‘Can this be the Bright Matonga we knew and liked?’

BY TREVOR GRUNDY

LONDON – Every now and again Zimbabwe spews up a particularly poisonous breed of spin doctor. Jonathan Moyo was one of them.

The latest is Bright Matonga, who spent his formative years not struggling for freedom in Zimbabwe but rather at Southend -on -Sea, playground for middle Englanders and one of the UK’s best known holiday resorts.

Before Bright and his English born wife Anne (nee Pout) let for Britain to participate in the tail-end days of the Zimbabwean “revolution” ( aka as a land grab that destroyed the former breadbasket of southern Africa) he used to speak so fondly after his seven years in the citadel of imperialism.

Recently, neighbours of his and Anne told a local paper The Essex Echo that they were amazed to see the face of their former friendly and England – loving neighbour on television, raving and ranting about Robert Mugabe.

He was such a “quiet and friendly”man said one of his next door neighbours when he lived in Wraysbury Drive, Laindon, Southend as a student of media studies at East Essex College.

Shirley Begg, 62, lived two doors away and liked to stop and chat with “that nice man” from Africa. She told the paper’s reporter at her utter shock when she saw Mugabe’s spin doc on television.

“It was horrible and I can’t believe it,” she said. “Anne was a friendly women. I was very shocked to see her actions and don’t know what came over her. It was very sad” -all of that a reference to allegations that the former IT manager at Essex County Council helped evict white farmers from their properties in 2002.

The Matongas own a large house in Southend and draw substantial amounts of rent from tenants who are unaware that the absentee landlord is dictator Mugabe’s most ferocious propagandsist.

The report said that when Bright Matonga left the UK in 2001 he spoke so fondly about his years in Britain.  He now calls Britain “bloodthirsty” and accuses it of trying to overthrow the Mugabe regime.

The new Dr Goebbels of Zimbabwe flew into Britain in 1994 sand enrolled on a media and technology course at South East Essex College, Southend.

Half way through the four-year course, the UK wanted to deport him after a change of rules regarding foreign students meant he was no longer eligible to stay in cushy Britain where he lived like a middle class gent with his high earning white wife.

Then Southend East MP Sir Teddy Taylor persuaded a tribunal to let him stay on.

Sir Teddy told The Essex Echo: “He was a nice guy. I was aware of his politics at the time but he always told me the administration was not as bad as people think and that other parties (in Zimbabwe) were just as bad.”

The MP optimistically hoped that shining Bright Matonga – that nice guy – might be able to persuade Robert Mugabe to be more moderate. “I hope he can have some influence on Mr Mugabe and tell him to get some more sensible people to take over.”

In Zimbabwe, Sir Teddy, pigs fly.