election violence news in ways that dig for solutions not instigate further bloodshed and suspicion.

Peace journalists strive to avoid emotive framing, name-calling that emphasise the conflict rather than the desired peace, and frames the conflict as brutal, callous and out of control (Keeble 2009). While journalists may argue that such discourses capture the mood and reality of the time, and are within the realm of journalists’ professional standards, it ought to be noted that these discourses come no closer to promoting peace. Accusatory frames hardly promote peace journalism. For example:

 Beleaguered Robert Mugabe unleashes terror (The Independent, 20 April 2008).  “War veterans are angels of death” (The Independent, 21 May 2000). There was a preference, in both newspapers, to make use of what Fairclough (2003) calls evaluative references as a referential strategy in covering electoral violence. For example, The Independent frequently referred to the political establishment as “the regime”. This reference was often accompanied by more loaded referential discourses like “the violent kleptocratic regime” (The Independent, 27 January 2008). This was very frequent in The Independent’s op-ed articles which were sampled in the corpus. For instance, the paper’s 9 March 2008 edition reported:

The ZANU PF kleptocratic and violent regime continues its scorched earth policy in the rural areas. Villagers are being forced to attend election rallies and MDC supporters are being forced to attend ZANU PF rallies… they are assaulted at these rallies by ZANU PF thugs…

In a more luridly demonising attack, the paper wrote:

The death of five MDC supporters at the hands of war veterans in Chivi this week has all but confirmed that ZANU PF as a party is nothing but the invention Satan and an example of Africa’s postcolonial political decadence and intolerance… (23 March 2008).

Such referential strategies avoided neutral references that could be associated with peace journalism. In this instance, words like “Satan”, “thugs” do nothing to engender peace, neither do they help establish how the actual problem of violence in Zimbabwe can be defined. Such words are just expletives offering no explanatory trajectories to citizens’ understanding of the conflict. Kempf (2007) notes that peace journalism strives to label violence where it has taken place but without the creation of unnecessary binaries between “us” and “them”. “Thugs” could have been replaced by simply, “a group of ZANU PF youth” with no meaning lost, rather than blanketing all as violent. On the other hand, The Sunday Mail employed (referential) evaluative discourses on the MDC that evoked alarm and referred to the MDC as a clear and immediate danger to Zimbabwe’s broader political practices and elections in particular. In The Sunday Mail, the MDC was associated with an unfathomable regime change agenda and apocalyptic tendencies.

Simultaneously, The Sunday Mail hedges ZANU PF involvement in electoral violence when it was all too evident to background and ignore. This is when it referred to “alleged ZANU PF youth” (The Sunday Mail, 25 March 2005), “suspected war veterans” (3 April 2005). Other lexical frames of The Sunday Mail refer to the opposition MDC as “the Western-sponsored violent MDC outfit” (The Sunday Mail, 30 January 2005). The Independent referred to former liberation fighters who have been the mainstay of ZANU PF support and election machinery as “axe-combatants” (The Independent, 18 June 2000), instead of “ex-combatants”. In some other news relating to their involvement in election violence, they are referred to as “axe-wielding veterans” (The Independent, 2 July 2000). Thus, when it comes to covering election violence, both papers spewed propaganda disguised as news. In the process, they drifted away from the core tenet of peace journalism that the media shall not be instruments of propaganda, especially the one that heightens tension during conflicts and build suspicion amongst protagonists. The Independent seem to have been obsessed with the “the Zanufication of evil” – where all electoral violence was placed at ZANU PF’s door. This was the paper’s grand narrative in the newsification of electoral violence.

The Sunday Mail equally pursued an anti-MDC grand narrative sustained in equal measure by the use of metonym that promoted the demonisation of ZANU PF opponents.

100

Fairclough (1995) defines metonym as a referential strategy in discourse where there is the substitution of the name of an attribute or adjunct for that of the thing meant. For instance, “regime change agents” had been used by The Sunday Mail in reference to the MDC, so is “Western stooges”. But, ZANU PF is, in the same paper, referred to as “the revolutionary party”. These terms demonise other players by representing them with condemnation, as diabolical. “Other players are given names as evil-doer” Galtung and Ottosen 2010: 275). This closes off any possible spaces of re-engagement between or among protagonists. The use of metonym helped to reveal the more profound differences between the MDC and ZANU PF. Secondly, metonym served to compound the difference between these two political parties. They strengthened the demonisation of the other in both newspapers. For both The Sunday Mail and The Independent, the evilness of the MDC and that of ZANU PF were substantiated “facts”, and this explains why most of the news frames relating to the other perceived this other as a threat. The general argumentative structure preferred in the newsification of electoral violence seem to be that, “We are right because they are a violent party” and this is repeated with varying degrees of intensity. Thus, in terms of their negative construction of the other, both newspapers draw on the topos of threats. These topos are constructed in the news and substantiated through frames such as, “MDC’s threat of violence” (The Sunday Mail, 13 April 2008) and “ZANU PF’s threat of anarchy” (The Independent, 18 May 2008)

There is an acute lack of contextualisation and perspectivisation of electoral violence. Both papers relied on certain shared “knowledges” of the other side. For example, The Independent evoked in its coverage of electoral violence, “known issues” associated with negative stories about ZANU PF relating to its role in the liberation struggle. These “known issues’ generally refer to ZANU PF as a party involved in the well-documented atrocities of the liberation struggle between 1962 and 1979. The Independent perpetuated these “old knowledges” about ZANU PF for strategic reasons: to paint a consistent picture of an inherently violent and evil party. The “old knowledges” evoked by The Independent go back to around 1962 and to the period of civil in Zimbabwe (1984-1987). For example, on 11 June 2000, The Independent referenced to these “old knowledges” that still demonised ZANU PF. It reported thus:

101

We need not forget that ZANU PF is a historically violent party. It was formed in violence… and in the post-independence period most of our election have been violent because of ZANU PF…ZANU PF has a phobia for political competition…

Reference to these “old knowledges” makes it easier to connect the past with the present and label the party as an existential threat to the country. Fairclough (2005:16) remarks, “The implicit presence of old knowledges may not be easy to pin down to any specific surface frame in the language of the texts, but nevertheless at the pragmatic level, this body of knowledge is crucial in the process of interpretation and production of discourse, i.e. the intersection of language and society – where aspects of meanings are negotiated, re (created) or modified.”

Both The Independent and The Sunday Mail relied on what they called “expert consensus” – the views of assumed experts and specialist academics in the field of elections, politics and governance in Zimbabwe- in covering election violence news. The Sunday Mail, for example, quoted many University of Zimbabwe academics on politics who much of the time, offered analysis that was “politically correct” – i.e. pro- ruling party and that further demonised the MDC. On the other hand, The Independent quoted oftenly, from academics, activists, election-related civil society organisations and research institutes. Expert opinion did not in any way help the cause of peace journalism. Rather, the experts’ views were as polarising as the non-expert discourses themselves. These experts confirmed and further drilled the differences between these two major parties. The two newspaper may have resorted to experts in order to give their stories on election violence some political balance and trying to suggest an “expert consensus”. For example, in one story, The Sunday Mail wrote:

Most experts see the MDC as the main source of violence… it cannot win an election against the revolutionary icon… it is resorting to violence to discredit the re-election of President Mugabe… (19 May 2013).

There is a deliberate choice of the verb “see” in this excerpt, rather than “say”, “identify” etc. It is suggested that the use of the verb “see” in this particular instance serves a legitimating role. It is not a precise verb compared to other verbs like, “prove”, “identify”, “record”, but in this instance, it is working through its connotation with the subject of the

102 sentence – “Most experts”, to suggest direct observation of “the MDC culpability” and, possibly, set the tone for the legitimation of ZANU PF’s own violence as acts of revenge. The Independent on the other hand, resort to expert-provided figures. For example:

Political scientists have noted that election violence related deaths might be more than 2000 with most of them being opposition supporters…” (30 June 2013).

Figures provide the “fact” with some form of credibility. Lester (2010) notes, quite correctly, that news is texts at work, potentially creating understanding, opening spaces for contestations and discouraging others and doing this simply through word choices and sentence structure. In this case, the words and structures are reinforcing the two newspapers’ ideological leanings and foregrounding their preferred audience reading of election violence news.

In a story titled, Violence set to flare up as rerun election looms” The Independent reported about Mugabe thus,

President Mugabe has urged his party youth to deal with MDC supporters ahead of the rerun election in which he face his nemesis Morgan Tsvangirai… The embattled and furious President warned his party that the country cannot be surrendered to the whites… The address represented a show of frustration by Mugabe whose popularity has slipped in recent years… He has been abandoned by supporters and even his inner circle is narrowing… (All emphasis mine).

This is yet another evidence of the failure of peace journalism. The news article is filled with flimsy conjecture and assumptions. For example, embattled President is not clear who has embattled him. Words and phrases like frustration, as used in this context are non-objective. By whose measure is the president furious and unpopular? The story sheds the image of an abandoned, revengeful demagogue sucking his thumb in a fetal position in the corner. Furthermore, the story reinforces the “us and them” binaries that have characterised coverage of election violence in the mainstream press. As I noted earlier, binaries do harm to peace. Such discoursal tags provide no incentives for future political engagement and cooperation between or among warring parties. More so, binaries do not accurately capture the events on the ground for readers. What is needed

103 for peace journalism is a press –led awareness of what defines election violence and the legally defined sanctions for violators. In addition to that, the press still need to explain to readers why other political players are designated as such as this is not obvious to readers.

When the two newspapers assumed demonising frames and emotive lexicon, they assumed a higher moral pedestal of political morality, which in the process allowed them to draw sufficient political attention as evaluators of political character and behaviour. While this might have been because of their general influence as publications, the position they accorded themselves as judges of party character, condemning certain parties was nevertheless, influential in this process.

5.3. The conflict frame in the construction of electoral violence news: from coverage of election violence to participation in election violence.

Demonisation narratives adopted by the two newspapers further added to another frame emerging in the news discourses – the conflict frame. The conflict which is very closely related to frames of demonisation, was very outstanding in the corpus sampled from both The Independent and The Sunday Mail. Conflict news frames emphasise disagreements between individuals or groups possibly as a means of capturing audience interest in the story (Elliot 1993; McManus 1994; Entman 1999 and Semteko and Valkenburg 2000). McManus (1994: 16) says, “Conflict frames are prominent determinants for identifying which events attract media coverage”. Iyengar (1987) notes that the conflict frame addresses four specific questions. These are: (a) does the story reflect disagreements between or among parties? (b) Does the story reflect two or more sides of a conflict? (c) Does the story emphasise actions of a group or an individual? (d) Does the story refer to winners or losers?

Relating to peace journalism, Galtung (2000), Lynch and McGoldrick (2005), Keeble et al (2016), and Youngblood (2016) berate conflict news frames as an enemy to the practice of peace journalism. This is because conflict frames concentrate on what always divide the parties, “on the differences between what each says they want, instead of trying to ask questions which reveal areas of common ground” (Lynch and McGoldrick 2005: 28- 29). Mandelson (1999) notes that every conflict always has a common ground on which

104 some form of peace and consensus can be built. Peace journalists should strive to identify these common areas of consensus no matter how fragile they maybe, and bring them on the limelight as basis around which an enduring peace can be built. Thus, conflict frames explain the nature of the conflict by labelling it as caused by others, through naming and labelling words that imply blame. Conflict language often stirs enmity, suspicion and hostility between and among warring sides of a conflict. This explains why advocates of peace journalism encourage the media to tone down their rhetoric in times of conflicts by avoiding emotive language (Keeble 2010 and Hanitzsch 2007). Keeble (2010) specifically asserts that the peace journalist should, avoid victimising language, catchphrases like ‘devastated’, ‘defenceless’, ‘pathetic’, ‘tragedy’, which only tell us what has been done to and could be done for a group of people by others. “This kind of language is disempowering and limits the options for change. Instead journalists should report what has been done and could be done by the people to mitigate the conflict…” (Keeble 2010:3). But this can be construed as self-censorship, which is undesirable. Journalists should report both- what has been done to others and what can be done to mitigate peace, with emphasis on the latter.

The 2008 re-run election in Zimbabwe provides ample evidence of the use of conflict frames that could exacerbate tensions and encouraged violence, victimisation of people and limited the options for peace. On 28 March 2008, the first round of the election was held. Unofficial results pointed to a defeat for Robert Mugabe, the then incumbent, at the hands of his arch-rival Morgan Tsvangirai. The ZEC did not announce the election results within five days as stipulated by the Zimbabwe constitution. It was on 23 April 2008 that the official results were announced and a re-run of the presidential poll was pencilled for 27 June 2008, since neither Robert Mugabe nor Morgan Tsvangirai had garnered the mandatory 50+1 vote required to ascend to power. As soon as the defeat of Robert Mugabe was announced, Robert Mugabe announced the official start of campaigning for the re-run election. However, from the time when unofficial results filtered on the public sphere, that Robert Mugabe had been defeated in the first round of polling, violence started to escalate to levels hitherto unexperienced in any election. It is difficult, however, to agree with Makumbe (2008), HRW (2008) and Sachikonye (2012) that the 2008 election violence, generally held to be the worst election violence in Zimbabwe, was a

105

ZANU PF creation simply because it had lost the poll and was desperate to retain the executive at all costs. This is because election violence can be an instrument for both those who are on the cusp of losing power as well as those on the verge of acquiring it. But, that much of the 2008 election was ZANU PF creation has rarely been challenged in scholarship and other research. As Todd (2009 unpublished) noted, the defeat of Robert Mugabe was particularly stinging for a sitting president famously known for his exaggerated, vain pomposity and ego and his ill-founded sense of ownership of the country. On the other hand, the MDC and its allies felt buoyed by the first round victory and began to campaign for final victory.

The 2008 presidential re-run election represented an abrupt shift for electoral violence news reporting in both The Independent and The Sunday Mail. I see this period as an abrupt shift because the media were no longer reporting election violence as it unfolded on the ground, but were directly participating in it. This is true of The Sunday Mail particularly. There was a shift in the rhetorical use and lexical choices from demonising frames to directly confrontational rhetoric that encouraged and accentuated election violence. As election violence became more institutionalised than at any time – involving the direct participation of the army, the police and the intelligence agencies on behalf of ZANU PF, press discourses of electoral violence became more belligerent than before and hortative to the violent machineries on the ground- like the youth, the war veterans. The press use of conflict was punctuated, furthermore, by open and direct threats, angry statements and articulations by politicians were given unprecedented space in the press, direct encouragement for violence by editors, columnists, and commentators.

The following news headlines are particularly instructive in this regard:

 It’s time to strike fear in white hearts: President (The Sunday Mail, 27 April 2008)  We have degrees in violence: President Mugabe (The Sunday Mail, 4 May 2008).  The ballot shall be led by the gun not the other way round: President Mugabe (The Sunday Mail, 11 May 2008). In the introductory chapter, I adopted Lynch and McGoldrick’s (2005) definition of peace journalism as, “when reporters and editors make choices about what to report on and how to report it – in ways that create opportunities for society to consider and value non-violent

106 responses to conflict…” (Emphasis mine). The Sunday Mail’s headlines provided above, comings towards a hotly contested presidential run-run, certainly do not create an opportunity for peace. It should be noted that Mugabe himself was a candidate in this election, who was accorded a platform by a public newspaper to spew violent-exalting discourses like those quoted above. The headlines noted above are the worst a public sphere can do in the pursuit of partisan politics. There is no dispute that the journalists were simply regurgitating Mugabe’s speech at his rallies in Chinhoyi, Marondera and Bindura respectively. Thus, objectivity, public interest and facticity are easily evoked as grounds for such reporting. But certainly, objectivity, public interest have limits. In this instance, however, the press went overboard. Of course this is certainly newsworthy, but this prevents journalists from making a positive contribution to electoral violence resolution in Zimbabwe. This kind of reporting is adversarial and perpetuates distrust within a winner-loser framework, and in the process generates antipathy in an already conflict-ridden environment. When Mugabe made these remarks, already the country was reeling from a string of murders of commercial farmers by alleged ex-combatants and war veterans. In quoting Mugabe verbatim, the press was being accessories to hate speech. This kind of coverage is a negation of the press’ social responsibility role as purveyors of knowledge that build society. ‘Strike fear in the hearts of the white men’ is uncontestably hate speech which, in other places is censored with perpetrators punished. Hate speech is any kind of speech that targets a group of people on grounds of certain attributes like colour, religion sexual orientation beliefs or any such criteria (Brown 2017).

Zimbabwe has no known statutes against hate speech, unlike neigbhouring South Africa. This leaves the media and political parties room to go to the extreme in the process of pushing sectional political agendas. And, when faced with the threat of losing political power, politicians through the media, often throw caution to the wind, as Mugabe’s speech excerpts above show. Being a fourth estate as the press is, goes beyond checking the performances of the other three estates- legislature, judiciary and executive. It means advocating for the protection of vulnerable minorities, like the whites, Mugabe refers to in the excerpts above, from any harm the majority may inflict on them, including racist hate speech. By framing and distributing such vitriolic discourses during an election already gripped by extreme violence, the media were collusive in the perpetuation of violence.

107

Participation comes in different ways. The UN for example, now recognises participation by omission. An omission, generally is a failure to act (Ratillif 2011). In other spheres which are not the press, an omission constitutes an actus reus and gives rise to liability. But that only happens when the law imposes a duty to act, and the defendant is in breach of that duty. So, the press have a responsibility to ensure harmony, avoid disseminating information that can cause and promote racial and ethnic conflict. Section 66 of the AIPPA law in Zimbabwe criminalises the publication and dissemination of information that causes fear, alarm and despondency. As vaguely defined as these terms are, the sense of what is publishable and unpublishable cannot be in any doubt here. In the case of The Sunday Mail, it was participation by active engagement in violent discourses that had the potential to inflame political conflict, racial hatred and prejudice.

In the story “It’s time to strike fear in White hearts” The Sunday Mail quoted Mugabe extensively spewing violence rhetoric:

“We know the whites have been sponsoring the MDC… they want to take the land back from us… but these are not indigenous to Africa…they cannot do whatever they want…The courts can say whatever they want… but we are going to deal with the white men in the manner they colonized us… no law shall stand against us…We have declared that no self-respecting man shall vote for the MDC on 27 June…Never ever shall the whites be seen on this land pretending to be an opposition… never…” (Emphasis mine).

There is overlexicalisation in this speech. Teo (2000: 20) says overlexicalisation, “results when a surfeit of repetitious quasi-synonymous terms are woven into the fabric of discourse, giving rise to a sense of over completeness”. Over-lexicalisation is found where there is an abundance of particular words and their synonyms. It indicates anxiety on the part of the journalists or speaker to try and justify the MDC as an enemy of every Zimbabwean because they (as the paper alleges) pander to the whims of the West. There is an overlexicalisation of words that communicate MDC’s evilness and intention to be proxies for the (re)colonisation of Zimbabwe. For example, the white as non-indigenous and as sponsoring an alien form of opposition politics.

108

By publishing such stories, The Sunday Mail had participated in promoting hate discourses and promoted an extensive conflict –instigating news culture that renders diabolical other electoral participants on grounds of colour and ideological differences. This is extremely irresponsible reporting which some societies the world over have started punishing. A good example is that of Hassan Ngeze and Ferdinand Nahimana – two Rwandan journalists who were, in 2003, convicted by the UN tribunal on Rwanda for “genocide, incitement to commit genocide and crimes against humanity” (UN tribunal on Rwanda 2003:169). The presiding judge of the tribunal, Judge Navanethem Pillay was particularly scathing and at the same time clear, asserting thus:

[They] chose a path of genocide and betrayed the trust placed on them as journalists, intellectuals and leaders… [They] caused the death of thousands of civilians without a firearm…” Even more instructively, Judge Pillay noted, “You were fully aware of the power of the words and you used the media … to disseminate hatred and violence… without a firearm, machete or any physical weapon… in the process you caused the death of thousands of people…”(2003:169).

In this case, the two journalists - Hassan Ngeze and Ferdinand Nahimana were convicted of fuelling the killings of Tutsi people through their magazine, Kangura, which fanned the genocide through degrading frames and discourse that were used in reference to the Tutsis. For example, the magazine referred to the Tutsis as “coakroaches (inyenzi). Lisa (1999) assert that conflict frames in the media are an early-warning sign of a brewing crisis and it was the World’s mistake to ignore them before the genocide in Rwanda

Journalists at The Sunday Mail failed to filter their news discourses in ways that promote peace, and were, therefore, equally guilty of promoting hate speech. For example, for the pursuance of peace journalism, the urge to “strike fear” on a racial minority should have been avoided. Perhaps, a frame like, “Mugabe castigates whites for supporting his opponent Tsvangirai” would capture the juice and essence of the speech without spreading racial hatred. It is instructive to note immediately (1 day after), the infamous “Strike fear in white hearts” speech by Robert Mugabe, a white farmer and MDC activist, Henry Elsworth was abducted and killed at his farm in the South – West of Harare by war veterans, Mugabe’s supporters, who publicly dragged his body around the farm for his

109 workers to witness. To argue that they were responding to Mugabe’s public call for the violent destruction of all opposition supporters especially the whites, would be an ill-fated attempt to refashion the magic bullet theory of the press. But to ignore such an immediate connection of events would be equally foolhardy.

The Sunday Mail was, therefore, central as a weapon of promoting conflicts through its preferred sourcing of news and its framing of the news for public dissemination. It deliberately stirred a violent hysteria during the campaign period which violent elements might have fed into as they found it as official endorsement for their actions. Otherwise, how else can an editorial like this be explained:

Tsvangirai is just an empty vessel… a miserable figure. He cannot be equated to our educated president…the intellectual level of our country shall not allow ignorant people… it will be shameful and embarrassing to allow him to claim victory on 27 June… he and his supporters should now know the country will not be sold for thirty pieces of silver…(The Sunday Mail, 8 June 2008).

The conflict frames emphasised by The Sunday Mail moved the two parties- the MDC and ZANU PF further away from each other such that they could not certainly agree on how to combat run-away violence and ensure an environment conducive for a free and fair election. From the way The Sunday Mail framed the conflict, it became a “Zimbabwe versus white citizens” affair. The paper further emphasised conflict frames by characterising the election in discourses of confrontation, and not as health political competition based on mutualism. Instead it emphasised “non-negotiable issues” like that “the MDC and local white population were proxies of colonialism” (22 June 2008), and that “The whites were supporting the opposition to reclaim their land, control the wealth and other natural resources of Zimbabwe…” (15 June 2008). Putman and Shoemaker note that, “The media frame some elements of a conflict as grand and others as trivial… they search for labels to capture the nature of a struggle and to try to forecast the outcomes of a dispute…” (2004:4).This sums up the framing strategies of both The Independent and The Sunday Mail in this case.

Nominal pronouns and phrases like, “We cannot accept MDC attempt to mislead Zimbabweans…”, “The Zimbabwean fight for sovereignty…”, “Our values as a nation shall

110 not die in vain…” (The Sunday Mail, 6 July 2008) reinforced the ideological chasm existing between the two parties, further strengthening the conflict frame. Nominal phrases further underlined the differences between these two parties and they further exacerbated the conflict in the process. Phrasal nouns like “damp squib” (The Sunday Mail, 9 July 2008) further underlined already existing conflictual tensions between the MDC and ZANU PF. For example, The Sunday Mail, (17 February 2008) reported thus:

The MDC and its allies had called for an anti-violence march yesterday… it turned out to be a damp squib as only a handful of participants turned out…

This kind of discourse affirms the newspaper’s pro-ZANU PF stance and at the same time downplays the MDC’s anti-violence awareness campaign. There was also a preference for rhetorical questions on issues of electoral violence, especially in The Independent. For example, the paper asked thus,

 Can ZANU PF allow a violent-free election which it can lose? (The Independent, 2 March 2008)  After the violence, which way Zimbabwe? (The Independent, 6 July 2008)  Political violence rips Zimbabwe apart, but is there an alternative for ZANU PF? (The Independent, 18 March 2008) Rhetorical questions as a linguistic strategy were crucial in evoking thinking and making a point about the other. For instance, in the headlines cited above, they were crucial in making the audience re-evaluate ZANU PF’s role in the elections and its overall contribution to Zimbabwe’s electoral history. The last headline cited, hints at a debilitating and destructive contribution for ZANU PF to Zimbabwe’s overall electoral life. Thus, as a strategy, rhetorical questions are used for reflective purposes. In the particular case of The Independent’s rhetorical strategies also served many as instruments of persuasion – to persuade its readers about its position that ZANU PF is contributing to electoral violence and to evoke emotions on the part of audiences in thinking about electoral violence. Rhetorical questions in this particular instance, poke, dismay goad and prod readers on the subject under discussion. Overall, they feed into the conflict frame.

111

There was, in both newspapers, a persistent use of descriptive clauses like, “alien threats” The Sunday Mail, in reference to the MDC), “axe-combatants” or “O veterans” (The Independent, in reference to the war veterans). Descriptive clauses served the persistent reproduction of the conflict by presenting other political players as exhibiting behaviour which is unfathomably outside the “acceptable” consensus regardless of how that consensus was defined. For example, a news article in The Sunday Mail of 22 June 2008, a week before the election opined, “The MDC is an alien party… it threatens our political culture and national way of life…” It is important to note that it is the author who is defining this “national culture”. In its editorial of 13 January 2002, The Sunday Mail asserted in the same conflict framing culture, “The MDC is an illegitimate, dangerous and subversive political outfit backed by ungrateful former colonisers…” Furthermore, the use of noun phrases like “alien party” makes the MDC a legitimate target of destruction by virtue of the “fact” that they do not come from this universe, thus they are an existential threat to nationhood. Such discourses open political players to violence and all forms of retributive targeting, a scenario that worsens the conflict and are unhealthy discourses for a free and fair election. To define a group of party supporters as “alien” is a naming strategy in discourse that seeks to dehumanise them.

In this example, by being tagged “alien” or “totemless people” as ZANU PF candidate, Robert Mugabe called them (The Sunday Mail, 1 June 2008), The Sunday Mail was designating opposition supporters as “them’’ and marginalising them as evil and malicious. The danger is two-fold. Firstly, Mugabe’s speeches were polarising in themselves, and the public press dutifully reported them without worrying of the consequences and the stereotypes they were perpetuating. The conflict frames preferred by The Sunday Mail reinforced unequal power relations between ZANU PF and the MDC. The Sunday Mail framed its news in such a way that the opposition is portrayed as unethical, weak, and undemocratic and an instrument of (re) colonisation. While ZANU PF appears as the true guardian of sovereignty against MDC’s planned election violence. Derrida (1981) correctly notes that binaries, like “the violent opposition party led by Morgan Tsvangirai…” (The Sunday Mail, 3 March 2002) and “the increasingly violent Robert Mugabe…” (The Independent 20 January 2002), engender conflict because, “they do not facilitate peaceful co-existence but rather exist as a violent hierarchy [in which]

112 one term governs the other…or has the upper hand…” Zanetti (1999: 235) agrees, noting that conflict frames connote an intense struggle for predominance, and this predominance suggests that, “one position is right and the other must be wrong”.

However, preference for conflict frames when covering violence is not unique to the Zimbabwean press. Davies (2013) notes that conflict news frames are weapons of news production stored in the ideological armoury of virtually all news discourses. Sonwalker (2005) agrees, noting that conflictual frames and binaries are core to media, basically, mainstream journalism is predicated around them because they are a taken-for granted way for reporting news. Riggins (1997) notes that controversial issues like nationalism, gender, race, terrorism and violence are typically framed around conflict frames. Sonwalker (2005) says conflict frames are sustained by binaries and are a routine feature in the news media the world over. Sonwalker calls them part of a prevalent “banal journalism”, “institutionalized, normalized, naturalized that it seems benign and banal” (Sonwalker 2005: 262). Gans (1983) agreed, noting that the news media industry thrives on conflict frames.

Conflict frames in the Zimbabwean press are a culmination of the battle for control of the media spaces pitting the few private media owners in the country and the dominant ruling regime that controls the public media. These contestations become acute during an election when politicians have to control the public discourses on elections. This imperative to control discourses on electoral violence is important in order to dictate international perceptions around the elections especially after the year 2000 when elections in Zimbabwe became more contested than before. Thus, the press becomes an important battlefield for the control of hearts and minds. The press is even more important in this regard because, relative to broadcasting, the Zimbabwean press offers both diversity and pluralism. Thus, the ruling party’s grip on broadcasting media eliminates all possible contestations in broadcasting, shifting the battlefield to the press.

Thus, the two newspapers were not to a large extent, useful as conduits of peace journalism. If they had wanted to push an agenda for peace journalism, they could have highlighted possible areas of cooperation between the warring parties, something that they backgrounded. Foregrounding possible areas of consensus would have lessened

113 tensions, assist in eliminating suspicions and establish a starting point for mutual engagement between the two major protagonists. There are many possible ways this could have been done. For example, casting the contestants in a more positive light. For example, calling them “MDC supporters”, “opposition supporters”, “ZANU PF youth”, “the ruling party supporters” are better frames than the associated pejoratives of “ZANU PF as an invention of Satan”, “MDC as running dogs of imperialism” etc. Both newspapers could have attempted to find a common ground that unified the participants, for example, emphasising that both parties needed a violent –free election in order to garner political legitimacy and allow the country to move out of its less-splendid isolation. De-escalation discourses could also have offered multiple explanations of the violence, narrowed and simplified it for the audiences rather than cast it in unexplained simplistic binaries of an MDC- ZANU PF do-or-die tug-of-war. The conflict frames adopted by the two newspapers left no room for reconciliation, destroyed even a remote possibility that both parties could agree on the ground rules to quell violence. Conflict frames created two irreconcilable polars – effectively staving off any possibility of positively framing the other side.

5.4. Prevalence of the human interest frame in electoral violence news

In producing news on electoral violence, both The Independent and The Sunday Mail made reference to the human interest frame frequently. The human interest frame, according to McManus (1994), brings the “human face” and emotional dimensions to the presentation of a news issue. Opperhuizen Schouten and Klijin (2018) note that human interest frames are prevalent in news media especially when framing conflicts like political violence and natural disasters like earthquakes. Neumann, Just and Crigler (1992:69) also assert that the human interest frame expresses people’s, “personal concerns and compassion with a visceral directness… and frame stories in emphatic or compassionate terms…employ adjectives, personal vignettes, and visuals that might generate feelings of outrage, empathy, sympathy or compassion from their audiences…” Uribe and Gunter (2007) add to this, asserting that the human interest frame overhypes events, presents biased impressions of events likely to arouse emotions and cause a manipulation of truth. Kozakowska (2013) asserts that the human interest frame suits sensational news reporting, further advances the conflict frame and highlights the confrontation between or

114 among the parties. Grabe et al (2001: 635-636) note that human interest frames carry within them sensationalist news reporting that, “violate notions of social decency, displacing socially significant stories and drifting into excessiveness”. Uzuegbunani (2013) agrees, saying in covering electoral violence, the human interest frame packages headlines in such a way that the story appears interesting, extraordinary and relevant. Neumann et al (1992), McManus (1994), Grabe et al (2001), Uribe and Gunter (2007) and Opperhuizen et al (2018) agree that the human interest frame in news media thrives on the sensationalisation of important issue like political violence. Padin (2005) and Cho and Gowzr (2006) note that the human interest frame is also a very significant predictor of blame and responsibility in a crisis. Otieno et al (2013) note that the human interest frame contributes negatively to news dissemination because it emotionalises and dramatises events and processes. In the process, it accentuates individual affectedness. But, the human interest frame can also contribute to positive knowledge gain on electoral violence in Zimbabwe. Jebril et al (2012) note that both human interest and conflict frames in news coverage can easily generate interest in news even for the least interested citizens and can provide easy assessable news coverage. Jebril et al (2012) argue, “First, news stories combining either or both elements are likely to provoke attention which can ensure longer exposure as well as enhance learning from the news. According to Graber (2001), attention arousal is considered one of the first steps in acquiring information.

Scholarship on human interest frames in the media (Neumann et al 1992: Graber 2001 and Jebril et al 2012) agree that human interest frames are not ideal for problem solving and policy intervention because they morally evaluate individuals and consequently, readers are more likely to have a negative perception of actors, and not an informed perception of the system in which these individuals live, which might be a serious cause of the problem.

Based on the corpus under analysis, I observed that both newspapers evoked human interest frames in reporting electoral violence, with The Sunday Mail making use of it more than The Independent. They evoked the human interest strategy possibly to increase the newsworthiness of election violence stories. I noted that news headlines on election violence were an important resource of the human interest frame, which became even

115 more important as an expression of the evaluative stance the two newspapers had adopted in covering electoral violence. The following news headlines from The Independent and The Sunday Mail show how the overtly sensationalised human interest frame was pervasive in stories of electoral violence:

 Critically injured and bedridden ZANU PF supporter sues MDC (The Sunday Mail, 19 May 2013)  War veterans kill and mutilate MDC supporter (The Independent, 11 May 2008)  ZANU PF youth drag dead commercial farmer’s body to rally (The Independent, 18 June 2000)  MDC youths terrorise villagers, assault pregnant women (The Sunday Mail, 30 June 2013)  Chilling violence testimony moves judge to tears (The Independent, 27 February 2005) The above are sampled examples of human interest news frames packaged to, possibly, elicit the “Wow’ reaction in readers. They trigger an emotional response in readers and, equally arouse very strong negative emotions towards other political players, and in the process decrease public support for other players, while, sometimes, increasing it for others. I noted that the human interest frame made perpetrators of election violence appear more prominent in the news in their own “merit”. Mogekwu (2013:244) notes that the human interest frame goes contrary to the demands of peace journalism in the sense that it valorises combatants more than the victims of conflict. Again, contrary to the ascribed demands of peace journalism, the human interest frame, “makes it mandatory for audiences to identify with one or the other of the fighting parties…”

The human interest frame in election violence news was enabled by discourse strategies like the use of attributive adjectives in news stories. For example attributive adjectives like “critically injured”, “bedridden” accentuated the human interest dimension and, at the same time, revealed the reporters’ sympathy with the victims. Ge (2016) notes that attributive adjectives have the potential to arouse strong emotional responses in readers. In both newspapers, wherever human interest frames surfaced, they generally emphasised two aspects of electoral violence in Zimbabwe; firstly, how it was committed

116 and secondly the persisting disagreements between the MDC and ZANU PF on the issue of electoral violence. For example; “The 32 years old… mobilised youths and attacked a ZANU PF member, Meynard Ngwaro at Mapisa growth point. Meynard was attacked by a mob wielding broom sticks and axes. Police have not made any arrests over the matter…they have condemned MDC’s violent culture…” (The Sunday Mail, 12 May 2013). In this excerpt, transitive material processes in discourses are sensationally utilised to perpetuate a detailed account of individual criminal acts of electoral violence. Evaluative discourses like “MDC’s culture of violence” persisted in the coverage of electoral violence. The Sunday Mail (2 June 2013) resorted to metaphors in framing electoral violence stories within the framework of a human interest frame. It published thus, “An opposition-backed election violence ill-wind is blowing across Zimbabwe leaving in its wake devastation, consuming lives, destroying property and planting despair and hatred…”

The human interest frame adopted by the two newspapers was more of “adrenalin- pumping” reporting meant to attract attention. Harvey (2009) notes that human interest news frames as a news discourse and discursive rationality saturate readers with humanistic values like compassion, reason and the greater good. The reader is therefore, made to emphathise with the victim(s). But contrary to Harvey’s (2009) observation, it was also noted that human interest frames banished all sense of rationality and aided the generation of feelings against either ZANU PF or the MDC. To illustrate this point, two examples can be cited. The first one is about the death of Ignatious Chepiri a ZANU PF youth League member reported by The Sunday Mail on 27 February 2005 towards the March 31 parliamentary elections.

Extract 1: The Sunday Mail (27 February 2005)

Headline: Police find dismembered body of Ignatius Chepiri.

Story: In the middle of the night last week Saturday, MDC youths armed with machetes dragged Ignatious Chepiri from his home in Budiriro. His voice echoed through the deadly night silence as he cried for help. Today after seven days of frantic search, his decomposing body was found along the Mukuvisi River…chopped, wounded and dismembered… (Emphasis mine).

117

The second extract comes from The Independent (March 6 2005):

Headline: Chilling testimony moves judge to tears

Story: The High Court yesterday briefly adjourned as witnesses broke down and the testimonies moved the presiding judge to tears. The presiding judge and his assessors were visibly moved to tears as witnesses testified against notorious war veteran Wilson Biggie Chitoro. Chitoro, a former member of the Army’s Fifth Brigade which is accused of genocide in Matabeleland between 1984 and 1987, is accused of murdering two MDC supporters during the past elections. The court heard how Chitoro, 60, the notorious knife –juggling karate expert, recognizable in his cowboy hat and with knives dangling from his belt… abducted and assaulted Fanos Zhou severely until he died at Rixon Farm. Chitoro faces another count of murder… he assaulted Mavis Mapaire, inserted a hot metal rod in her private parts until she died… for being an MDC polling agent in the past parliamentary election… (Emphasis mine).

