The Sunday Mail
Philip Gurajena
With a fun-filled media environment like ours and with all the time in the world, what else can this couch potato do but watch, learn and critique as the media continues to reveal one circus then another? We might as well enjoy this charade while it lasts.This gets me straight to starting with the infamous Muckraker in The Independent. The sting and sharpness is gone. It was a lot more coherent when the writer was that chap who stays at the YMCA or the Bull and Bollocks for the holidays alongside Gary Glitter and Liberace.
Now those tasked with running the column are challenged in a number of ways. Let’s ignore the shortcomings and focus on his most recent submissions.
Here was Muckraker equating the abduction of over 200 girls in Nigeria by Boko Haram to the crossing over into Mozambique of students from St Albert’s Mission in Mt Darwin during the height of the liberation struggle.
Now, that’s absolute nonsense. You see, the Muckraker would have us believe the students in the liberation struggle were taken to be ‘‘sold’’ into slavery or that they were taken to be used as sex slaves, raped at the whims of their captors. Already we have made a huge jump of assuming the At Albert’s children were even coerced into crossing over.
Such a wilful disregard of context can only be exhibited at the Independent, which distorts the liberation war history, has no understanding or appreciation for the causes behind the war or the fruit being celebrated.
Maybe Boko Haram should abduct one of the boys at the Independent and give them an experience of their ‘‘hospitality’’. When they return they will have an appreciation of just how different these two things are. But then again being akin to Liberace and Gary Glitter, they may consider that to be a pleasant holiday only lacking a musical and a boat cruise! Enough said.
Enough has been said about the whole Hifa Freshlyground debacle but it seems people really did not see one of the most contentious patches.
You see, the bits and sound bites coming out of Hifa are centred on their public relations guy. After the somewhat mysterious ousting of the media expert, Jill Day, the brains (or lack thereof) behind Hifa decided to replace diplomacy with the loose cannon probably in a quest to darken their otherwise imperialistic voice and “Africanise” it. And does that pygmy just spew nonsense or what?
The longer they keep that little motormouth the more they shall find themselves in collision with the media, the authorities and anyone who follows the rainbow in search of the pot of gold at the end of it.
Elsewhere the media registered several new wars which were very interesting to say the very least. Nice to hear Alick Macheso say he did not have his prawn rise like a phoenix as he set his manhood on his child’s head as the Queen herself in an act of conferring knighthood.
And now he says he knows not what The Herald was on about when they say he admitted to knighting his children. You see whether he made the children suckle on the straw or whacked them gently with it over the head with it is inconsequential. The worry is what inspired it to rise like a phoenix as he beheld his children. What is a paedophile?
Now the Carnival was in town and there have always been stories of the mighty prize monies that ZTA gives the deserving winners. The silent story is how the winners spend their money or maybe a little story in the media perhaps of the recipients happy to put the money to good use.
Perhaps El Sucre Chagonda at ZTA would tell us how much the late Chiwoniso, Russo and Sulu got for the first prize in the UNWTO song.
Or what Tanga WekwaSando and Dudu did with their money. Or what the winners of the first Carnival did with their loot. Ah! Of course. They never do get the monies now do they?
Isn’t this therefore something of a ‘‘dupe the nation’’ prize list?
Now, I couldn’t leave without taking a look at the ongoing saga in the MDC-T.
Here are people saying Morgan has lacked the depth to run a political party as complex as the MDC. People expect too much of Morgan and I am surprised they are only starting to recognise his weaknesses.
