Thursday, September 24, 2009

Goebbels knew nothing

This morning I had my car radio on as I drove to work and found myself listening to the morning news. It all started off fairly typically with a reference to the fact that the ‘State President and head of government and commander of the armed forces, comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe while attending a summit yesterday on global warming at the United Nations and said that…………’ I was bored to tears but listened on.

Then in the midst of this ‘news’ bulletin the announcer told us that we were going to listen to some other reporter who would tell us about how the MDC created ‘Illegal Economic Sanctions’ against the Zimbabwean people. There was a pause, a deathly silence for about 15 seconds before a clear and audible voice told the listenership how an MDC Member of Parliament had now ‘admitted’ that an MDC conference in Nyanga several years ago was the brainchild behind the ‘dreaded and brutal’ ZDERA (Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act) that was enacted in the US State Congress to impose ‘illegal economic sanctions’ on Zimbabwe and thus lead the ordinary Zimbabwean people to economic destruction, while at the same time the MDC ‘retained the moral high ground’ by blaming ZANU PF for the problems that plunged Zimbabwe into the economic abyss between 2000 and 2009. This was, the speaker concluded, an act of economic sabotage aimed directly at the ordinary Zimbabwean people and was to be condemned from every quarter.

Even though I have been largely inured to the hostility of the ZANU PF propaganda machine, I was just a little shattered. I thought we had a Government of National Unity of some kind. How could this party political vitriol be emanating from the (unified) State broadcaster?

Later I picked up a copy of The Herald, the state propaganda daily news-sheet to see if there was anything in the print media on the subject. Nothing. But I did find a whole page attributed to Golden Guvamatanga (a pseudonym surely – perhaps for the notorious Gee-Gee?) that told the readership of the similarities between the MDC and the brutal and greedy Europeans who had recently been on a self-seeking glory trip to assess the damage caused by the illegal economic sanctions that they imposed on the poor people of Zimbabwe. The MDC, GG told us, were as greedy and avaricious as their European counterparts.

No wonder the MDC are unhappy with the skewed news coverage of the state press. And equally, no wonder that ZANU PF have resisted – and will continue resisting – the introduction of another national broadcaster and the revival of the Daily News.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Another deal in the offing?

Always interesting to see what I wrote this time last year! I wrote about the government propaganda machine and the view that ‘illegal economic sanctions’ were the crux of our economic crisis.

Not surprisingly, this morning I listened to ZBC and heard how the US Government was making preliminary moves to ‘lift illegal economic sanctions’ against Zimbabwe. Today’s report has something to do with Mugabe attending the United Nations in New York and he had some kind of meeting with some un-named US government official.

‘Illegal Economic Sanctions’ has been on the daily diet of all ZBC and ZTV listeners for well over a year now. The words Economic Sanctions cannot possibly be stated in the government propaganda media without the prefix ‘Illegal’. From hereon and to save valuable print, I will refer to them as IES. The IES, to remind the readership of this blog, are targeted sanctions against members of the ZANU PF hierarchy and clearly from the recent rants of that hierarchy, they are really hurting the individuals. We even had Mr Gono declaring that ‘if IES were lifted he would ‘consider’ resigning from his office at the Reserve Bank. All these thieves, for that is what they are, have ‘their’ money stashed away in Swiss and other banks locked up by the IES. The fact is that all ‘their’ money has been looted in one way or the other from the ordinary Zimbabwean people. But the thieves want it and they want it now. For them it will be an opportunity to escape and in so doing hopefully, avoid being arrested in Zimbabwe for their crimes against humanity. So the strategy now is to hold on to power at all costs until the IES are lifted and they can access their loot. The worst case scenario for the looters would be to not get their hands on their loot, not get out and end up being arrested for their crimes.

I wonder how this is going to pan out. You can be sure there is going to be a deal struck somewhere. You can be sure that there are a lot of people working on it right now from every angle. The thieves and their protectors (South Africa and SADC) from one side, the MDC and the western governments from the other. How can a deal be engineered in such away that nobody looses face and everybody gets what they want?

No doubt we will find out soon enough.

Monday, September 14, 2009

A Mining Conference

Tomorrow there is a scheduled mining conference in Harare and the big mining houses from South Africa and the rest of the world are due to hear how Mugabe is quite happy for the mines to be re-opened and for new investment into platinum, gold and coal. His previously proposed law that Government must own 51% of all mines in Zimbabwe is about to be changed and new laws promulgated to enable investment to come ‘freely’

Watch out! Mugabe has a plan, you can be sure, to loot the new mines just as he looted the old ones and forced them to close. He is not on this new trip for any other reason.