Both extracts are full of humanistic frames which evoke sympathy with the victims and simultaneously expose cruelty and barbarism. The graphic illustration of victims’ suffering and bodies in both instances may be intended to add effect to this cruelty and arguably, heighten readers’ emotions by adding to a sense of bewilderment over such inexplicable acts. Thus, human interest frames carry with them, an emotive tone that banishes rationality and generate intense negative feelings towards another party. Mogekwu (2013) condemns human interest frames in the news media, especially when used to cover violence, because they do not aid conflict resolution and are nowhere closer to peace journalism practices. Mogekwu (2013) argues further that human interest frames manifest the conflict and is a very simplistic approach to news reporting, less intellectually demanding on reporting latent conflict. This frame is far divorced from peace journalism tenets in that it adopts a simplistic approach to news coverage and it favours events at the expense of processes, treats news as a commodity with no other societal functions – like providing society with information that help solve problems. Mogekwu (2013: 244) argues that the human interest frame, “...serve only the career recognition of the

118 journalist… it is easy to describe dead bodies and casualties but it is very vital [for news] to contribute to peace…”

In reporting the Biggie Chitoro case, The Independent uses personalisation strategy, through the use of names. It reported thus:

Murderous war veteran, Chitoro incited his colleagues, Shadreck Makoni, Francis Ncube, Sam Kid Ganyau, Morgan Gumbo, Nhamoinesu Dziva and Elias Zhou to visit Masaga village and kidnap the late Kufazvinei, Elia Mapaire, and James Zhou…Soon after Chitoro's alleged order, the group moved onto Mapaire's home and ordered him to wake up. They first assaulted and handcuffed him before forcing him to lead them to the homes of Zhou and Kufazvinei.

While it is a generally upheld reporting protocol to supply names in such instances, Machin and Meyer (2007) assert that this reporting strategy has the effect of collectivising everyone named as an offender. There is also little agency on behalf of other accused persons. Firstly, it is intimated that they are “led’ by Biggie Chitoro. News narratives on electoral violence in Zimbabwe are replete with tales of groups not driven by thoughts and (party) ideas, goals and concerns but pushed by some very fanatical, often charismatic and sometimes embittered strong men. For example, Biggie Chitoro –led war veterans as in this case, Savanhu –led Chipangano and Mudha- Ncube – led Al Shabaab in Kwekwe and many others. This is part of well-trodden discourse about electoral violence in Zimbabwe as being militia-instigated and perpetrated with strong men leading. The Independent ideologically seeks most of the time to foreground violence as organised, calculated and well-thought out, with law and order institutions and ZANU PF functionaries and related groups appearing to share one goal of decimating the opposition.

On the other hand, the state-controlled The Sunday Mail employs nominalisation as a strategy. Nominalisation replaces verb processes with noun constructions which can obscure responsibility for an action (Machin and Meyer 2007). In reporting the same case of Biggie Chitoro, the paper reported: Two MDC supporters were killed in Shurugwi during a campaign rally by suspected war veterans…. The murder of the MDC supporters has been condemned…

119

This was the same infamous Biggie Chitoro incident which attracted global attention on electoral violence to Zimbabwe. Even mainstream Western newspapers like The (British) Independent, The BBC Africa Service and The Mail Online reported it. Biggie Chitoro killed an MDC supporter at Texas Ranch farm in Mberengwa, 300 miles south of Harare, by inserting hot metal objects into her privates. In The Sunday Mail report, Biggie Chitoro the perpetrator of the violence is completely obscured. Nominalisation increases agent deletion (Fairclough 2003). The act of burning a person is hence, represented as a nominalisation. Furthermore, nominalisation distances the event from any moment in time. When did this happen? Where in particular in Mberengwa district. Appeleg (1999) notes that peace journalism is an act of truth-telling. A more peace journalism reporting frame would have named the perpetrators, the reasons for the violence, the reaction of the people and more importantly, name who is condemning it. Electoral violence is a phenomenon that can be challenged by citizens if presented in such a way that urgency is attributed to actors within specific contexts and time. In this case nominalisation used defeats any form of action because agents are hidden and their contribution to violence is hidden too. Violence is in this case presented as a fleeting thing and in the process, the presentation erases the necessity by citizens to act on it. Machin and Meyer (2007) note that nominalisation hides the agents as well as the victims by narrowing and channeling readers’ visions and removing any sense of time. By so doing, the when and how questions crucial to peace journalism practices are avoided.

If, for example, using the Biggie Chitoro case, The Independent had really wanted to pursue peace journalism and help solve electoral violence, there are many productive lines of reporting that the newspaper ignored in this case. For instance, rather than providing graphic descriptions of his acts and victims, the newspaper could have asked more serious questions of whether Chitoro himself was not a victim of an earlier vicious kind of violence that dehumanised and desensitised him. In the story, the newspaper acknowledges that Biggie Chitoro was an ex- combatant and he was part of the Fifth Brigade – the North Korean trained ZNA unit which is accused of mass slaughter in the Western part of Zimbabwe (Matabeleland and Midlands provinces) soon after independence. This means Chitoro participated in two cycles of political violence. Arendt (1989) notes that violence wrecks both the perpetrator and the victim. Nancy (2005)

120 agrees, noting that violence denatures and transforms victims and perpetrators into signs of its own rage. Thus, a productive peace journalism practice could have linked these violent acts possibly as a manifestation of an earlier violence that transformed vicious perpetrators like Biggie Chitoro into signs and objects of its rage. Chitoro and his ilk might be victims themselves who, if not counselled and helped, may still brandish political violence as an instrument of political contestation into the future. The question demanding inquiry for the peace journalist would have been: Is Biggie Chitoro and the war veterans not signs of the continuation of political violence into the postcolony, a violence that now brandishes a new form, or perhaps even a new meaning? The present news portrayals that newsify electoral violence as a form of entertainment, filmic experiences that can be consumed with unquestioned jollity by the readers, and its graphic illustration does not probe deeply on causes nor the consequences on the political, social and moral fabric of society.

To illustrate this point, it is crucial to look at some facts of Zimbabwe’s post-colonial history. In 1981, the then Commander of the newly formed Zimbabwe National Army, General Peter Walls wrote to the then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe and the then Minister of Defence Richard Hove, informing them that the newly integrated ex- combatants needed serious psychological rehabilitation. There is no evidence of that having happened. Actually Mugabe selected 20 000 of them and deployed them in Matabeleland to quell what he said was a rebellion. They committed untold atrocities (CCJP 1990). Thus, a simplistic report would just reproduce their violence without digging deep into whether these men and women are fully integrated and healed from liberation war trauma. Has the government done anything, or it has just retired them and unleashed them on hapless citizens for a political party’s advantage? Gladys Matinenga, the MDC candidate in Mberengwa, on hearing Chitoro acts of brutality, asked if he was not a candidate for a mental asylum. The press would have probed such kind of brutality and the people behind.

Emphasis on melodramatic electoral violence news makes it “readable” as a spectacle. I argue that even those who did not experience electoral violence firsthand, saw it in the press with its emphasis on melodramatic events. The murder of two white commercial

121 farmers who were also MDC activists serves to illustrate this case in point. They were reported by The Independent towards the 2005 parliamentary elections. The first was the murder of Gloria Olds. She had been “warned” previously, for supporting the MDC by war veterans. Her murder became a symbol of both electoral violence and national shame because the investigating officer opened an investigation of both murder and necrophilia. On 23 March 2005, a week before the parliamentary election, The Independent reported the story:

Headline: Gloria Olds’ body violated.

Story: Police investigating the murder of the Olds family have confirmed that Gloria Olds body was sexually violated with an autopsy at Gwanda hospital showing that the violation happened after her murder…. War veterans allegedly broke into the Olds house…

Reporting on the murder of losing MDC candidate for Marondera, and commercial farmer, The Independent wrote:

Headline: In Macheke, murder most foul

Story: … Mr. Stevens, a well-known farmer and opposition activist was bludgeoned to death by suspected war veterans. His mutilated body was dragged along the dust road … and a case of cannibalism has been opened against the ZANU PF supporters… President Mugabe, ZANU PF candidate in the coming elections has urged his supporters to hit back at the MDC and its supporters. Commenting on the death of Mr. Stevens. The veteran 81 years old dictator (sic) said Stevens deserved it. “Stevens is the one who started a war. He is one who started firing and he is the one who started the fight….”

There are several aspects from this news report. Firstly, it is virulently violent speech characterised by fury rhetoric. This is where peace journalists should intervene by ensuring that evocative and violent rhetoric that do not serve peace are not reproduced in media spaces in such a way that they give supporters the courage to act, in the misguided belief that their violence is righteous, so is their cause. The second issue to note is that this rhetoric was printed a few weeks before a hotly contested election, it

122 relates to electoral violence, in a political context where violence had dominated as an instrument of politics. A peace journalist would not have published such a speech because the speech erroneously identifies a minority race as a problem, and in the process makes it vulnerable to all forms of suspicion and hatred. Precisely, this speech perpetuates some untruths about the minority other. Journalists should carefully chose what they publish so ensure it creates opportunities for peace. It is awkward that there is a general consensus around the world that the publication of nude pictures and pornographic material is unethical and against public morality, but the same world is reluctant to note that violent-instigating hate rhetoric is equally dangerous. It is even more dangerous when this rhetoric comes from politicians who should be safeguarding society, and in an already polarised environment. Galtung and Ottosen (2010) say, for the media to serve peace, restraint is necessary. This means, space should be closed to rhetoric that dehumanises other people, for stories that build an understanding among groups.

Both newspapers resorted to rhetorical questions as a discursive strategy, which tended to emotionalise the whole debate on electoral violence. They also served as an attempt to draw sympathy from readers for their preferred political side. In attempting to draw sympathy and in emotionalising the debate on electoral violence, they glossed over the pertinent dimensions of electoral violence – like, why is it still persisting? Rhetorical questions whip up readers’ emotions. The following examples illustrate the two newspapers resort to rhetoric questions as a discursive strategy on electoral violence:

 Is opposing ZANU PF now a crime? (The Independent 19 May 2013).  What has Zimbabweans done to deserve this violence from ZANU PF? (The Independent, 11 May 2008). Naming was yet another strategy used in the context of humanistic frames of news production. Victims’ names were given in full, lurid descriptions and their chilling last moments were equally described. One of the first politically motivated murders of the post-2000 period happened at Murambinda growth point, South- East of Zimbabwe. Two war veterans, Joseph Mwale and Francis Zimunya (later convicted for this murder but granted Presidential Amnesty), petrol-bombed Talent Mabika and Tichaona Chiminya on

123 their way from a rally nearby. The Independent, using a naming strategy within a humanistic frame reported thus:

Talent Mabika and Tichaona Chiminya met their demise at the hands of war veterans at Murambinda…. They were the finest brains of the new generation… they could not get out of their burning vehicle…Talent’s lifeless body lay beside the road…Tichaona’s body was barely recognisable…decimated by the engulfing inferno…their charred bodies are a reminder of how ZANU PF intends to deal with its opponents…

Naming victims, according to Kherrabadi (2016) helps to illuminate the subject matter under discussion. Fairclough (2003) notes that naming players allows the readers to place them in certain social contexts. In this case, there is an element of bravery that the reader would possibly associate with the two victims. The unnamed perpetrators also revoke outrage in the readers, as threats to society, resisting a wider, shared cultural value of non-violence.

Harvey (2009:5) notes, “Humanistic rhetoric uses highly emotive language to elicit the sympathy of the readers while masking the covert bias of the newspaper reporting”. The strategy has two-pronged objectives. Firstly, such framing of news seeks to win the hearts and minds of readers for a certain cause, through sensationalistic and melodramatic portrayal of election violence. Secondly, overt bias is masked by a pretense to objectivity. Human interest frames therefore, foregrounded “worthy victims” (Herman and Chomsky 1992: 49), granting them generous coverage characterised by gory details of mutilated bodies, violated bodies and those burnt beyond recognition. I noted that in reporting “the worthy victims” both newspapers try to use the eyewitness account narrative technique in order to “dredge up” what reporters and editors wanted and also to enable news reporters to bring out a lot of details about the horrifying experiences of the victims. The brutality, so luridly described in the press, is not followed up by a more useful discussion of impunity, involvement of state institutions and elite-sanctioned violence, which could be expected of a serious and inquisitive press.

Instead, human interest news frames seem to have been adopted in the happy pursuit of sales and profit. Wolfsfeld (1997) says peace journalism news does not generate as much

124 sales and audience attention as war frames and graphic violence. The latter, suits a media environment driven by ratings. Thus basically, human interest frames are news frames of the market, tilting towards tabloidisation. But this is not a trend unique to the Zimbabwean mainstream press only. The move towards sensationalisation even of serious news issues like political violence is fast becoming a global trend in mainstream media. Bennett (1995:43) offers a justification, arguing, “As the market for news everywhere becomes competitive, journalists and editors are at pains to produce a product that captures and retains audience interest”. This include hackling back to sensational human interest frames long condemned as uncharacteristic practices for any serious mainstream newspaper. Elsewhere, (Munoriyarwa 2017), I argued that the press cannot afford to ignore the demands of the market because by so doing, they will be denying the reality of their existence. Human interest frames heighten community fear of electoral violence without engaging with the issues. In other instances, electoral violence is framed like it is a spectacle of infotainment, consequently distorting public view about electoral violence through trivialisation of such an important matter. When alternative voices that can inform public understanding of electoral violence are suppressed in favour of human interest news and elite sources, there arise an inflamed public discussion on electoral violence, which is not very useful because it is grounded in a jingoistic climate, especially in the public media, and fails to highlight alternative conflict resolution news informed by peace journalism.

For example, statements like, “This is how ZANU PF intends to deal with its opponents…”could have been framed as, “This is how some ZANU PF supporters intend to deal with the party’s opponents…” This is because, it was not the party’s official policy to endorse violence and more so, focuses on the conflict arena by generalising where more revealing particular details that were pertinent. In the case of The Sunday Mail, reference to chopped, dismembered and decomposing bodies could have been framed only as, “Ignatious dead body was discovered by passerby’s…” Describing the body graphically served no other purpose than to make the death more surreal and emotional, yet in avoiding them, the facts of the matter are not lost. More so, the descriptive words choices befogged on an effectual policy intervention to combat violence because they did

125 not add anything to how electoral violence could be eradicated. Describing dead bodies is the least possible way of helping policy interventions.

Press thinking in terms of the audience market preference has, however, been one of the greatest undoing of peace journalism. The market reality is that violence, especially of a grotesque nature, sells (the ISIS beheadings, the live broadcasts of the invasion of Iraq which notched unprecedented viewership, for example). These are common news production practices that tend to define the modern neo-liberal era economic culture. These include the press’ continued adoption of sensational framing of violence, a move towards tabloidisation even by previous serious press (McGuigan 2016). In the modern neo-liberal economic culture, everything has been reduced to marketisation and monetisation. Thus, humanistic frames serve the market well because as Galtung and Ottosen (2010) note, violence and gory images tend to attract more readers/viewers. This economic reductionism has in many ways, infiltrated cultural products like news. Now most news has to be constructed with an eye on the market and potential buyers. Thus, as long as this modern neo-liberal economic order remains hegemonic, peace journalism practices will be sacrificed at the altar of the market. Thus, as McGuigan (2014) notes, neo-liberalism is as economically reductionist as it is culturally reductionist, reducing cultural products like news products to the service of the market and consumerism.

Peace journalism does not sell. Wolfsfeld (2001) notes peace journalism requires patience, a calm environment, not the razz mattaz of violence, and a minimal understanding of the needs of the other side. Yet, Wolfsfeld (2001) further observes, news media requirements call for immediacy, focus on threats and violence, strife, and discord and reinforce ethnocentrism and hostility towards adversaries. However, this preference for human interest frames in the press can be both a blessing and a curse. While it is detrimental to peace journalism, it can equally be useful to peace journalism practices in the sense that human interest frames tend to highlight the plight of the subaltern, who more often than not, receive the violence and are not always its instigators. Peace journalism advocates for “the telling of the stories of the victims of violence” (Sall 1993:23). But, basically in spite of these advantages, emphasis on human interest frames

126 that sensationalises and dramatises (electoral) violence like The Independent’s and The Sunday Mail’s approach, is detrimental to peace journalism.

5.5. The attribution of responsibility frame in election violence news

The attribution of responsibility frame was another prominent frame in both The Independent and The Sunday Mail coverage of electoral violence. This frame largely flowed from the demonisation and conflict frames. Semteko and Valkenburg (2000) note that attribution of responsibility frame presents an issue in such a way as to pin down its cause(s), consequence(s) and in some instance, solutions to either government, an institution, individual, arm of the state or a particular group. Iyengar (1987:13) clearly asserts, “news media shape public understanding of who is responsible for causing or solving social problems”. De Vreese (2005) and Neumann et al (1987) identify two questions that the attribution of responsibility frame addresses when prevalent in the news. These are: (a) Does the story suggests anyone responsible for the problem? (b) Does it say who has a solution? To be held responsible for some outcome, generally means to be seen as the cause of that outcome. Kim (2015) asserts that attribution of responsibility, while ensuring clarity on who should be held responsible, does not offer any solution to what ails society. Urbono (2012) notes that attribution of responsibility frames create false and misleading news about events. However, this may not always be the case as attribution of responsibility may be a positive step towards establishing truth, healing and reconciliation in conflict ridden societies if individuals are called upon to account. However, Urbono (2012) prefers what he calls neutral, attribution-free reporting on controversial issues like climate change (and violence) which he says are conducive for problem solving.

The political party demonised by each of the two newspapers bore the responsibility for electoral violence in the news discourses of that particular newspaper. Both The Independent and The Sunday Mail attributed responsibility for electoral violence to ZANU PF and MDC respectively. However, I noted that The Independent largely attempted to be cautious in its blame strategy, possibly to be seen as objective. It did this by sometimes attributing responsibility to the MDC. The Sunday Mail on the other hand, whenever it attributed responsibility to ZANU PF, buried the story inside the paper, in certainly

127 invisible sections. Again whenever it attributed responsibility to ZANU PF, it used phrases like, “suspected ZANU PF supporters”, “renegade elements of ZANU PF in….” In the news discourses of The Sunday Mail, ZANU PF had to remain largely free of these allegations. But The Independent, while attributing responsibility to ZANU PF, made strenuous attempts to answer the question: What ought to be done to end the violence? A question that is in sync with solution-oriented peace journalism practices, which as Galtung (1999: 26) noted, “Outlines possible solutions to the conflict”.

There was an extensive use of hyperboles in both The Independent and The Sunday Mail in order to pin down responsibility to a political player. Fairclough (2005) notes that in discourse, hyperboles or exaggerations are apocalyptic discourses that elicit a certain level of attention towards what is foregrounded. For, example, The Sunday Mail accused MDC of engaging in a “terror campaign” (The Sunday Mail, 2 June 2013). The Sunday Mail edition of 4 May 2008 further accused MDC of being, “a terrorist organisation bend on destroying the credibility of Zimbabwe’s elections” In another editorial (6 March 2005) three weeks before the March 31 2005 elections, The Sunday Mail wrote:

Headline: Beware of MDC terrorists

Story: The increasingly irrelevant MDC has launched terrorist attacks on peaceful citizens who are keen on a free and fair election…Zimbabweans can read through the MDC’s political game plan. It wants to disrupt the election… which everyone except their foreign British and American funders know they will lose…”

Equating MDC with a terrorist organisation (like ISIS, Boko Haram, Al Shabaab and Al Qaeda etc) was a vicious over-exaggeration meant to show both the brutality of the MDC and its responsibility for the violence. However, while hyperboles as discourses can reveal the degree of involvement/culpability of certain political players, they can also reveal some desperation on the part of the other player to pin responsibility to others except themselves. How, for instance, can it be believed that MDC, a civilian political party with no military wing, can organise along the lines of vicious terrorists - with suicide bombers, hijackings, kidnapping units, indoctrination departments and many such arms of terror? Such discourses elicit, solidify and sustain a wide attention on electoral violence in Zimbabwe without digging deep into the causes of electoral violence. The mention of

128

MDC as a terrorist group would, arguably not go unnoticed especially at a global stage considering how terrorism has become a global threat. But making global players believe that MDC is a terrorist group is something beyond the ability of ZANU PF. It is important to note that in the history of political violence in post-2000 Zimbabwe, ZANU PF had on numerous occasions, tried to sustain a discourse of MDC as a terrorist organisation. For example, about three months (5 November 2001) before the 2002 Presidential election, Bulawayo province war veterans’ leader and ZANU PF activist Cain Nkhala was abducted at his home in Magwegwe and his decomposing body was found 40km outside Bulawayo. Four MDC activists, Kethani Sibanda, Army Zulu, Remember Moyo and Sazini Mpofu were arrested for the murder, but their arrest was quashed by the courts as duress and unconstitutional. The accused were alleged to have strangled him using shoelaces. While the trial was on-going in the Bulawayo High Court, the public-owned The Sunday Mail ran with headlines like;

MDC terrorists kill Bulawayo war veterans’ chief (The Sunday Mail, 11 November 2001)

Beware of MDC terrorists shoelaces (The Sunday Mail, 18 November 2001)

MDC will pay brutally for the murder of such a principled cadre” ZANU PF Chair (The Sunday Mail, 25 November 2001)

MDC are terrorists and should be stopped” Mugabe (The Sunday Mail, 18 November ZANU PF).

So, ZANU PF attempted to perpetuate a discourse of MDC as a terrorist organisation, though it appears the discourse had no real sympathisers outside the party itself. It should be noted also, that towards the presidential election re-rerun of 27 June 2008, the terrorism comparison came back again with The Sunday Mail reporting thus, “It is known that the MDC is training youth in Botswana for an insurrection if they lose the election…” (The Sunday Mail, 18 May 2008). However, the paper quickly abandoned the line after diplomatic protests from both Botswana and SADC.

The Independent applied hyperboles in its discourses too. For example, in a bid to attribute the responsibility to ZANU PF, the paper wrote of ZANU PF’s “scorched earth

129 policy” during election times (14 April, 2008). It directly pointed a finger of scorn and responsibility on ZANU PF by asserting that the ruling party, “Was running a violent campaign…squeezing rural areas and chasing away opposition supporters out of their voting wards…” (14 April 2008). In other features, for example 21 May 2008, The Independent accused ZANU PF of, “unleashing an orgy of violence… a looting spree… kidnapping people…” In one report, at the height of the 2008 election violence, (1 June 2008), The Independent accused ZANU PF of being “…a criminal mafia with political power…” However, I argue that by using over-exaggerations, like comparing a political party to a criminal mafia or a terrorist organisation, the press was still playing a public sentinel role by attempting to forestall the worst – a genocide scenario – by raising alarm bells. Again, I assert that while hyperboles over exaggerate the scenario, the two newspapers were not creating this scenario. Zimbabwe’s electoral violence was not close to a genocide, but all the same, an over exaggeration is better than silence, one can say.

In attributing responsibility, The Independent saw electoral violence as a government creation orchestrated at the highest level of power, involving state institutions in the service of ZANU PF – the ZNA, ZRP, the CIO and ZANU PF wings – the war veterans and the youth league. But to The Independent, central to the organisation of electoral violence were state institutions, war veterans and Robert Mugabe’s complicity. For instance, the attribution was, most of the times, very clear:

Headline: It’s the Army versus the people

Story: As Zimbabwe head towards the much-anticipated elections… we are aware of the Army acting on ZANU PF’s orders … terrorising people … to try and subvert the will of the people...” (The Independent, 7 July 2013).

Another story that directly attributes responsibility for elections violence read;

Headline: MDC must insist on electoral reforms before the poll

Story: MDC should be unequivocal in its clamour for a peaceful election…State institutions are still being abused…as agencies of violence against the opposition. This will never guarantee free and fair elections…”

130

The attempt to pin down electoral violence to one political player perpetuated stereotypes and further engendered the conflict frame. Furthermore, the attribution of responsibility frame made it appear commonsensical to blame one party for the electoral violence. The Independent in attributing responsibility, saw a grand ZANU PF plan activated yearly to deal with the MDC’s electoral plan. This possibly explains, why in Zimbabwe, the phrase electoral violence conjures up images of ZANU PF or MDC depending on the ideological leaning of the person. Press attributions of election violence, arguably shaped readers’ perceptions, beliefs and behaviours towards the stereotyped groups. Attitudes towards the stereotyped groups were dramatically altered – negatively. A Mass Media Opinion Institute of Zimbabwe survey (2013) shows that out of a thousand citizens, only four trusts the war veterans and ZANU PF youths. The figure declined from 390 in 2000. This might be because of the violence they are always associated with which might have enhanced the negative perceptions of citizens around them. Lippmann (1922:72) notes that stereotypes are often dangerous in the sense that they are more than just idle curiosities and labels. They are a very, “inadequate ways of representing the world”. The Sunday Mail’s attempt to create counter-stereotypes around war veterans and ZANU PF youth further highlighted the ideological chasm between the two newspapers. Counter- stereotypes contradict or disconfirm the cultural stereotypes of the group (Seiter 1986 and Mortgomery 1989). Stereotypes, created as a result of the attribution of responsibility frame highlighted the layers of ideological differences between the two papers and in the process did nothing destroy the dangerous perception of hatred and suspicion existing between the two sides. The Sunday Mail further embellished the attribution of responsibility frame in order to accommodate its perceived influence of foreign forces. For example, it reported thus;

“In a resounding defeat for British and American regime change conspirators, Zimbabwe youth have taken a stance against MDC-led violent youth who are rampaging rural areas in a bid to discredit the forthcoming elections, which its leader Morgan Tsvangirai is expected to lose to President Mugabe…”

In the process of attributing responsibility for electoral violence to certain political players, predicative verb phrases were key. For instance, The Sunday Mail wrote, “MDC steps up

131 defiance”. In another article, it wrote, “MDC threatens election officials” Predicative verb phrases assist in furthering the attribution of responsibility frame by framing MDC as chaos-hungry agent of violence. In making use of the attribution of responsibility frame both papers did not make an effort to source for the voices of the other side being held responsible. The Independent, compared to The Sunday Mail, attempted to give a space for ZANU PF voices, but it was very rare and its sourcing routine still maintained a visible distance for ZANU PF officials. ZANU PF voices were reported with a distancing strategy which made their voices less visible. There was no chance to understand electoral violence outside ZANU PF and MDC, neither was there a chance to understand any other violence that happens during an election as non-electoral violence. For example, Moyo (2009) notes that there is a lot of violence in some resettlement areas triggered by boundary disputes, water sources ownership and grazing lands ownership. But when this violence happens towards, during and immediately after an election, they assume, in the media, an electoral dimension. Moyo (2009) gives an example of the disputes in Masarira resettlements area in Chipinge, east of Zimbabwe. He notes that the flaring disputes there involve the sharing of grazing lands. But during an election, the media have profiteered from them by framing them as election-violence thereby making news stories out of what is basically a non-electoral conflict. Therefore, the attribution of responsibility frames like the other frames discussed- conflict and demonisation, maintained a stereotypical news coverage which did not build bridges towards peace journalism.

5.6. The “Zanufication” of electoral violence: the myths and metaphors of evil in election news discourses of The Independent

A trend that basically emerged from the corpus of The Independent newspaper was the frequent reference toward the “Zanufication” of all electoral violence. The Independent in quantitative terms, covered more stories and carried more commentaries on electoral violence than The Sunday Mail and this made this trend very visible. By “Zanufication of evil”, I refer to an established trend supported by the four themes discussed in the preceding sections – demonisation, attribution of responsibility, conflict and human interest frames – in which The Independent connected much of the electoral violence to the ruling party ZANU PF. But as much as ZANU PF was largely responsible, the

132 opposition should not be treated as a saint. This trend was particularly visible in the candid comments section of the paper and other editorial sections. It was supported by reference to certain myths, metaphors and other linguistic strategies that served to portray this electoral violence evil as part of ZANU PF’s political DNA and grand political strategy dating back to the formation of the party in around the 1960s, and enduring incrementally into the postcolonial period. The Independent reckoned, with increasing rhetorical and argumentative ferocity, that ZANU PF’s (political violence) culture has increased in quantitative terms – becoming more frequent in every election, and in qualitative terms – with the methods of administering torture and opponents’ physical suffering becoming crueler with each passing election.

Metaphors refer to the process by which understanding processes is transferred from one realm to another (Fairclough 2005). They are an important way of grasping reality as they appeal to some kind of knowledge that a reader may already have about a situation. When metaphors are accepted in everyday discourses they can implicate how people think and understand their surrounding world and how they act, and react to it, the institutions to be built and how that particular society organises them. Lakoff (1993) notes that metaphors can have ideological importance in discourse. More so, they may become difficult to challenge once accepted as commonsensical and natural ways of understanding some phenomenon within the world (Semino 2008). Metaphors can obscure what has actually happened and can have an effect of simplifying processes dramatically. Myths refer to the various beliefs and symbols of a community (Lakoff 1991). When used in the media, they “actively produce, reproduce, and occasionally modify social structures and hierarchies by skillfully manipulating the sentiments of affinity and estrangement that draw people together and drive them apart” (Lincoln 1989:1). Myths serve as an important form of power organised around emotions, instincts and feelings (Kenzhekanova and Dalelbekkyzy 2014). But, they also can create an illusory picture of reality and can effectively influence how people understand issues, like violence in this case.

In “Zanufying” election violence, The Independent evoked metaphors of violence that it kept associating with the party and its war veterans. For a start, The Independent

133 abrogated to itself the role of a “myths buster”. For example, The Sunday Mail (25 June 2000, the day of the parliamentary election) peddled its own myth, in support of ZANU PF, reporting thus, “MDC violence will not break the resolve and the determination of Zimbabweans to be independent by shunning all imperial politics. ZANU PF will today win resoundingly like it did in 1980. Zimbabweans will send a message to the enemy that we are not going to be a colony again…” The Sunday Mail’s claim was mythical in the sense that in 1980, in the first election, ZANU PF victory was very narrow (57 seats out of a 100), to be defined in such charitable terms as “resoundingly”. The Independent responded to this in its commentary (2 July 2000); “Our colleagues at The Sunday Mail saw a resounding victory for the ruling party ZANU PF. It should have been one. War veterans were on the rampage, like they were in 1980…once again, this election was determined by the violence of the ruling party… the fact that ZANU PF won narrowly is testimony to the resilience and determination of the opposition to save the country from ZANU PF’s voodoo (sic) politics…”

The Independent made frequent reference to war veterans atavistic evil which was taken as commonsensical and a given for all Zimbabweans. This group of party supporters is portrayed as menacingly violent and this forms the basis of its conflictual relationship with the opposition parties. Current acts of electoral violence committed by the war veterans are easily linked up with liberation war violence and atrocities. For example, one editorial 6 March 2005) revisits this violence;

“…the well-documented atrocities of the liberation struggle cannot be repeated today in the name of Robert Mugabe. Zimbabwe deserves a peaceful election, not the coercion of the 1980s…”

This throwback serves to remind readers of the inherent danger that the ex-combatants pose to free and fair elections and to any other political processes in the postcolonial period. These representations, as can be noted, are rooted in historical references. Barbarous and gratuitous violence by war veterans is reported as an irreducible evil that characterise ZANU PF and war veteran electoral behaviour. The barbaric and murderous temperaments of war veterans and other ZANU PF supporters are presented as a given, thus violent atavism is a basic narrative on which news on electoral violence is based in

134

The Independent. The names “war veterans” and “ZANU PF youths” are used as metonyms of electoral violence. In linking current acts of violence to the formative years of ZANU PF and its fight against colonialism, The Independent erases the (rather legitimate) motives of historical violence (e.g. for liberation from colonialism), focusing attention exclusively to narrative trops of innate political deviance. The fact that during the colonial period, war veterans were responding to an equally debilitating form of political violence (colonial violence) is ignored in a bid to highlight the criminal recalcitrance of the ruling party and portray it as an obscurantist entity to free and fair elections.

More palatable views that can be associated with war veterans are backgrounded in The Independent. For example, that they were central in the fight against colonialism, that they were central in the agitation for land, is backgrounded. By so doing, The Independent attempts to erase the positive history and contributions of the war veterans – as fighters against inequalities. The Independent evokes its intellectual superiority and its ownership of a space to articulate its discourse consistently, a space the war veterans do not possess. Thus an entire group of war veterans is criminalised. Participation in electoral violence is reported as a “cultural identity” for war veterans as they are “normally” linked exclusively to this deviant predilection. The following excerpt from The Independent (27 March 2005) further illustrates the point I am making; “The violent ex-combatants of the liberation struggle are not entitled to Zimbabwe as they so wish…They have become a law unto themselves… their association with criminal activities has eroded the respect that they may have had… Zimbabweans are right… they should disavow… respect for such anti-social behaviour…” This kind of news frames on war veterans become for The Independent, acceptable and “normalised knowledge” appropriated as the entire meaning of what ex-combatants are and what it means to be one – grotesqueness, deviancy, barbaric, maliciousness.

For example, the incidences noted in the previous sections of the murder of Gloria Olds and the violation of her body, as well as the alleged cannibalism of Martin Stevens is in The Independent, attributed to war veterans. The cases became points of national shame regarding Zimbabwe’s elections and the conduct of political players. For The Independent, these incidences may, arguably serve not only to stereotype and vilify war

135 veterans as electoral deviants, but to show that their wickedness has transcended its own predisposed border to a point of abyss, exceptional immorality and cruelty. These representations exist and persist in The Independent. Yet, it may be important to ask if the journalists at this newspaper were creating these incidences? The answer would arguably, be no. What the newspaper might have been doing was to over-exaggerate some of the incidences to sustain its narrative of an evil ZANU PF. Thus, The Independent arguably, exaggerated, but not create, a generally accepted national monologue (of violent ex-combatants in the service of ZANU PF political elites). I argue that as a result of this sustained onslaught, and of course the ex-combatants’ own involvement in violence, even the most loyal of ZANU PF supporters may find it difficult to, with each passing election, defend the party from accusations of violence. The sweepingly damning, condemnatory and vilifying frames that dominated the news on war veterans participation raises a lot of questions around the objectivity of the journalists, and no doubt, were opposite to the demands of peace journalism.

The possible effect is that by associating much of the electoral violence and other perceived electoral malpractices on war veterans, The Independent did not only assist in further fabricating electoral deviancy, but wittingly, or otherwise, symbolically absolved other Zimbabweans (outside ZANU PF youth and war veterans) of their own responsibility for the violence. For example, the role of opposition party youth is muted in these discourses especially in the urban areas where the party is very popular. Also, the role of the Army is not clearly articulated. Though it acts on behalf of ZANU PF, it is not normatively, a wing of the party. Election violence is, therefore, circumscribed to a limited, and arguably peripheral group of society. Electoral violence is dissociated from other Zimbabweans and guilt fixated at the war veterans and ZANU PF youth. In the news reportage of The Independent, war veterans become the repositories of evil within Zimbabwe’s political space. Musolff (2012) argues that the use of metaphors adds to our understanding and meaning constitution in the context of news coverage. Their explanatory power is helping unmask different party ideologies. But they are also acting as dangerous tropes by spreading hate narratives on electoral violence and stigmatisation of actors. There was frequent reference to the body metaphor in The Independent to

136 underline the crisis that engulfed Zimbabwe’s body politic in this period. Three examples below emphasise the point;

Extract 1

As long ZANU PF remains the party dominating Zimbabwe’s politics, the war veterans will become more and more violent. As a reward of their violence, they will forever remain parasites milking the government and feasting on Zimbabwe’s citizens’ taxes through their well-rehearsed and gargantuan violence (sic)… basically….Zimbabwe needs political renewal… liberation politics is infected and cannot deliver a functional government and economy… (Emphasis mine to indicate relevant metaphorical expressions) (The Independent, Candid comment 2 July 2005)

Extract 2

Robert Mugabe, the only leader Zimbabwe has known since independence in 1980… has furiously rejected the claim that he props his government by violence. He said yesterday Western democracy is not a medicine to Zimbabwe’s political problems… (The Independent, 5 June 2000).

Extract 3

Electoral violence has spread like a cancer in Zimbabwe. No amount of shock therapy can deal with this disease …It is eating into Zimbabwe’s body politic…It has been allowed to fester and spread …yet ZANU PF is trying to normalise its spread…. This is abhorrent and objectionable… (The Independent, 4 May 2008).

The three examples cited above show how electoral violence is treated metaphorically as a human body with the capacity to health and illness. When ill, it suffers from different diseases, specific diseases like cancer. But these illnesses are result of disease-carrying and spreading agents, for example parasites that live off the state’s body (feast on citizens) until it is rotten and decomposed. In this context, metaphors provide an argumentative platform to The Independent as the paper uses metaphors, to qualify the political developments in Zimbabwe and the individuals, groups threatening free and fair

137 elections. The three excerpts cited above show how the paper avoids wandering laboriously into facts which may be tested and challenged. Rather, it applies common knowledge about the undesirability of illness and the necessity of therapy by making reference to generally known illnesses and agents of diseases.

The conceptual items used in these extracts, like cancer, parasites, rottenness in themselves carry emotional aesthetic and social values and these values do influence the way readers interpret news about electoral violence. They form a “source domain” from which analogically, its elements and relation are directly mapped on “the target domain” of the Zimbabwean body politic. In other words, they are the concrete concepts providing readers’ understanding of electoral violence – the target domain- that we try to understand through the use of the source domain. Thus, for the readers he/she can work out the meaning and implications in a straight forward way: Just as it is imperative for medical therapy to eliminate diseases’ agents, so violent elections can threaten the whole postcolonial Zimbabwe body politic and parasites ought, therefore, to be eliminated. Metaphors allowed The Independent to be broadly diagnostic of Zimbabwe’s electoral problems and this can be taken to be in line with the demands of peace journalism practices. Keeble et al (2010 note, “peace journalism highlights the political, social and economic contexts in which a conflict appears…” Through the disease metaphor, The Independent diagnoses the persistent postcolonial micro-causes of violence in Zimbabwe – the existence of unrestrained, partisan and impunity-enjoying violent groups like war veterans and youths. However, this attempt does not come out clearly. At the same time, the newspaper negated an important principle of peace journalism –“Avoids concentrating always on what divides the parties… and not to focus exclusively on what each say they want…” (Lynch and McGoldrick 2005: 28-29). Instead, ask questions which may reveal areas of common ground and avoid focusing on the suffering, fears and grievances of one party in the conflict (Lynch and McGoldrick 2005). Even when resorting to metaphors, The Independent still focused more on what divides the parties instead of focusing on solutions on how the illness could be treated.

