Media have duty to promote unity

The Herald 08/03/2009

FOR well over three hours last Thursday, President Mugabe spoke to editors of local media houses about the progress the inclusive Government has made in its first year.

He covered Zanu-PF’s relations with the MDC formations, international relations and the state of the economy.

He ended his address by appealing to the media to promote national unity and the efforts of the inclusive Government.

He complained that the private media was just seeing the cracks in the inclusive Government and not the efforts to mend them, and said the public media, and specifically The Herald, was being accused by the MDC formations of not being objective in its coverage of the inclusive Government.

It is good that there is that recognition from the highest office in the land of the need to embrace the media as partners in the social, political and economic reconstruction of Zimbabwe after a decade of bitter polarisation.

The polarisation, which was being projected in the media, was a reflection of the deep-seated differences in the forces behind the media, and most of them were and still remain ideological.

But now there are commendable efforts to focus more on the areas of agreement than the differences.

The cracks are there but there is a conscious effort to mend them as soon as they appear.

We agree with the President that the media can play a key role in promoting national unity, reconciliation and healing and ought to respond positively to that call.

This response, however, must be right across the spectrum of both the private and public media.

We commend the principals to the Global Political Agreement for the work they have put into the Government of national unity.

It clearly has not been easy given that they were coming from two extreme positions.

As the President noted, they were moving from a situation where the Prime Minister would even hesitate to share lunch with him to the present situation where they have tea and pancakes every Monday as they work out their differences and chart the way forward for the country.

There were always doubts as to whether the parties that were once described as oil and water that could not mix would finally see things the same way.

"It was as if we were strangers yet we were citizens of the same country. Politics had made us strangers. But better politics was to make us closer," noted the President.

The challenge, as the President pointed out, is for that unity to trickle down to the lower levels where, regrettably, there is still friction.

This is where the media can play a significant role in communicating that rapport.

The political parties have an even bigger role to complement the efforts of the principals to the GPA to rally the people together to work as one without abandoning their different political parties.

Once the constitution-making process is completed, it should be possible to hold elections in an environment that is free of violence.