Zimpapers Logo

Ivan Zhakata-Herald Correspondent

THE Zimbabwe Media Commission has urged journalists to report on the community hearings into the Gukurahundi disturbances in a responsible way that upholds the spirit of Ubuntu.

The ZMC is working with the Zimbabwe National Chiefs Council to ensure accurate reporting when the evidence is given during outreach programmes to be rolled out soon.

The commission has set up a committee to develop reporting guidelines and a pledge for journalists covering the hearings.

It’s goal is to have journalists act as amplifiers of the community’s voice, not spreaders of misinformation.

Police will be deployed to maintain peace during the outreach programmes and ensure journalists can work freely.

The public hearings, being led by chiefs in their communities, aim to address the legacy of Gukurahundi, a period of violence and conflict that affected some parts of Matabeleland and the Midlands provinces in the 1980s.

Speaking during a Gukurahundi sensitisation breakfast meeting in Harare yesterday, ZMC Executive Secretary Mr Godwin Phiri said: “As a media commission, we are undertaking a role to train journalists on how to report in a conflict-sensitive environment. We want the media practitioners to be the amplifiers of community voices, not to distort and not to promote falsehoods.”

National police spokesperson Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi said police would maintain peace in the outreach programmes.

“The ZRP will deploy police officers to ensure that we maintain peace within communities. We are also there to ensure that journalists perform their duties freely,” he said.

Journalists in Harare have endorsed what the special guidelines committee has done so far working under the guidance of the Chiefs Council and the Zimbabwe Media Commission.

Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Permanent Secretary Mr Nick Mangwana has also urged the media to be careful and not to incite conflict in their reporting on the Gukurahundi issue.

Speaking during a two-day media sensitisation workshop on the Gukurahundi hearings in Bulawayo last month, Mr Mangwana urged journalists to report responsibly on Gukurahundi to help solve the post-independence conflict, saying the media has a sacrosanct duty to conscientiously relay information to the public.

“We are not here to recruit you to be couriers of our propaganda. So, those who thought that they had been called by the Government and the chiefs so that they could be conveyors of propaganda must just forget it. We are not taking away your editorial independence as the media, but asking you to work with us responsibly.”

Mr Mangwana called upon the media not to abandon coverage of the programme along the way, saying there may be a likelihood of stories with similar narrations being told over and over again.

“Abandoning this programme along the way would mean you would not have done justice to your nation.”