138

The “Zanufication” of electoral violence was narrativised in the news as a given than a problematic aspect requiring further interrogation. For instance, the paper on its Candid Comment (13 January 2008) wrote thus,

Mugabe’s reliance on political violence every election is poisonous to Zimbabwe’s politics. It has become a disease that SADC cannot fold its hands and watch… We need to warn Mugabe that his penchant for violence will discredit his legacy and legitimacy…he is committing a political hara-kiri with long-term negative consequences for the economy.

Metaphorical references to “poisonous…diseases”, “the body politic” and “political hara- kiri” (suicide by disembowelment) are all grotesque and this made the newspaper over exaggerate issues around electoral violence and its consequences. In this regard, metaphors served polemical purposes. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) lauds metaphors as possessing (linguistic) creative powers that allow newer and different expressions of ideas. Steen (2008) says metaphors provide a dialogic function to discourse. They have argumentative, inferential and interactional dimensions in news discourses. For example the excerpt below explains further;

Headline: ZANU PF deadly factional politics leaves graves

Story: ZANU PF factionalism never dies. Like the flu virus, it is mutating. Now it has assumed a killer form, leaving pains in families. The clash in Hurungwe which left two ruling party supports dead and 7 injured is a symptom of violent times ahead… The opposition should brace itself for violence which will jeopardise the legitimacy of the elections….” (The Independent, 19 May 2013).

Such use of metaphors develop a very specific line of argument- one of ZANU PF’s culpability and the consequential complexities of factional politics – that it might be contagious to the opposition. The last sentence of the excerpt which reads, “The opposition should brace…” absolves the opposition of any responsibility for electoral violence. The paper suggests that if the opposition is involved in violence, it might be a result of an infection from ZANU PF cascading down to them.

139

Thus, The Independent “agentivise” ZANU PF’s electoral violence culpability across the whole political divide. The reader is made to understand ZANU PF’s electoral violence behaviour in a virological sense- as a virus that spreads across Zimbabwe’s politics. In the spirit of peace journalism, The Independence could have carried a “conflict analysis” that informs its readers about the complexities of electoral violence, how the system can be transformed, how a new route of electoral tranquility can be forged. In this instance, the press’ use of metaphors in news reporting is not building an awareness for peace and non-violence, yet peace journalism argues that news reporting is a practical job of everyday editing and reporting that saddle the reporter with a social responsibility to consider peaceful transformation of conflicts without compromising balance, fairness, accuracy in news reporting (Keeble et al 2010 and Youngblood 2016).

The arrest of a Chipangano leader, John Murukai, was also explained in metaphorical discourses. Chipangano is a notoriously violent youth group operating in the Harare suburbs of Mbare and Sunningdale. One of the leaders was arrested for election violence, and for a group that claims to be close to power, this was big local news. The Independent reported thus,

A mountain has been climbed… but there are still higher peaks to go… but this is the right signal if Zimbabwe is to restore credibility in its elections… ZANU PF enforcers must be arrested…

Thus arresting electoral violence is metaphorically constructed in terms of a difficulty- mountain climbing, but with signs of ultimate successful ascent. Metaphorical references to “higher peaks to go” presence electoral violence still as an existential threat- with further chain of mountains to be climbed. This metaphor further suggests that the arrest of this violent militia member is an achievement in a long process, not a final and desired one. Metaphors contribute to discourse narratives by making communication effective through making discourses vivid, powerful and effective. Linguistic myths narratives were important to further and effectively bring to fore ZANU PF supporters wickedness as a party unable to win elections without resorting to violence. Lakoff (1991) says linguistic myths, when used in war and violence narratives can spur killings. Linguistic metaphors

140 can highlight deep-seated contrasts between or among warring parties but can help readers in understanding abstract and complex conflicts, but they can be pernicious when they hide reality in a harmful way.

Thus, the attribution of electoral violence is prominently portrayed by The Independent in a phenomenon I have termed “the Zanufication of violence”. This “Zanufication of violence” might have been based on well-founded intentions on the part of The Independent. The intention might have been to reveal the degree of damage ZANU PF- instigated violence was wrecking and the degree of impunity its supporters were enjoying, allowing them to reign freely. But, this “Zanufication of violence” helped underpin a toxic set of beliefs about electoral violence. Most toxic of them all being the belief that all electoral violence can be traced to ZANU PF. The ZANU PF name in some instances, was just a brand to get away with violence by some groups. Bhila (2008) notes that there were many groups operating in Zimbabwe collecting ‘security rents” and brutalising citizens using the name of the party to enjoy impunity. Some, for example those operating in the tea estates of Triangle, South-west of Zimbabwe, are not even made up of registered voters nor known party members. This picture of the conflation between criminal and electoral violence was lost to the press. This belief is toxic in that it clouds any accurate understanding of the complexity of electoral violence in the post-2000 period, which could be more useful to peace journalism. This complexity would include the role of all political parties in instigating and perpetrating violence was never interrogated. The fact that there fewer incidences of such does not mean it was not there, and the press had a responsibility to dissect it for a fuller picture.

5.7. Press contestations on the prevalence of election violence

A contested dimension was the question of how much electoral violence was Zimbabwe experiencing in every election. Both newspapers possibly, because of their ideological leanings, saw electoral violence in different quantitative dimensions. The Sunday Mail, downplayed the prevalence of electoral violence in every of the six elections where data was sampled. For example, The Sunday Mail (11 June 2000) reported, “Environment peaceful for free and fair elections”. The same paper (2 May 2008) reported;

141

Headline: Few cases of electoral violence reported.

Story; Only 5 cases of politically motivated violence countrywide have been reported countrywide…as the country gears for the June 27 election…” (Emphasis mine).

By using words like “only”, the paper was hinting at the perception that there might have been an anticipation of rising violence by some sections of society, which, in its own view, did not materialise. By framing the story as, “only 5 cases” – there is an attempt to sanitise the election environment, as if the 5 cases reported do not matter at all, or have no bearing to the outcome of the election and the ability of those affected to take part in it. In order to sustain its rationalisation discourse, The Sunday Mail relied on police sources. On 2 May 2008, the paper cited the National police spokesperson saying, “We commend peace-loving Zimbabweans for desisting from political violence as we head for this crucial election…” (Superintendent Themba Nyathi in The Sunday Mail 2 May 2008). This attempt to sanitise the electoral environment despite rising violence might be in sync with its pro-ZANU PF stance.

On the other hand The Independent portrayed a rapidly deteriorating political environment. In the same week (2 May 2008) that The Sunday Mail was reporting of “only 5 cases of politically motivated violence…” The Independent was reporting, “It’s dejavu again”. In this editorial, the editor wrote, “ZANU PF youth and war veterans are on the rampage once again… the prospect of a peaceful election have been destroyed…” While the public-owned The Sunday Mail provided an overly optimistic narrative, The Independent shed a pessimistic one. For The Sunday Mail, an optimistic picture of the election environment was useful to ensure that the legitimacy of the election was sustained in local and international political circles. Zimbabwe criminalises foreign journalists operating in the country without registration and thus, foreign media houses rely on either their correspondences or local mainstream media for stories. Of course sometimes they also rely on moonlighting journalists. The Sunday Mail might have been overly aware that it still holds sway in this regard as a trusted mainstream newspaper.

Their sourcing routines directly influenced their quantitative estimations of violence in the elections. The Sunday Mail relied on official government sources, politicians from the

142 ruling party ZANU PF and the police for its news. These sources offered a charitably optimistic vision of the election, referring to it as violent- free election despite mounting local, regional and international outcry to the contrary. The police, for example, offered dutiful pontifications of the political environment as safe and conducive for elections. Thus, together with ruling party elites, the police assumed the role of primary definers of reality in the construction of public discourses on election violence. That the police and ZANU PF politicians on whom The Sunday Mail was, much of the time, beholden for news on election violence, had a lot to say about the subject, is in itself a sad indictment of independent journalism in Zimbabwe. It means the paper allowed its monotonous sources to exert an influence in the construction of news on election violence. There were no attempts by journalists at The Sunday Mail to challenge official ruling party and government version of election violence and question the “saintly discourses” that they presented themselves in. It was evident that the ruling party politicians attempted to manage the news by casting themselves in good light. It means journalists at the paper abdicated their power to assert their versions of reality on public discourses around the subject of election violence. Thus, what the public consumed as news about election violence was actually a negotiated middle-of the-course version featuring elite politicians and police sources on the one hand, and the editorial process at The Sunday Mail on the other. The victims had no space in these news discourses. Yet, to understand violence, the victims’ versions should be captured in press spaces too. There is need, therefore, for the press to focus on victims’ suffering, expose elite politicians’ untruths, source news from vulnerable groups in conflicts like the elderly, women and children so that their experiences are known and told.

There is an interesting case that might warrant highlighting at this instance. In January 2002, the then president of South Africa Thabo Mbeki, dispatched two constitutional court judges- Sisi Kampepe and Dikgang Moseneke with two specific orders: to investigate the rampant claims of violence ahead of the March 10 and 11 presidential election and to assess if the environment was conducive for a free and fair election. The two judges arrived in Zimbabwe on Thursday 7 February, almost about a month before the election. On the 10th of February, both The Sunday Mail and The Independent reported the matter. What is interesting is how both papers foregrounded and backgrounded particular issues

143 of the mission in their news frames. That Kampepe and Moseneke were specifically here to investigate rampant violence was now a matter of public knowledge since President Mbeki had made that public. There was already a South Africa Observer Mission on the ground in Zimbabwe). The Independent reported thus:

South Africa has dispatched two highly respected judges to Zimbabwe to investigate cases of political violence ahead of the election… According to sources, President Mbeki has expressed his concern at rising levels of political violence… he has talked to President Mugabe about his concerns insinuating to him that the region will find it difficult to endorse a violent election outcome…The arrival of Justices Sisi Kampepe and Dikgang Moseneke comes at a time when about 100 opposition supporters have been killed and many forced to flee their homes … as ZANU PF youth and war veterans maraud rural Zimbabwe sniffing out opposition supporters….

The Sunday Mail, reported the same issue, but in a very different way. It said:

The arrival of Sisi Kampepe and Dikgang Moseneke is part of ZANU PF and ANC political collaboration that dates back to the era of apartheid…Government sources who spoke to The Sunday Mail said that the two will take the opportunity to learn about Zimbabwe’s conduct of elections….

The fact that the justices were neither election administrators nor ANC members was lost to The Sunday Mail, possibly deliberately. The Independent foregrounded the mission as a specific investigation into election violence. The Sunday Mail backgrounded the violence, never saying anything about it nor the specific role of the two judges. This kind of framing played well in The Sunday Mail strategy of backgrounding the election violence and sanitising the political context as conducive for an election. While for The Independent, this was yet another sad indictment of the country’s electoral conduct especially with regards to electoral violence. Thus, The Independent in its frame, was able to highlight the magnitude of the crisis and the regional that it was taking. Sources hence, exerted some great deal of influence on how each of the two newspapers quantified the prevalence of violence. The Sunday Mail generally depended on elite sources – senior government officials, high ranking officials from election management

144 bodies like ZEC, election candidates from the ruling ZANU PF party and senior party officials from ZANU PF. On the other hand, The Independent attempted to widen its news sourcing routines on electoral violence. The paper included voices from the opposition leaders (which are equally elite), the victims voices were sometimes included, CSOs, NGOs, churches, eye witnesses election observer groups. How news is sourced exerts a considerable influence on the process of framing (Shoemaker and Reese 1996; Manning 2000; Berkowitz 2009 and Shehata 2010). But Cook (2005) and Reich (2009) while agreeing with this assertion, argue that finally, the journalists more than the sources, exert the greatest influence on the news frames. Dimitrova and Stromback (2012) say news sources influence media frames which may have significant effects on audience frames. In the case of The Sunday Mail, sources seem to have exerted a great deal of influence on the paper’s frames on electoral violence, or perhaps, elite frame preferences coincided with the journalists’ own needs? This cannot be answered with certainty.

But it was clear from the pro-ZANU PF sources The Sunday Mail preferred that the goal of ZANU PF as a political actor with regards to electoral violence news seems to have been to convince the press to include them in the news, firstly, then make the newspaper accept its frame version of election violence. Through this method, the ruling party used The Sunday Mail to disseminate its preferred reading of violence which was generally multi-pronged and ambivalent depending on what was at stake in particular election. For instance, during the 2005 elections, as well as the first round of voting in 2008, elite voices condemned, at least in The Sunday Mail, election violence. The strategy seems to have been to report election violence as a rare occurrence with no bearing on the outcome of the impending vote. The party elites made ample use of The Sunday Mail space accorded to them to discredit the opposition as the violent party, build public support for itself by painting itself as the victim of Western-sponsored violence. But this strategy was abandoned during the 2008 presidential rerun election. Discourses endorsed violence openly and The Sunday Mail’s sources became more bellicose. The fact that the MDC had won the election may possibly account for this bellicosity as ZANU PF threw caution to the wind in a bid to retain the presidency having lost councils and House of Assembly majority. Official ruling party sources in The Sunday Mail made all the violence an MDC issue. On the other hand, The Independent’s diverse sourcing gave it a relatively

145 authoritative account of election violence, which was in agreement with peace journalism demands.

Thus, the coverage of election violence news became a battleground for power, control and influence, with both political parties and the two newspapers constructing versions of reality that advanced their own political agendas and ideological standpoints. It was a battle for the control of the frame on electoral violence. Hence, when covering electoral violence, both newspapers became more of campaign posters than serious news spaces. It became dangerously inadequate, hence, to rely on both The Sunday Mail and The Independent if one was to understand election violence in Zimbabwe in this period. How they reported it was counter to any effort to the exploration of peace initiatives. Their polarised coverage of electoral violence made it difficult for them to be trusted platforms where a sustainable, robust discussion on the matter could be launched.

5.8. The deterioration of news discourses on electoral violence.

I note that the coverage of electoral violence in the two newspapers did not improve over time. By improvement I mean news frames on electoral violence did not graduate beyond the destructive posture of conflict, causation, demonisation and attribution of responsibility that were evident in news stories. While there were rare moments of peace journalism practices (which will be discussed later) these instances seemed to be by default, and not by design. At this juncture, it is important to discuss this progressive deterioration of news frames towards destructive frames. Liechtenstein et al (2018) define destructive frames as the anti-thesis of peace journalism (constructive frames). Wolfsfeld (1997) agrees, saying destructive frames, spur conflict and further violence, closing off peace journalism initiatives.

The deployment of conflict, demonisation and the human interest frame by both The Independent and The Sunday Mail enabled the two newspapers to construct a common enemy-in the form of ZANU PF and MDC respectively. This common enemy became, for both newspapers, an integral part of the coverage (of electoral violence news). News stories on each of the main political parties were essentially constructed around the level of danger to elections each newspaper claimed this common enemy posed. For example, The Sunday Mail portrayed the MDC as a threat to Zimbabwe’s election, a discourse

146 frame manipulated by the ruling Zanu PF as part of its attempt for political control and for the reinforcement of its own anti-Western ideology and for whipping up the press for regional support

This was rather a reductionist approach to the coverage of electoral violence. And such a reductionist approach detrimentally treated electoral violence as a series of events, unrelated to the socio-economic context of their origin. Chuma (2007) aptly notes that the public media in Zimbabwe succumbed to “patriotic journalism” – defined in narrow conceptualisations of patriotism as support for ZANU PF. The Sunday Mail adopted a jingoistic approach to news coverage that saw it supporting, without question, ZANU PF’s version of electoral violence. This approach to news coverage of election violence confirms Herman and Chomsky’ (1998) observation that the mass media serve to mobilise support for the dominant interests of the state and private interests and that their choices, emphasis and omissions can best be understood by analysing them in such terms. Linguistic discourses pertaining to news on election violence up to 2013 became more emotive with each successive election. News frames became more confrontational, derogatory, insulting and accusatory.

This trend of degeneration of news discourses might have been a result, not only of deliberate editorial choices in the newsroom, but also the deterioration of the political environment which was becoming more violent than ever. The press’s own definitions of every election as “high stakes”, “do-or-die” might also account for the persistence of destructive discourses in the news. At one notable instance, The Sunday Mail (5 June 2000) reported, “This election sees the revolutionary party fighting to fend off concerted Western countries’ bare-knuckled challenge to Zimbabwe’s sovereignty through its surrogate party, the MDC” Such rhetoric in news discourses are only helpful in nurturing an enduring sense of victimhood, which in turn, breed virulent aggression in the name of “defending sovereignty”. The Sunday Mail (25 May 2008) carried two more headlines that further added to this deteriorating nature of election discourses. For instance, “Chipanga is right, it’s time to defend the revolution by force” In another editorial (27 April 2008) the paper reported:

147

“The ZANU PF youth should make their numerical advantage count… and deal with the Western-sponsored MDC renegades…” This illustrates how the two newspapers became active participants in the violence, not conduits facilitating a dialogic approach to electoral violence. The headlines cited above show how the press was legitimising violence. The Independent (25 May 2008) declared that:

It is time for the international community to intervene on behalf of the battered Zimbabweans… there is no doubt that Robert Mugabe is a sore loser, a constitutional delinquent punishing citizens for voting against him. The army has become a threat instead of a protector of public security… the international community should use the Responsibility to Protect Clause (R2P) of the UN Charter to reign in on Robert Mugabe…

This was an open call for military intervention which contradicts peace journalism tenets. The R2P is global political commitment obligating the international community under the auspices of the UN and other individual states to protect, militarily, vulnerable populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Thus, any call for R2P to be evoked is an open call for military intervention. The Independent would, alternatively have called for a UN election oversight, more international pressure on the regime and more diplomatic intervention by regional players like SADC and AU. An open call for R2P, was irresponsible reporting. Despite its extravagance, Zimbabwe’s electoral violence had not reached levels it could be classified as a war crime, genocide or ethnic cleansing.

Ironically, the MDC had called for the UN to revoke R2P in Zimbabwe. The two newspapers were comfortable being “embedded” in politicians’ rhetorical mudslinging and were happy to be used as instruments for such. Thus, in the process, usurped their independence, and in many respects their objectivity. In the case of The Sunday Mail, I hazards to argue that the paper became more like the youth militia themselves, the war veterans, the army the police and the CIO frequently blamed for violence.The paper became an instrument of ZANU PF violent rhetoric. To a lesser extent, this can be said of The Independent as it was not entirely captured in the service of a single political party.

148

Otherwise how else can news headlines in The Sunday Mail like the following ones be explained?

 If Tsvangirai refuses to listen, he will be bashed” (5 March 2005).

Story: Yesterday President Mugabe warned unruly Zimbabweans that the police are ready to deal with them if they disturb the hard won peace and tranquillity of this country… Speaking at a rally in Chikomba, President Mugabe said the Western-sponsored opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was bashed because he refused to make way for the police who were performing their constitutional duties… “Yes, you will be bashed if you don’t obey police orders… and you can go hang…” (sic)… This shows that the paper became an official instrument of election violence by carrying violent rhetoric and fury of the ruling party. It shared ZANU PF’s zealousness in disparaging the MDC and gleefully reported ZANU PF’s rhetorical ruthlessness. It helped to forge a pedagogy of hate and provided a platform for its propagation by being an expressive site for this hatred, vicious and poisonous tirades. By assisting in the spread of hatred, the paper was acting against the tenets of peace journalism.

How do we account for the deterioration in news rhetoric that has been noted? It is true, the press made a deliberate and reckless effort to support the party of their choice. This is especially true of The Sunday Mail. But, the corpus examined also pointed at the broader framing techniques adopted by the press which might have led to the escalation of confrontational and hate rhetoric.

The corpus sampled showed that in framing news, these two newspaper adopted a broadly episodic news framing technique rather than a thematic framing approach. Secondly, their desire to side with one party against the other upped the rhetorical stake and by default, encouraged confrontational frames. They both positioned themselves around the major contestants of the election. Episodic frames, according to Iyengar (1991) depicts concrete events and provide a distorted portrayal of recurring issues as unrelated events. They generally hold individuals to be responsible for certain phenomenon like electoral violence (Iyengar 1991:19). “Episodic frames simplify complex

149 issues to the level of anecdotal evidence… and this encourages reasoning by resemblance – people settle upon certain causes and treatments that “fit” the observed problem”. (Lichtenstein et al (2018) assert that episodic frames generally lead to the destructive construction of news stories relating to violence. By destructive frames, Lichtenstein et al (2018) mean the type of frames that blame one party for the violence, apply no treatment of the violence or if they do, they apply destructive ones. Lichtenstein (2018) further assert that episodic framing leads most of the times to destructive news rhetoric, which feeds into what they refer to as “confrontational journalism” – a kind of journalism that blames a side(s) for the conflict and downplays peace initiatives (Lichtenstein 2018: 11). .

The preference for episodic frames possibly explain press obsession with gruesome events and news evaluations that tended to demonise other players. The public could not understand clearly from the press, any reasoned understanding of what exactly was causing elections to be violent in every season. A predominantly “voyeuristic” coverage of election violence mixed with sensationalist discourses and outright bias could not answer the important questions of what was causing election violence. There were important questions that episodic framing of news could not answer. For example, what exactly were the youth benefitting from violence? Were they being abused by unscrupulous politicians? These questions, put into context, could have answered the questions of why election violence is prevalent. Thus, both newspapers failed, in varying degrees, to articulate electoral violence clearly for their audiences. The scale and character of electoral violence in Zimbabwe is hardly understood through press discourses, making Zimbabwe newspapers unhelpful in the quest for solutions. If the press had robustly engaged with these issues understanding electoral violence would have gone beyond the localised, episodic- specific approaches to a broader, holistic perspective, which could have been in line with peace journalism.

A thematic framing of news could have been more useful in the pursuit of peace journalism. Iyengar (1991:4) defines thematic frames as, “consisting of information bearing on the general trends than specific events”. For example, a more robust debate could have ensued on why is it that the same players –especially ZANU PF youth, ex-

150 combatants, the secret service, the police and the army are implicated in violence in every election since 2000? Why is it that Zimbabwe has more documented cases of electoral violence, fewer prosecutions and even fewer convictions? Where is Zimbabwe, as a society failing to such an extent that every election now involve physical and mental torture for other players? These are thematic issues that the press could have engaged with beyond reporting who got beaten and where. Thematic framing is generally impersonal and abstract. Lichtenstein et al (2018) say that a thematic framing of news presents collective or general evidence, allow the press to consider general societal factors responsible for the violence. They further argue that thematic framing of news leads to constructive frames, which they say address situational causal interpretations and constructive problem treatments. Thematic framing of news which leads to constructive peace journalism is supported by Peleg (2006: 121) who asserts, “In times of crisis, the media should act as a neutral third power, communicating between (and among) conflicting parties and bystanders, stimulating mutual motivation and conflict resolution”. McGoldrick (2005) and Lynch (2013) agree, stating that peace journalism advocates that the media should direct attention to civil society and peace initiatives instead of strategic political communication, provide context instead of covering violence as spectacle, and discuss methods of crisis resolution instead of asking for winners and losers. Workneh (2011) says thematic framing is more suitable for peace journalism than episodic framing because it contains all of the four elements of peace journalism news frames: problem definition – what is causing election violence, causal interpretation- can we tie down certain players as perpetrators with certainty?, moral evaluation- what are the ethical issues around election violence and treatment recommendation- what can be the solution.

A thematic framing of election violence news would have allowed both papers to scan through the myriad range of causes and make proper attribution of causality and solutions. For example, thematic framing could have answered the questions, which causes of electoral violence can be attributed to government? To political parties? To individuals and groups? To victims themselves? Their (the newspapers’) biased reporting, backed by episodic framing of news, robbed them of a moral standpoint and authoritative position to sustain an intelligent and informative debate on electoral violence and ask key

151 questions. Little attempt was made to contextualise the episodes and connect incidences of electoral violence that the two papers ostensibly separated in time and space. Thus, in covering electoral violence journalists at both papers operated in the service of hegemonic power and not society in general. This, however is not surprising because it is not a trend peculiar to The Sunday Mail and The Independent. It is rather a global trend. Abdullar (2018) says the press are generally capitalist enterprises reporting to political power. In relation to peace journalism, empirical studies show that only a small share of media coverage fulfils peace journalism frame criteria (Rose and Tehranian 2009; Workneh 2011; Fahmy and Eakin 2014 and Earsy 2016). Generally, save for a few instances in The Independent, the two newspapers do not fall within this category of newspapers that actively promoted peace journalism.

5.9. Some attempts at peace journalism: The case of The Independent

To a larger extent, news coverage in the two newspapers did not serve the interests of peace journalism. It was not every time, however, that news on electoral violence relied on these frames. On rare occasions they adopted peace journalism frames. The Independent more than The Sunday Mail, adopted peace journalism frames. Some of the peace journalism tenets adopted, especially by The Independent include: multiple sourcing to include voices of the victims of electoral violence, exploring the complex causes of election violence, proposing peaceful solutions and ways of ending the conflict.

The Independent, on some occasions, attempted to give an account of electoral violence by prodding the relationship binding violence perpetrators, state institutions and political elites in order to reveal the dynamics of electoral violence. It sought to understand the relationship existing between and among violent groups, propose solutions and opportunities for peace. This means reporting beyond the “bad behaviour narrative” of political players that have largely been perpetuated in the frames discussed earlier. As I asserted, these narratives had largely dichotomised political violence players into two - MDC-ZANU PF groups. They have also polarised the political sphere and ignored any other players and factors outside the two. Peace journalism-oriented stories in The Independent appeared in commentary articles than hard news stories.

152

In a Candid Comment Section entitled; Zimbabwe should ensure a credible election (5 May 2013) The Independent diagnosed the need to:

…deal with violent militia groups…reform corrupt law and order structures that allow violence under their watch… and disqualify candidates who preach violence…

Furthermore, The Independent made proposals that were basically solution-oriented in some of its comments and editorials. McGoldrick and Lynch (2000:26) describe another objective of peace journalism as, “to seek a broader, fairer and more accurate way of framing stories, drawing on the insights of conflict analysis and transformation”. Lee, Maslog and Kim (2006) further add that peace journalism focuses on the broad structure of society as it searches for causes to a conflict. On top of widening its news souring routines, The Independent made reference to the need for collaborative action to end election violence, establishment of fact-finding missions to diagnose the causes of violence. In one commentary, The Independent proposed “Joint political rallies involving the MDC candidates and ZANU PF candidates” (24 April 2005). In other stories the paper attempted to examine the goals of each of the two parties in the election. The editorial, for example, of The Independent on 6 March 2005 is a good case of standard peace journalism practice:

The MDC has a point on the need to liberalise the economy, restore property rights and attract investors. ZANU PF should not construe this to mean a return to colonialism… If the two parties fail to find each other along… then Zimbabwe is doomed… Resorting to violence is a lie… and a tragic way of trying to win a contest….

The excerpt shows a solution-based approach to news reporting on electoral violence. It is an attempt to appeal to the major tenets of peace journalism – reconciliation and reconstruction. Instead of emphasising what separates the two parties, it emphasises why they need each other.

The Independent, whether it was through a conscious application of peace journalism, or an accidental coincidence, tried in those rare moments, to show in its news reports that

153 positive political, non-violent behaviour could be achieved by a change in the behaviour of political players. It also showed in those news stories that there are alternatives (and peaceful ones for that matter), to violence - dialogue and cooperation can be fruitful to a violent-free election and that empathy is key to human relations and political conduct. In one editorial opinion it asked, “How does the killers of Tichaona Chiminya and Talent Mabika sleep at night? And proceeded, “It’s a dreadful tale that will be told for generations. As long as those who commit violence continue to walk free, Zimbabwe cannot boast of observing the rule of law…” (26 January 2005). There was, true to peace journalism, emphasis on the invisible effects of (election) violence like trauma. In the same article cited above, The Independent reported:

One of the survivors of this act of brutality, Martin Hapanyengwi spoke to The Independent and admitted, ‘It is not easy to forget what happened on 14 April. We are still frightened… the car shell you see here serves as a reminder of this dark history… a history that has tainted our elections… even children cannot play in that burnt shell because it is a reminder that we will always talk about, of what went wrong with Zimbabwe…

In the stories that appear more peace journalism-oriented, The Independent practiced multi-sourcing of news stories in order to widen the number of voices included in the construction of election violence news. Inclusion of multiple voices may not, however take a story significantly beyond the reporting of facts. There was still a bias however towards official sources. It is a common practice in journalism that the work of journalists follow predictable rituals and the reliance on elite sources is one such an entrenched ritual. The Independent like most mainstream media outlets, relied on official sources too which it considered to be authoritative, credible, knowledgeable and powerful, especially those from election observers, influential CSOs and NGOs as well as the influential individuals in the opposition camps. And, on other occasions it consulted eyewitnesses and victims of the violence. This sourcing strategy made it practice more peace journalism than The Sunday Mail which relied much of the time on government and ruling party sources.

Thus, in the few moments that The Independent practised peace journalism, it was direct and more assertive in its denunciation of election violence. It also avoided emotive

154 language in its news stories and simultaneously, adopted a non-partisan stance. I also noted that in its news articles that suited peace journalism, The Independent questioned the role of violent criminal gangs hiding by the name of politics, contribution of historical factors like economic inequalities as well as the role of the wider Zimbabwean society in ending electoral violence.

But broadly, as proved by the data analysed here, the two newspapers basically divided an already polarised and angry country. Zimbabwe’s elite politicians routinely refer to each other as fools, traitors and rogues. The press, through its discourses and frames, amplifies this toxic politics. Toxic politics, has often-times, been one of Zimbabwe’s weaknesses contributing to election violence. It prevents real action from being taken on this central issue of violence infecting the polity. I argue that this kind of toxic politics that the press assists in amplifying, has eroded Zimbabweans’ faith in their governments and related institutions and it has extinguished any flickering fires on which democracy in the country could be light. Peace journalism could, possibly be a starting point in the arduous task of normalising election practices. Peace journalism would allow, as a starting point, for the elimination of violent rhetoric. I need to point out however, that the toxic politics in post- 2000 Zimbabwe is traceable to the colonial period (Mugari 2015).Only that post – 2000 elite politicians have embraced this discoursal abasement with reckless abandon, enthusiastically urged on by a pliant and collusive press, carrying the rhetorical decline to new depths of their own devising. When political discourse becomes poisonous and willfully divisive, characterised by explosive rhetoric of political party positions framed in the press as hopelessly irreconcilable, reasoned debates logically lose power to win arguments. If this happens, I contend that democracy will not function.

As long as the press continues to abate a rhetoric in which political party elites view each other as bad people, it means compromise, which is the foundation of any healthy politicking and democracy, becomes very hard to win within political parties and even impossible between them. Thus, Zimbabwe’s politics wallow in division aided by the press’ amplification of divisive politics that make compromise hopelessly impossible. By falling into this trap of partisan politicking and skepticism, the press are, therefore, helping to inflect poison in everyday political transactions. An Afrobarometer survey (2016) notes

155 that about 46% of Zimbabweans have no faith in their government. They view the presidency as inherently dishonest, supported by an obsequious legislature and empowered by a partisan and sycophantic judiciary, and in this case, being helped by a fawning press that fails to flesh and articulate the deep-seated cause of election violence and its impact in the areas affected. By failing to articulate these issues and holding institutions to account, the press is for all practical purposes turbo-charging the divisive actions of all these institutions.

5.10. Conclusion

This chapter discussed the frames that emanated from the textual corpus gathered from The Independent and The Sunday Mail. The major frames examined in this chapter are the conflict, demonisation, attribution of responsibility and the Zanufication of violence frames. Different discourse strategies were employed ranging from the use of metaphors, metonyms, naming as a strategy of discourse and other referential strategies. The frames that emerged from this corpus call for a new thinking around the role of the mainstream press during moments of electoral violence. The political conditions under which news on electoral violence is produced and ideological predilections of the journalists themselves ought to be re-assessed to understand their role in the production of news discourses on electoral violence.

Based on the corpus analysed in this chapter, the press coverage of electoral violence constructed regimes of truth greatly influenced by the prevailing socio-economic and political conditions. This question, however, would require a sufficient investigation. Political cleavages reflected in the demonisation, attribution of responsibility and conflict frames, for example, bring into question the applicability of Western normative theories of the media during conflicts. For instance, can normative theories like the liberal democratic theory, with its presumption that the media furnish citizens with information so that they make informed choices and decisions continue to hold sway? That during a conflict, the press report the “truth” is no longer a given. What the evidence has shown is that the press produces, as news, various versions of reality and thus, there is need for a systematic and continuous rethinking of the role of the press in covering electoral violence.

156

Mainstream press coverage of electoral violence reflected the dominant discourses as defined by elites from both the ruling party and the opposition. In the process, both papers failed to set an agenda for electoral violence debate, and more importantly, set an agenda for peace journalism that could have helped in conflict resolution. The debate sustained by the two newspaper did not go beyond finger-pointing accusations, mud-slinging affairs that remained rather a “village level” discussion for a sophisticated issue like violence. Thus, the two newspaper failed as information disseminators to shape a meaningful public platform for engagement, establish and map the contours of public debate on the subject. Election violence is complex issue - roles conflate and interchange and consequences linger on for a long time. Meaningful engagement would have meant reflecting these complexities in news discourses. Evidence shows they were captured into the service of political elites.

Through interviews with the journalists who covered election violence news for these two newspapers during the period under study, the next chapter will attempt to answer the overarching questions arising out of the textual data – why did peace journalism fail? Why are news frames around election violence the way they are in these two newspapers?

157

CHAPTER 6

Obstacles to peace journalism practices in the coverage of electoral violence: journalists’ perspectives

“Journalism can never be silent: That is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak... immediately and truthfully, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air” — Henry Anatole Grunwald. (2014:7).

“ If news reporting under normal circumstances is tough job, it grows much more so in the case of the communities plagued by armed conflicts, where the truth is largely overshadowed by a torrent of rumours, with both journalism and journalists experiencing sharp divisions, hardship and serious daily violations” Al-Zikri (2017:6).

6.1. Introduction

The little attempt to practice peace journalism noted in the previous chapter provides some evidence that it can be implemented in Zimbabwe. But, under what conditions can it be practised, and what has hindered it hitherto? The two quotes from Grunwald (2014) and Al-Zikri (2016) respectively, are a vivid illustration of the dilemmas of practising peace journalism in conflict-ridden environments. As Grunwald asserts above, journalists ought to speak when societies are confronted by violence. Yet, as Al-Zikri (2016) has noted, there is always a barrage of challenges that either make it difficult or impossible for journalists to speak.

In this chapter, I seek to answer the question why news frames relating to election violence were confrontational, polarising, conflict -engendering and in some instance bordered on hate speech? In other words, why did peace journalism practices fail in this period? What were the obstacles to its practice? Through interviews with the journalists who covered election violence for these two newspapers between 2000 and 2013, I also seek to understand whether journalists made attempts to circumvent these obstacles and practice peace journalism. Considering that election violence is not, in the first place, caused by the press, I seek to understand what journalists think about other players and their commitment to peaceful elections. I also discuss what journalists think of other political players, since the burden of creating peace cannot be journalists’ responsibility

158 alone. Furthermore, in this chapter, I propose a news gathering and reporting model that possibly, can realign Zimbabwe’s news gathering practices, journalism education and newsroom structures to possibly assist with more robust peace journalism during moments of electoral violence like those prevalent since post-2000.

I note that journalists’ accounts for the failure of peace journalism in this period, can be divided into two broad categories of reasons – the micro-levels and the macro levels. At the micro-level, respondents note one major obstacle to the practice of peace journalism:

 Journalists’ own ideological predilections as hindrance to the practice of peace journalism. At the macro-level, journalists raised three factors as obstacles to the practice of peace journalism:

 Newsroom structures and news gathering routines  The influence of politics, advertising and ownership – the “corporate and political beasts”  Journalism education- ignorance of peace journalism in the newsroom. 6.2. The meso-level obstacles to the practice of peace journalism

At the meso-level, focus is on the experiences of journalists as a collective profession in their day to day duties, and their interaction with other factors and structures as institutions of news production. Frank, Camp and Boutcher (2010) say studies at the macro level look at interactions at the broadest level such as between newsroom institutions and other state or independent institutions, and an analysis of such interaction. Both micro-level and meso-level factors impeding the practice of peace journalism do not exist in isolation, they do feed into each other and should therefore, be read holistically. Thus, for a sufficient understanding of why news texts are belligerent, boorish, with a visceral dislike of other political players climaxing in vituperative hate speech and inflammatory rhetoric, there is need to understand micro and macro factors as integrated proximal determinants.

6.3. The disruptive and toxic influence of press ownership and market forces to the practice of peace journalism

159

Journalists raised the issue of political economy as a hindrance to the practice of peace journalism. Political economy has been theorised from multiple theoretical standpoints. But broadly, political economy of the media stands at the intersection of ownership, advertisers and media content production (McChesney 1989 and Mosco 1991). A central concern of political economy of the media is the influence of political and economic forces in news production (Mosco 2008). Political economy scholars argue that how the media are organised and funded provide lens through which we should understand their role in society and how they frame the news (Golding and Murdoch 1997). Furthermore, media proprietors, funders, advertisers, political elites and other market forces wield operational and allocative powers that, ultimately, determine news content through influencing editorial decisions (Mullen 2010).

