ruling party while attacking or denigrating opposition parties or distorting information and views by or regarding the opposition parties. Even where it is not necessarily acting improperly, a ruling party has automatic and continuous access to voters since it gets more media exposure or coverage. For instance, its ministers regularly use the public media and other public resources to publicise their programmes, policies, etc72. Ruling party ministers will also get coverage by the public media even when they are speaking more as members of their political party than as ministers of government and putting across their party position rather than government position. What we have discussed above in relation to the use of the public media applies to Zimbabwe in many respects. The Country Study observes that since independence in 1980, the State owned and controlled media has dominated the industry and that it was and still is pro-government in its form and content (under the current Inclusive Government arrangement it is pro the ZANU (PF) element of the government). For a long time there was no meaningful private media. When the private media eventually emerged and began to challenge the public media, the government viewed it with suspicion, accusing it of being the mouthpiece of the opposition. The use of repressive laws such as the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA), and even suspicious bombings of private media houses, resulted in the demise of private players like the Daily News, the Daily News on Sunday, the Tribune and Capitol Radio while journalists working for the private media are often harassed and charged on spurious grounds. While the private media continues to soldier on, though in a very difficult and oppressive media environment, ZANU (PF) has been able to air its propaganda freely with very little alternative voice of opposition73. Generally the MDC and other political parties are either denied access to or coverage by the State controlled media or they receive negative coverage, through distortion of information and views by or regarding those parties or denigrating or undermining them. ZANU (PF)‘s monopoly of the State media in its totality, the closure of or undue interference with the private media, the absence regular alternative sources of news on the state of affairs in the country , etc means that the electorate relies on an unbalanced supply of news thus tilting the scales in favour of the party. Meanwhile, the MDC and 72 Ibid, p.6. See also Jain, op cit, p.13. st Country study: “Resuscitating party politics in Zimbabwe: scenarios for the 21 century”: An analysis of the MDC and Zanu-PF from the perspectives of political leadership, political architecture and party constituencies, op cit, pp.16-17. 73 28