HARARE - If there was any award for badmouthing political opponents and using hate speech against them, Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe would surely beat them all. According to a report by the Media Monitoring Project, Mugabe made about 82 utterances classified as hate speech between February and June last year, declaring in one that he would go to war if Morgan TsvThere is no way Tsvangirai can come and stay there. Tsvangirai is confused, Grace said. The report is entitled The Language of Hate: Inflammatory, Intimidating and Abusive Comments of Zimbabwes 2008 Elections. It was distributed during the NGO Expo held at the weekend.
While we can not tell how such incitement got to be directly translated into political violence, there is little doubt a strong link exists between the accusations and insulting language directed at the MDC and its leader by the three groups mentioned here and the preparation of public opinion for the violence that occurred in this period, says MMPZ.
Amnesty International put the number of those killed by pro-Mugabe militias and renegade security forces between the March 29 2008 election and the June 27 runoff at 190. MDC says more than 500 were murdered while diplomats put the figure as high as 2000.
Also cited in the report as making offensive remarks is police commissioner-general Augustine Chihuri, who is said to have twisted the facts to present the MDC as the author of political violence thus refusing to assist victims of state-sponsored attacks.
Commissioner of Prisons Paradzai Zimhondi declared in a speech published in The Herald on 29 February 2008: If the opposition wins the election, I will be the first one to resign from my job and go back to defend my piece of land. I will not let it go. I am giving you (prison officers) an order to vote for the president (Mugabe). I will only support the leadership of President Mugabe. I will not salute them (MDC).
The speech has come back to haunt the generals as they were recently forced to publicly salute Tsvangirai, an event that made news headlines around the world. In one of Mugabes classics, 10 days before the June 27 non-election he said, You can vote for Tsvangirai, but if he brings back the whites well go to war.
Mugabes worst performance, according to the report, came on Independence Day (18 April 2008) when he made 10 inflammatory and abusive comments in one speech that was broadcast live on ZBC-TV. All were directed against Tsvangirai and the British government. The MMPZ report said: In Zimbabwe, hate speech has become an endemic and poisonous epidemic that has fractured and polarized society by promoting extreme levels of political and social intolerance and hostility towards any group or individual that disagrees with Zanu PFs perspective on reality.
Post published in: Opinions