Interviewees asserted the obscurantist influence of political economy to peace journalism practices. However, there was a difference in the way respondents asserted this point. Journalists from the public-owned The Sunday Mail admitted to the negative influence of the ruling party, which through the ministry of Information, controls the paper. The Independent said owners rarely made direct intervention in terms of influencing content, but corporates advertisers were a nagging concern in trying to influence content. An editor at The Sunday Mail said,

The problem is our owners – to be specific the government. During election times, they literally have control over much of what we produce as election coverage news. Senior party politicians from ZANU PF always try to manipulate the news during elections. They do that for two reasons. First, they want positive coverage in their individual constituencies. Secondly, they do not want to be implicated in election violence even if their hired youths are involved… (Interviewee 1; 10 January 2018).

Another junior political reporter from the same paper noted,

We have become dependent on the ruling party politicians who have their personal interests other than objective coverage of elections. Another problem here is that these politicians have interests elsewhere. They are politicians, businessmen. Their interests are interlinked everywhere I can say. They have interests in most

160

economic spheres that are not media. So here I realised on top of serving their political careers, we have to serve their business interests too… (Interviewee 2: 11 January 2018, Harare).

As a result of their vested interests in other spheres, their influence over the media could not be underestimated. One journalist pointed out that on top of being politicians of the ruling party, they were also amongst top advertisers. He gave a specific example of a former top ruling party official from Mashonaland East whose energy and transport business were a lifeline of the newspaper. Thus, such elites assume double importance to the newspaper. Their influence becomes both political and economic. If they felt their political muscle was not swaying hard enough, they would exert the economic muscle. This became even more dangerous, according to one senior editor at The Sunday Mail because big companies and parastatals were faltering in the harsh economic environment. Hence, their advertising in the newspapers was declining. This left The Sunday Mail, initially a major recipient of parastatal advertising revenue, exposed to politically – linked individuals’ companies that comes with a heavy price in terms of attempts to manipulate content.

For those working in the public-owned press, which the ruling party directly controls, ZANU PF politicians have morphed into “political bullies” standing in the way of peace journalisms. One political editor, who left the newspaper sometime admitted openly,

During my tenure as political editor, we would receive calls from politicians on who we should cover. This became worse from around 2007 when Mugabe’s succession became a hot potato. We were bullied left, right and centre. We had to give in to the demands of party factions. It was a habit that intensified during primary elections when the politicians themselves were jostling for seats. The ministry of information became a strategic ministry allowing these politicians access to us…Our newspaper was a battlefield for fighting politicians…

This direct influence by senior party politicians is well documented in Zimbabwe, and would not come as a surprise (see Moyo 2009 and Mugari 2015). What would be surprising, however is the intensity of the interference. Such intense influence by politicians has fewer replications elsewhere. It is contrary to the best practices of

161 independence demanded of the press, for it to operate away from the clutches of the state. It confirms the fear that what the public consumes from the public media is not news, but propaganda. Two more respondents gave telling admissions about how the state interferes in content. They specifically related to election news coverage. Interview 3 (14 January 2018; Harare) said thus,

When it comes to election violence reporting, the script is the same…we cannot implicate ZANU PF. In 2008, I was a senior reporter here. I saw it with my own eyes, the army being deployed, people being beaten, harassed, forced to flee so that they do not vote for the opposition. But, you know, we have a script here. The law is, blame everyone and anyone except ZANU PF, the army, the police… you live by it or you go…

The other respondent (Interviewee 4; Harare 14 January 2018) agreed,

Here we have two options. To write what you are told is the line or to go…One problem with mentioning the peace journalism you are talking about here is that the moment you say peace you are trying to say someone is causing that violence…it can easily be construed to mean them. What can exist when covering election violence is fairness, not peace journalism… we may try to cover both sides but then the other side should not feature much. This means even the fairness does not exist.

Hence, the absence of unfettered freedom to choose news content stands in the way of peace journalism, as interviewees notes. “Political diktats” disrupt their news production and reporting practices. This means, for The Sunday Mail, the adoption of peace journalism practices during moments of electoral violence directly correlates with the freedom of publication that ruling party politicians are willing to grant. The current scenario is, however, not hope-inspiring. Under both the Mugabe regime and the Mnangagwa regime, reforms that seek to guarantee the independence of the public media have been much ado about nothing. While they have been publicly trumpeted, they have, in practice, stalled. The ZANU PF-dominated state has a warped belief with regards to the public media. Their thinking is that since the public media is always fiscally bailed out by the government (which they constitute), it means its self –legitimation outside the ZANU PF

162 grip simply does not exist. Which, therefore, means its independence is beholden to the ruling party. The fact that it is not the party but the citizens whose funds bail out the public press is deliberately lost to them.

Private press journalists from The Independent agreed that proprietors exerted influence in the production of news. But, they differed on the extravagance of this influence. While those at The Sunday Mail noted that owner’s interference was frequent, and decisive especially during elections, The Independent respondent said in their case it was rare, but equally decisive. A senior political reporter at The Independent recounted a story of what he called “brutal interference” which he said happened on Friday 8 March 2002:

You know as we headed towards the presidential election, we were convinced that Mugabe had to go. I tell you for more than a year, we put effort in detailing Mugabe’s failures. We upped our tempo of criticism as we moved towards the election on 9-10 March 2002. Then, imagine on that Friday, a day before polling we had a bold headline which read: Only Mugabe can save Zimbabwe...I think in many important ways, this confused and disemboldened our readers and the whole following we had cultivated as a result of our reputation. We also knew Zimbabweans craved for change…We all knew it was ordered from above… it never was a headline and a story we had shared in the newsroom… how could we praise Mugabe when we had spent an entire lifetime detailing all his brutality and overwhelming underperformance. (Interviewee 4; Harare 20 January 2018).

Pressed to explain, the journalists noted that the headline actually emanated from the owner of the paper. He said the owner of the paper felt it was necessary to,

“State a position of that nature as Zimbabwe went into the election… whatever he meant by that…there was little resistance from us in the newsroom… we ended up publishing the headline and the story…” (Interviewee 4; Harare 20 January 2018).

The Independent interviewees also noted the existence of “corporate bullies” from amongst their advertisers, who wanted stories written their way, ways that did not support any peace journalism practice. A senior reporter still serving at the paper intimated how

163 in 2008 a well-known Zimbabwe bank was providing daily allowances to army units and youth militias centrally involved in the violence in Mashonaland East province. She said,

We discovered that link. We called the Bank to give us their side of the story. But we were told it was none of our business…. I realised after some days into the investigation that even the editor was losing interest in the story… I abandoned it… yet it was a time when were supposed to reveal the forces behind this orgy of violence… I could not send my story to other publishers because I feared losing my job.

For the private press, hence, much influence came from the advertisers with sporadic but equally lethal ownership interference. For the public press, it was about towing the line of “political correctness” – pacifying the big brother. For the private press, the pressure is worse than on face value. One political editor explained it more succinctly.

The pressure in news production is intolerable here…look we have advertisers who provide a lifeline to our enterprise. The problem is, they are entangled in politics too. They have their own expectations. Then we have the state, dominated by the ruling party. They have theirs too…

Most of the time, they said, these interests clash. Their advertisers prefer a specific line of news coverage to be sustained, a frame that might not clash with the overbearing state. The fear of the state was more serious because of associated harassments in the form of arrests. The private media has no parastatal adverts and government –related adverts. They said this was a sole preserve of the public-owned media. One journalists, Herbert Moyo at The Independent joked about the advertisements, “The only time we received adverts from parastatals was when they were celebrating Gushungo’s (Robert Mugabe) birthday… then we knew they would be outbidding each other to prove loyalty… so they will buy our space too…” Indeed there has been numerous occasions from the days of Chen Chimutengwende, Ambassador Jokonya in the late 1990s and Jonathan Moyo in the post-2000 period as information ministers that the state has threatened to withhold parastatal advertisement from privately-owned newspapers because of its adverse reporting towards the government. Those who work in the private press newsroom testify that much of the advertisements they receive from parastatals are now limited to

164

Independence Day celebrations, heroes’ day announcements and unity day messages. These are classified, usually, as public announcements and fetches little in terms of revenue. This means the state may have carried out this threat. This threat of advertiser boycotts is terrifying enough to keep any coverage of election violence that may implicate ZANU PF at bay. A senior editor at The Independent noted, “I think in the days of declining sales, the threat of boycotts by advertisers can have a chilling effect on how you cover the news…When we are told to spike (sic) a story we know someone influential out there has complained to our superiors” (Interviewee 4; Harare 20 January 2018)

There are numerous examples where the state-owned press have largely served the interests of those in power. Famous media houses like the BBC and locally, the SABC have also been accused of such. Under such circumstances, the respondent noted, the press would not domesticate peace journalism as a practice in their newsrooms. One journalist at The Sunday Mail angrily quipped, “Look, we know some ZANU PF senior politicians instigate violence. Both at inter-party and intra-party levels. But they all flock here for a good story…” Nabir (2018) notes that media content is more likely to serve government propaganda, advertisers and owners of media especially in times of war where truth is always the first casualty. “Money, power and structure can filter out the news fit to print and shape the message” (Nabir 2018: 5). In Kenya, Weighton and McCurdy (2017) observed that media owners tend to influence the reporting style, news sources and personalities employed by their media houses. But journalists at The Independent acknowledged the subtle and rare influence by owners on content. One political editor still serving the paper said,

Here, it’s not like you are given specific instructions. You just have to keep it on your fingertips and at the back of your mind what to write, about, who and in what ways…you cannot disparage the untouchables for whatever reason… the editor will mutilate your story… and in doing so, the message is implied…

Scholars studying the link between corporate, commercial and state ownership of the media have found out that if not well-managed these kind of ownership structures can compromise news (McChesney 1997). While others have disagreed (e.g. Waisboard 1998) arguing that an absence of such ownership structures may be worse for the news,

165 the scenario in Zimbabwe proves McChesney (1997) to be correct. State ownership in Zimbabwe has had the effect of pushing professionalism to the margins by ring-fencing the press and imposing undue technical limitations on how it can cover elections and the violence associated. It becomes difficult, if not impossible, for peace journalism to be practiced where the press is in the service of power and hegemony. As journalists dance to the tune of ownership and commerce in the coverage of election news, they consciously downplay the violence, overhype other incidences or out rightly suppress some. Interviewee 6 from The Sunday Mail said,

The ruling party politicians have little interest in how we cover culture, social issues crime, the environment etc. There we have leverage… a lot of it. But in reporting political violence… you do not throw caution to the wind… so it cannot be an individual decision to adopt peace journalism. We prefer caution when covering such an issue because it has a lot to do with who is blamed, right?

True to Herman and Chomsky’s (1988) propaganda model, the press in Zimbabwe therefore, serves to mobilise support for special interests that dominate the state and private activities. This is dangerous as it promotes what Schudson (2003:5) call “a lethargic public acceptance of the existing distribution of power”, without even questioning that power. In cheerleading ZANU PF, as testified by journalists in the public press, the latter failed to carry out its normative role, especially of questioning recurring electoral violence, contributing to peace through alternative practices like peace journalism, by alarming the public about the brutal role of political parties in this scourge of violence. The press on both divides, failed to be platforms for civic political debate around electoral violence nor a battleground for contesting views on this aspect. Schudson (2003:58) notes, “If the press mirrors the views and voices of those in power, then it means they have reduced themselves to servants of that order”. An aggressive, feisty and irreverent approach to the coverage of electoral violence would have served peace journalism better than the all too frequent meek, largely uncommitted and cautious approach adopted, which was a direct nemesis of the press’ contribution to peace through news.

In discussing the influence of owners and advertisers on news production practices, respondents from both sides of the press highlighted the shifting nature of journalism as

166 an existential threat to the profession and to peace journalism. They lamented the fact that journalism is quickly dissolving into a profit-driven practice. Political economy scholars (McChesney 1997 and Mosco 1998) have long noted that media products are a business, and as such, they are produced for consumption by a specific and clearly defined and segmented market. This trend is global and has been traced to the rise of entertainment conglomerates (Bagdikian 2014). Entertainment giants like Disney are making huge profits compared to news companies like the BBC, CNN, and NBC etc. The economic basis of news in general are threatened by the dominance of entertainment information. The continued fragmentation of audiences as a result of the availability of a variety of content on media platforms is not helping news organisations either. This makes it difficult for peace journalism to survive, where, news as we know it, is under severe threat. Hackett (2006) admits, noting that peace journalism as an alternative news coverage practice stands no chance of survival, where traditional ways of reporting news like war-oriented reporting are under pressure from entertainment competition. Hackett (2006; 12) says, “the ethos governing (the production) news have shifted, from public service and objectivity (no matter how it is defined), to one of consumerism and commercialism”. Thus, the existing context of news production processes speaks against peace journalism.

But for Zimbabwe press journalists this means just more than consumerism and commercialism. Journalists complained that what I was talking about –peace journalism- was basically not possible because of budget cuts and fewer resources to work with. Political reporter Takunda Maodza lamented, “If peace journalism means we should also represent the views of the victims, remember the many victims of violence are in the rural area. How do we go there when we can’t even cover news stories in cities? Do you think we can go deep down there to find victims?” Thus, the current economic travails affecting the press in Zimbabwe contributes to the failure of peace journalism, especially in instances it takes an investigative twist, requiring travel and substantial commitment of financial resources. More so, declining copy sales in the streets and subscriptions require a response that make news for more ‘interesting’ to attract readers. Peace journalism may not fit into this category.

167

6.4. Newsroom structures and routines as obstacles to peace journalism

Respondents noted the influence of both structure and culture as obstacles to peace journalism. The production of news takes place within huge structures. Structuration, therefore, is, “the production and reproduction of the social systems through members’ use of rules and resources in interaction” (Giddens 1984: 25). Early studies of newsrooms identify very common routines, or rituals that are observed universally in the production of news (Tuchman 1972; Gans 1982 and Berkowitz 1992). The most universally observed newsroom routines are: emphasis on deadlines, a general tendency to report on the immediate events (immediacy), the simplification of news events, with little context provision, a preference for powerful and elite source and an overall preference for bad news. Gieber (1963: 173) notes, “The examination of the press must start where the news begins – within the institution of the press, within the walls of the newsroom or any other place where a newsman gets and writes his stories”. By newsroom structure, I mean the relationship existing amongst reporters, their immediate superiors and editors (Perry 2003).

Any discussion of the failure of peace journalism, therefore, must factor in the questions of the limitations imposed by both newsroom routines and the bureaucratic structures of news organisations. Respondents noted that these routines stand in their way of practising peace journalism because they do not support alternative ways of reporting news. Former political reporter for The Independent, Herbert Moyo noted,

Because we generally prefer powerful sources, especially people high up there in government, it means we have very little time and space for the common man … you know our sources do not really talk about peaceful elections, they just disparage their opponents and blame them for everything…

Newsroom routines tied journalists down to gathering news on electoral violence using a set of already established criterion that include who is fighting who, where, how, why and finally, who is the devil?. In the previous chapter, I noted that this culture was prevalent at The Sunday Mail. The latter’s preference for sources that disparaged and blamed the opposition MDC, had a negative impact on objective and balanced journalism (as the opposition was rarely given a chance to reply) and attempts to peace journalism. Such

168 routines in which journalists are acclimatised, fail to discuss and situate election violence within its broader economic, social and political context, neither did these existing routines fully problematise the genesis of the violence nor its effects on communities. Keeble (2008) notes that elite sources in news reporting are generally oriented towards war journalism – the very nemesis of peace journalism. Galtung (1998) notes that peace journalism succeeds if sourcing of news moves outside elite realms – to the victims, perpetrators and affected communities. By so doing, the journalist can relate the other side of the conflict and propose available peace alternatives. The unenviable task would then be how to practice peace journalism in a political context dominated by elite sources.

Journalists also pointed out that the normative organisation of the newsroom into “beats” means that they, more often, though not always, have to get their stories from certain, traditionally approved sources – like government agencies, officials, corporate sources, political elites. This was even truer with regards to “news punditry” – where they had to seek opinions of experts. They often had a list of “accepted” commentators whose views were usually in sync with editorial lines. Any deviation to include non-bureaucracies as sources is not viewed charitably in the newsroom. It may be viewed as an unacceptable deviation from normalcy. Barnabas Thodhlana a revered editor of more than thirty years, summed it up clearly “We expect reporters to refer to well-established sources…not everyone out there is a source” (Personal communication: 21 January 2018). “The tyranny of deadlines” further makes it difficult for journalists to widen their sourcing routines away from the preferences even if they wished they could. There is an advantage in this approach though: bureaucracies are trusted for reliable and steady supply of news. But in the Zimbabwean context, this normative approach raises a number of challenges. ZANU PF leaders have been fingered in many reports as instigating political violence (see chapter 2).Their accounts might not be reliable since they are central to this scourge. Simbarashe Muparaganda a former political reporter for The Sunday Mail said,

Our preferred newsroom sources that we also inherited, are not skewed towards peace journalism. Look I always interviewed senior government officials, police sources here in Harare, even after violent skirmishes down in Uzumba even in some remote rural areas. They do not talk about alternatives to peace much of the

169

time. The best they do is to appeal for calm… and do you think that this is enough for what would be called peace journalism, the way you describe it here.. [Chuckle]… no I don’t think so…

For The Sunday Mail journalists, there are further complications. Yet those at The Sunday Mail noted that relationship between themselves and their sources is by no means pristine. They noted an incremental erosion of the distance between them as an institution and the state as their “proprietor”. They intimated that this corrosion of the divide, which is healthy for objectivity has made it difficult for them to practice peace journalism. One of the serving political reporters testified thus,

Here we are taught to blame everyone except the state, especially blaming the MDC. Do you know in 2008, we even sometimes received tips on where “operations” were? But we had to know how to write about them.

One respondent quipped sarcastically, that reporting election violence in The Sunday Mail was like filling a form- you had to know the blanks and how to fill them. This points to a possible “zombification” of the political reporter. The ruling elites had for all intents and purposes, assimilated the paper into its preferred frame of reference. And reporters assumed the role of the submissive, compliant distributive agents of these frames, never digging a story, silent and content to accept the fostered ruling party version. Thus, the journalists gave up their powers of surveillance and associated responsibilities, preferring to bask in the “glory” of loyalty, sustaining a vaguely defined societal consensus that shielded culprits from criticism of their role in the violence. Keeble (2008) and Lynch and McGoldrick (2005) agree that for peace journalism to thrive, the media should go beyond the news script provided by the elites and officials, to seek wider views and solicit wider commentary in order to get the views of affected groups. On the other hand, interviewees at The Independent noted they try to maintain an aloofness from the influences of sources, institutions, experts and all others that desire to reach the public through them.

Zimbabwe press institutions overtly depend on government – linked sources. The corpus of news reports analysed in the preceding chapter showed a tendency by the press to rely on government–initiated news conferences, police reports, politicians’ public pronouncements and campaign rally speeches in the coverage of election violence. This

170 might be largely unavoidable, however because of Zimbabwe’s state structure that is over-centralised at national government. Most decisions at national administrative levels are made in Harare, with powerless regional/provincial authorities. This means there are no meaningful “news nodes” outside Harare on which the press can revert to as an alternative to the daily dose of national government. But with increasing violence during elections, it should have been expected that journalists be distrustful of government and politicians as sources of electoral violence news. Yet, Zimbabwe press journalists did not show a move away from these suspicious sources. This raises questions of news veracity considering the well-documented role of the government in the violence. Again, it raises uncomfortable questions of reporter-official relations that seemed to continue uninterrupted as a result of this exchange of news. As journalists themselves pointed out, there is palpable “phobia” to deviate from the official caste of events especially in the publicly-owned The Sunday Mail. Perhaps, this phobia explains the existence of some unpalatable news frames that appeared in The Sunday Mail and noted in the previous chapter, like, “Strike fear in whit men’s hearts, our real enemies”, “We have degrees in violence” etc. These headlines, could have been framed with better responsibility.

There has been a lot of research from early times on source- reporters’ relationship (Cohen 1963 and Gans 1979). But, there has been surprisingly little on reporter-editor relations though there has been early suggestive works produced on the aspect (Breed 1955 and Hallin 1986). In order for peace journalism to succeed, journalists highlighted that there is need to also focus on interrogating this relationship between the reporter and the editors. This means attention should shift from being entirely on source-reporter relations (the news gathering process), to writing and publication, where editors are central.

Editors’ centrality to the news production process makes them matter in what finally constitute news (Hallin 1986). It is, therefore, important to understand the power structure of the newsroom in order to understand output. Junior reporters who were interviewed confessed the hindrance imposed by newsroom structures to the practice of peace journalism. One journalist who still serves one of these two papers said,

171

I attended a training on peace journalism. It was something I learnt through a work- related session, not university. But I think it’s much easier said than done. [Why? Interviewer interjection]. .. You know even if I want to practice it, my story can be changed, and I know it will be changed by the editor… it has happened to me many times.

This was confirmed by the veteran editor Barnabas Thodhlana,

Yes, if journalists try to adhere to their own brand of news writing we will order a re-write of the news story. We do not really appreciate experimentalism…there are well-established ways of reporting news…

Journalists interviewed recognised the limited range of news on electoral violence that they covered, and they said it was a reflection of the spaces accorded to them in the newsrooms. One aspect that featured consistently during the interviews, especially among junior political reporters was the hierarchical nature of the newsrooms which left no room for innovation and alternative forms of news reporting. Junior political reporters complained that editors maintained a “godfather” aura in the newsroom. One reporter quipped, “They are aloof, they are intimidating and it is not easy to approach them with a new story angle and worse, to convince them to be interested in it…” This means peace journalism as an alternative reporting practice cannot percolate through these structures regardless of its undoubted relevance in Zimbabwe. One aspect noted with young political reporters is their impatience and their dislike of rigid formal rules. I noted that young reporters seem exasperated by the dogmatic insistence on routines –sourcing, deadlines, etc by their editors, who still represent the old generation of the scribe industry. The editors still possess a nostalgic attachment to formal newsroom procedures, something the new graduates do not seem to share. New graduates seem to see themselves as products of a “modern age”, with no reverence for formalism, a generation that challenges rules. This might be a source of friction, leading the junior reporters to believe that their senior counterparts occupying editorial position represents an old world governed by formal rules and regulations, not willing to challenge boundaries and try alternatives. To the junior reporters, journalism is a route to fame, it is a leeway to adventure, and to

172 achieve that, one needs to push everything to the limit, including the rules. This seems to be a risk the old generation of journalists cannot take. Therein lies the rub.

Obeying and respecting the newsroom structures is part of the considerations for rewards that come from senior editors and fellow colleagues in the newsroom (Sonwalker 2009). Such bureaucratic structures, where obeisance is more valued than innovation means alternative news coverage is difficult to filter down these rigid hierarchies. One junior reporter stated that the current newsroom structures, in addition to what he called, “boring routines’, presents a clear disjuncture and an incongruity between his craft’s expectations and the reality he finds in the newsroom. He said, thus;

I know peace journalism but I have never written a story that I would say adheres to it. The structure of news production here would not allow that, I think. They are not used to it. Taking my stories all up this hierarchy and having them rejected is not a humiliation I can bear…let sleeping dogs lie…

Thus, the newsroom climate is not conducive for peace journalism to be practised. Editors maintain a “splendid isolation” from their reporters, which makes it difficult for the latter to suggest innovative ways of covering election violence. There is also a visible lack of enthusiasm for peace journalism. One interviewed editor clearly summed his thinking about peace journalism with an old adage, “Better the devil you know, than an angel you don’t”. This was an utter disdain for peace journalism as an alternative. The existing, normative news values do not seem to be changing as fast as peace journalism advocates would want. News still value elite sources, the pressure of deadlines still exist, victims remain peripheral as sources, and there is still a general preference for violence- which sells. Based on this evidence from reporters, the newsroom structure- the hierarchical relations between junior journalists, their immediate superiors and editors, and its routines present a huge obstacle to peace journalism implementation. Maybe, a renewed newsroom commitment to the values of peace journalism may trigger a move away from some of the hindrances to peace journalism entrenched in the newsroom. This, however, exposes peace journalism as too “individualistic” (Weighton and McCurdy 2017:6), relying more on the initiative of the individual journalist than the agency of structures.

173

6.5. The micro-level factors hindering the practice of peace journalism

Micro-level factors examine those influences at the smallest level of interaction (MacDermid 1996). These are factors that generally affect “the self” alone, and how this self comes into interaction with the broader context of the journalist’s existence and operational context.

6.6. In the grip of politics: “the personal is political”: journalists’ ideological predilections fail peace journalism practices.

Respondents admitted that their political ideologies played a role in hindering peace journalism practices. But, this admission was largely common among senior political news editors and reporters at The Sunday Mail. First and foremost, journalists define themselves as news professionals, adhering and committed to (so they say) professional journalism markers like objectivity, factuality, political neutrality among many other such standards. Participants admitted that they are, as much professionals as they are also “political beings”. By their own admissions, their professional decisions are sometimes coloured by their political beliefs and party leanings. For example, one reporter who reported that the, “MDC youth was Western-sponsored… party of hooligans… bend on derailing an otherwise peaceful election…” (The Sunday Mail, 14 May 2000), admitted that his story was equally based on what he believes the MDC represents- from his (political) ideological perspective.

This trend is, however not a unique “Zimbabwean journalism phenomenon”. Significant researches across many different news context have proved the influence of journalists’ ideological beliefs to their choice, selection and framing of news, especially around politics, elections, wars and political violence. Patterson and Donsbach (2001) confirms this in their study of sampled journalists in five countries – the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Italy and Sweden. They note that the relationship between political ideology, news selection and production choices, “is more pronounced among newspaper journalists than broadcast journalists, but partisanship has a more modest impact on news decisions in all arenas of daily news, even those bound by law and tradition to a policy of political neutrality” (Patterson and Donsbach (2001: 1). Johnstone et al (1976) found out that 39% of USA journalists were Democrats and many bore some sympathy

174 towards either the Democrats or Republicans. Henningham (1995:54) says, “Research in various countries have shown that journalists are politically inclined to the left rather than the right”. He notes, however, that their professional commitments always overrode their political ideological predilections when covering news. Interviewees confirmed that there is a significant correlation existing between the personal political ideology of the journalist and the news production decisions they make.

Journalists especially at The Sunday Mail, readily acknowledged political partisanship as a permanent feature of daily news coverage. It was a taken-for –granted component of their news production routines. The long-established close link between the press and political elites would plausibly explain the influence of political ideology in news production. As noted earlier, Zimbabwe’s press has always been rooted firmly in partisan advocacy even during colonial times. This, possibly, explains the longevity of this relationship between journalists and politicians. Research has noted that partisan news organisations are in long decline around the World (McQuail 1994). But it would be a mistake to assume the same of Zimbabwe. The press, especially the public press has a long and symbiotic tradition of interaction with ZANU PF elite politicians, which visibly reflects in their news content about politics. By their own admission, public press journalists said they have become “the oxygen of the political outfit of their choice” (Interviewee 4: Harare 12 January 2018) - manipulating their news skills to that end. Respondent 5 noted,

We cannot leave our political ideologies at home [chuckle]… We also have beliefs, values and when you work in a big newspaper space like this… you have the chance to assert what you believe in. (Interviewer interjection)…So, does this explain why you prefer words and phrases like despicable, zealot youths, running dogs of imperialism in reference to the MDC? (Answer)… In a way, yes! I believe they are bend on mayhem… (Interviewee 5: Harare: 14 January 2018)

Interview 3, a political editor said,

Yes we are professionals. But we should take a stand. This stand defines what we believe in. I think this is where journalism as an academic field differs from the reality on the ground. You guys you teach objectivity and research it, but we know

175

there are pressures. But definitely when we say this party is wrong we are taking a stand against wrong things. When we associate with politicians and cover them positively, we are aware of their mistakes but they represent the best that I would believe in myself. But...yes I am a professional of course. (Interviewee 3: Harare: 19 January 2018)

The long association of the press to politics may partially explain this bias. But, three other factors may fully account for this. Firstly, the ever-increasing conflation of state and the party in post-colonial Zimbabwe, now means those institutions of the state that should be independent of partisan interference, like the public press, have basically been captured in the service of the ruling elite. Secondly, the shift by The Sunday Mail from being financed by circulation and advertising revenue to government subsidies have left them vulnerable to political influence. Thirdly, the staunch partisan loyalty of the journalists occupying senior positions in the press. For example, a former senior editor at The Sunday Mail, Caesar Zvayi, publicly declared that he is ZANU PF for life. One interviewed editor at the paper intimated that getting a senior job at The Sunday Mail was linked to political support for the ruling party. Even hiring of junior reporters has recently been politicised. “You cannot just walk here on the basis of a strong CV or experience. You have to be linked to power somehow” (Interview 5: Harare 14 June 2018).

He continued,

Our ideological leanings are visible in the news stories we write. But we do not regret that, obvious you should seek a position in media house that satisfies your own values and beliefs…That is why you would not see an advert for junior or senior reporters here. We know where to look for the right persons.

It is rather ironic that journalists at a public- owned newspaper expressed this blatant bias, yet the public press should by law and organisational policy, be non-partisan. Herman and Chomsky (1988:82) note, “Journalists serve the conservative interests of the state and established elites”. The views of respondents support this entirely. What is surprising is that respondents still insisted that they are professionals despite this glaring partisanship. Interviewee 4 said, rather bluntly,

176

That we have not practiced peace journalism is no evidence that we are not professionals. We are simply not adhering to a brand of reporting that we think does reflect the reality on the ground

What is this reality (My interjection)

He continued,

The reality that ZANU PF deserves more positive coverage. It is a liberation party, it has a history and it has ideals. Look at the successes it has scored. Can you compare this with sell-outs manufactured in Europe?

Thus, there is a clear intrusion of political bias on news decisions, even among journalists consciously aware of other alternative ways of reporting electoral violence, and conscious of the existence of codes of ethics. Thus, the partisanship of The Sunday Mail, was a culmination of journalists’ conscious efforts to side with a certain political party. The bias is problematic in many ways. It does not adhere to normative expectations of the press. Consequently, it shrouds the “accountability gap” – that is, the bond between the newspaper and its readers. The accountability gap may remain strong between the newspaper and ideologically like-minded readers who will see the newspaper’s content as a reflection of their own version of reality. But still, this partisanship reflects a general decline in quality of news. Early researchers like Peterson (1956) saw objectivity as measured by both quality and accountability. Objectivity is part of the social responsibility of the press (Peterson (1956). The belief was that news would reflect facts not opinions and would be fair- making an effort to present all sides of a story in a particular debate.

Yet in the case of The Sunday Mail, political reporters, opinions are inflected in the news, and interpretation of this news is biased. Party loyalists cannot masquerade as journalists and still claim objectivity. This is not, however, unique to The Sunday Mail alone. McQuail (1994:72) notes that in Germany, Italy, France and other countries of Europe, “Broadcasting has at times been structured in ways that allow the parties control some newsroom appointments”. Admittedly, broadcasting has, historically been far more controlled than the press. But, this is still a valid reading of the Zimbabwean public press. In general, the appointment of self-declared party stalwarts to influential positions in the

177 newsroom has always been controversial and opened up massive criticisms of interference. The major Achilles heel of the journalists’ approach in the Zimbabwean case is that their political ideologies are not hidden. Again, their political biases pervade, by their own admission, their professional objectivity in covering electoral violence. Their political beliefs, therefore account for the extremely biased trends in news content observed in the previous chapter. This does not augur well with peace journalism. It would have been expected that political beliefs “are left at home” to ensure credibility of the news and professional detachment of the journalists. Gans (1985) notes, two values matter most in the newsroom – getting the news story and getting that news story in ways better and faster than the newspaper’s prime competitors. For The Sunday Mail journalists, professional aptitudes mattered less than in-group identification with the ruling party. McNair (2009:239) supports them, noting that journalists can be participants in the political process. It is permissible for journalists to participate in their country’s process “…and advocate particular political positions”. This is rather controversial considering that it flies in the face of what journalists should do- mediate society for the public good.

Contrary to public-owned press journalists, those from The Independent noted that they were not necessarily obliged every time to defend a particular party. But they agreed that they have their own political views which to some extent, colour their news decisions. The most important values at the paper were, however, speedy production of news and attempt to produce news that speaks to the information requirements of the widest readers. Brian Chitemba said,

We have written stories of the MDC and other opposition parties’ culpability in the violence… that’s what we should do, inform a wide audience by telling the truth… (Interview in Harare 10 December 2017).

Another former senior political reporter at the paper, Herbert Moyo said,

We do not belong to any political party as we report news. Maybe when we are home, yes. But, well, we don’t make that count here (Interview in Harare 2 February 2018).

178

How do we explain the persistent demonisation of ZANU PF in this paper? One senior reporter at the paper answered,

It is a reflection of reality. Of course you should know ZANU PF has largely been responsible. We can’t hide it (Dumisani Muleya interview; 18 December 2017: Harare).

In comparison to their counterparts at The Sunday Mail, journalists at The Independent are more professional in outlook and less concerned with political correctness. They were not willing to explicitly nail their masts to politics.

The position of the public-owned press became even more radical as the challenge to ZANU PF legitimacy intensified. The role of The Sunday Mail can be equated to that of the press during communism. The public press was, and is still expected to be vital on agitation, organisation and mobilisation of the masses for the party’s political ends. It is still expected to engender positive convictions and attitudes among citizens towards the party. Hanitzsch and Vos (2016) argue that such kind of media control is commonly sedimented as a journalistic norm in non-democratic political contexts. Janowitz (1975) assert that journalists ought to play two roles – gatekeeper and advocate. The involvement of public press journalists in buttressing ZANU PF rule would not be surprising, if viewed from Janowitz’s (1975) perspective. Tunstall (1970) notes that it is understandable that political journalists take a clear defined ideological position which ends up influencing their content because they are very close to those in power as a result of their news beat. They, report, “matters of great national importance, like national elections or cabinet decisions” (Tunstall 1970: 2). News headlines and stories noted in the previous chapter, like, “ZANU PF youth should effectively deal with unruly MDC supporters (The Sunday Mail, 11 June 2000). Every arm of the state should rise to defend our revolution (The Sunday Mail, 27 March 2005) explain this clear tilt towards undisputed partisanism in the press.

Hence, basically, reporting electoral violence in the two newspapers articulated and reinforced political views though it was subtle with The Independent than with The Sunday Mail. For The Sunday Mail, reporting electoral violence followed a “participant model”. This participation, which entailed defending ZANU PF on the subject, became a collective

179 mentality and a taken-for-granted journalistic culture in the newsroom. The result went beyond an unfair and unobjective coverage of electoral violence, to a kind of reporting that is not solution-oriented. The enduring revelation from the interviewees is that a strong, collectively shared mind-set that is in favour of a certain political party or its ideology can dangerously impose blinkers that negatively limit the capacity of journalists to report meaningfully and factually crux issues like electoral violence. It is crucial to interrogate further the interaction of power, politics and performativity in the newsroom

6.7. Power, politics and performativity in the newsroom

During my interviews, I noted that there is nuanced political divisions especially in The Sunday Mail newsroom that pits what I call the young generation of reporters that joined at the most, a few years back and the old generation who have been in the space for a relatively long time. The young generation, made up of the junior political reporters, admitted that they started covering elections in around 2008, which means they were not involved in earlier elections. The older generation, claimed to “have seen it all”. The young generation confided that they, unlike their older counterparts, who happen to be their immediate superiors on the political desk, have no emotional attachment to the regime. Yet, they are still expected to cover the ruling party more positively during instances of election violence despite their lack of enthusiasm. The young reporters admitted that in a way, these ideological differences influenced discourses and practices in newsroom interpretation and discussion of election violence. First of all, they agreed that no matter how hard they “sanitise” the ruling party, they were certain that it was largely culpable of much of the election violence. One of the junior journalists said, “We know we are serving a violent system… sometimes when you write the story you feel pained that you are not reporting the correct details… it’s putting lipstick on a frog…” (Personal communication, 20 August 2018).

Junior journalists admitted that their views of election violence, were largely undesired in The Sunday Mail newsroom. This was worsened by the fact that being junior reporters, they did not have much power to use that space to articulate, “The real story of election violence in Zimbabwe…” (Personal communication, 20 August 2018). Their version of election violence, whether true or not, had to be masked and modified to suit the dominant

180 news frames of the newspaper. The junior journalist noted instances where he has written, “MDC thugs yesterday unleashed an orgy of violence in Masvingo, looting shops, burning properties, stoning cars and attacking innocent people…” (The Sunday Mail, 5 June 2000). “In this instance, I was not certain if these were opposition supporters. My suspicion was that it was ZANU PF because they had a rally in the town that same day. But I was told there was no time to confirm, I just had to do the story and get done! But it ended up that it was intra-party violence between two ZANU PF factions soon after a rally in Mucheke stadium…”

Some admitted that in other instances, though rare, they challenged these dominant interpretations by their superiors. Challenging this dominant interpretation, widely acknowledged in the newsroom, was an act of journalistic performativity. I limit performativity in this case to mean journalists’ attempts to use news production language to consummate new meanings on election violence. Austin (1975) defines performativity in these terms – where language is used in an attempt to construct new meanings and understanding and events. Butler (1988) says that language becomes performative when users attempt to consummate a new reality.

