Of Jestina Mukoko, bandits and the public media

Then after several weeks, the public media went ballistic, claiming in banner headlines how Mukoko and the MDC terrorists had plotted to topple the government through acts of sabotage, banditry and terrorism. The public media told us, in their typical fiction-style reporting, how these innocent men and some breast-feeding women planned to launch their military invasion from neighbouring Botswana.

I felt an eerie feeling of dj vue. In 2007 and 2008, I had spent a total of five months in prison on the same charges of plotting to violently overthrow the government – trumped-up charges that later crumbled like a deck of cards. I knew then that we were being taken for another long walk up the garden path!

When on 28 September 2009, the Supreme Court confirmed what everyone knew; that Jestina, and by inference all the other so-called terrorists, had been abducted, illegally detained and tortured and that what must be investigated were the abductors and the torturers, there was another deafening silence from the public media.

After an embarrassing three day-silence, The Herald finally told us that the Supreme Court had granted Mukoko a permanent stay of prosecution. It was a little story tucked away on page 2, a far cry from the screaming front-page headlines that Mukoko had attracted during the unmitigated propaganda binge of December 2008. So while her vilification and arrest was front-page material, her acquittal was of no or little significance to the dimwits at Herald House and Pockets Hill who masquerade as journalists.

This is the embarrassing story of our public media; an unprofessional circus that fails to recognize the basic rules of journalism: that the acquittal must be given equal coverage to the so-called arrest.

This is a story that had been taken to SADC; a story that had fascinated the public media for over two months as it played megaphone to a party that had dismally lost an election. Even when the former SADC chairperson, the then South African President Kgalema Mothlanthe, dismissed the banditry claims as laughable, Zanu (PF) and the public media never let go of their shameful fiction. They continued to vilify, malign and convict the suspects who were actually victims of state brutality.

Eight months after the formation of an inclusive government, the public media, under the stewardship of lily-livered and jelly-kneed editors who are afraid of claiming their editorial independence, have not thrown down the gauntlet on those it continues to perceive as enemies of Zanu (PF). They remain caught in a web of embarrassing incompetence, patronage and a penchant to deliberately mislead the people and undermine other political parties and their leaders.

The public medias reincarnation of Zimbabwe as a war zone through winding columns attacking cabinet ministers and public officials at a time when the nation wants national healing and reconciliation is treasonous. It is a betrayal of the nation and its aspirations; a brazen attempt by public institutions to undermine the very people they must serve.

The leashing of the public media by the Ministry of Media, Information and Publicity is an act of high treason. The public media have allowed themselves to be put on leash by sulking civil servants in the Ministry of Media, nformation and Publicity who have for years benefitted from the patronage at the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe; that feeding trough of corrupt Zanu (PF) sharks. The sulking cabal has now been joined by the politically promiscuous Jonathan Moyo – the most decorated turncoat of our time.

Now that Jestina is free, we expect the same frenzied coverage of the real culprits; the abductors, torturers and murderers of the unmitigated violence that engulfed this country after 29 March 2008.

The sordid story of a vicious state, hell-bent on annihilating its own citizens

Even if The Herald and the ZBC connive to keep quiet about that sad chapter of our nation, someone will always be around to tell this story to posterity and the world; the sordid story of a vicious State that was hell-bent on annihilating its own citizens simply because a dictator had lost an election.

And history will always remember a humble former miner called Morgan Tsvangirai; a man who refused to be seduced by the trappings of power; a man who refused to step on human skulls and skeletons on his way to State House! And so he donated his hard-won Presidency to the man he had defeated so that human life could be saved!!

As a party, we in the MDC will not forget those who were killed so that change would live again; those whose limbs were broken so that democracy would walk again in the land of our birth. They are an indelible footprint on our long road to democracy and freedom. – Luke Tamborinyoka is the director of Information and Publicity in the MDC formation led by Morgan Tsvangirai. He is a former news editor of The Daily News and can be contacted on mhoful@yahoo.co.uk