Fresh
assault on Zim media
It is truly tragic that the Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC) has now
launched its Media Council.
Indeed, there can only be one outcome of this Zanu PF-driven and managed
political project — a fresh and savage assault on the country’s fledgling
independent media, at the same primitive level as was witnessed when the
Daily News was maliciously and unjustly shut down in September 2003.
What this also means is that the well-known lunatic fringe in President
Robert Mugabe’s former ruling party, with their scotched earth approach to
politics, are now firmly in charge of Zanu PF again.
This in turn means that Zimbabweans ought to be very afraid again, for the
signs are all too ominous, all round. To decode things further, this fresh
assault, as was the case a decade ago, is ultimately aimed at ordinary
Zimbabweans — rather than the independent media per se.
The question to ask is what is next after they decapitate the private media
as they intend to do?
A decade ago it was literally the beginning of a traumatic ride to hell that
culminated in the likes of Murambatsvina, rapes and murders in 2008 and the
worst economic disaster that the world has ever witnessed!
Beleaguered Information minister Webster Shamu set the ball rolling on this
fresh tilt at anarchy earlier this week when he bluntly and unashamedly
promised to shut down the private media if they continue shining their
bright torches in the dark corners of Mugabe’s and Zanu PF’s kleptocratic
worlds.
We say beleaguered of Shamu because we believe that he is acting under
pressure from his party’s hardliners, and that deep down he does not believe
in this barbarism. Indeed, why would he sanction this insanity now and not
earlier?
And was it not under his overall sympathetic watch that Zimbabwe’s leading
media brand the Daily News was able to come back?
Shamu’s shocking rantings were on Thursday followed by the launch of the
Zimbabwe Media Council itself, to the further trauma of all right-thinking
Zimbabweans.
Among its supposedly impartial members who will run this august body are
Justin Mutasa, the CEO of Zimpapers, and Happison Muchechetere, the CEO of
the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation. Whoa! Really?
Is Mutasa not the same gentleman whose company publishes the rabid Zanu PF
propaganda missiles that include The Herald, The Sunday Mail and The
Chronicle?
And is Muchechetere not the head of the monopoly television outfit that is
headquartered at Pockets Hill and that beams nothing but hate speech against
political opponents of Mugabe and Zanu PF?
Indeed, are state newspapers and broadcast stations not guilty of the worst
editorial excesses imaginable in this country? Do they not day-in and
day-out weave disgusting Zanu PF spin and incite violence against those
perceived to be critical of the establishment?
Given all these incontrovertible truths, we ask with tears in our eyes how
this media council is supposed to work with any semblance of legitimacy with
the likes of these two gentlemen as part of the team in charge? To what
effect?
We want to state unequivocally here, that any nation that seeks to regulate
the media this way is truly a banana republic, no matter how much this
statement will upset these anarchy mongers.
After all, we already have the Voluntary Media Council which is working
perfectly.
Just watch the carnage as it unfolds from here onwards, for you can’t
entrust the chicken run to hyenas.
It is that bad.
It is truly tragic that the Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC) has now
launched its Media Council.
Indeed, there can only be one outcome of this Zanu PF-driven and managed
political project — a fresh and savage assault on the country’s fledgling
independent media, at the same primitive level as was witnessed when the
Daily News was maliciously and unjustly shut down in September 2003.
What this also means is that the well-known lunatic fringe in President
Robert Mugabe’s former ruling party, with their scotched earth approach to
politics, are now firmly in charge of Zanu PF again.
This in turn means that Zimbabweans ought to be very afraid again, for the
signs are all too ominous, all round. To decode things further, this fresh
assault, as was the case a decade ago, is ultimately aimed at ordinary
Zimbabweans — rather than the independent media per se.
The question to ask is what is next after they decapitate the private media
as they intend to do?
A decade ago it was literally the beginning of a traumatic ride to hell that
culminated in the likes of Murambatsvina, rapes and murders in 2008 and the
worst economic disaster that the world has ever witnessed!
Beleaguered Information minister Webster Shamu set the ball rolling on this
fresh tilt at anarchy earlier this week when he bluntly and unashamedly
promised to shut down the private media if they continue shining their
bright torches in the dark corners of Mugabe’s and Zanu PF’s kleptocratic
worlds.
We say beleaguered of Shamu because we believe that he is acting under
pressure from his party’s hardliners, and that deep down he does not believe
in this barbarism. Indeed, why would he sanction this insanity now and not
earlier?
And was it not under his overall sympathetic watch that Zimbabwe’s leading
media brand the Daily News was able to come back?
Shamu’s shocking rantings were on Thursday followed by the launch of the
Zimbabwe Media Council itself, to the further trauma of all right-thinking
Zimbabweans.
Among its supposedly impartial members who will run this august body are
Justin Mutasa, the CEO of Zimpapers, and Happison Muchechetere, the CEO of
the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation. Whoa! Really?
Is Mutasa not the same gentleman whose company publishes the rabid Zanu PF
propaganda missiles that include The Herald, The Sunday Mail and The
Chronicle?
And is Muchechetere not the head of the monopoly television outfit that is
headquartered at Pockets Hill and that beams nothing but hate speech against
political opponents of Mugabe and Zanu PF?
Indeed, are state newspapers and broadcast stations not guilty of the worst
editorial excesses imaginable in this country? Do they not day-in and
day-out weave disgusting Zanu PF spin and incite violence against those
perceived to be critical of the establishment?
Given all these incontrovertible truths, we ask with tears in our eyes how
this media council is supposed to work with any semblance of legitimacy with
the likes of these two gentlemen as part of the team in charge? To what
effect?
We want to state unequivocally here, that any nation that seeks to regulate
the media this way is truly a banana republic, no matter how much this
statement will upset these anarchy mongers.
After all, we already have the Voluntary Media Council which is working
perfectly.
Just watch the carnage as it unfolds from here onwards, for you can’t
entrust the chicken run to hyenas.
It is that bad.
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