It was a directly strategic and purposeful form of symbolic communication, staged as a way of navigating the ideological “straight jacketedness” of senior editors in the newsroom. As one junior political reporter notes, “Whenever we get an opportunity within this space, we try to tell the real story. At one time I was asked to follow my editors to a meeting with my story. The previous week he had not liked my piece implicating ZANU PF militias in Kwekwe displacements. It had found itself into the news. I do not know how it escaped him…” Another one said, “You may not get the whole story into the paper verbatim. Remember the process once you submit your story, lies outside your powers. But when in the field, gather as much info (sic) as you can. I would gather a lot on Chipangano in Mbare. So everyone high up there would find it impossible to ignore the story. They may have to reject it outrightly if they want to suppress the negatives (sic) in the story. The process of gathering the news is the journalist’s one to see how the real news would come out though you will stand to be disappointed by these senior editors…” (Personal communication, 21 August 2018). This junior journalist noted a feature story

181 which he wrote, entitled, “Both MDC and ZANU PF must find each other”. He continued, “ZANU PF must not allow youth militias aligned to its candidates to terrorise villagers… there has been numerous such reports and they all cannot be false…” (The Sunday Mail, 12 March 2008). I asked him whether this was not a challenge to the strict editorial line. He said, “Yes, it was a challenge. But we needed to be honest. We needed to do it for our readers to know that every violent election has many faces and players. It is always embarrassing that every story on election violence bolstered (sic) ZANU PF as saint. It was always the victim. But we knew it was not true. We had to try and reveal the darker side of the party without jeopardizing our positions and showing openly that the frame is becoming all too familiar and readers out there should know that by now… we also did not have to show that this ZANU PF ideology is not shared” (Personal communication, 20 August 2018).

As Cottle, (2006) notes, journalists are not just passive producers of news messages and narratives, they are active agents producing news for a purpose. Thus, by seeking to challenge the power of their seniors whenever they had a small opportunity, young recruits were turning The Sunday Mail newsroom into a site of contestation, and simultaneously, a site of negotiations where they could, to an extent, challenge or negotiate the editorial lines dogmatically adhered to by their editors. This attempt to challenge the editorial slant of election violence news made the practice of reporting news a performative act of news production. From their admission, young journalists as social agents attempt to bypass established rules of news framing and inflect within the news, in their small ways and limited space, and through the use of language, a different understanding of election violence, that blames the ruling party, but foreign to The Sunday Mails’ editorial stance. One respondent wrote in The Sunday Mail, “Who in ZANU PF owns Chipangano...It has become a violent force that should not be tolerated. Allowing it to terrorise people will delegitimise this election. This is an outfit that has no place in Zimbabwe…” (6 January 2008). I asked this journalist whether this was also a challenge to senior journalists and editor’s powers at the paper. He answered, “Yes, I was exasperated. We are protecting violence by not speaking against it. When the ZANU PF politburo spoke against the Chipangano youth violence, I seized the opportunity to write this. You remember that Didymus Mutasa and Tendai Savanhu nearly fought over

182

Chipangano in a politburo meeting? When Mugabe asked them who owned it? It was after Chipangano youth had assaulted a member of the armed forces…” (Personal communication, 20 August 2018).

The challenge these young recruits attempted to foster was still soft and tame, by their own admission. “It was not possible to radically challenge our superiors, to stop covering for ZANU PF. You could not do that without being fired” (Personal communications, 21 August 2018). Another young recruit said, “We had to be employed, but we also had to ensure the truth. Unfortunately, the small ways we tried to do it were negligibly insignificant. There was no hope for huge changes as that would have meant direct confrontation with the superiors… but you can’t say we didn’t try…” There was no possibility of a bare-knuckled challenge to editorial lines as that would be fatal to careers. The limited attempts made by these journalists serve to highlight the constant interplay between journalistic agency and newsroom structural forces, an interplay substantially shaped by political beliefs. This is understandable in a polarised political environment like Zimbabwe where journalists have, like the rest of the citizenry, developed strong loyalties to political ideologies – as either ZANU PF or MDC. This political alignment by journalist largely account for the “severed” relationship between them and professional norms – the commonly respected news coverage rules that has become a hallmark of Zimbabwe’s journalism (Chari 2000). Veteran journalist Barnabas Thodhlana once said when it comes to covering politics in Zimbabwe, one would see that Zimbabwe journalism has gone to the dogs! The political orientation of journalists into different and often competing and conflicting camps means that even reporters from the same newspapers are liable to conflict in covering news about political parties.

While young recruits attempted to influence existing frames and discourses on election violence, this had to happen within, and was limited by, endemic power structures within newsrooms. As such, most of the times, journalists testified, the “undesired” aspects of their frames, which ironically, constituted the substance of their challenge to biased framing and discourses, have to be hidden or masked whenever was possible so that editors would not see that as a direct challenge, Yet, any small opening or space that allowed them to exert some influence on the news production process was exploited. The

183 power dynamics of the context was crucial at every moment to determining the kind of news report on election violence produced, which in The Sunday Mail, was largely not peace-oriented.

6.8. Lack of peace journalism education and training amongst journalists.

A common theme raised by many of the interviewees was that they lack proper knowledge of peace journalism practice. Of all the journalists interviewed, six said they knew peace journalism from workshops and on-the-job refresher courses. Another three said they read about it after attending talks especially by the Centre for Peace Initiatives in Africa (CPIA). Five said they had a vague idea about peace journalism. However, even those that knew peace journalism, admitted that their knowledge of the practice was too scratchy and rudimentary to constitute an effective alternative that they would be confident to implement. UNESCO (1980:262) notes, “To be treated as professionals, journalists require broad education, preparation and specific professional training” (emphasis mine). Journalism education in Zimbabwe lacks in specificities, like peace journalism, relevant in specific moments like violent elections. One respondent, who is a former political reporter at The Sunday Mail, Simbarashe Muparaganda commented, rather sarcastically,

Its village level knowledge that I have. I wouldn’t say I know quite a lot because I had to read it on my own. (Interview in Mutare: 22 January 2018).

Other respondents also highlighted that their knowledge of the practice was not strong to their own liking. Political reporter at The Sunday Mail, Kennedy Chakanyuka said,

I know peace journalism. But I do not think I have enough knowledge of it to really claim expertise in the field. What I know about it is what I got from peace-related organisations like CPIA. (Interview in Harare 15 January 2018).

Another respondent, Takunda Maodza noted,

Peace journalism is a subject that comes often towards and during an election. But it is easily forgotten once that election passes. I have not heard about this reporting strategy being raised outside an election. And it’s not something that we ordinarily

184

discuss in the newsroom. No, I do not think we really are enthusiastic about it, not because it’s useless but because we do not really grasp it. And we cannot practice what we do not know, you see?

Another reporter, Herbert Moyo formerly of The Independent acknowledged,

Most of us who wrote stories that were solution –oriented and aligned to peace journalism like you are saying were trained during refresher courses by organisations. It was not university or college training, nor in-house training. Our in-house training focuses on other aspects of news reporting. I do not remember peace journalism. Actually, you know with me also, I am tired of this violence. I was thinking this other day, maybe, I try to play my role… highlight in the news, the alternatives to violence, and the solutions available... Maybe?

At the time of writing this thesis, Zimbabwe has nine institutions that train journalists. Six are degree-offering universities while the other three offer diplomas and certificates in the practice. Of the six universities, only one offers a degree particularly named “journalism”. The rest of the universities offer media studies degrees. Across these universities and colleges, emphasis is tilted towards skills acquisition necessary to gather and report news. For example, most curriculums offer courses on print layout and design, broadcasting theory, critical theory and sub-editing. However, none of these institutions offer a course either in peace journalism, conflict resolution or even media and conflict. No courses on conflict coverage either are offered even as workshop style or even as a module within a course, nor a regular, full semester course. Even a university like the Midlands State University (MSU) where a stand-alone degree programme on peace and conflict studies is offered, they still do not offer, currently, a course on peace journalism, rather, preferring to offer a topic on media and conflict within a broad course on Contemporary conflicts in Africa. Even this minute effort is not sufficient in my opinion. There is no evidence that training institutions invited guest lecturers and presenters to teach the subject to their trainees.

The absence of peace journalism training is evident in the prevalence of news stories that show a clear lack of awareness in quelling down conflicts by avoiding the publication of

185 violent rhetoric, as peace journalism prescribes. Examples noted in the preceding content analysis chapter include:

“Our party must continue striking fear in the hearts of the white men, our real enemies… We must never relent…the white men must go back to England… (The Sunday Mail, (April 2002)

“If the MDC wants violence...we are ready… we have degrees in violence…” (The Sunday Mail (January 2002)

“What we want to tell Mugabe today is that please go peacefully or we will remove you violently…” The Independent 12 December 2002).

The above cited excerpts, (discussed in chapter 5) show that the journalist are not aware of their peace – building role. If peace journalism is provided in the training curriculum at universities and colleges, it has the potential to empower the journalists and the press as a whole to be useful during times of violence, according to respondents. Three respondents noted;

Herbert Zharare: I think if it was taught as part of journalists’ professional orientation, as part of university training course, it could help journalists to fight from the side of humanity, the side of victims. (Interview in Harare 22 January 2018).

Kennedy Chakanyuka: I think if we are properly trained in the practice of peace journalism, this may assist in enlightening us on how to go about the shackles around reporting election violence. You know during conflicts, every individual, organisation and party want the conflict to be covered in ways that make them appear nice and as victims rather than perpetrators. I think a properly trained peace journalist can manoeuvre around these shackles. (Interview in Harare 15 January 2018).

Africa Moyo: I believe proper training in peace journalism can be useful. Training would help in that some journalists would come with peace journalism-inspired

186

stories… these stories may help alter the violence scenario… (Interview in Harare 19 January 2018).

Adequate training would impart knowledge on peace journalism, enhance professional ethics and integrity, values that are central to peace journalism practices. Training may inculcate a positive attitude towards news reporting, as well as interest in following up stories on conflict resolution, which Zimbabwean journalists said were extremely boring stories. A disheartening display of how Zimbabwean journalists are bored by stories of peace was demonstrated by an event that happened in Zimbabwe in the last week of June but received little coverage. I noted that the story was headline news in almost every foreign media. On Tuesday 26 June 2018, the 23 presidential hopefuls and all major political parties signed a peace pledge, to try and commit themselves and their parties to a peaceful election. I noted that this very important development was more visible in neigbhouring South Africa’s media than in Zimbabwe’s own media. For example, The Zimbabwe Herald had the story at a corner on page 5, as if it was an obituary. Newsday, another daily paper had the story tucked on page 3. Both newspapers, through placement, downgraded this development to an inconsequential event, at a time when election violence was a major concern of Zimbabwe’s electoral practices.

Peace journalism can be easy to apply if the journalists’ attitude are transformed positively so that they approach conflict reporting differently and value their own contribution to peace. Training should strive to alter mind sets and not only target the know-how of peace journalism. Training should also target existing newsroom practices and acclimatised routines that favour conflicts and stand in the way of peace journalism. This is a daunting task. Researchers have proved that conflict and violence sale (Cottle 2009 and Wolfsfeld 2006). One journalist, said about Iraq; “The sound of (military) boots on the ground means a lot of money for the media. When the guns die down, the media leave” (Agnes Kirks for Lebanon Times Online; 22 March 2003). Thus, journalists wanting to inflect some form of peace journalism are always up against something much more formidable to fight – profits. But training may add, for the determined journalist, tenacity, persistence, stubbornness with a purpose for him/her to go around these hurdles. Two veteran journalists noted;

187

Herbert Moyo: This peace journalism approach has not been adequately taught and trained for. I mean in the newsroom, universities and colleges. I share its intentions though. As part of society, the press should help in the reduction of violence through peace reporting… but with no adequate training around it… it is a doomed effort… (Interview in Harare 16 January 2018)

Barnabas Thodhlana: I think with time and adequate education, journalists would be okay with this approach. But so far, there is no support given around this. Let us start on the know-how of the practice. The rest can follow with little trouble you see? (Interview in Harare 2 February 2018).

Peace journalism education faces a number of challenges, however. The first one being how to train journalists to practice peace journalism without turning them into “conflict resolution practitioners”. Critics of peace journalism (see for example, Lyon 2005) have seized on this thin but very significant difference between the peace journalist and peace maker as fodder to dismiss peace journalism. This is possible, however, if training clearly delineates the possible parameters of peace journalism. Training should show that peace journalism is possible without marrying itself to conflict resolution models, by, perhaps, simply delivering conflict resolution possibilities information. Thus, journalists should remain faithful to what the profession is about without delving into other cognisant conflict resolution models that are non-journalistic. The second challenge of peace journalism training is to convince editors that it is a possible alternative, and does not threaten the integrity of the news produced. Journalists themselves should be people of integrity. One way of ensuring this integrity is to ask critical questions of everybody regardless of their position in society, including those connected to the conflict. When journalists do this, they open up the various “truths” of the conflict, including about those connected directly, or remotely, to the conflict. In the process, they set up possibilities for dialogue, spaces for engagement and conflict resolution.

These are, by no means the only challenges peace journalism education might face in the Zimbabwean context. Questions of financial resources for the introduction of the course and training needs to be addressed. Zimbabwe universities struggle for funding and it would be a challenge to mobilise sufficient financial resources for peace journalism.

188

Again, the bureaucratic structure of universities is a big challenge in itself. Introducing the course will take a very long time despite its obvious relevance. Universities in Zimbabwe are basically centralised institutions and operate within tightly controlled structures. This would add constraints to introducing peace journalism as it might end up swallowed in red tape and intertwining protocols.

There is also the question; if it is introduced, at what level should it be taught? There is no one-sided answer to this. It can be taught at undergraduate level, as a standalone journalism/media course. The justification for this being that this is the group that joins the newsroom after completing their degrees. It can also be taught at postgraduate levels, for those degreed already and in the field and for those dedicated to research. Combining peace journalism with critical perspectives on communication and media at postgraduate levels can robustly enhance skills for practitioners and advocates of peace journalism. This critical perspective can also richly inform debate on how the practice can be improved to inform a variety of violence and conflict context.

Peace journalism education should also aim at two levels of knowledge dissemination: theoretical knowledge of peace journalism and practical exposure. At the theoretical level, peace journalism education should strive at giving contextual, conceptual knowledge of what exactly would constitute conflict, violence and peace. At the practical level, peace journalism would then strive for the provision of the prerequisites skills – the tools that are required in order for journalists to report the conflicts. Training should also emphasise how journalists should survive in conflicts and violent environments, conflict and violence- related trauma and other related aspects. Zimbabwe journalists may also adopt UNESCO training modules that emphasise conflict-sensitive reporting in the media. However, they do not precisely mention peace journalism. As long as there is integration of this kind of reporting, then it would be tolerable and acceptable. The current scenario where it is not even an “adds-on” course is not conducive for its practice.

For journalists who can no longer find their way back to universities, media-organised training seminars and workshops can help. Zimbabwe journalists can follow the example of the Philippines press. In 2006, the Philippines media formed the Peace and Conflict Journalism Network (PECOJON) (Patindol 2006). This network has been holding

189 workshops seminars and expert talks and other various training sessions for practising journalists on peace journalism in the country. This can be offered as a continuing development training for journalists. It should be noted here that training peace journalists whether in universities or courses may not guarantee peace journalism practice during conflicts because other hindrances outlined still have to be dealt with. But breeding and investing in peace journalists that can be deployed in newsrooms may yield positive results and is a very pertinent starting point.

6.9. Practising peace journalism in a polarised press environment: moving beyond the journalism of ventriloquism and the “Towers of Babel”

An incontrovertible effect of the polarisation of the press (see chapter 2) is that the Zimbabwean press cannot muster a united voice against political violence like the Kenyan media did in 2013.Coverage of electoral violence, as shown in the textual analysis chapter previously, is a “Tower of Babel” – with every newspaper speaking their own language over the same issue and subject. The Sunday Mail accuses the private-owned press of over-exaggerating levels of violence and unjustifiably blaming ZANU PF. On the other hand, the private-owned press accuses the public-owned press of bias, propaganda in favour of a beleaguered regime and in the process, providing oxygen to it for survival through legitimating its actions – I refer to as parrot journalism. Yet peace journalism requires collaboration, cooperation and sometimes, journalists finding a common voice amongst a commonly debilitating evil like electoral violence. Youngblood (2016) notes that peace journalism is achievable when journalists are able to summon a common voice to condemn violence or conflict in all its forms, without fear or favour. McLeod (2014) notes how the Kenyan media carried similar headlines in 2013 condemning election violence.

One major question I asked was whether it was possible for the Zimbabwean press, as hopelessly divided as it is, between “super-patriots” and “unapologetic sell-outs”, to practice peace journalism. In other words, I asked what exactly can be done for the press to find each other on this matter, in ways that they make a contribution to peace and augment the efforts of peace practitioners on the ground. Interviewees thought it is possible. But for this to happen, the lingering suspicion and dislike of each other ought to

190 be got rid of in order to close the huge ideological chasm separating the public and private- owned press. Respondents noted that there is need to attend to specific aspects of the newsroom production process and “tweak” them to suit peace journalism.

Firstly, respondents from both newspapers agree that there is need for consensus building on the subject of election violence. By consensus building, they mean the need for journalists from both sides of this polarised divide to agree that election violence is undemocratic and unacceptable. The opinion of journalists from The Independent is that their colleagues in the public press seem to play too much along with ZANU PF to such an extent that they no do not seem to understand that election violence is evil. On the other hand, journalists from The Sunday Mail accuse their private press counterparts of suffering from a “compassionate fatigue” on the subject. They say, without evidence though, that journalists from the private press have no interest in the subject and are indifferent to the suffering of the people. In light of these accusations and counter accusations, it is then plausible to come to the conclusion that what is basically not shared among these journalists is the valence of election violence – every citizen shares an interest in peace. Veteran former editor, Vincent Kahiya said,

We need to admit, first, as journalists that electoral violence is wrong. This has nothing to do with whether you are a patriot or not. If we agree on this then what follows is to build a consensus on who is causing it, and if that fails, at least start writing peace-oriented stories…It would also mean that as media we are united in condemning the brutality of election violence (Harare: 12 December 2017).

Former senior political reporter for The Independent, Herbert Moyo elucidated thus,

Let me give you an example. You know the notorious Biggie Chitoro case? If we in the media as a whole had come out at that time to condemn this brutality, we could have forged an influential platform in which election violence was condemned or in the least objectively discussed (Bulawayo: 15 December 2017).

Another reporter at The Sunday Mail, Takunda Maodza agreed too;

Yaa, (sic), it is possible despite our divisions. If we focus on the plight of the victims, those forced to disappear, the children caught in-between, we can do peace

191

journalism. Look, these are bad issues, regardless of which side of the political divide you are. So peace journalism is possible in our time, if there is cross-cutting consensus that these evils have no place in a civilised society (Harare; 15 January 2018).

Another respondent summed up the weaknesses that he says manifested even at his own newspaper, The Sunday Mail,

As a journalist, I admit our biggest failures have been threefold. Firstly, we do not seem to care about the victims of electoral violence. Secondly, in a bid to shield political godfathers, we don’t contextualise this scourge for everyone to see how it starts and how prevalent it is. Thirdly, we deny other stakeholders space in the media… (Interviewee 5: Harare 14 January 2018).

The three problems identified by the respondent have a tendency of narrowing possible interpretations of the violence. Secondly, they adopt a reductionist perspective in covering the conflict where one side is blamed for all the violence and the other side is protected depending on the perspective of the paper in question. Furthermore, there is need to report electoral violence victims from apolitical lenses. This would mean humanising the conflict. If the press consensually agree that victims of electoral violence are human beings first and foremost, before being party members, coverage of electoral violence would have taken a far more peace-oriented dimension than the belligerent frames it adopted. Being a political party member is but a secondary marker of identity. Once the conflict is humanised, the press would have moved a step forward into identifying the financial and political drivers and interests of the conflict. This is a huge step towards peace journalism.

Secondly, respondents noted that peace journalism was possible if the media agree to eliminate discriminatory, racist and insulting hate language so banal in their newsrooms. They noted that this was a particular problem that needs to be addressed. Veteran journalist Barnabas Thodhlana said,

192

I think the press should mind what they print in particular moments. Sometimes the press needs to avoid quoting politicians whose rhetoric is dangerous to peace. The press should also avoid playing along in their editorials.

Herbert Zharare said,

The use of language is a particular issue for concern. Sometimes even when you read your story about violence, you think, are these the words that I should have used? Am I not encouraging political violence here? If you really take a serious look at how the press have reported election violence, you would agree with me that sometimes we have behaved like the militias themselves.

As noted in the previous chapter, the press in Zimbabwe has indeed relied on this kind of language often. They have negatively defined players, triggered prejudgements and “othered” political parties and individual political players. Peace journalism, in its founding values, eschews defamatory, conflictive and discriminative language, yet the Zimbabwe press has sustained a high intense verbal warfare when covering of election violence. Zimbabwe journalists argue that if this approach is abandoned across all media, there is a high a chance that a degree of peace journalism can be practised. Considering the prevalence and commonsensical nature of non-peace journalism in the press as noted earlier, this is quite a huge call. It seems vitriolic discourses have been accepted as part of the newsroom reporting routines. And altering this approach would be akin to changing an established practice.

Thirdly, respondents noted that the possibility for peace journalism exists if there is greater newsroom collaboration in covering election violence. Respondents thought greater newsroom collaboration could help nurture peace journalism practices. Currently, they say, there is no such interaction between political reporters in Zimbabwe newsroom. Collaborative journalism is a mode of journalism where multiple reporters or news organizations report on and contribute news items to a news story together. It is practiced by both professional and amateur reporters (Cohn 2017:1). Rosenberg (2017) further notes that there is a professional transition akin to a revolution, taking place in newsrooms across the world, where competition is replaced by cooperation and collaboration in news production, shared labour and news sources that serve the public better. Respondents

193 agreed that this phenomenon is lacking in Zimbabwe newsrooms, but can be transformative in how electoral violence is reported. Herbert Moyo said,

There is no collaboration at all. This is because we come from alien political polars. I do not generally agree with my colleagues in other newsrooms… this is why collaboration is dead…”

Another serving editor from The Sunday Mail said,

We do not share news stories or even tips on story ideas… we do not actually know each other in the professional sense (Harare 22 January 2018).

Another serving political reporter for The Sunday Mail said,

Our journalists rarely speak to others from across newsrooms, and they are not even aware of their works (Harare, 15 January 2018).

Collaborative reporting brings a lot of advantages in the coverage of election violence. Journalists, for instance, can travel together to areas affected by violence and share information. This also helps bring the press close together and the subject – electoral violence – would command constant press attention. More importantly, in a polarised working environment like Zimbabwe, collaborative journalism can foster new relationships amongst journalists as a corp of news reporters. A new form of comradeship and companionship based on news stories can be created which can loosen up tensions and destroy existing hostilities and barriers to cooperation.

As it stands, this lack of collaboration has guaranteed the Zimbabwe press readers a concoction of either pro-government or pro-opposition election violence news. For example, The surprising comment in The Sunday Mail 09 April 2015), “Africa’s hero President Mugabe yesterday openly told journalists in South Africa that he hates seeing a white face…shaming imperialists…” This was a comment in reaction to Mugabe’s infamous declaration that he hurts to see a white person. It is surprising that a responsible newspaper would find a positive spin to such blatant racism. On the other hand The Independent, upon the beginning of campaigns for the 2013 Harmonised elections declared, “It is time for Mugabe’s men to rape, kill, maim and pillage again…” This can be

194 termed the journalism of ventriloquism – where journalists sing the praises, and advance the interests of political parties or individuals, or what Latin American journalists call journalism of denuncismo – where journalists use the press to denounce the activities of political players as individuals or as parties. Collaboration can lead to wide and deep reporting on election violence. For example, if the press works together in political hotbeds like Uzumba- Maramba- Pfungwe, in the North – East of Zimbabwe, they can unearth the kind of grassroots politics and political orientation existing in that particular place, which make it vulnerable to violence. Thus collaboration can dig deep and answer the question: why is it that some places in Zimbabwe have more election violence than others? This is a huge question for one newspaper because it requires a lot of travelling, being embedded in the community for some time, interviewing. With newspapers suffering a resource dearth, collaboration can be useful in this case.

Scholars like Cohn (2010) notes that newsroom collaboration can lead to new forms of journalism such as distributed reporting, and one can add to this, peace journalism. Hare (2017:1) notes that collaborative journalism is now “being practiced on a scale that constitutes a revolution in journalism”. A good example of collaboration close to Zimbabwe, geographically, is the state capture stories that erupted in neighbouring South Africa. The state capture revelations that have led to a commission of enquiry (The Zondo Inquiry) were a result of the collaborative works of AmaBhungane Centre for Investigative reporting, The Daily Maverick and News24, involving about 19 journalists. This approach, according to journalists, can deepen electoral violence coverage, widen it and make it more involving.

If, then, there is a possibility to practice peace journalism even of the press is divided as in this case, what would be the motivants that can inspire the practice and what would be the adversities that may make it difficult even if these obstacles outlined in this section are conquered?

Some respondents expressed a desire to depict a peaceful Zimbabwe and more positive news about the country as a motivator. Kennedy Chakanyuka said, “I think we should strive to portray Zimbabwe more positively” (Harare: 23 January 2018). Herbert Zharare added, “Well, beside this negativity, we should also tell the positive story of Zimbabwe”

195

(Harare; 15 January 2018). Africa Moyo said, “It would be important to show that there are also other beautiful things about Zimbabwe” (Harare: 12 January 2018).Thus, as a motivating factor, journalist think they can be driven to practice peace journalism as it represents a point of opportunity to tell a more good story about Zimbabwe. This, however, displays serious misreading of peace journalism itself. Contrary to their thinking, peace journalism is not about the good story per se, it is about the bad stories also, but with a clear juxtaposition of these stories to practical solutions during violence, and making these solutions more visible in the press. However, as much as they are a misinterpretation of the concept of peace journalism, these sentiments can be tapped on to nurture peace journalism in the Zimbabwean press and erase the annihilative hate discourses perverse in the press. But, what is the contribution of other non-press actors to election violence in Zimbabwe? Certainly, their contribution cannot be ignored at this juncture.

6.10. “The false idols of peace”: journalists’ perceptions of other players in election violence.

During the interviews, I sought to understand from journalists, who they think was largely responsible for election violence. As in the Rwanda genocide of 1994, journalist cannot be blamed for the election violence entirely. They are just cogs in a long winding wheel and therefore, it is unfair to blame them for election violence. Respondents pointed out that key players in Zimbabwe’s political and social context are reluctant peacemakers and peace builders. The key players mentioned commonly by respondents are: the major political parties, the church, both CSOs and NGOs and law and order institutions of the state. One junior reporter at The Sunday Mail pointed out that, “political parties, especially ZANU PF exploit the fears of rural communities for votes as a strategy for election victory. They also mobilise their youth militias in those areas. Our problem is that due to the ownership environment we report, we can’t point these out, but I know this myself..,” (Personal Communications, 20 August 2018). Herbert Moyo, a former senior political reporter at The Independent pointed out, “Our political players are false idols of peace… they do not mean it when they preach and talk about peace during elections. It’s that very

196 same peace they are prepared destroyed whenever they feel threatened during an election…”

There was a general consensus amongst respondents that NGOs that operate in the rural areas of the country, could speak more and bring to global attention the scourge of election violence. After all, they have established strong connections with their communities. Even CSOs, interviews stated, should take the issue of election violence and speak more loudly than they do. Africa Moyo of The Sunday Mail agreed, “I think if every organisation rooted in the people speak out loudly, we may have little room for unchecked election violence, and that may end up discouraging perpetrators.” (Personal communications 21 August 2018). A senior reporter at The Sunday Mail said, “I don’t think our politicians especially in the ruling party are too keen for peace. Violence can be handy when the opposition poses serious competition” (Personal communications 22 August 2018).

The major issue discerned from the respondents’ interviews is that Zimbabwe’s main political payers cannot achieve some form of political consensus – building mechanisms that would enable all political players to switch from confrontation to engagement with each other. Simbarashe Muparaganda said, “Political parties should move beyond peace pledges and start the process of peace –building during elections. Then, we in the media can support these efforts. Currently, we have very little to support because such initiatives are not there on the ground…” The huge problem here is the lack of solid backing for peace from senior politicians of all political players. If there is no general consensus for peace, then violence would be a logical electoral weapon in already polarised environments. However, building consensus is not an overnight trick. It is difficult because the processes, both dynamic and relational, requires frequent interaction among the political elites in addition to a strategic long term approach to peace. This is what lacks in Zimbabwe. Thus, politicians should continuously forge alliances of peace and question elements like youth militias that feed violence.

Respondents were also critical of the role of the church. They think the Christian churches, that are popular in Zimbabwe have a role to play, firstly, by openly and loudly questioning the morality and philosophy of violence as an election tool. Secondly, the

197 church should “facilitate meaningful engagement among political players” (Africa Moyo, personal communications 20 August 2018). One respondent felt, “The church should start conversations that open up dialogue especially on the role of youth militias in election violence” (Takunda Maodza, personal communications 20 August 2018). Respondents’ views of the church are justified. The church is an important institution in Zimbabwe’s social life. Zimbabweans are a deeply religious people. As such, the church can forge a constructive role in the fight against election violence. It is true that churches, through their various organisations like Catholic Bishops Conference (CBC), Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC), Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe (EFZ) and many more have occasionally issued statements against election violence. But, this is not enough.

There are numerous steps that the church and other concerned organisations and political parties can take. They can, for instance, create spaces of conversations especially in the afflicted areas where both victims and perpetrators can face up. Thus, by so doing, they establish clear lines of dialogue on the election violence. These organisations should start conversations on transitional and restorative justice. Peace is always stronger if it is accompanied by processes of justice (Gaviria 2015). In my opinion, Zimbabwe can achieve lasting peace if election violence discourses are accompanied by processes of restorative and transitional justice. Herbert Zharare said, “We feel let down by influential organisations like the church and civil society. I think they have not agitated hard and loud enough for peace. If they had, the press could have picked up from there. That is why we carry news from politicians only much of the time. These organisations are not there on the ground…” Another senior reporter noted, “I think these churches and organisations should be more visible on matters of peace than us. We are journalists, we report what happened, and we don’t create events. So if nothing happens, we just stay here and talk to the politicians who are happy to appear in our stories. If these organisations start talking about peace we will be the happier to cover them…”

There are two important issues to note in this regard. ZANU PF has created its own CSOs and NGOs and there is a rising trend of what I refer to as “regime churches” in the country. This explains why there would be difficult for non-state actors in Zimbabwe to forge a consensus against election violence. Some of the players are serving the regime and

198 their silence becomes strategic. Their activities are lauded by the ruling elites, and in the press, they are praised by “regime scholars” who are frequently quoted in the pro-ruling party press as “analysts”. There are many churches that do not speak, hear nor see no evil as long as the ruling regime elites are involved. Another challenge would be harmonising the multiplicity of visions about election violence likely to arise among these organisations. For example, the churches’ largely biblical-based vision of peace may find less enthusiastic takers in civil society. One way of overcoming this challenge would be to first cultivate a broad consensus among players that election violence in Zimbabwe is in itself an evil that requires changes in how the country manages its elections and a redefinition of political conduct amongst players. For a start, CSOs, NGOs and churches would require to maintain their autonomy in the face of political dynamics likely to swallow them into the service of the ruling regime or opposition parties. The critical distance required to condemn violence needs to be re-established. The existence of a common objective – combating violence, should itself lubricate a common objective of peace among non-state actors.

For the churches, this is possible. For example, the Roman Catholic Church has a long history of resistance to injustice in the country. It has spoken and written widely against the Gukurahundi massacres of the early 80s. It has also been influential in the subsequent peace of 1987. Even more recently, one of its officials, Father Fidelis Mukonori negotiated Mugabe’s exit from power. This means it has influence, and ability to make a difference in this regard. The fact that churches and organisations are grassroots-based offers an added advantage. Peace is more enduring if it comes from the grassroots than if imposed from above (Gaviria 2015). But in doing this, they should be mindful of being accused of meddling in politics by political players. Thus, CSOs, NGOs and churches can provide institutional linkages and a set of rhetoric necessary for the emergence of a broad-based peace movement in Zimbabwe. They can build an infrastructure of peace by creating a broad- based peace movement under the umbrella of electoral pacifism. This can bring isolated peace movements together for one common objective.

Having articulated all these concerns and issues, the question that still lingers in the mind is: How do we proceed to nurture peace journalism in the press, and make it useful in

199 violence-ridden Zimbabwe? My answer to this is that Zimbabwe needs a new peace journalism model that suits its media environment.

6.11. Rethinking peace journalism practices for the Zimbabwean press

Implementing collaborative journalism, eliminating hate-imbuing, racist, and insulting news discourses and consensus-building on the issue of electoral violence can, according to journalists, propagate and nurture peace journalism practices in the Zimbabwean press. This, however, is not sufficient for a sustainable, widely practised peace journalism alternative, though it’s a useful starting point. These explanations still fall short of a holistic model that suits Zimbabwe’s media and political situation so that peace journalism become more practical and relevant. At this juncture, I propose a recalibration of existing models of peace journalism explained in chapter three, to make them more suitable and more relevant to Zimbabwe’ context characterised by: a polarised media; high levels of electoral violence; limited news sourcing patterns (limited to political elites); lack of peace journalism education and the dominance of public-owned media, tightly controlled by the ruling party ZANU PF.

6.12. The problems of existing peace journalism models

There are still weaknesses of existing peace journalism models that necessitates the need for a Zimbabwe-specific model. One of these weaknesses is that they need to be “de-westernised”. Galtung’s (1998) and Lynch and McGoldrick’s (2005) models were developed from Western media perspectives. Scholars who have written on peace journalism in Africa, for example, Hyde-Clark (2011) and Rodney-Gumede (2015 and 2016) have done so through the theoretical lens of these models developed in Western media settings. This is problematic in some ways. Western models overlook specific and peculiar journalistic cultures obtaining in some parts of Africa. For example, in Zimbabwe, the state, through public-owned media companies like Zimpapers and NewZiana, dominate the press. Controlling more than twenty newspapers, these organisations have generally served the ruling regime interests. This has no parallel in the Western world.

Secondly, Western models of peace journalism do not factor in the differences in the nature of violence and conflicts for which they are designed. African conflicts are different

200 from those in the Middle East/Arab and Asian world where peace journalism has been applied (Wolfsfeld 2007; Lynch and McGoldrick 2006 and Ottosen 2003). Conflicts in these areas are largely inter-state conflicts. For example the Israel and Palestinian conflict, the Iraq and USA conflict, the Afghanistan – NATO (an amalgamation of some European states). On the other hand, African conflicts are intra-state – involving multiple insurgent groups in the same country (e.g. Nigeria state versus Boko Haram), or intra – party conflicts (MDC vs ZANU PF). Hence, a one-size-fits-all approach to peace journalism may not work. Each conflict would require a model, though slightly tweaked from the classic ones, to suit the peculiarities of its conflict or violence and its media structures. Hussein and Rehman (2015) note that in Balochistan, Pakistan, they discovered that existing peace journalism models work in other conflict contexts and are impractical in others. This is particularly telling on Zimbabwe. No country, arguably, has witnessed successive violent elections since 2000. Again, the state in Zimbabwe controls, arguably, more newspapers than anywhere else on the continent. States have largely restricted themselves to broadcasting while only offering some form of support to print media, without necessarily acquiring them. Another weakness with classical models of peace journalism is that they answer the question, what, and not how. For example, Galtung’s peace journalism model, the first one and the classic one, differentiates peace from war journalism. It does not, for all its undeniable strengths, articulate how then peace journalism should be practiced in the event of war, violence or conflict.

Thirdly, existing models of peace journalism underestimate the constraints that journalists face in covering conflict and violence, in particular, electoral violence. Moreover, these models are silent about the contextuality of these constraints. Each environment afflicted by conflict or violence raises its own constraints for the media operating there. For example, Columbia Journalism Review (CJR 2009), notes that in covering the Iraq war, the major obstacle to be faced by journalists was accessing information outside military structures. Carruthers (2011) notes that during the war in Afghanistan, journalists feared Taliban bombs more than any kind of censorship and threats. In covering violence and conflict, these obstacles differ according to the nature of the conflict or the violence at hand.

201

Yet, existing models of peace journalism tend to overemphasise the autonomy of the individual journalist without scrutinising the limits to this autonomy. Hanitzsch (2007:9) notes in detail,

Peace journalism … ignores the many structural constraints that shape and limit the work of journalists: few personnel, time and material resources; editorial procedures and hierarchies; textual constraints; availability of sources; access to the scene and information in general – just to name a few … .To have any impact on the way news is made … the advocates of peace journalism must address the structural constraints of news production.

Hyde –Clark (2012) agrees with Hanitzsch (2007), arguing that peace journalism ought to be exercised at all levels of news organisations if it is to realise its full potential, not just by a few within news structures. Lynch (2007) notes these constraints in some detail. However, he still focuses on “micro-level factors” – of individual agency of the journalist, largely ignoring macro-level factors that stand between the journalists and their environment. Hussein and Rehman (2015) states that peace journalism ought to be contextual, nuanced in practice and context-based. However, I still maintain that Galtung’s and Aslam’s (2014) models of peace journalism are classic campuses – pointing to the direction that peace journalism can follow. Now there is need for each conflict or violence context to develop a map – that tells specific paths to be followed in sync with the specific nature of conflict and/or violence in question.

6.13. Towards an integrated peace journalism practice model for the Zimbabwe press

Having noted these weaknesses of existing peace journalism models, the major question is: what then, can a peace journalism practice model for Zimbabwe look like? And, by extension, how would it differ from the existing ones? The model I propose here seeks to operationalise peace journalism in the Zimbabwean press by disrupting traditional election violence coverage that leans towards war journalism than peace journalism as the previous textual analysis chapter has ascertained. What I propose here is not a definitive model, nor a model that can “travel” to other context. It is a model that is possibly operationalisable within a specific case study (Zimbabwe) that exhibits special press

202 characteristics (polarisation, limited resources for journalists; heavy dependence on political elite sources, state-ownership of the press), and special (election) violence characteristics (sustained violence in about seven elections held within a period of ten years).

