The Sunday Mail
Information is power. It is power wielded by the media industry with its monopoly over the means of disseminating information to our broad majority.
Rangu Nyamurundira
It is the media that weigh upon the determination of such power, “to be empowered or to be dis-empowered”.
They shape our mindsets; manipulate what endeavours shall emerge there from. It is worrying then, that a chunk of our local media reveal themselves to be at odds with the popular mindset, if not hostile towards it.
Our mindset is that of a people and nation resolved upon the pursuit of economic emancipation and empowerment on the back of indigenous ownership and beneficiation of our natural resources.
Yet, we must find such endeavour besieged by the pens in the private media, fanatically scribbling and preaching all things doom and gloom for Zimbabwe’s birthing indigenous economy.
They disparage and undermine their own nation’s economic revolution, while mastering the art of keeping a nation in a state of apprehension, frozen in paranoia over a never-never Armageddon.
Our private media have blinded themselves to any signs of life being conceived in our revolutionary womb, where struggles and pain are anticipated birth pangs.
They prefer, instead, to misrepresent and taint such revolutionary ideology and crucify its emissaries, while keeping in the shadows what enlightenment a people endowed in the wealth of resources must have to shake off economic subjugation.
Pens have been coached to disseminate despair and keep our nation in a political frenzy ever since Western economic interests enlisted local opposition to our full emancipation. Journalists have delighted in prophesies of a dying nation, never saying what has threatened to kill off our aspirations.
Why would a whole editor of the Daily News thump his chest in self-adulation as he did last year over what he believed was vindication for his paper having foretold and called for an end to indigenisation?
What does their “diligent journalistic enquiry” say today? Where is this corpse that is indigenisation.
Have they had the integrity to retract in the wake of the ruling Zanu-PF’s bold 6th National People’s Congress that has reaffirmed and called for indigenisation’s reinvigoration, while cleansing the party and Government of those that compromised it and eroded its revolutionary ideological foundation?
They duck and dive from any news of a nation’s indigenous womb revealing signs of life’s bulge upon having met with indigenous farmers proving themselves potent, and a Zim-Asset promising turnaround.
They will not communicate such conception to a people longing for such truths simply because the seed that “threatens” life was sowed and is nurtured by President Mugabe and Zanu-PF.
They are driven, instead, by glaring malice and contempt, peddling journalistic fraudulence hidden behind such veils as “telling it like it is”, mantras quite alien to their practice.
Just read the now over-written rant about President Mugabe’s travel schedule, which they will not contextualise with his duties beyond our nation’s borders as Sadc and African Union Chair.
They will rather call him a “serial traveller”, as they yelp on like hungry hounds over a very dry bone, one without substance or nourishment to themselves or their audience.
Is this not the same private media that has, over the past years, gleefully told us of President Mugabe being a forced hermit to the international community with his African “allies turning their backs” on him?
Now that their stories are found wanting, as Sadc and Africa embrace the man and crown him their leader and emissary for economic renaissance, they protest that the man doth travel too much into embracing arms across the continent.
Why disparage the man now that he sets upon remedying Zimbabwe’s international image and goodwill that they so maliciously defamed? Their pens must taint the man in the hope of erasing his ideological footprint and cause.
Thank God, the man has not shifted from principle and ideology, but remains resolute despite the torrid storms cast upon his person.
The Daily News (June 2, 2015) en-flamed its malice with the antics of some Nigerian reporter whom they tell us “roasted” President Mugabe.
Dear Editor, on what fires of truth did your celebrated non-professional put our President to the test?
Your newspaper even brought in its so-called analysts to interpret the Nigerian reporter’s antics as exposing President Mugabe as a “bad father” who will leave a “disgraced pariah”.
Really? From that one moment, by that one headline-fishing drama queen, you would reach such a conclusion.
Before you would have us fooled, let us, for a moment, revisit the reporter’s charge as informed by The Daily News.
The newspaper highlighted her ranting that Zimbabwe is without and in need of the same “change and democracy” Nigeria was experiencing with the inauguration of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Her incompetent journalism, applauded by The Daily News, needed only research to be enlightened that Zimbabwe under Cde Robert Mugabe has, firstly, consistently and constitutionally held elections since Independence.
Secondly, we have not suffered a civil war or military dictatorships, thanks to President Mugabe’s resolve for peace and political stability.
The reporter should have asked President Mugabe to spare time and brief her on the urgency of adding value to our African resources.
Zimbabwe will keep its Cde Robert Gabriel Mugabe in a democracy which our electorate freely defines.
We will have this dear comrade finish laying the foundation of our economic revolution. God give him life in abundance.
I was privileged to be part of a revealing Information and Media Panel of Inquiry (IMPI) commissioned by the Ministry of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services to enquire into the state of our media industry.
The consumer of information had much to say, from the wise east of Chimanimani and Nyanga, to central Chegutu, and Gweru, across south to Gwanda and Beitbridge, in Gokwe, Binga and Lupane, out in Plumtree and in Bulawayo, Masvingo, Bikita en route to Harare, Mutoko and down in Muzarabani.
They are disillusioned consumers, disgruntled by reportage far removed from their aspirations, pursuits and realities.
IMPI also revealed private media institutions are struggling to survive and pay wages to falsehood-scribbling pens that have stabbed the heart of the goose that lays the golden egg.
Our majority is pro President Mugabe’s agenda, know his economic plan and, thus, we grow weary of wasted headlines playing like a broken record.
The grandmother in Binga would rather be informed of where to sell her goats at a fair price and the young potato farmer has publicised his/her plight against cheap genetically modified imports. We have no need for an otherwise hostile media to set aflame our economic aspirations.
Our country would do better off with media that inform, question and bring to account responsibly, so we achieve a prudent empowered society of integrity; one that will build its own economy.
Rangu Nyamurundira is the acting corporate secretary of the National Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Board and a member of the Zimbabwe Youth Council board. His views are his own and do not represent the views of institutions he is associated with.
