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.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Well thats his real name not a pseudo