6.14. Key axis of a Zimbabwean peace journalism model

This section attempts to present an integrated peace journalism model that can be used in Zimbabwe during moments of election violence. I refer to it as integrated peace journalism model because it attempts to incorporate five key variables that are crucial in news production at every level

I prefer to call them the axis of the model because they constitute the pillars around which this model revolves, that should be manipulated to achieve peace journalism in Zimbabwe. These are: altering mainstream press news sourcing routines, altering the structure of the newsroom by providing for the establishment of a specialist peace journalism desk during elections, a rethink of the journalism education curriculum (J- education as it is called in journalism academia), to include peace journalism course/module, recalibrating dormant community press for peace journalism and, lastly, pushing back the influence of political economy. The model is addressed to practising journalists themselves, press activists interested in the domain of the press and peace journalism, advocates of peace journalism in Zimbabwe, journalism trainers and other interested parties. It does not seek to renounce previous models outlined in chapter 3 of this thesis, as proposed by Galtung (1999) and Aslam (2014). Rather, it respects these models and only seeks to crystallise them by operationalising them through an integration of journalism education, newsroom structures, news sourcing routines and community press involvement and utilisation. Thus, bridging what I call “the operationalisation gap” left by previous models. More so, the model I sketch here builds on earlier models’ collective acknowledgement of the fact that the press, and the media in general, count for something during moments of conflicts or violence. The next section explains the five axis in some detail.

6.15. Axis 1: expanding news voices in electoral violence news coverage: towards a “blue-collar” approach to news sourcing and reporting.

203

In this model I propose, I recognises the overall dependence of the Zimbabwean press on elite sources for news. Research around the World has suggested that most journalists use a significantly limited number of sources, most of which are elite (Keeble 1994; Claudman and Hallahan 2000). Keeble (1994) notes that elitist sources are preferred because they possess credibility, authority and relative status. Holland et al (2013) argue that in covering violence, sourcing possess great power that shape the content through which citizens and journalists see the event. Shoemaker and Vos (2009) say news sources influence how the conflict will be defined and understood. Claudman and Hallahan (2006) even claim that the intensity of a conflict can be determined by the sources used to report it.

Elite sources used by The Independent and The Sunday Mail varied from senior party members, government officials, police, military intelligence agencies and the contestants themselves. The overt dependence on these sources, as noted in the previous chapter, was responsible for hate-filled language, outright violence-mongering discourses that were replete in the news in this period. Elite officials became the dominant sources confirming or denying the involvement of their principals in violence. There was also a domineering fixation with linking electoral violence to Mugabe or Tsvangirai.

Under this model, Zimbabwe press journalists will revolutionise their news sourcing, to involve more peace-oriented voices, the victims of election violence, the side of perpetrators and eye-witnesses and anyone who have to live with the consequences of the scourge. Even peace journalism itself acknowledges the necessity of altered news sourcing routines for peace journalism. For example, Lee and Maslog (2005:1) assert,

The three most salient indicators of peace journalism are the avoidance of demonizing language, a nonpartisan approach, and a multiparty orientation. The war journalism frame is supported by a focus on the here and now, an elite orientation in news sourcing, and a dichotomy of good and bad….

Galtung (1999) equally emphasises a focus on giving voices in the media to all parties, exposing the damage caused to victims, the trauma and related suffering by according this class space in the media. Therefore, the press in Zimbabwe would abandon its elite sourcing orientation and focus on widening the voices in news. Admittedly, it would be

204 dangerous for representative democracy if the mainstream press peripherialises major political players. But an overwhelming attention on them limited the range of news on electoral violence produced and the ability of journalists to lay scrutiny at the merits and demerit of each party’s claims and counter-claims to innocence during moments of election violence. The press should also lessen the dependence on expert analysis in the coverage of election violence. The previous chapter noted a preference for political commentators and political science experts who were not participating in the election, but are still elite sources. Stromback (2010: 956) refers to these phenomenon in news as “the rise of punditocracy in the coverage of elections”. These sources offer important commentary on election violence. The problem is, their commentary still revolved around a narrow set of defined political party concerns. Some of them lack the expertise to pass informed judgements and interpret developments on the ground. More importantly, some did not hold power to account effectively, a central requirement of peace journalism.

Thus, the model I suggest here requires that the journalists should, through varied multi- sourcing of news, pursue a more independent (independent from elites) news agenda on election violence reporting that can achieve three main imperatives of covering the violence: an agenda that connects with the public’s quest for balanced news reporting on election violence; one that interrogates politicians’ claims on the causes of election violence, and their loud claims to innocence; and, lastly, an agenda that establishes the relevance and necessity of peace journalism in an environment haunted by frequent outbreaks of violence. Undoubtedly, these three imperatives may not achieve a quick – fix solution to partisan election violence coverage. But, over time, adherence to multi- sourcing of news may encourage a press news culture that connects with citizens’ need for objective news on the subject, challenge the deep-rooted myths on the subject and clear the accusatory frames surrounding election violence in Zimbabwe. By so doing, the press may reconnect with Zimbabwe’s democratic expectations on the press and people’s expectations – that the press does not gloss over their concerns about violence.

The model requires journalists to search for news from peace activists on the ground. NGOs and CSOs can be useful in this regard because they usually possess their own expertise of information gathering that the press can tap in and are most of the time,

205 connected with the population on the ground - the victims, eyewitnesses and where possible, even the perpetrators who will be willing to speak out. This would widen the debate on electoral violence and revitalise wider societal involvement in this debate. Again, this debate will engage with the generality of the population, who have a stake in the subject. Peace experts and activists on the ground are handy for peace journalism frames. But, journalists need to be cautious approaching NGOs and CSO sources. They may harbour their own agendas that may not be in sync with professional news reporting. More so, NGOs and CSOs are notorious for being critical of other players, but have problems recording their own failures (Wright 2018). Again, NGOs and CSOs may lack self-criticism and reflexivity. But there is no doubt that NGOs have an ability to provide original information about violence or conflict from remote areas (Powers 2005 and Schudson 2011).

There is a real life example that supports the use of NGOs sources as proposed under this model. In 2008 at the height of the rerun election violence, war veterans declared Uzumba-Maramba-Pfungwe, in the North-east of the country, a no-go area to the private press. This part of Zimbabwe is notorious for its violence. The violence in that area reached a level where it was even dangerous for journalist to visit. This is where NGO and CSO organisation sources can be useful. NGOs in Zimbabwe face access challenges in some rural areas like the opposition parties themselves. But they rely on their dense network of volunteers and activists well-equipped to provide a constant flow of information about the events unfolding in these inaccessible parts of a conflict or violent context (Meyer and Sangar 2017). Sallot and Johnson (2006) note that NGOs working in conflict and violent- ridden contexts actually operate as news systems that distribute news about the conflict on their websites, social media platforms and in some instances, send the information directly to journalists. Under this model, journalists would exploit such opportunities to vary sources and also because they can offer opportunities for them to produce more news with peace frames.

The emphasis of this model, in the context of news gathering, is basically, a move towards crowd-sourcing of news – or what I have termed here, “a blue-collar approach” to news sourcing. Crowd-sourcing involves the use of the public in gathering news (Vehkoo 2013).

206

Citizen role in news production is a quintessential question of the 21st century spurred by the advent of new media. So, under this model, the press pays attention to experts on the ground, sufferers tucked away in the remotest parts of the country, whistle-blowers – generally, the ordinary men and women. Factoring in the crowd is a recognition of the evolving nature of journalism as a practice. Journalists should realise that their profession has been re-conceptualised by new media technologies, and they no longer have a monopoly on news gathering and sourcing. Any model that ignores these changes suffers from a denialism of the changes infecting the field of journalism. Again, tapping for news from these lower classes is an acknowledgement of the new horizons of exploration that journalism should be understood. It should be understood as a social practice and as memory, rather than as an institution per se. For, if journalism it is understood as social practice, news gathering and dissemination would factor in the role of ordinary citizens as vital cogs in the news production process. And if journalism is understood as memory, it will allow journalist to be aware of their position as preservers of collective memory be they horrific (like the 2008 violence) or pleasant - the capturers of key moments of society.

A blue collar approach to news gathering renders itself more to discourses of peace journalism in the sense that it allows for the capture of the victims of violence. More so, it highlights the stories of those who experience violence and have no media space to relate their experiences. Thus, it syncs well with the objectives of peace journalism – capturing grassroots traumas with conflict and violence. This is not new in Zimbabwe. Father Michael Traber, the, the Roman Catholic Missionary in the then Rhodesia practised it. In the 1970s, he edited The Moto, a Roman Catholic magazine that was able to relate the traumatic experiences of rural people during the war of the liberation struggle (Windrich 1977 and Mugari 2015). Michael Traber gave the liberation parties – ZANU PF and ZAPU a platform to challenge mainstream stereotypes of them as terrorists. He created a network of informants that was able to supply The Moto with news on the liberation struggle in isolated areas where the war was severe and brutal (Windrich 1977). Thus, through this news approach that sourced news from those affected by violence, Traber was able to document the atrocities of the war, and bring it to international and domestic attention. More so, The Moto advocated for complete coverage of the war violence

207 encompassing the remote and marginalised areas and capturing victims’ experiences with the war.

By involving citizens as sources of news on election violence, as proposed by this model, the press would be going a long way in demystifying certain ill-founded beliefs about Zimbabwe politics – that journalists as partisan as they may be, remain the sole interpreters-in-chief of the country’s political events, campaigns, actually nearly everything because of the absence of any other alternative sources of interpretation. Again, the space accorded to citizens to contribute would allow them to question the moral and ethical dimensions of Zimbabwean politics. Thus, involvement of a variety of sources would not only mean a better and far enhanced adherence to peace journalism, but the destruction of Zimbabwe journalists’ aura of magisterial entitlement of both the space and the debate around election violence, which can no longer hold nor justified. This might be a tortuous process for the press because it challenges a long-standing traditions of news sourcing, but it is worthy the challenge. By crowd-sourcing news from the communities, other than elites sources, the press is simply tapping into what these communities already have – defined groups and individuals affected by election violence.

Changing news sourcing routines in this way can be a challenge, however. News from the ‘subaltern’ classes have never been classified, by traditional news practices and routines as such. Mainstream news tend to rely on elite sources. Even in Galtung and Ruge’s (1965) topology of news, these classes do not constitute sources of news. For example, Galtung and Ruge (1965) give aspects like negativity, reference to elite nations, and elite persons, as core news values. The classes, mostly ravaged by the consequences of election violence do not fit into this accepted elite classes. This means, it would be a challenge to convince mainstream press to deviate from their taken-for – granted news gathering routines to pursue these stories. They have, perhaps, to produce real aberrant news to feature in the mainstream. But election killing should be aberrant enough to be part of the mainstream.

6.16. Axis II: the peace journalism desk in the press newsrooms

This model’s other pillar is the establishment of an independent peace journalism desk during violent elections. When there is a specialist desk responsible for covering election

208 violence and practising peace journalism, there is a chance that deep, strong and beneficial relationships with sources are cultivated. This will strengthen the flow of news on electoral violence and the dedicated journalists on this desk can report along peace- oriented frames. Journalists on this desk would have ample time and focus to initiate and structure relations with central figures, sources at an “industrial” scale, which allows them to exert effective control over the flow of information and news on election violence, rather than depend on political elites who bring stories plus their preferred framing – usually irreconcilable with peace journalism frames. This would be difficult to achieve if election violence is treated ordinarily as part of political news. “Fly-by-night” news coverage of election violence cannot achieve sustainable peace journalism through robust contextualisation and problematisation of the scourge.

It would mean they have ample time to pursue formal and informal contacts, explore stories concealed from the public without the risk of having to abandon this pursuit for another different story as assigned by the editor. A special desk for peace journalism assist the journalists on this desk to develop ways to manoeuvre around newsroom constraints that may hinder their ultimate success with digging deep into election violence causes and related developments. For example, journalists can circumnavigate the formal news source channels that are preferred by editors, and that might yield different stories not necessarily to do with peace journalism. They would rely on their own sources that yield different but still reliable stories. Establishing alternative news sources, as explained in the first axis above, is key to peace journalism. One of the interview respondents agreed with this need for a specialist desk during elections.

We do not have to do what I call shuttle journalism. I call it shuttle reporting because at one time you are reporting about maybe cholera in the locations. In the afternoon you abandon this and you are covering a political rally. Later in the day you are at the official opening of something somewhere. You are a jack of all trades and a master of none… (Herbert Zharare, personal communication, 21 January 2018).

Simbarashe Muparaganda (personal communication 15 January 2018) said,

209

If my job was to report election only, I would have done a far better job than I have done so far…but there has been many staff cuts… we are much of the time, everything from sports reporter, health reporter and political reporter…

That they assume different professional positions as demanded by superiors partly accounts for their failure to provide contextualised news and information on election violence and to explore the significant and underlying patterns of the violence. Because of the fast nature of news reporting, journalists are oriented towards election violence stories that could comfortably be serviced by the particular information generated through easy-to-get sources. This guarantees a steady flow of fragmented and non-holistic news coverage, a focus on particular discreet episodes rather than detailed and holistic approaches of election violence coverage. Furthermore, the complexities of election violence and the dangers associated with covering it, like being misled by sources, means that journalists would not pursue stories vigorously with sources. This justifies the need for a special peace journalism desk that can be granted ample time, and possibly, resources to pursue stories. Granted time, journalists on this special desk can break the mutually acknowledged normative restraints that usually characterise news/information exchange between the journalists and their sources. For example, the restraints that sources’ demands for some information not to be revealed, may discourage critical lines of election violence inquiry.

However, the establishment of this desk has to compete with the already established and widely acknowledged beat system in the newsroom which does not encompass peace journalism. A beat in the newsroom is a special area of responsibility like council, business and markets, health associations (Nel 2001). This approach is routinised across many newsrooms. Disrupting this to inflect a peace journalism beat is no mean task. The beat system is widely trusted because it is thought to be efficient (Glasser and Lee 1990). Under the beat system, for example, journalists know where to find tomorrow’s news even if they do not know what the news would be like. In some countries, public officials are compelled to release some information journalist want. This guarantees some form of bureaucratically credible news under the beat system (Fishman 1980). In this model, the press should disrupt this beat system for two main reasons. Firstly, it is still biased in

210 favour of the elites and the “managers of the status quo” (Gouldner 1976:1123-4). Secondly, it has no place for peace journalism. So, disrupting and displacing the beat system for an untested approach that seeks to thrive on traditionally peripheral news sources represents a real threat to the practice of news production and by extension, to revenue systems in a period when press revenue stability is under threat. It is a gigantic gamble likely to meet resistance from conservative editors, but, for sustainable peace journalism, it is an imperative necessity to take. This is still fraught with obvious dangers. For example, what happens if the qualified or experienced journalists on this desk leave? This can be an issue. Again, the approach tends to ghettoise peace journalism reporting, by making it an exclusive domain of a few journalists thereby isolating it and making it unavailable to other journalists who may contribute to conflict de-escalation. I argue, however, that despite these dangers, having the desk provides a critical step in moments of election violence.

6.17. Axis III: provision of peace education for journalists

For the model to work, there is supposed to be a steady supply of trained journalists, oriented to peace journalism as a practice. A sustainable peace journalism culture can only be conceived if journalism training institutions, (referred to as J-Schools, according to Tulloch and Manchon 2017) adopts peace journalism as a course or a module within their journalism curriculum. Training journalists would foster the necessary peace journalism news writing skills, the ability to foster civic engagement especially with victims in addition to the usual training that emphasise working under pressure of tight deadlines. From the interviews captured in this chapter, it is evident that J-Schools need transformation in Zimbabwe if they are to play their part in ensuring peace. Training in peace journalism would also help contain the influence of ideology as a hindrance to the practice of peace journalism. Journalists would be oriented in training to accept that no matter their ideological predilections, peace is a common denominator amongst all, and the practice of peace journalism is relevant if media are to make their contribution to peace in Zimbabwe. Josephi (2009) says, “Journalism schools serve as both a preparation for and as corrective to the profession”, (in Wenger et al 2017:3).

211

Adoption of peace education in Zimbabwe’s J-schools would face considerable challenges, chief amongst them being lack of teaching expertise in the field and (possible) resistance in J-Schools and faculties. Reforming a curriculum has always been a hot potato in universities, often unnecessarily politicised. Some within J-Schools see any move towards the introduction of a new course or the abolition of another one as a move either to render them redundant or to create jobs for favoured people. But, the greatest threat to any reform of J-School curriculum, according to Shapiro (2014), is journalism itself. Journalism, both as a profession and academic endeavour has never been defined with clarity. While its core principles of accuracy, timeliness and relevance have stood the test of time and remained intact, the skills required to practice journalism sit on shifting sands, being continuously expanded with advances in communication technology and the evolving nature of preferences in news consumption. Thus, it would be difficult to know with certainty what aspects of peace journalism to teach while the goals of journalism are continuously being altered. J-Schools in universities may be equally hesitant in my view, to transform their journalism courses and their departments into job training centres, instead, they may prefer keeping them as they are - institutions of higher learning. A move towards peace journalism may trigger these fears. But then what would be the point of any journalism training that mimics journalistic practices, instead of improving them? J- Schools trainers should be privy to the developments on the political, social and economic front so that their curriculum responds accordingly. For example, in Zimbabwe, election violence is a clear and present danger that eats into the social, political and economic fabric. Therefore, a firm understanding of this circumstance helps trainers know what is urgent and what can be done. Mentioning peace journalism amongst trainers who are not privy to it may evoke fears that they would produce reporters for political pandering. But this fear can easily be allayed if trainers are informed that peace journalism adheres to same old principles, albeit from a more constructive angle of peace-oriented reporting, one that undoubtedly enhances their social responsibility roles.

The press itself can lobby for the inclusion of this training in J-Schools. The Paynther Institute study of 2013 says it has become customary that J-Schools consult industry on the nature of training to be provided so that educators keep abreast with industry changes. Thus, J- Schools and media institutions in the country should adopt, under this model,

212 what Deuze (2006: 25) calls “the follower mode of journalism education”. This mode dictates that the mission of journalism training should be a reflection of the actual wants and needs of the specific economic, social and political environment. In arguing for peace journalism, the point is not that old training objectives should disappear. It is inclusion – adding to what is there. Core skills will remain. But peace journalism would be added to produce a well-rounded conflict-sensitive journalist able to cultivate networks, enterprising, interactive with the public, able to survive in conflicts itself and produce peace-oriented news frames in moments of conflicts or violence. Alternatively, J-Schools in Zimbabwe can introduce a broad course on media and conflict if they are scared of peace journalism’s unbridled alignment to an ideal. This broad course can still offer advantages like widening journalists’ knowledge of media strategies during conflicts. Lynch (2013) says broad approaches to media and conflicts, help to collaborate the message of peace in a way suitable in other public spheres, other than journalism, which is a useful job in itself.

There is also need for J- Schools to think beyond normativity. They need to question the existing normative models of journalism and news reporting, like the professional model. They need to encourage other forms of journalism – that allow for engagement with the masses – for example, peace journalism, solution journalism and others. Thus, on top of skills, J- Schools should focus on training that question normative assumptions being taught in classes, and one that critic the theoretical premises and assumptions on which current journalism education is based on. This would venture into important aspects of political economy of the media. Students should understand that, “he who pays the piper dictates the tune”. By understanding the issues of ownership and funding, this provides an appreciation of factors that may stand in the way of other practices like peace journalism. Also, political economy would help students understand more the relationship between conflict and commerce- that media are business and conflict makes profits. J - Schools would also need to strengthen ethics as a field.

6.18. Axis IV: harnessing the dormant potential of Zimbabwe’s community press for peace journalism

213

In this model, I propose that the potentially robust power of the community press be harnessed for peace journalism. Each of Zimbabwe’s ten provinces has a public-owned community newspaper under the entity NewZiana (see chapter 2 of this thesis). In an integrated peace journalism model, these community newspapers would be useful as outlets of peace journalism framed election violence news. Community newspapers would be relevant in offering first-hand accounts of what is happening around their immediate communities. Excluded communities who, most of the times are the victims of election violence, can be empowered by this bottom-up approach to reporting election violence, which allows them to provide the news on what is transpiring within their communities. This would empower victims to act as senders of news and, possibly, resist the propaganda of the elite politicians and urban-based mainstream newspapers about their experiences. A good example is that of The Hindustan Times in New Delhi. In 1974 it “adopted a village and wrote weekly stories about issues and concerns raised by this community” (Verghese 1975:14). The result was a heightened awareness of that community’s problems by residents who read the newspaper, and a willingness to engage with the problems at communal levels (Verghese 1975).

By harnessing the power of the community press, the intention is to focus on election violence within specific communities. More focused community reporting can refocus the subject of election violence back on the community’s agenda, possibly forcing local policy makers to act, encouraging change and reforms. Blanks (1996:1) notes that news reports on conflicts and violence within community newspapers can contribute immensely, “to the creation and maintenance of the community’s stability and its adjustment to change in the large social environment”. Hahn et al (2014) argue that community newspapers can be influential in intervening against issues that the particular community view negatively. In their study of a rural Kentucky community newspaper, Hahn et al (2014) find out that the newspaper was able to advocate against high levels of adult smoking, which was the highest in the USA, standing at 31,8%. They note that a community newspaper can increase the frequency of coverage of the issue, heighten the prominence of the issue in the news, seek the opinions of influential community leaders adopt advocacy strategies tailor-made to curtail the undesired behaviour. Hindman (1996) says after all, community newspapers should reflect the content related to the community’s conditions. In this

214 model, Zimbabwe’s community press will be utilised for the purpose of peace journalism so that it reflects the unique experiences of particular community via-a-viz election violence. In the process, the community press will point out the unique needs of that community as well as its peculiar failures and accomplishments in relation to combating election violence.

However, the Zimbabwean community press, like its mainstream public- owned press, still reflect ZANU PF ideology. They are still vulnerable content-wise, to covering events happening outside their communities. This compromises their “communityness”. Secondly, local communities in Zimbabwe have no control over these newspapers like in other countries, the USA, for example (Hahn et al 2104). Consequently, these communities have not even resisted the dominance of “non-community” content in their newspapers. Perhaps, they are accustomed to seeing “their” community newspaper reflecting dominant national politics than local issues and power dynamics. Yet election violence usually is a reflection of local power dynamics (Costalli and Rugeri 2018) which a community press should focus on more. Thus, integrating Zimbabwe’s community newspapers into the service of peace journalism as I propose here would mean altering their long-entrenched habits of covering broader national politics at the expense of community issues, and redefine their focus to particular community orientations. This should be their role anyway! Other attendant dangers include the limited financial muscle of the community press, smaller staff and possibly less journalism training as no highly qualified journalists would want to work for a community newspaper in Zimbabwe in their present state. These factors may stand in the way of harnessing the power of the community press for peace journalism. But, if well-resourced and tilted away from dominant ruling party politics, the dormant potential of the community press can be handy towards peace journalism.

6.19. Axis V: pushing back the negative influence of state control of the public press: reviving the Mass Media Trust.

I propose that in order to push back the negative influence of press control by the state, the Zimbabwe Mass Media Trust (ZMMT), must be revived. The ZMMT was formed in January 1981. It was meant to superintend over the transfer of media operations, asserts

215 and a change in editorial policies from the white minority to the black majority (Saunders 1991 and Rønning and Kupe 2000). It became a buffer, standing between the state and the public media operations. Rønning and Kupe (2000: 139) assert thus, “The government was reluctant to expose itself to charges of exerting undue influence over the media, particularly as ZANU PF had criticized the Argus press for being at the service of the UDI regime…” Saunders (1991) further notes that the ZMMT was an interesting “Lehrstiicke” for interpreting the relationship between the public-owned press in Africa and the government. It was constitutionally prescribed with a nonpartisan board of trustees. For a time, it was successful to resisting the new government’s zeal to exert editorial control over the public press. As the new ZANU PF government hopped from one scandal to another (e.g. fraud, firearms scandals, corruption etc), its resolve to control the public discourse increased (Mukasa 2003).

It had some autonomy, serve for its financial dependence on the government (Rønning and Kupe 2000). Even sitting members of parliament, members of the civil service and armed services could not be members of its board. I propose that this trust be revived, albeit in a new form. By new form, two major reforms would be necessary to push the state away from editorial influence and allow journalists to report freely, and hopefully, practice peace journalism. Firstly, a new ZMMT should still be a constitutional creature. This means media organisations and activists ought to push hard for this considering the recalcitrance of the Zimbabwe ruling elites to reform. Secondly, it should be created with enough checks and balances, especially in terms of its funding that will ensure the state has no way back into the public-owned media. For example, if funding is statutorily provide by parliament and not by the ministry as in the previous board. Journalists form the state controlled The Sunday Mail complained about the influence of the ruling party in news content production. I argue here that reviving this extinct trust can be the only viable of re-establishing news editorial autonomy in the public press. However, this argument is not entirely based on that the now extinct ZMMT was successful in its days. Rather, the argument is based on the fact that the now extinct ZMMT made bold attempts to ensure editorial independence of the public media from ZANU PF. The argument is also based on some form of ‘desperation’ – wrought by the realisation that there is no other way of wrestling the public press from the ruling party except by establishing a trust.

216

Admittedly, this Trust was never completely successful in dealing with the overbearing hand of the state on the public media. The state exercised undue influence through funding. More so, the Trust never dealt with the blatantly skewed or scant and nonexisting, reporting of opposition to, grievances with, and demonstrations and strikes against the government and the ruling party, as well as uncritical praise of the party and its leadership. This explains why, in this model, I propose that a new Trust comes with constitutional guarantees of financial independence. This may go a long way in achieving success in pushing back the ruling party government from interference. One veteran journalist, Barnabas Thodhlana who witnessed the formation and dissolution of ZMMT agrees, “It was not often effective. But I know it was a far better buffer than the current scenario where the ruling party rides roughshod and blatantly dictates how news will be covered” Another journalist admitted, “A weak system is better than no system at all. For a start, the ZMMT would give public press journalists the confidence that they are shielded from the overreaching hand of the ruling party. That confidence is very important. So, it is a very good starting point” (Journalist from The Sunday Mail, personal interviews 20 August 2018).

6.20. Axis, action lines and expected outcomes of an integrated peace journalism model for the Zimbabwe press

On the table below, the axis, action lines and expected outcomes of an integrated peace journalism model are summed up.

ACTION LINES EXPECTED OUTCOMES AXIS Introduction of peace Better trained crop of peace Peace journalism in J-Schools journalists journalism education More on-the –job training for Generation of awareness political reporters towards peace journalism Refresher courses for reporters Effective peace journalism on peace journalism related framing of election violence news.

217

Newsroom awareness campaigns on peace journalism Hired expert talks for peace journalism A move away from elite- Disrupting elite bias in news oriented sources to victim- frames that tend to promote the oriented sources conflict Sourcing news from lower level party members who usually Alternative news sourcing suffer the violence Focusing on stories of victims routines Incorporating NGOS and and their experiences. CSOs organisation who work Widening news sourcing with citizens at grassroots routines and voices Crowd-sourcing news on Engendering local and widely- electoral violence to include involving debates on election eyewitnesses, experts, violence. community leaders Specialist journalists manning Specialist reporting on electoral peace journalism desks during violence Introduction of a peace elections More active role for journalists in journalism desk during Establishing reliable and non- reporting election violence elections elite sources for news Comprehensive investigation of Cross-linkage with grassroots election violence cases to better activists and other related society networks Refocusing community Bottom-up reporting of election newspaper for peace violence Harnessing the dormant journalism practices Visible use of peripheral potential of the community Ensuring the community press sources and individuals focuses on local issues than

218

press during election national issues covered by A more robust focus on violence mainstream press. particular communities, their efforts to arrest violence, successes and failures Setting a communal agenda for peace in the news Continued and sustained advocacy for peace through the community press

Fending off political pressure Reviving the ZMMT to manage from the public-owned press the public-owned press ‘Fencing off’ the public press Pushing back the negative from ruling party elite politicians’ influence of political interference in the public press. economy factors to the Ensuring that public press is practice of peace adequately funded with no journalism strings attached through editorial influence.

FIG 3: The table above provides clarity to the model description and explanation of the five axis provided in the preceding section.

Being intellectual devices meant to make processes easier to understand (Mortensen 2004), models should basically explain complex processes, on top of being easier to understand (Lehr 1990). Greenwood (1989) says models should have testable consequences. Greenwood (1989:90) clearly states, “The key to a useful model is the degree to which it conforms in point-by-point correspondence to an underlying determinant of communicative behaviour”. In addition to clarifying the structure of a

219 complex peace journalism model, the table illustration provided above gives some form of order to the complexity explained in the preceding section. However, this table can be represented in as a model, with heuristic value that provides new ways of conceiving the relationship among the five axis of the model provided. The model illustration below offers a simplified insight into our understanding of this integrated peace journalism model by clarifying in simpler representation, the fact that the five axis work together and should be viewed as complementary towards one goal of peace journalism.

FIG 4: A proposed integrated peace journalism model for the Zimbabwean press

Specialist peace journalism desks in newsrooms

Reviving ZMMT

ENHANCED PEACE JOURNALISM Harnessing community PRACTICES newspapers’ potential wi Widening news sourcing routines

Peace journalism education

220

The figure above illustrates a peace journalism model for the Zimbabwean press which contains the proposed elements that can be manipulated to achieve sustainable and meaningful peace journalism practices

6.21. Strengthening the integrated peace journalism model

This model presented here is a “perforated calabash” – meaning it depends on the five axis successfully linking together to achieve a sustainable peace journalism culture in Zimbabwe. Three issues can help improve this model. Firstly, if it is subjected to empirical collaboration. Secondly, if it possibly, be subjected to cross-cultural comparative analysis in press and political environments almost similar to Zimbabwe’s. Such an environment may be difficult to find. As it stands, its greatest undoing is the fact that it is being proposed for a Zimbabwean political and press environment. Thirdly, the model can be improved by framing it within this ever-growing peace journalism research field taking cognisance of the confluence of journalism practice and journalism education amongst other factors.

For this model to succeed, there is need for the public press to be weaned from special (political) interests. In other words, the press ought not to be mobilised by sectional interests. Secondly, the press should remain non-official as institutions. If these aspects are achieved, the press can successfully, under this model, practice peace journalism. In the process, the press will occupy a critical role in the re-establishment of a common interest that speaks against election violence. It will also widen and deepen debates and public discussions on the subject of electoral violence. Thus, the press will stop doing further harm to Zimbabwe’s political life, a harm it has exerted through its biased, emotive binary coverage of election violence news.

6.22. Conclusion

This chapter has outlined and discussed the factors raised by journalists during interviews that stand in the way of successful peace journalism practices. The discussion in this chapter noted factors like journalism ideology, employment tenure and widespread ignorance of peace journalism as among factors obstructing a sustainable culture of peace journalism practices. The second part of this chapter presented a model that can be implemented for peace journalism in the Zimbabwe press. The model outlined

221 integrates five possible axis within the reach of peace journalism advocates and practitioners, which can be re-calibrated for peace journalism. A recurring observation made in this chapter during the interviews and the presentation of the model proposed, is that for peace journalism to thrive in the Zimbabwean press, it is important for ruling political elites in government to let go of their vice grip tentacles on the public press so that the public press regains its lost mojo as an objective and non-partisan institution to be trusted as news sources. After all, government is best when it governs the least.

The next chapter, which is the last chapter of this thesis, provides critical reflections of the findings made in this thesis.

222

CHAPTER 7

Conclusion

Rethinking election violence news coverage in post-2000 Zimbabwe

“Coverage of elections should be done in ways that serve the interests of citizens by enhancing citizens’ engagement with and understanding of politics ahead of different elections” (Cushion and Thomas 2018:165).

7.1. Introduction

This chapter provides critical reflections on the overall findings made, and on how they respond to the questions posed at the beginning as well as to the objectives set out. The thesis has explored the frames and discourses associated with electoral violence news coverage in the Zimbabwean mainstream press and the extent to which they conform to peace journalism practices. The prevalent and competing discursive constructions of election violence news show that peace journalism is not a common practice in the two weeklies studied. Their news frames and discourses highlight the tension between two theoretical standpoints. These are: the perspective that the press through careful selection of frames and discourses construct reality; and the perspective that the press simply reflect reality. I have furthermore, explored how the complex interaction of newsroom journalistic practices, ideologies, newsroom cultures, and press ownership have militated against peace journalism practices among journalists in the Zimbabwean press. In the process, I established that press polarisation, pitting the publicly-owned versus the privately-owned media, has also been responsible for the failure to produce alternative understandings of election violence that encompass peace journalism approaches. In chapter 6, I have proposed a model that alters news-gathering and reporting practices aiming to promote sustainable peace journalism practices. The model seeks to steer the press away from partisan news coverage. In the different chapters of this thesis, I have argued that peace journalism is, more than ever, needed in Zimbabwe as a result of the prevalence of election violence.

This last chapter reflects on the key observations and findings made and on how to tackle the complex relationship of peace journalism and election violence.

223

7.2. The “priestly” versus the “prophetic” press

The metaphor of priests and prophets (Mugari 2015) aptly explains how the two mainstream newspapers have reported election violence in Zimbabwe between the years 2000 and 2013. The reconstitution of election violence in the press is characterised by a lack of voice for the victims. Even as news coverage remains rigidly biased along party lines, victims remain without a voice in much of the coverage. The denial of voice for the victims of election violence signified their symbolic annihilation on a subject that seriously affects them. This marginalisation and silencing of victims is in direct opposition to what a peace journalism-oriented press would be like. The Sunday Mail re-enacts election violence by assuming a “priestly” role – a legitimating function of ZANU PF’s hegemonic order. The paper is largely silent about state-sponsored and state institutions-instigated election violence. Its goal, as noted in chapters 5 and 6 of this thesis, is to shield the ruling elites from blame by remaining loudly critical of the opposition parties. Like the biblical Old Testament priests, the paper “anoints” the ruling regime as legitimate without critically questioning the regime’s reliance on violence for political power.

The Independent largely plays a “prophetic” role in the coverage of election violence. Like the Old Testament prophets, the paper upbraids and rebukes the state and its institutions for their role in election violence. The paper makes an appreciable effort to attempt to expose election violence instigators and perpetrators, in line with the dictates of peace journalism. And like the biblical prophets, the paper prophesises more violence if Zimbabwe’s institutions are not reformed. The 2018 post-election violence, in which about seven people were killed by the army and several injured largely vindicates the prophetic insistence of The Independent that Zimbabwe needs to obey its own rules and reform state institutions so that they do not actively participate in party politics. The Independent attempts to speak truth to power like Judaic prophets in the mould of Daniel, Isaiah and Jeremiah, who also challenged the political establishments of their times. The Independent continuously and correctly questions the legitimacy of a regime whose cornerstone of survival is violence.

7.3. What Zimbabwe journalists need to unlearn

224

There are many habits, cultures and practices that Zimbabwean journalists need to unlearn if they are to play a meaningful role as part of a public sphere where the scourge of election violence is robustly debated. Firstly, partisan reporting stands in the way of a balanced coverage of election violence and peace journalism practices. Zimbabwean journalists should start understanding the harm that partisan reporting has done to the reputation of the press especially as a conduit of political information. It exacerbates the loss of trust in the press amongst citizens. If this trust is to be rebuilt, partisan news coverage should be unlearned. Traditional news gathering that is biased in favour of the elites still remains a hindrance to peace journalism practices. There is need, therefore, for the press to embrace dialogic forms of news gathering and interactions that give groups, like victims of electoral violence some spaces in the press.

This can only happen if journalists move away from their pro-elitist culture of news sourcing, which largely serves power, to a more agential interaction that integrates marginalised groups as part of news sources. Thus, what has been learnt as the traditional and acceptable canons of good journalism ought to be unlearnt as a hindrance to peace journalism-oriented news reporting in Zimbabwe. The failure of journalists to engage with the numerous voices that have suffered the violence has reduced them effectively to “political ventriloquists” in the service of political elites. Hence, skewed news sourcing practices are some of the negative habits that ought to be discarded. The exclusion of subaltern and victims’ voices in newsgathering impairs peace journalism. Going forward, I want to conclude by explaining what I assert to be “future imperatives” for the press if it is to rediscover its mojo as a fourth estate for the sake of peace journalism. These imperatives are: the need to refocus election violence towards a “public logic”; closing the democratic accountability gap that comes with press partisanship; and connecting the newsroom for greater and informative coverage of election violence.

7.4. Re-focusing election violence coverage: Towards a “public logic” in news coverage

By “public logic”, I mean a kind of news coverage that places at its centre the experiences of the public with election violence – rather than the claims and counter-claims of politicians about its causes. A public logic rationale flows from what Cushion and Thomas

225

(2018: 165) call a “media logic”: “The organising principles behind the editorial selection and communication of election coverage”. In the previous chapters, I note that the press is obsessed with general discourses and frames of demonisation that focus more on covering political parties than individual citizens falling victim to rampant election violence. Why would a public logic be necessary? Firstly, it is necessary because political parties tend to either limit, evade or even ban questions from journalists that they deem hostile (Cushion and Thomas 2018). Thus, if journalists insist on covering parties only, they risk being complicit by sticking to the messages of political parties. Secondly, a public logic would serve better democratic value by picking up issues that are public-oriented – rather than party-oriented. But, as I noted in chapter 5, political parties in Zimbabwe give messages about election violence, not news. They give “massaged” and “spun” messages that do not implicate them. This is bad news for peace journalism as news coverage ends up being tangled in accusations and counter-accusations. In the process, coverage fails to tackle the broad role of state institutions, militias and other instigators of election violence. This kind of coverage also fails to capture the fears and concerns of citizens about election violence.

For example, in 2017 a Mass Public Opinion Institute of Zimbabwe (MPOIZ) poll showed that election violence was the most widespread single concern for any future election in the country. Yet, this public concern issue was largely ignored by the press. They chose to emphasise what journalists and political elites seemingly “agreed” were the concerns of any election – costs of living, jobs, education and health. A public logic informed news coverage perspective would construct and reflect public fears as, for example, shown in this opinion poll report. Thus, if the press covers election violence from a public’s rather than political elites’ perspective, they would be syncing with the democratic needs of the citizenry. Reporting elections should close the gap between the concerns of the voters and the election campaign news agenda (Cushion and Thomas 2018). Thus, how the mainstream press covers election violence leaves yawning a “democratic gap”, which the press, normatively, should help to close.

7.5. Reporting election violence and the democratic accountability gap.

226

By democratic accountability, I take the definition of Connors and Smith (2009) to mean the obligations of institutions like the press assigned to inform the public, critique, explain, justify or scorn the decisions made by those in power. A gap exists when their normative roles are a pale shadow of their practical actions on the ground. I acknowledge the criticisms of surrounding normative theory – i.e. that it is prescriptive, and devoid of reality in practice (Sparks 1992). In spite of this criticism, the press’ normative role remains relevant as institutional mechanisms to hold power to account. Bernstein (1992) notes that the press remains a central mechanism to ensure accountability of the elite’s government to the governed. Sparks (1992) notes that the provision of political information is central to the function of the mainstream press in any democracy. The failure of peace journalism in the Zimbabwean press contributes to Zimbabwe’s postcolonial democratic travails. This is because the press is central to a liberal democracy that Zimbabwe always claims to mimic. By liberal democracy, I adopt Dunleavy’s definition (1987): a government system that recognises and protects the rights and freedoms of individuals and where the rule of law limits the exercise of executive power. When the press fails to hold the political elites accountable and responsible for their electoral transgressions, they contribute to an ever-growing chasm in Zimbabwe between institutions and their accountability to society. I admit that this is not a problem specific to Zimbabwe, but one that has become widespread. Yet, despite its widespread nature, it still raises concerns especially in polities like Zimbabwe, where liberal democracy is yet to develop firmer roots and wider political acceptability and practice.

There is a huge accountability gap that, going forward, ought to be closed off by more responsible reporting on the part of the press. That hateful political language promoting violence ought to be denied a news platform should be logical. It is not a function of democracy to accord violent rhetoric some oxygen. I have noticed how, for example, The Sunday Mail has given war-like discourses space, and in the process has intensified the politics of violence and hate. This opens up a yawning accountability gap, where the press is no longer providing information about election violence to the ordinary citizens. The major reason for this is that the press fails to extricate itself from the influence of the political elites. The press could not resist the visible penetration of elites in the day to day

227 production of election violence news, and this poses a serious challenge to both press freedom and democracy.

Such practices do not contribute to the building of a robust democracy, one that is sufficiently and effectively leashed by open critique by the press – a press that is responsive to any violation of set rules by political players. The two newspapers largely fail to make a substantial contribution to the quality of Zimbabwe’s self-proclaimed liberal democracy through holding power to account by critiquing the disruptive culture of election violence. This failure highlights a characteristic of the press in post-colonial Zimbabwe – that it is structured along two lines. There is the elite who control the narrative on election violence, then the ordinary people who read without influencing the discourses. As I have shown, this structure of the press ought not to be understood simply as a consequence of the behaviour of the journalists, editors and reporters in the newsrooms, neither is it an accident.

Admittedly, the Mugabe regime, which maintained a tight grip on the public-owned press, is gone. But the Mnangagwa regime while it has assured some democratic changes, still mimics the Mugabe regime in many respects. The “new” regime has, for example, allowed for more public demonstrations, public gatherings and freer political campaigning during elections than the deposed Mugabe government. But even under the “new” regime, the publicly-owned press remains pro-ruling party, and the hand of government interference in the press and the publicly-owned media in general remains visible. And most damning of all for a regime that claims it wants to govern differently, the Orwellian press laws remain unreformed. A hope-inspiring starting point would have been an unshackled press. But there is no evidence that restrictive press regimes would be removed in the near future by the Mnangagwa-led government.

In order to close this democratic gap, there is need to develop a strong and coherent information policy. Such a policy would enable the existing and widest range of voices and views to be put forward in the press. Secondly, it may assist in ensuring that these voices command an equal chance of drawing public attention. Such a policy may ensure that the masses have access to serious news on election violence, not the political praise and worship discourses falling short of a clear problematisation of violence, and

228 addressing a fragmented audience of party supporters. In addition, there should be legislation that guarantees non-intervention by the politicians especially in the public press affairs. I have argued this point in the previous chapter (section 6: 12).

Such an information policy may be difficult to achieve in practice because the public press still have to negotiate both market conditions and political restrictions. But, if given an attempt, an information policy, backed by a non-interventionist policy, can create new opportunities for news coverage of election violence away from political elites’ narratives. I am extremely pessimistic as to the chances of these guarantees being given, especially by the current ZANU PF regime. Their public policy pronouncements do not point to a party that would easily let go of the public press. For example, the recent pronouncement that are no intention to reform and revive ZMMT to fence it off from government and political party interference.

Another alternative to closing the democratic deficit gap by the press would be for the newsrooms to intensify some form of “mixed coverage” of election violence. By “mixed coverage”, I mean a mixture of both commentary and “fact based” coverage. Commentary has been criticised for offering too much subjective journalistic interpretations of news (McNair 2012) at the expense of straightforward “facts”. Despite this criticism, a mixture of both styles would, perhaps, allow the press to offer the hard news stories and open the subject to commentary by both experts and the affected citizens. This may go a long way in restoring the interpretive function of the press, which is vital for its role in a democracy (McNair 2012). Currently, there is too much emphasis on the hard news.

The democratic gap can be closed by a renewed focus on a press watchdog role. Part of the watchdog role of the press involves the creation of a “critical conversation” backed with discursive sensibility. By discursive sensibility, I mean that the press should not engage in the divisive and polarising discourses that have a tendency of spurring political suspicion in society. In the process, the press should widen their “nose” for news, which allows them to “smell” the news. Watchdogism means that the lived experiences of election violence victims ought to be captured in news with a clear understanding that electoral violence in Zimbabwe is historically shaped, politically structured within institutions, and contextually situated within specific elections. Thus, there is evidence, as

229 demonstrated in the preceding chapters, that the two newspapers engage in deliberate, vituperative, divisive and organised production of disinformation. Closing the democratic gap is about transcending political lines and resisting politicians’ zeal for manipulating the press for their political ends. Thus, journalists should be facilitators of debates and discussions on election violence rather than gatekeepers. A facilitator’s role should “foster new ways of envisioning [news], creativity, audience engagement and community storytelling” which are the hallmarks of peace journalism (Moore and Hatcher 2008: 2).

7.6.Recommendations If peace journalism is to have a sustainable foothold in Zimbabwe’s press newsrooms, journalists need to adopt participatory and collaborative approaches in news reporting. Peace journalism thrives in a participatory and collaborative journalism environment – where journalists collaborate with society to capture stories of violence and simultaneously allow victims to air out their narratives. Burum and Quinn (2016: 28) note that “participatory journalism happens when citizens are directly involved in the process of collecting, reporting, analysing and disseminating news and information”. Collaborative journalism describes a situation where media and citizens work together and is focused on achieving a specific outcome – of gathering news (Burum and Quinn 2016: 29). Electoral violence in Zimbabwe is a national concern. A facilitative role would allow those affected by it to become “content creators” – telling their stories and narrating their experiences of victimhood. Journalists would in this case help coordinate this narration, facilitate the debate and listen to these diverse experiences. This approach syncs well with the demands of peace journalism. Lynch and McGoldrick (2005) note that peace journalism means allowing victims to tell their stories by according them the deliberative space to do that. Gilmor (2006: 49) notes that “The ability of anyone to make the news will give a new voice to the people who have felt voiceless and whose stories we need to hear”.

How can this collaboration be achieved? As noted in the previous chapter, journalists will have to talk to each other, view each other as partners rather than political enemies. Journalists will have to engage with each other more to allow news on election violence to appear on a variety of outlets and to forge a collective view against election violence.

230

In chapter 3, an example is given of Kenyan media on the eve of the 2013 elections. They agreed to carry similar headlines that spoke against election violence at agreed times of publication. Another example of collaboration is that of the US press. On 16 August 2018, more than 300 media institutions in the US published a similar editorial condemning President Trump’s continued attack on the press. More than 100 newspapers, led by The Boston Globe, went further to agree to incorporate the following words in the joint condemnation: “The greatness of America is dependent on the role of a free press to speak the truth to the powerful. To label the press ‘the enemy of the people’ is as un- American as it is dangerous to the civic compact we have shared for more than two centuries.” Simon (2018) later commented that if the media speaks with one voice like this, then politicians will have to listen. The Zimbabwean press should emulate this type of approach as violence affects both ZANU PF and MDC supporters. It is recommended that the media exploits their moral suasion power to speak out collectively against election violence.

Central to the success of peace journalism practices in Zimbabwe is a changed role of press journalists from gatekeepers to conveners of community conversations, with citizens chipping in with their experiences. I would call it “a citizen-oriented approach” to news gathering and reporting. The approach energises the community to be more vocal about their experiences and to know that these experiences, no matter how horrific they might be, have a platform as well as listeners. Marchionni (2012: 17) notes, “News organisations should be central hubs of information flow that invite and mediate conversations and help a community make meaning”.

I recommend a more active role for journalists’ unions in Zimbabwe. Journalists’ unions like the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ), the Zimbabwe National Editors Forum (ZINEF) and many others can be useful in two ways. Firstly, they can help create a climate of interaction, collaboration and cooperation amongst journalists, which is required for peace journalism. By extension, this can also be useful in destroying the climate of distrust among media houses and journalists that is a consequence of a polarised media environment. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, unions can offer an institutional

231 platform to fight against the state’s grip on the public media. By so doing, unions will be fighting against the instrumentalisation of the profession. At the same time, unions should assist in the cultivation of a robustly integrative ethical culture, which acts as a buffer against political bullying in the coverage of elections.

While the previous chapter notes the influence of political economy in determining news content on election violence, it is high time we focus on other cultural practices that undergird journalism practice in the Zimbabwean context. I am not discounting political economy as a factor in editorial decisions, but I am advocating for a shift of focus to other areas that seem to be also exerting weight in the process. Journalists’ unions in Zimbabwe should start taking ethical and professional values more seriously to minimise the impact of political economy pressures that they are not able to completely eliminate. Nyamnjoh makes a persuasive argument to buttress the recommendation:

To talk of a profession is to talk of people who distinguish themselves through their training and competence to practise a given trade. A profession is like a club: with its members, its by-laws, its values, its attitudes and ideals. It is going to admit or retain as members only those prepared to respect its vision of things, and its approach. Those whose values are different or whose attitudes do not conform will be excluded. One cannot talk of a profession where anyone can do what he likes how he likes (Nyamnjoh 1996: 54-55).

Once journalists are re-engaged on ethics and professionalism, they stand a better chance of withstanding the debilitating effects of owners in the coverage of election violence. Thus, journalists’ unions should carry frequent and sustainable programmes towards this end.

I recommend that the Zimbabwean mainstream press can adopt social media as an alternative way of engaging with peace journalism, if they have not already done so, or enhance their use if they have. Belair-Gagnon (2015) argues that integrating social media in mainstream newsrooms has immense potential to influence the nature and

232 representation of news reporting. Belair-Gagnon (2015) further notes that when BBC journalists adopted social media crisis reporting, its coverage of the 2007 London bombings, became open and transparent. Mare (2015) notes that Zimbabwe is a social media intense society. Mare (2015) argues that social media platforms in Southern Africa in general have added both agency and momentum to political participation. There is now a “creative appropriation of technology” (Mare 2013: 1). This includes platforms like Twitter and Facebook, which are relatively popular in Zimbabwe.

Social media platforms raise problems of their own. For example, fake news is pervasive on social media. Surveillance and control are equally prevalent on these platforms. Again, these platforms can be divisive and spew discourses that foment violence. But, despite these weaknesses of social media, in a heavily regulated press environment like post- 2000 Zimbabwe, they can foster participation and can be useful sources of election violence news for journalists.

7.7. Pathways for possible further research The focus of this research is first order elections – that is Presidential, House of Assembly and Senate elections held in Zimbabwe. By-elections were not covered and second order elections like local authority (council) elections were not a primary focus of this thesis. The 2018 elections were not covered as they happened at a time the thesis was being written. This leaves a gap that future research can pick from. Future research may focus on whether Zimbabwe mainstream news outlets have adopted peace journalism in covering the 2018 elections that ended with about seven post-ballot deaths and a commission of inquiry into the deaths. The thesis does not explore how other small community newspapers, NGO and CSO media adhere to peace journalism practices. There is also need to explore adherence to peace journalism in other media platforms – especially radio and television. Radio and television remain popular sources of election violence news in Zimbabwe despite the fact that they are largely controlled in favour of the ruling ZANU PF party. This kind of research may, however, be limited by difficulties of access to historical newsreels, which are very expensive.

233

There is also a gap that remains to be explored in the field of online media spaces, like websites and how they have constructed election violence. The internet offers the added advantage that discursive constructions on its platforms can assume multiple modes that include visual and textual. In this regard, Zimbabwe has some popular websites that can be examined for their adherence to peace journalism. For example, Kubatana.Net and New Zimbabwe.Com. There is also an imperative to explore social media platforms’ coverage of election violence to ascertain whether the discourses articulated on these spaces adhere to peace journalism. These are just some of unexplored research areas among many other possibilities. Evidence presented in this thesis shows that the two newspapers largely failed to set an agenda for peace. Coverage of election violence remains too fragmented and contradictory to be informative about solutions to this political disease afflicting Zimbabwe.

In retrospect, election violence in Zimbabwe will not be solved by a single factor. At a minimum, progress will take a conflation of four factors. These are: the existence of influential press outlets, like The Sunday Mail and The Independent dedicated to peace journalism; a renewal of political parties in ways that make them accountable for the actions of their supporters’ rhetoric and actions; institutional engineering – that can cause the mutation of institutions like the ZRP, ZNA and ZEC, amongst others, that are non- partisan; and a political class that has a different moral compass. If the mainstream press, especially The Sunday Mail and The Independent, which are influential in political news, cease their rhetorical venom in mediating the elections, this would point the peace journalism way. So far, there is no cause for optimism that coverage of election violence would, at a certain time in the future, adopt a more sustainable and robust peace journalism framework. The two mainstream newspapers largely do harm to the debate on the subject, and exert toxic influence on deliberations on election violence.

234

REFERENCES

Adams, A., Harf, A. and Ford, R. 2014. “Agenda setting theory: a critique of Maxwell McCombs & Donald Shaw’s theory”. in: Griffins, E. A First Look at Communication Theory. USA: McGraw Hill, pp. 47-62 Adams, D. 1999. “Toward a global movement for a culture of peace”. Peace and Conflict, 6(3), pp.259-266. Adams, G. 1999. Free Ireland: Towards a lasting peace. Ireland: Roberts Rinehart. Adongo, O. J., Awobamise, A. O. and Chidiebere, O. 2018. “A peace journalism approach to understanding the role of the media in the land disputes in Kenya”. Journal of Social and Administrative Sciences, 5(2), pp.170-180. African Union. 2014. Observer report on Zimbabwe’s 2008 elections. Addis Ababa: AU Publications. Arendt, H. 1970. On violence. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Alaimo, K. 2015. “How the facebook Arabic page ‘We are all Khaled Said’ helped promote the Egyptian revolution”. Social Media and Society, 1(2), pp.20-56. Alexander, J. 1999. “Representing violence in Matabeleland, Zimbabwe: Press and Internet Debates.” in: Allen, T. and Seaton, J., 1999. The media of conflict: war Reporting and representations of ethnic violence. London: Zed Books, pp. 66-78 Allan, S. 2011. “Documenting war, visualising peace: towards peace photography.” In: Shaw, I. S., Lynch, J., and Hackett, R. A. Expanding peace journalism: comparative and critical approaches. Australia: Sydney University Press, pp.147-167. Allan, S. 2013. Citizen witnessing: revisioning journalism in times of crisis.London: John Wiley & Sons. Althusser, L. 2008. On ideology. Paris: Zed Books. Al-Zikri. B. 2016. “Reporting Iraq”. in: The Lebanon Times: 24 June, 2003: pp 4-6 Anderson, A. and Ayres, A. 2015. “Economics of influence: China and India in South Asia.” New York: Council on Foreign Relations. Annan, J., Blattman, C., Mazurana, D. and Carlson, K. 2011. “Civil war, reintegration, and gender in northern Uganda”. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 55(6), pp.877-908. Ansolabehere, S., Iyengar, S., Simon, A. and Valentino, N. 1994. “Does attack advertising demobilize the electorate?” American Political Science Review, 88(4), pp.829-838. Aslam, R. 2016. “Building peace through journalism in the social/alternate media. Media and Communication”, 4(1), pp.63-79. Bach, D. C. 2013. “Patrimonialism and neopatrimonialism: comparative receptions and transcriptions”. in: Bach, D. C. Neopatrimonialism in Africa and beyond. London: Routledge, pp.37-57.

235

Badza, S. 2008. “Zimbabwe's 2008 Elections and their implications for Africa”. African Security Studies, 17(4), pp.1-16. Baker, C. E. 2004. “Media structure, ownership policy, and the First Amendment”. S. Cal. L. Rev., 78, pp.733-86. Baran, S. J., & Davis, D. R. 2006. Mass Communication Theory, USA: McGraw Hill Publishers. Barnes, T. 2004. “Reconciliation, ethnicity and school history in Zimbabwe 1980” in: Raftopoulos, B., Savage, T. Zimbabwe injustice and political reconciliation. Harare: Weaver Press, pp.140-59. Barstad, G. E., Hjelde, A., Kvam, S., Parianou, A. and Todd, J. 2016. “Making the case for an interdisciplinary approach to language and nation”. Crossroads and Connections, Issue 7 pp.9 -25. Baumann, M. and Siebert, H. 2001. “The media as mediator”. in: National Institute for Dispute Resolution Forum. pp. 28-32. Belair-Gagnon, V. 2015. Social media at BBC news: The re-making of crisis reporting. London: Routledge. Bell, W. 2004. Foundations of futures studies: values, objectivity, and the good society. Toronto: Transaction Publications. Bennett, W. L. 1990. “Toward a theory of press‐state relations in the United States.” Journal of Communication, 40(2), pp.103-127. Benson, R. 1999. “Field theory in comparative context: A new paradigm for media studies”. Theory and Society, 28(3), pp.463-498. Berkowitz, D. 1992. “Who sets the media agenda? The ability of policymakers to determine news decisions”. Public Opinion, the Press, and Public Policy, 2, pp.81-102. Berns, N. S. 2017. Framing the victim: domestic violence, media, and social problems. UK: Routledge. Bhila, H. H. K. 1989. “The last becomes the first: the transfer of power in Zimbabwe”. Decolonization and African Independence: Transfers of Power, 198, pp.445- 459. Biazoto, J. 2011. “Peace journalism where there is no war. Conflict-sensitive reporting on urban violence and public security in Brazil and its potential role in conflict transformation.” Conflict & Communication Online, 10(2), pp.1-19. Biber C. 2017. Exploring the intersection of research and the community, USA: Trinity University Publishers. Billig, M. 1995. Banal nationalism. London: Sage. Bond, P. and Manyanya, M. 2003. Zimbabwe's plunge: exhausted nationalism, neoliberalism, and the search for social justice. South Africa: University of Natal Press.

236

Booysen, S. 2003. “The dualities of contemporary Zimbabwean politics: constitutionalism versus the law of power and the land.” African Studies Quarterly: Special Issue: Zimbabwe Looking Ahead, 7(2), pp.67-89 Botes, J. 2000. “Regional media in conflict”. Paper presented at the Institute for War, UK, on 13 March 2000.

Botes, J. J. 1996. “Peace journalism”. Journal of Peace Research, 44(1), pp. 127-45. Boyatzis, R. E. 1998. Transforming qualitative information: thematic analysis and code development. Oklahoma: Sage. Branch, A. 2007. The Political Dilemmas of Global Justice: anti-civilian violence and the violence of humanitarianism: The case of northern Uganda (Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University). Bratić, V. and Schirch, L. 2008. “The role of media in peace building: theory and practice”. in: Symposium on journalistic training in conflict relation situations, DW-Akademie, Bonn, 3 (2), pp.23-56. Bratić, V., 2006. “Media effects during violent conflict: evaluating media contributions to peace building”. Conflict & Communication, 5(1), pp.80 -94. Bratton, M. and Masunungure, E. 2007. “Popular reactions to state repression: Operation Murambatsvina in Zimbabwe”. African Affairs, 106(422), pp.21-45. Bratton, M. and Masunungure, E. 2011. “The anatomy of political predation: leaders, elites and coalitions in Zimbabwe, 1980-2010”. Research Paper 09, Development Leadership Program. Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publication Braun, V. and Clarke, V. 2006. “Using thematic analysis in psychology”. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), pp.77-101. Breed, W. 1955. “Social control in the newsroom: A functional analysis”. Social Forces, 4 (5) pp.326-335. Burke, P. J. 2005. “Access and widening participation”. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 6(4), pp.555-562. Carpentier, N. and Hannot, W. 2009. “To be a common hero: The uneasy balance between the ordinary and ordinariness in the subject position of mediated ordinary people in the talk show. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 12(6), pp.597-616. Carruthers, S. L. 2011. The media at war. Canterbury: Macmillan International Higher Education. Cassidy, W. P. 2006. “Gatekeeping similar for online, print journalists”. Newspaper Research Journal, 27(2), pp.6-23. Catholic Commission for Justice, Peace in Zimbabwe (CCJP). 1990. Breaking the silence, building true peace: a report on the disturbances in Matabeleland and the Midlands, 1980 to 1988. Zimbabwe: CCJP Publications.

237

Caute, D. 1983. Under the skin: the death of white Rhodesia. Salisbury: Allen & Unwin. Centre for Peace Initiatives in Africa. 2010. Building peace in Africa’s rural constituencies. CPIA: CPIA Publication. Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation. 2008. Subliminal terror? Zimbabwe’ violations during the 2008 elections. Johannesburg: CSVR Publication Chalaby, J. 1998. The invention of journalism. St Louis: Springer. Chari, T. J. 2016. Press-citizen interface in a fragile society: mapping press and citizen discourses on election violence during presidential and parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe, 2000-2013 (Doctoral dissertation, University of Witwatersrand). Chari, T. J. 2017. “Electoral violence and its instrumental logic: mapping press discourse on electoral violence during parliamentary and presidential elections in Zimbabwe”. Journal of African Elections, 16(1), pp.72-96. Chiwanda, G .1990. “Mugabe Warns Tekere”. The Herald, 22 March 1990: pp13-14. Chiweshe, M. 2014. “One of the boys: female fans’ responses to the masculine and phallocentric nature of football stadiums in Zimbabwe.” Critical African Studies, 6(2-3), pp.211-222. Cho, S. H. and Gower, K. K. 2006. “Framing effect on the public's response to crisis: Human interest frame and crisis type influencing responsibility and blame”. Public Relations Review, 32(4), pp.420-422. Christians, C. G., Glasser, T., McQuail, D., Nordenstreng, K. and White, R. A. 2009. Normative theories of the media: journalism in democratic societies. Illinois: University of Illinois Press. Chuma, W. 2000. “Mediating the 2000 elections in Zimbabwe: competing journalisms in a society at the crossroads”. Ecquid Novi: African Journalism Studies, 29(1), pp.21-41. Chuma, W. 2004. “Liberating or limiting the public sphere. Zimbabwe”. in: Raftopoulos, B., Savage, T. Zimbabwe injustice and political reconciliation, pp.119-139: Cape town: Juta Books. Chuma, W. 2008. Mediating the transition: The press, state and capital in a changing Zimbabwe, 1980-2004 (Doctoral dissertation, University of Witwatersrand). Cliff, E, Bowyer-Bower, T. A and Stoneman, C. 2000. Land reform in Zimbabwe: constraints and prospects. London: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.

Coe, K. 2011. George W. Bush, television news, and rationales for the Iraq War. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 55(3), pp.307-324. Cohen, B. C.1963. Press and foreign policy. USA: Princeton University Press. Cohn, J. 2017. “The Politics of the diagram as graphic narrative” Substance, 46(2), pp.33- 49.

238

Coleman, R., McCombs, M., Shaw, D. and Weaver, D. 2009. “Agenda setting”. in: The Handbook of Journalism Studies. Sussex: Routledge, pp.167-180. Collier, P. and Hoeffler, A. 2004. “Greed and grievance in civil war”. Oxford Economic Papers, 56(4), pp.563-595. Columbia Journalism Review. 2009. Journalism in the age of new media. Columbia: University of Columbia Commission on Freedom of the Press. 1947. A free and responsible press: a general report on mass communication: newspapers, radio, motion pictures, magazines, and books. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Commonwealth Organisation. 2002. Commonwealth Report on Zimbabwe Presidential Elections. London: Commonwealth Publication Office. Cook, T. 2005. “Freeing the presses: an introductory essay”. in: Cook, T. (ed.). Freeing the presses. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, pp.1–28. Corbin, J., Strauss, A. and Strauss, A. L. 2014. Basics of qualitative research. Portland: Sage. Costalli, S., Ruggeri, A. (2015a). “Forging political entrepreneurs. Civil war effects on post-conflict politics in Italy” Political Geography, 44, pp.40-49. Cottle, S. 2008. Global crisis reporting. UK: McGraw-Hill Education. Cottle, S., 2011. “Taking global crises in the news seriously: Notes from the dark side of globalization”. Global Media and Communication, 7(2), pp.77-95. Cushion, S. and Thomas, R. 2018. Reporting elections: rethinking the logic of campaign coverage. Liverpool: John Wiley & Sons. D’angelo, P. 2010. Arriving at the horizons of new framing analysis. Oxford: New Horizons. Dallaire, R. (2003). Shake hands with the devil: the failure of humanity in Rwanda. Toronto: Random House.

D'Angelo, P. and Kuypers, J. A. eds. 2010. Doing news framing analysis: empirical and theoretical perspectives. Berlin: Routledge. De Vreese, C. H. 2005. “News framing: theory and typology”. Information Design Journal & Document Design, 13(1), pp.77-98 Deacon D., Pickering M., Golding P., and Murdoch G. 2007. Researching communications: apractical guide to methods in media and cultural analysis. 2nd ed. London: Hodder & Arnold. Denzin, N. K. and Lincoln, Y. S., 1994. Handbook of qualitative research. Harare: Sage Publications, Inc.

239

Des Forges, A. 1999. Leave none to tell the story: genocide in Rwanda. New York: Human Rights Watch Publications. Des Forges, A. and Longman, T. 2002. “Legal responses to genocide in Rwanda”. My neighbor, my enemy: Justice and Community in the Aftermath of Mass Atrocity, 56, pp.55- 56. Deutsch, K. W., 1952. “On communication models in the social sciences”. Public Opinion Quarterly, 16(3), pp.356-380. Deuze, M. 1999. “Journalism research: issues concerning theory, methodology and context.” Ecquid Novi, 20(2), pp.25-40. Deuze, M. 2005. “What is journalism? Professional identity and ideology of journalists reconsidered”. Journalism, 6(4), pp.442-464. Dimitrova, D. V. and Strömbäck, J. 2012. “Election news in Sweden and the United States: A comparative study of sources and media frames”. Journalism, 13(5), pp.604- 619. Dodo, O. and Musorowegomo, C. 2012. “Political intolerance, diversity and democracy: Youth violence in Bindura Urban, Zimbabwe”. American International Journal of Contemporary Research, 2(6), pp.134-143. Dodo, O., Nsenduluka, E. and Kasanda, S. 2016. Political Bases as the Epicenter of Violence: Cases of Mazowe and Shamva, Zimbabwe. Journal of Applied Security Research, 11(2), pp.208-219. Dowmunt, T. 1993. Channels of resistance: Global television and local empowerment. UK: British Film Inst. Doyle, C. and Patel, P. 2008. “Civil society organisations and global health initiatives: problems of legitimacy.” Social Science & Medicine, 66(9), pp.1928-1938. Dubbs, C. 2017. American Journalists in the Great War. Washington: Routledge Duncan, J. 2014. The rise of the securocrats. Johannesburg, Jacana Media. Edward S. Herman and Chomsky, N. 1988. Manufacturing consent: the political economy of the mass media. London: Vintage. Entman, R. 1993. “Framing: Towards Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm. ”Journal of Communication, 43(4), pp.51-58. Entman, R. M. 2003. “Cascading activation: contesting the White House's frame after 9/11”. Political Communication, 20(4), pp.415-432. Eriksson, G. and Östman, J. 2013. “Cooperative or adversarial? Journalists’ enactment of the watchdog function in political news production”. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 18(3), pp.304-324.

240

Fahmy, S. and Eakin, B. 2014. “High drama on the high seas: Peace versus war journalism framing of an Israeli/Palestinian-related incident”. International Communication Gazette, 76(1), pp.86-105. Fairclough, N. 2004. “Approaches to discourse analysis”. Discourse and Social Change12 (4) pp.12-36. Fairclough, N. 1995. Critical discourse analysis. The critical study of language. in social life. London: Routledge. Fairclough, N. 1995. Media discourse. Sussex: MacMillan. Fanon, F. 1997. Toward the African revolution: political Eessays. New York: Grove Press.

Galtung, J. 1997. ‘Violence, peace, and peace Research’. Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), pp.167-191. Hammar, A., and B. Raftopoulos, eds. 2003. Zimbabwe's Unfinished Business: Rethinking Land, State and Nation in the Context of Crisis. Harare: Weaver Press. Kaysh, J. 2009. “Peace journalism in Iraq”. Journal of Peace and Conflict Research, 56(2), pp.67-101. Lee, S. T. 2008. “War or peace journalism? Asian newspapers coverage of conflicts”. Journal of Communication, 55(2), pp.311-329. Fawcett, L. 2005. “Why peace journalism isn't news”. Journalism Studies, 3(2), pp.213- 223. Feltoe, G. 1993. A Guide to press law in Zimbabwe. Harare: Legal Resources Foundation. Fiske, J. 1998. Culture, ideology and interpellation (pp. 1268). London; Sage Fontana A. and Frey J. H. 2005, “The interview from neutral stance to political Involvement”. in: Denzin N. K. and Lincoln Y. S. (Eds).The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd Ed), Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications Inc. Fortner, R. S. and Fackler, P. M. eds. 2011. The handbook of global communication and media ethics. USA: John Wiley & Sons. Foucault, M. 1980. Power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977. Paris: Pantheon. Fourie, J. 2012. “Peace journalism as ideology or peace journalism as a semiotic act of world and life view”. In Communicare, 31(2), pp.1-22. Frank, D. J., Camp, B. J. and Boutcher, S. A. 2010. “Worldwide trends in the criminal regulation of sex, 1945 to 2005”. American Sociological Review, 75(6), pp.867-893. Franklin, B. and Carlson, M. eds. 2010. Journalists, sources, and credibility: New perspectives. Thousand Oaks: Routledge.

241

Frederikse J. 1982. None but ourselves masses vs. media in the making of Zimbabwe. Harare: Anvil Press Freedman, D. 2008. The politics of media policy. London: Polity. Galtung, J. 1998. Track two: media and conflict: high road, low road charting the course for peace journalism. Stockholm: Transcend. Galtung, J. 1997. “Violence, peace, and peace research”. Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), pp.167-191.

Galtung, J. 2010. A theory of conflict: overcoming direct violence. TUP, Transcend University Press.

Galtung, J. and Vincent, R. 1993. Global glasnost. Toward a new world information and communication order. TUP: Transcend Galtung, J. and Vincent, R.C. 1992. Toward a New World Information and Communication Order. Hampton: Cresskill. Galtung, J. (2005). “The Task of Peace Journalism”. Ethical Perspectives, 7(2), pp.162- 167.

Galtung, J. (2002). "Peace journalism- a challenge" in: Journalism and the new world order, eds. Wilhem, K. and Luostarinen, H. Göteborg: Nordicom, pp.90-112

Galtung, J., and Ruge M. H (1965). "The structure of foreign news," Journal of Peace Research, 2(1), pp.64-91. Gamson, W. 1989. Talking politics. New York: University Press. Gans, H. J. 1979. “The messages behind the news”. Columbia Journalism Review, 17(5), pp.40. Gans, H. 1979. Deciding what's news: A study of CBS news, NBC nightly news, Newsweek, and Time. New York: Pantheon Press. Gentzkow, M. 2016. “Polarization in 2016”. Toulouse Network of Information Technology white paper. Giddens, A. 1979. “Agency and structure”. Central problems in social theory. London: Palgrave, pp.49-95. Giddens, A. 1999. “Risk and responsibility”. The Modern Law Review, 62(1), pp.1-10. Gieber, W. 1963. News is what newspapermen make it. n.i Gilmor, D. 2006. We the media. Toronto: O'Reilly & Associates.

242

Gitlin, T. 1980. The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left. University of California Press.

Given, L. M. ed. 2008. The Sage Encyclopedia of qualitative research methods. Howard: Sage Publications. Gjelten, T. 2001. “Finding the right moral attitude”. Media Studies Journal, 15(1), pp.72- 89. Glasser, T. L. and Lee, F. L. 2002. “Repositioning the newsroom”. Political Journalism, 9(3), pp.203. Goffman, E.1974. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organisation of Experience. Boston: North-eastern University Press

Golding, P. and Murdock, G. 1997. The political economy of the media. Washington: Edward Elgar Publishing. Goretti N. L. 2007. “Journalism ethics and the emerging new media culture of radio talk shows and public debates (Ekimeeza) in Uganda”. Journalism, 9(5), pp.646-663. Goretti, L. N. 2007. “Peace journalism applied: an assessment of media coverage of the conflict in Northern Uganda”. Conflict and Communication Online, 6(2) 18-31. Gouldner, A. W. 1976. The dark side of the dialectic: Toward a new objectivity. Sociological Inquiry, 46(1), pp.3-15. Government of Zimbabwe. 2002. The access to information and protection of privacy act. Harare: Government of Zimbabwe. Government of Zimbabwe. 2004. The immigration act: Harare: Government Printers. Graber, D. 2004. Mediated politics and citizenship in the twenty-first century. Annual. Review Psychology, 55, pp.545-571. Gramcsi, A. (1980). 1999. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London: Elec Books. Graves, L. and Konieczna, M. 2015. “Sharing the news: journalistic collaboration as field repair”. International Journal of Communication, 9 (8), pp.56-78. Groff, L. and Smoker, P. 2002. Creating a Global Culture of Peace. Global options. Available from: www://www.gmu.edu?academic/pcs/smoker/htm: [Accessed 12 April 2016]. Grunwald, H. A. 2014. “You cannot silence journalism” in The Times Magazine, 23 February 2014. pp. 9-11 Hackett, R. A. 2008. “Is peace journalism possible? Three frameworks for assessing structure and agency in news media”. Conflict and Communication Online, 5(2), pp.1-13.

243

Hahn, E. J. Rayens, M. K. and York, N. 2014. “Readiness for smoke-free policy and overall strength of tobacco control in rural tobacco-growing communities”. Health Promotion Practice, 14(2), pp.238-246. Hall, S. 1997. Representation: cultural representations and signifying practices. Vol. 2. London: Sage. Hallin, D. C.1986. The uncensored War, the media and Vietnam. Portland: Sage. Hallin, D. C. and Mancini, P. eds. 2011. Comparing media systems beyond the Western world. London: Cambridge University Press. Hamelink, C. J. 2008. “Media between warmongers and peacemakers”. Media, War & Conflict, 1(1), pp.77-83. Hanitzsch, T. and Vos, T. P. 2016. “Journalistic roles and the struggle over institutional identity: The discursive constitution of journalism”. Communication Theory, 27(2), pp.115-135.

Hanitzsch, T. and Vos, T. P. 2018. “Journalism beyond democracy: A new look into journalistic roles in political and everyday life”. Journalism, 19(2), pp.146 - 164.

Hanitzsch, T. 2004. “Journalists as peacekeeping force? Peace journalism and mass communication theory.” Journalism Studies, 5(4), pp.483-495. Hanitzsch, T. 2009. “Comparative journalism studies”. in: Wahl-Jorgensen, K. and Hanitzsch, T. eds. The Handbook of Journalism Studies. London: Routledge, pp. 173- 203. Harvey, D. 2009. Cosmopolitanism and the geographies of freedom. Columbia: Columbia University Press. Hatcher, A. 2008. “Adding God: religious and secular press framing in response to the insertion of ‘Under God’ in the pledge of allegiance”. Journal of Media and Religion, 7(3), pp.170-189. Hawkins, K. (2010). “Investigative journalism: something from nothing”. Paper presented at the Media, Investigative Journalism and Technology (MIJT10) conference, AUT University, Auckland, 4-5 December 2010. Retrieved on 20 December 2017, Available from: www.pmc.aut.ac.nz/content/mijt-2010-conference-papers-and-proceedings [Accessed 23 March 2018] Hawkins, V. 2011. “Peace process or just peace deal? The media’s failure to cover peace”. in: Shaw, I. S., Lynch, J and Hackett, R. A, eds. Expanding peace journalism: comparative and critical approaches Sidney: Sydney University Press Henningham, J.1995. “Journalism in the USA and Australia: some comparisons”. [Paper drawn from one presented at the Fulbright Symposium on The News Media, Responsibility and Power' (1993: Sydney)]. Australian journal of Communication, 22(1), pp.77-90.

244

Hertog, J. K. and McLeod, D. M. 2001. “A multiperspectival approach to framing analysis: a field guide”. In: Reese, S. D., Gandy Jr, O. H. and Grant, A. E. Framing public life: A bridging model for media research. Sidney: Routledge, pp.157-178. . Hindman, D. B. 1996. “Community newspapers, community structural pluralism, and local conflict with nonlocal groups”. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 73(3), pp.708-721. Hjarvard, S. 2011. “The mediatisation of religion: theorising religion, media and social change.” Culture and Religion, 12(02), pp.119-135. Hodgson, G. 2005. Institutions and economic development: constraining, enabling and reconstituting. in: Hodgson, G. Reimagining growth: towards a renewal of development theory. London: Zed Books, pp.85-98. Hopmann, D. N. and Strömbäck, J. 2010. “The rise of the media punditocracy? Journalists and media pundits in Danish election news 1994—2007”. Media, Culture & Society, 32(6), pp.943-960. Hotelling, H. 1931. “The economics of exhaustible resources”. Journal of political Economy, 39(2), pp.137-175. Hotelling, H. 1936. “Relations between two sets of variates”. Biometrika, 28(3/4), pp.321- 377. Hotelling, H. 1990. Stability in competition. In: The collected economics articles of Harold Hotelling. New York: Springer, pp. 50-63. Howard, R. 2003. “Conflict sensitive journalism: a handbook for reporters.” Vancouver and Copenhagen: IMPACS. Available from: http://www.i-ms.dk/files/publications/IMS CSJ Handbook.pdf [Accessed 17 September 2016].

Howard, R. 2003. International media assistance: A review of donor activities and lessons learned. Amsterdam: Netherlands Institute of International Relations" Clingendael", Conflict Research Unit. Howard, R. 2005. “The media’s role in war and peace-building”. Post conflict Development: Meeting New Challenges. New York: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder, CO. Howard, R. 2015. “Conflict-Sensitive Journalism: (r)evolution in media peace building”. Communication and Peace, V1 , pp.84-97. Human Rights Tribune. 2007. The state of the conflict in the CAR, Human Rights. USA: Tribune Publications. Human Rights Watch. 2008. The violence in Kenya. USA: Human Rights Publication Human Rights Watch Report. 2002, Fast track land reform in Zimbabwe, Vol. 14, No. 1. Available from: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/zimbabwe/ZimLand0302- 02.htm (Accessed 29 March 2017).

245

Hussain, S. 2017. “Analyzing the war–media nexus in the conflict-ridden, semi- democratic milieu of Pakistan”. Media, War & Conflict, 10(3), pp.273-292. Hutchinson, D. 1999. Media Policy: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Hyde-Clarke, N. 2010. The citizen in communication: re-visiting traditional, new and community media practices in South Africa. South Africa: Juta and Company Ltd. Hyde-Clarke, N. 2012. “Peace journalism in South Africa: a Ttheoretical discussion”. Communicare, 31(1), pp. 23-37. Hyde-Clarke, N. 2011. “Political posturing and the need for peace journalism in South Africa: the case of Julius Malema”. Communicatio: South African Journal for Communication Theory and Research, 37(1), pp.41-55. Irvan, S. 2006. “Peace journalism as a normative theory: premises and obstacles” Peace and Conflict Online, 9(4) pp.45-56. Jacobsen, E. T. 2017. Inside a contested profession (Doctoral dissertation; University of Copenhagen). Janowitz, M. 1975. “Professional models in journalism: the gatekeeper and the advocate”. Journalism Quarterly, 52(4), pp.618-626. Johnson, R. A. 2017. “Predicting future war”. Parameters, 44(1), p.65. Johnson-Cartee, K. S. 2001. News narratives and news framing: constructing political reality. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc.

Johnstone, J. W. C, Slawski, E. J and Bowman, W. W. 1976. The news people. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Josephi, B. 2013. “De-coupling journalism and democracy: Or how much democracy does journalism need?” Journalism, 14(4), pp.441-445 Kayoed. I. 2014. Tip and the Gipper: when politics worked. USA: Simon and Schuster. Keeble, R. 2010. “Peace journalism as a political practice: a new radical look at the theory”. in: Keeble, R., Tulloch, J. and Zollman, F. 2010. Peace Journalism, War and Conflict Resolution. UK: Peter Lang, pp. Kempf, W. 2007. “Peace journalism: A tight rope walk between advocacy journalism and constructive conflict coverage.” Conflict & Communication Online, 6(2), pp 13-26.

Kempf, W. 2002. “Conflict coverage and conflict escalation”. Conflict & communication online, 9(2). Kirks, A. 2003. “Are journalists still responsible?” in: The Lebanon Times Online, 22 March. Kosicki, G. M. 1993. “The media priming effect: News media and considerations affecting political judgments”. in: Hale, J. L., Householder, B. J., Greene, K. L., Dillard, J. P. and

246

Pfau, M., 2003. The persuasion handbook: developments in theory and practice. Chicago: Sage Publications, pp. 56-77. Kovarik, B. (2006). “Peace journalism: media and the path to peace. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly”, 83(2), pp. 444-60. Kubatana 2014. Kubatana Newsletter Volume 2, June. Harare: Kubatana. Lachman, R. 1960. “The model in theory construction” Psychological Review, 67(2), pp.113-32. Lafargue, J. ed. 2009. The general elections in Kenya, 2007. Nairobi: African Books Collective. Lederach, J. 1997. Building peace: sustainable reconciliation in divided societies. Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press. Lee, S. T., Maslog, C. C. and Kim, H. S. 2006. Asian conflicts and the Iraq war: a comparative framing analysis. International Communication Gazette, 68(5-6), pp.499- 518. Lee, S. T. 2009. “Peace journalism”. In: Wilkins, L. and Christians, C. G. eds., 2008. The handbook of mass media ethics, pp.258-275. London: Routledge.

Leitch, C. M., Hill, F. M. and Harrison, R. T. 2010. “The philosophy and practice of interpretivist research in entrepreneurship: Quality, validation, and trust”. Organizational Research Methods, 13(1), pp.67-84. Lewis, S. C. and Usher, N. 2013. “Open source and journalism: Toward new frameworks for imagining news innovation”. Media, culture & society, 35(5), pp.602-619. Lichtenberg, J. 2000. “In defense of objectivity revisited”. in: Curran, J. & Gurevich, M. eds. Mass media and society. 3rd edition. London: Oxford University Press, pp.238-254. Lincoln, Y. S. and Guba, E. G. 1989. “Ethics: the failure of positivist science”. The Review of Higher Education, 12(3), pp.221-240. Lindemann, S. 2011. “Just another change of guard? broad-based politics and civil war in Museveni's Uganda”. African Affairs, 110(440), pp.387-416. Lippmann, W. 1922. “The world outside and the pictures in our heads”. Public Opinion, 4, pp.1-22. Loyn, D. (2007). “Good journalism or peace journalism?” Conflict & Communication online, 6(2), pp.33-42. Lynch, J. 2010. “Propaganda, war, peace and the media”. Peace Journalism, War and Conflict Resolution, 1(3), pp.69-83.

Lynch, J. and McGoldrick, A. 2005. Peace Journalism. Stroud: Hawthorn Press. Lynch, J. 2006. What’s so great about peace journalism? Global Media Journal: Mediterranean Edition, 1(1), pp.74-87.

247

Lynch, J. 2007. A course in peace journalism. Conflict & communication online, 6(1), pp.1- 20. Lynch, J. 2008. Debates in peace journalism. Sidney: Sydney University Press.

Lyon, D. and Trottier, D. 2013. Key features of social media surveillance. in: Internet and Surveillance London: Routledge, pp. 109-125. Lyon, D. ed. 2003. Surveillance as social sorting: privacy, risk, and digital discrimination. New York: Psychology Press. Lyon, P. 2003. “Words of war: journalism in the former Yugoslavia”. SAIS Review, 23(2), pp.221-226. MacDermid, S. M., De Haan, L. G. and Heilbrun, G. 1996. “Generativity in multiple roles’. Journal of Adult Development, 3(3), pp.145-158. Madhuku, L. 2009. “Mugabe will have a difficult time governing Zimbabwe”, in The Independent, 21 November 2009. Madon, S. 1999. “International NGOs: networking, information flows and learning”. The journal of strategic information systems, 8(3), pp.251-261. Maher, T. M. 2001. “Framing: an emerging paradigm or a phase of agenda setting? In: Reese, S. D., Gandy Jr, O. H. and Grant, A. E. Framing public life: a bridging model for media research, Sidney: Routledge. Pp.157-178. Makumbe, J. and D. Compagnon. 2000. Behind the smokescreen: the politics of Zimbabwe's 1995 General Elections. Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications Office. Makumbe, J. M. 2009. Zimbabwe: survival of a nation. Norway: OSSREA Publication. Makumbe, J. 2009. The impact of democracy in Zimbabwe: assessing political, social and economic developments since the dawn of democracy. Harare: UZ Publication office. Makumbe, J. 2008. Theft by numbers: ZEC’s role in the 2008 elections. Defying the winds of change: Zimbabwe’s, pp.133-148. n.i Makumbe, J. 2010. “Local authorities and traditional leadership”. Local government reform in Zimbabwe. Harare: Konrad Ardanaeur Foundation, pp.87-113. Makumbe, J.M. 2014. “Economic crisis and administrative incapacity in Zimbabwe”. Occasional Paper, 6 (3), pp.103-125. Mamdani, M. 2005. “Political identity, citizenship and ethnicity in post-colonial Africa”. in: A keynote address in Arusha Conference, ‘New frontiers of social policy’–December 12, 2005. Arusha: Tanzania.

Mamdani, M. 2009. “Making sense of political violence in postcolonial Africa”. Socialist Register, 39(39), pp.120-143.

248

Mamdani, M. 2001. “Beyond settler and native as political identities: overcoming the political legacy of colonialism”. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 43(4), pp.651-664. Mamdani, M. 2009. Citizen and subject: Contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism. USA: Princeton University Press. Mamdani, M. 2014. When victims become killers: colonialism, nativism, and the genocide in Rwanda. USA: Princeton University Press. Mandelzis, L. 2007. Representation of peace in news discourses; viewpoint and opportunity for peace journalism. Germany: Regener. Mano W. 2005. “Press freedom, professionalism and proprietorship: behind the Zimbabwean media divide” Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture (University of Westminster, London), Special Issue, November 2005: pp.56- 70Availablehttps://www.westminster.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0015/20175/005zim_a rt4.pdf (Accessed 20 August 2016). Mansfield, E. D. and Snyder, J. 1995.“Democratization and the danger of war”. International Security, 20 (1), pp.5-38. Marchionni, D. 2014. “Online story commenting”. Journalism Practice, 9(2), 230-249 Mare, A. 2013. “New media, pirate radio and the creative appropriation of technology in Zimbabwe: Case of Radio Voice of the People”. Journal of African Cultural Studies, 25(1), pp.30-41. Mare, A. 2014. “New media technologies and internal newsroom creativity in Mozambique: The case of@ verdade”. Digital Journalism, 2(1), pp.12-28. Mare, A and Tsarwe, S. (2018, in print) “Mediating electoral conflict” African Journalism Studies. Mass Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe. 2014. Zimbabwe Print Media Survey Available from: www.mmpz. Org (Accessed 23 August 2015). Masunungure, E. V. 2011. “Zimbabwe's militarized, electoral authoritarianism”. Journal of International Affairs, V1, pp.47-64. Matsaganis, M. D. and Payne, J. G. 2005. “Agenda setting in a culture of fear: the lasting effects of September 11 on American politics and journalism”. American Behavioral Scientist, 49(3), pp.379-392. Maxwell, R. ed. 2016. The Routledge companion to labor and media. Chicago: Routledge. Mazango E. M. 2005. “Media games and shifting of spaces for political communication in Zimbabwe”, Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, London, University of Westminster, Special Issue, pp.33-55 McChesney, R. W. 1989. “The political economy of the mass media”: an interview with Edward S. Herman. Monthly Review, 40(8), pp.35-46.

249

McChesney, R. W. 1998. “The political economy of international communications”. Who owns the media: global trends and local resistances, Communication and Society V.18 Issue 9 pp.3-22. McCombs, M. and Estrada, G. 1997. “The news media and the pictures in our heads”. Do the media govern, Series 7, pp.237-247. McCombs, M. 1997. “Building consensus: The news media's agenda-setting roles”. Political Communication, 14(4), pp.433-443. McCombs, M., Shaw, D. L. and Weaver, D. 1997. Communication and democracy: exploring the intellectual frontiers in agenda setting theory. New Jersey: Lawrence. McCombs, M. E. and Shaw, D. L. 1972. “The agenda-setting function of mass media”. Public opinion quarterly, 36(2), pp.176-187. McGoldrick, A. 2005. Peace Journalism. Sidney: Hawthorn Press.

McNair, B. 2009. “Journalism in the 21st century—evolution, not extinction”. Journalism, 10(3), pp.347-349. McQuail, D. 1994. Mass Communication Theory. London: Sage. Meadow, R. 2009. “Political violence and the media”. Marquette Law Review, 231(93), pp. 231- 52. Media Monitoring Programme of Zimbabwe. 2012. State of the Zimbabwe media. Harare. MMPZ.

Media Monitoring Programme of Zimbabwe. 2014. Third quarter survey 2014. Harare: MMPZ Publication. Merritt, D. 1995. Public journalism and public life: Why telling the news is not enough, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Meyer, C.O., Sangar, E. and Michaels, E. 2018. “How do non-governmental organizations influence media coverage of conflict? The case of the Syrian conflict, 2011–2014”. Media, War & Conflict, 11(1), pp.149-171.

Meyers, M. 1996. News coverage of violence against women: engendering blame. Stockholm: Sage Publications. Mkandawire, T. 2017. “State capacity, history, structure, and political contestation in Africa”. States in the Developing World, Issue 2 (2) pp.184-108. Mlambo, A. S. 2002. White immigration into Rhodesia: from occupation to federation. Zimbabwe: University of Zimbabwe Publications Office. Mlambo, N. 2005. “Moods of bitterness: how political polarisation has influenced Zimbabwean elections”. Journal of African Elections, 4(2), pp.15-36.

250

Montgomery, K. C. 1989.Target prime time: advocacy and the struggle over entertainment television. New York: University Press. Moore, D. 2008. “Coercion, consent, context operation Murambatsvina & ZANU (PF)’s illusory quest for hegemony”. in: Vambe, M.T. ed., 2008. Hidden dimensions of Operation Murambatsvina, Harare: The African Books Collective, pp. 90-123.

Mosco, V. 1998. “Political economy, communication, and labor”. Global productions: Labor in the making of the information society, 4(9), pp.13-38. Mott, F. 1962. American journalism, 1690–1960. New York: Macmillan.

Moyo, D. 2012. “Mediating crisis: realigning media policy and deployment of propaganda in Zimbabwe, 2000-2008”. in: Chiumbu, S. and Musemwa, M., 2012. Crisis! what crisis: the multiple dimensions of the Zimbabwean crisis. South Africa: HSRC Press, pp 45-67. Moyo, L. 2010. “The CNN defect: Representations of race and historical justice in the Zimbabwean election”. Journal of International Communication, 17(2), pp.121-138.

Moyo, L. 2011. “Blogging down a dictatorship: Human rights, citizen journalists and the right to communicate in Zimbabwe”. Journalism, 12(6), pp.745-760.

Moyo, S. and Yeros, P. 2005. Land occupations and land reform in Zimbabwe: towards the national democratic devolution. Harare: SAPES Publishers.

Moyo, S. and Yeros, P. eds. 2005. Reclaiming the land: The resurgence of rural movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Colombia: Zed Books. Moyo, S. 2011. “Changing agrarian relations after redistributive land reform in Zimbabwe”. Journal of Peasant Studies, 38(5), pp.939-966. Moyo, S. 2011. “Land concentration and accumulation after redistributive reform in post- settler Zimbabwe”. Review of African Political Economy, 38(128), pp.257-276. Mrogers, E. and Dearing, W. J. 1988. “Agenda-setting research: Where has it been, where it is going?” Annals of the International Communication Association, 11(1), pp.555- 594. Mugari, Z. E. 2016. Rethinking news values and newsroom practices in postcolonial contexts and the construction of subaltern identities (Doctoral dissertation, University of Witwatersrand).

Mukasa, S. 2003. “Press and Politics in Zimbabwe”. African Studies Quarterly, 7(2), pp.171-83.

Moyo, S. 2014. The Politics of the Land Reform in Zimbabwe. Harare: Weaver Press. Munoriyarwa, A. 2018. “Have they got news for us? The decline of investigative reporting in Zimbabwe’s print media”. Communicatio, 44(1), pp.71-88.

251

Munyarari, T. 2018. Chipangano: vigilantism and Community responses in Mbare District, Zimbabwe, c. 2000-2013. n.i. Mutere, A. & Ugangu, W. (2004). Conflict management: a training manual for journalists. Nairobi: The African Council for Communication Education (ACCE) Mutere, A. (2006). “Media graduation from potential to actual power in Africa’s conflict resolution: experience from the East and Horn of Africa.” Occasional Paper Series Volume 1, Number 1. Durban, South Africa: The African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD) Nancy, J. L. 2005. The ground of the image (No. 51). England: Fordham University Press. Nassanga, G. L. 2009. “An assessment of the changing community media parameters in East Africa”. Ecquid Novi, 30(1), pp.42-57. National Association of Non-Governmental Organisation. 2013. Public Statement on the state of the Country. Issued in Harare: NANGO. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. 2001. Imperial hypocrisy, settler colonial double standards and the denial of human rights to Africans in colonial Zimbabwe: the historical dimension of democracy and human rights in Zimbabwe: Volume One: pre-colonial and colonial legacies. Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications.

Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. 2009. Do Zimbabweans exist? trajectories of nationalism, national identity formation and crisis in a postcolonial state. Oxford: Peter Lang. Negrine, R. M. 1989. Parliament and the media: A study of Britain, Germany and France. UK: Thomson Learning. Nerone, J. 2012a. “The historical roots of the normative model of journalism”. Journalism, 14(4), pp.446-458. Nordstrom, C. and Robben, A. C. eds. 1995. Fieldwork under fire: contemporary studies of violence and culture. California: University of California Press. North, C., Mantzavinos, C., and Shariq, S. 2004. “Learning, institutions, and economic performance”. Perspectives on Politics, 2(1), pp.75-84. Nyamnjoh, F. B. 1996. Mass media and democratisation in Cameroon. Cameroon: Friedrich Ebert Foundation. Nyathi, P T. 2004. “Reintegration of ex-combatants into Zimbabwean society”. in: Raftopoulos, B. and T. Savage. 2004. Zimbabwe: injustice and political reconciliation. Cape Town: Institute of Justice and Reconciliation, pp.63-78. Nyikadzino, P. 2012. Political violence in rural Zimbabwe. Mutare: Africa University Publications. OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development). 2001. ‘The DAC Guidelines: helping prevent violent conflict.’ Paris: OECD Publications Service. on 23

252

January 2012Available from: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/15/54/1886146.pdf (Accessed 22 January 2016).

Offe, C. 1993. “Structural problems of the capitalist state: class rule and the political system. on the selectiveness of political institutions”. The State 6 (9, pp.104-27. Offe, C. 2011. “Crisis and innovation of liberal democracy: can deliberation be institutionalised?” Czech Sociological Review, 47(3), pp.447-473. Ojwang, B. O. 2009. “The semantics of peace and the role of the print media in the 2007– 2008 post-election violence in Kenya”. Africa Media Review, 17(1), pp.23-50. Ozguness, N. and Terzis, G. 2000. “Constraints and remedies for journalists reporting national conflict: The case of Greece and Turkey”. Journalism Studies, 1(3), pp.405-426. Paletz, D. L. and Entman, R. M. 1981. Media power politics. Free Press. Palinkas, L. A., Garcia, A. R., Aarons, G. A., Finno-Velasquez, M., Holloway, I. W., Mackie, T. I., Leslie, L. K. and Chamberlain, P. 2016. “Measuring use of research evidence: the structured interview for evidence use”. Research on Social Work Practice, 26(5), pp.550-564. Palinkas, L. A., Horwitz, S. M., Green, C.A., Wisdom, J. P., Duan, N. and Hoagwood, K. 2016. “Purposeful sampling for qualitative data collection and analysis in mixed method implementation research.” Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, 42(5), pp.533-544. Patindol, J. C. 2006. PECOJON: Building a peace journalists’ network from the ground– challenges and lessons learned. Philippines: PEJOCON. Patterson, T. E. and Donsbagh, W. 1996. “News decisions: Journalists as partisan actors”. Political communication, 13(4), pp.455-468. Peleg, S. 2006. “Peace Journalism through the Lense of conflict theory: analysis and practice”. Conflict & Communication, 5(2), pp.90-101 Peterson, T. 1956. “The social responsibility theory of the press”. in: Siebert, F., Peterson, T.B., Peterson, T. and Schramm, W. 1956. Four theories of the press: the authoritarian, libertarian, social responsibility, and Soviet communist concepts of what the press should be and do. Illinois: University of Illinois press, pp. 78-90 Philo, G. and Miller, D. 2002. “Circuits of communication and power: recent developments in media sociology”. Developments in Sociology, 18 (9), pp.1-22. Porcu, O. 2017. “Exploring innovative learning culture in the newsroom”. Journalism, 4(5), pp.14- 36. Porto, M. P. 2007. “Comparings media systems: three models of media and politics”. Brazilian Journalism Research, 3(2), pp.167-170.

253

Powers, M. 2015. “NGOs as journalistic entities: the possibilities, promises and limits of boundary crossing”. Boundaries of Journalism: Professionalism, Practices and Participation, Series 3, pp.186-200. Putman, D. A. 1982. “Natural kinds and human artifacts”. Mind, 91(363), pp.418-419. Radu, W. S., Morwe, K. L. and Bird, W. R. 2012. “Do the media in South Africa offer alternatives to violence in their coverage of protests?” Communicare: Journal for Communication Sciences in Southern Africa, 31(Special Edition 1), pp.37-56. Randal, J. C. 1999. Kurdistan: after such knowledge, what forgiveness? Australia: PHP. Ranger, T. 2005. “The rise of patriotic journalism in Zimbabwe and its possible implications”. Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, 2 (10) 12-36 Ratliff, S. 2011. “Adult adoption: intestate succession and class gifts under the uniform Probate Code”. Nw. UL Rev., 105, pp.17-57. Reese, S. D. 2003. “Prologue-framing public life: A bridging model for media research”. in: Reese, S. D, Gandy Jr, O. H and Grant, A. E. eds. Framing public life: perspectives on media and our understanding of the social world. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc, pp.7-31

Richardson, J. 2005. Analysing newspapers: an approach from critical discourse analysis. London: Palgrave. Robertson, A. 2015. Global news: reporting conflict and cosmopolitanism. London: Peter Lang Publishing Group. Robins, M. B. 2007. “Press freedom in Uganda”. Press freedom and communication in Africa, 2(1), pp.121-134. Rodny-Gumede, Y. 2016. “Awareness towards peace journalism among foreign correspondents in Africa”. Media and Communication, 4(1). pp. 4-21. Rodny-Gumede, Y. 2015. “Coverage of Marikana: war and conflict and the case for peace journalism”. Social Dynamics, 41(2), pp.359-374. Ross, S. D. and Tehranian, M. 2011. Peace journalism in times of war . New Delhi: Transaction Publishers. Ross, S. D., 2006. (De) “Constructing conflict: a focused review of war and peace journalism”. Conflict & Communication, 5(2), pp.90-112.

Roth, M. P. and Olson, J. S. 1997. Historical dictionary of war journalism. Stockholm: Greenwood Publishing Group. Rukhsana, A. 2010. “Perspectives on conflict resolution and journalistic training.” In: Keeble, R. L, Tulloch, J. and Zollmann, F. (Eds.) (2010). Peace Journalism, War and Conflict Resolution. New York and Oxford: Peter Lang pp.123-51.

254

Sachikonye, L. M. 2011. When a state turns on its citizens: 60 years of institutionalised violence in Zimbabwe. Harare: African Books Collectives. Satria, R. and Handayani, N. D. 2018. The grammatical cohesive devices error usage by English department students in Putera Batam University. Menara Ilmu, 12(10), pp. 17-34 Saunders R. 1999. Dancing Out of Tune: A history of the media in Zimbabwe, Harare, Edwina Spicer Productions. Saunders, R. 2007. “Trade union struggles for autonomy and democracy in Zimbabwe”. in: Trade unions and the coming of democracy in Africa. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.157-197. Scheufele, D, A and Iyengar, S. 2011. The state of framing research: a call for New Directions. Routledge: Washington DC. Stanford University

Scheufele, D, A. 1999. “Framing as a theory of media effects”. Journal of Communication 49 (4): pp.103-122

Schudson M. 2011.The Sociology of News. New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc. Schultze, U & Avital, M. (2011). “Designing interviews to generate rich data for information systems research”. Information and Organization, 21(1), pp.1-16. Seiter, E. (1986). “Stereotypes and the media: a re-evaluation”. Journal of Communication, 29(5), pp.14-26. Selby, A. 2006. Commercial farmers and the state: interest group politics and land reform in Zimbabwe (Doctoral dissertation, University of Oxford). Semetko, H. A. and Valkenburg, P. M. 2000. “Framing European politics: a content analysis of press and television news”. Journal of communication, 50(2), pp.93-109. Semino, E. 2008. Metaphor in discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shapiro, I. 2014. “Why democracies need a functional definition of journalism now more than ever.” Journalism Studies, 15(5), pp.555-565. Shaw, I. S., Lynch, J. and Hackett, R. A. eds. 2011. Expanding peace journalism: Comparative and critical approaches. Sidney: Sydney University Press. Shaw, I. S. 2011. “Human rights journalism: A critical conceptual framework of a complementary strand of peace journalism”. in: Shaw, I. S., Lynch, J. and Hackett, R. A. eds., 2011. Expanding peace journalism: Comparative and critical approaches. Sydney University Press, pp.78-97. Shinar, D. (2004). “Media peace discourse: Constraints, concepts and building blocks.” in: Conflict and Communication Online. 3(1-2). Available from: www.cco.regener- online.de/ (Accessed 12 January 2018).

255

Shinar, D. and Bratic, V. 2010. “Asymmetric war and asymmetric peace: real realities and media realities in the Middle East and the Western Balkans”. Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict, 3(2), pp.125-142. Shinar, D. 2007. “Epilogue: peace journalism-the state of the art”. Conflict & Communication, 6(1), pp. 2-12

Shinar, D. 2017. “Why not more peace journalism? The coverage of the 2006 Lebanon War in Canadian and Israeli media”. Peace journalism in times of war: Peace and Policy, 13(6), pp.7-24.

Shoemaker, P J., and S, D. Reese. 1996. Mediating the message: theories of influence on mass media content. White Plains, NY: Longman.

Shoemaker, P. J. and Vos, T. P. 2009. Gatekeeping theory. Illinois: Routledge. Shoemaker, P. J., Eichholz, M., Kim, E. and Wrigley, B. 2001. “Individual and routine forces in gatekeeping”. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 78(2), pp.233-246. Shumba, J. M. 2018. Zimbabwe’ predatory state: party, military and business. Durban: UKZN Press. Siebert, F., Peterson, T. B., Peterson, T. and Schramm, W. 1956. Four theories of the press: The authoritarian, libertarian, social responsibility, and Soviet communist concepts of what the press should be and do. Illinois: University of Illinois press. Silverman, D. 1997. The logics of qualitative research. USA: Sage Simon T. 2018. “When the media speak, the government cannot afford to ignore”, The Boston Globe (11 July 2018), Boston: Boston Globe Publishers Sithole, M. 1989. “Zimbabwe: in search of stable democracy”. in: Diamond, L. ed. Democracy in developing countries: Volume 2. Africa: Boulder, Lynne Reinner, pp.97- 114. Solhjell, R. "Neopatrimonialism in Africa and beyond." in; Forum for Development Studies, 40(3), pp.523-525. Solidarity Peace Trust. 2008. Zimbabwe Update No. 4. In the shadow of elections, Harare: SPT. Sonwalker, P. 2005. “Banal journalism”. Journalism: Critical Issues, 1 (2), pp.262-273. Southern Africa Development Community. 2008. SADC report on Zimbabwe’s 2008 Harmonised elections. Gaborone: Secretariat Publication. Sparks, C. 1992. “The popular press and political democracy”. Culture and Power: media, culture & society reader, 1(4), pp. 278-92. Spiess, M. 2011. “From watchdog to lapdog?” Media@ LSE, London School of Economics and Political Science.

256

Spivak, G. 1985. “The Rani of Sirmur: an essay in reading the archives”. History and Theory, 24(3), pp.247-272. Stearns, J. 2013. Acts of journalism. Available from: www.freepressnet (accessed 24 July 2016). Stiglitz, J. E. 1991. The invisible hand and modern welfare economics (No. W3641). New York: National Bureau of Economic Research. Stockmann, D. C. 2007. Propaganda for sale: the impact of newspaper commercialization on news content and public opinion in China (Doctoral dissertation, University of Southern Illinois). Stoneman, C. 2017. Land reform in Zimbabwe: constraints and prospects. Melbourne: Routledge. Sule, R. N. 2015. Ethno-religious conflicts, mass media and national development: the northern Nigeria experience (Doctoral dissertation, University of Jos). Tankard Jr, J. W. 2003. “The empirical approach to the study of media framing. in: Reese, S. D, Gandy Jr, O. H and Grant, A. E (Eds), Framing public life: perspectives on media and our understanding of the social world. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc, pp 95-104. Tayeebwa, W. 2012. (Re) framing mass media values: The Prospects and Challenges of Peace Media in Uganda (Doctoral dissertation, Concordia University). Tayeebwa, W. (2013). “From conventional towards new frames of peace journalism: the cases of Uganda and Burundi”. Peace Online, 4 (6), pp13-23. Tehranian, M. 2002. “Peace journalism: negotiating global media ethics.” Harvard Journal of Press/Politics, 7(2), pp.58-83. Tehranian, M., (2002). Practicing Peace Journalism. Peace & Policy, 7. (9) 45- 67. The Centre for Global Peace Journalism. 2012. The Peace journalist. USA: Park University. The Independent, 23 April 2008. “Mugabe should cease his inflammatory rhetoric for the sake of peace”. Harare: Alpha Media Holdings.

The Sunday Mail Editorial, 17 March 2005. “We should now focus on development” Harare: Zimpapers.

The Sunday Mail Editorial, 24 February 2008. “ZANU PF should aim for outright victory” Harare: Zimpapers. The Sunday Mail Editorial, 3 March 2008. “The British proxies will be defeated” Harare: Zimpapers.

257

University of Zimbabwe Institute of Public Health. 2014. Political Violence in Zimbabwe. Harare: Institute of Public Health Publications Office. The United States Constitution. 1789. Washington. Issued by Congress of the USA. The Herald, 23 August 2013. “It is time to rebuild the country with pride” Harare: Zimpapers. The Zimbabwe Independent, 10 August 2010. “Our Orwellian media laws need change”. Harare: Alpha Media Holdings Thompson, A. (2007). “The verdict: Summary judgment from the media trial”. in: Thompson, A. ed. The media and the Rwandan genocide. Kampala: Fountain Publishers.

Thompson, A. 2007. Media and the Rwanda genocide. IDRC, Ottawa, ON: CA. Thussu, D. K. and Freedman, D. eds. 2003. War and the media: reporting conflict 24/7. Westminster: Sage. Tibaijuka, A. K. 2007. Report of the fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe to assess the scope and impact of Operation Murambatsvina. Harare: UN.

Tilic, D. 2001. Journalism in Greece and Turkey [in Greek], Athens: Papazisis.

Tiripelli, G. 2016. Media and peace in the Middle East: the role of journalism in Israel- Palestine. Bethlehem: Springer. Traber, M. 1985 “Alternative journalism, alternative media” (Communication Resource, No. 7, October 1985), London: World Association for Christian Communication.

Tuchman, G. (1978). Making news: a study in the construction of reality. New York: Free Press.

Tuchman, G. 1972. “Objectivity as strategic ritual: an examination of newsmen's notions of objectivity”. American Journal of sociology, 77(4), pp.660-679. Tulloch, C. D. and Manchon, L. 2018. “The classroom is the newsroom: CNA: a wire service journalism training model to bridge the theory versus practice dichotomy.” Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 73(1), pp.37-49. UN Tribunal on Rwanda. 2003. The UN Tribunal Report on Rwanda Sitting in Arusha, Tanzania. UN: UN Publications Underwood, D. 2011. Chronicling trauma: journalists and writers on violence and loss. Illinois: University of Illinois Press. UNESCO, 1980. UNESCO’s model curricula journalism education. Paris: UNESCO Publications.

258

United Nations Family Planning Authority (UNFPA). 2008. Report on gender- based violence in Zimbabwe. Harare: UN Publications.

United Nations family Planning Programme. 2008. Tackling gender-based violence in Zimbabwe. Harare: UNFPA Publication University of Johannesburg. 2012. Code of Academic research ethics. Johannesburg: University of Johannesburg. University of Johannesburg. 2014. Standard operating procedure for ethics. Johannesburg: University of Johannesburg. University of Zimbabwe (UZ) 2009. The Economic impact of diamonds mining in Chiadzwa. Harare. UZ Publications.

Vambe, M. T. 2008. The Hidden Dimensions of Operation Murambatsvina. Harare: African Books Collective.

Van Dijk, T. A. 1993. “Principles of critical discourse analysis”. Discourse & Society, 4(2), pp.249-283. Van Djik T, A. 1995. Elite discourse and the reproduction of racism. Hate speech/eds. R. Whillock, D. Slayden. London: Sage, pp.296-320. Vehkoo, J. 2013. “Crowd sourcing in investigative journalism”. Reuters Institute for the study of Journalism Occasional Papers (2). Veritas. 2010. Human rights litigation in Zimbabwe: Harare: Veritas. Vresse, C. H. 2005. News framing: theory and typology. Information Design Journal and Document Design 13 (1): pp 51-62

Waisbord, S. 1998. “When the cart of media is before the horse of identity: a critique of technology-cantered views on globalization”. Communication Research, 25(4), pp.377- 398. Waldahl R. 2004.Politics and persuasion media coverage of Zimbabwe’s 2000 Election. Harare, Weaver Press Walzer, M. 1971. “Political action: the problem of dirty Hands”. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 2(3), pp. 160-80. Walzer, M. 1971. “Violence: the police, the militants and the rest of us”. Dissent (April), 5(4) pp.119-127. Weaver, D. H. 1981. Media agenda-setting in a presidential election: Issues, images, and interest. Brussels: Praeger Publishers. Weighton, L. and McCurdy, P. 2017. “The ghost in the news room: the legacy of Kenya’s 2007 post-election violence and the constraints on journalists covering Kenya’s 2013 General Election”. Journal of Eastern African Studies, 11(4), pp.649-669.

259

Wenger, D. H., Owens, L. C. and Cain, J. 2018. “Help wanted: realigning journalism education to meet the needs of top US news companies.” Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 73(1), pp.18-36. White, B. Y. 1995. “A microworld-based approach to science education”. in: new directions in educational technology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 227-242. Williams, D. R., Patterson, M. E., Roggenbuck, J. W. and Watson, A. E. 1992. “Beyond the commodity metaphor: examining emotional and symbolic attachment to place”. Leisure sciences, 14(1), pp.29-46. Wodak, R. and Meyer, M. eds. 2009. Methods for critical discourse analysis. London: Sage. Wodak, R. ed. 2013. Critical discourse analysis. London: Sage Series. Wodak, R. 1997. “Critical discourse analysis and the study of doctor-patient interaction”. The Construction of Professional Discourse, 19 (6), pp.173-200. Wolfsfeld, G. 1997. “Promoting peace through the news media: some initial lessons from the Oslo peace process”. Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 2(4), pp.52-70. Wolfsfeld, G. 2001. “The news media and the Second Intifada: Some initial lessons”. Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 6(4), pp.113-118. Wolfsfeld, G. 2004. Media and the Path to Peace. Cambridge University Press. Wolfsfeld, G. Alimi, E. Y. and Kailani, W. 2008. “News media and peace building in asymmetrical conflicts: the flow of news between Jordan and Israel”. Political Studies, 56(2), pp.374-398.

Wood, G. and D. Apter. 2000. The legitimation of violence. London: Willey Books. Workneh, T. W. 2011. “War journalism or peace journalism? A case study of US and British newspapers coverage of the Somali conflict”. Global Media Journal, 6(1), pp.40- 52. World Bank. 2010. Report on the Zimbabwe economy. USA: World Bank Publication Yanow, D. and Schwartz-Shea, P. 2018. “Framing deception and covertness" in: Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 19(3), pp. 31-54). Youngblood, S. 2016. Peace journalism principles and practices: responsibly reporting conflicts, reconciliation, and solutions. Illinois: Routledge. Zelizer, B. 1993. “Journalists as interpretive communities”. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 10(3), pp.219-237. Zelizer, B. 2016. “Journalism’s deep memory: Cold war mindedness and coverage of Islamic State”. International Journal of Communication, 10 (5), pp.60 80.

260

Zimbabwe All Mass Media Products Survey. 2014. ZAMPS Report. Harare: ZAMPS Publications. Zimbabwe All Mass Products Survey. 2014. Survey of the print media in Zimbabwe. Harare: ZAMPS Publication. Zimbabwe Electoral Support Network Report. 2009. The 2008 election Report. Harare: ZESN Zimbabwe Peace Project. 2008. Peace monthly report: June 2008. Harare, Zimbabwe: Peace Project. Zimbabwe Peace Project. 2009. Peace monthly report: November 2009. Harare, Zimbabwe: Peace Project Printers

261