Swedish Ambassador to Zimbabwe calls for press freedom.
“Zimbabwe is now lagging behind most African countries when it comes to promoting a free flow of information and communication in humanitarian and development work.” Ambassador Sten Rylander is quoted by the Daily News.
Today Zimbabwe is observing its 30 th year of independence and it is really sad that the need for freedom of expression and a free media - a basic and fundamental human right - is still an urgent issue. For three decades Mugabe has ignored the cry of the Zimbabwe people for a free media and resisted pressure from outsiders. He has no intention of ever allowing Zimbabwean this basic human right and many others.
The GNU is over a year old and all it has to show for it as far as opening up the free flow of information is that it has appointed members to the Media Commission. This is nonsense, why do we need a Media Commission to exercise a basic right? This is just another of Mugabe's gimmicks: first he created the Commission to create the illusion he is DOING something about media freedom. It took months to appoint the Commissioners. And now that they Commissioners have been appoint still nothing has changed because the Commission has no real power to change anything, Mugabe does not want anything changed. So his second illusion is of a Media Commission that will change things when in reality it will change nothing.
Ambassador Sten Rylander, thank you for reminding Zimbabwe’s useless political leaders that after thirty years of independence Zimbabweans are still being denied a basic and fundamental right. Mr Ambassador, may I suggest that you also ask your Government and the European Union to review the targeted sanctions against Mugabe and his inner circle with the view of extending them to include the second tier of Mugabe’s circle and senior MDC leaders – after a year in power they have become as greedy, oppressive and useless as anyone else in Mugabe’s inner circle!
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In commiting acts of lawlessness and murders and no one ever being arrested Mugabe has created the illusion that he and his thugs are above the law. I say illusion because no one absolutely no one is above the law. The wheel of justice turns slowly but it does turn.
What Mugabe did in 2008 was an act of desperation and the individuals sent out to commit these murderous acts are confessing it. But they are too many for even him to silence. Makarume was one of the first, in the next few months others will follow and then the flood gates will open.
This is the beginning of the end of Mugabe’s reign of terror. “Vakuru vakati chisingakeri chinoshura; miromo yavo hayiwiri pasi!”
Zimbabweans must take heart; you, me, the late Makamure and the millions of other Zimbabweans out there mere unknown mortals; still we are human beings worthy of the respect and dignity accorded to every other member of the human race. No dictator, no matter how powerful he thinks he is, can take a human life and behave as if he has just killed nothing more than a rat. Mugabe murdered over 20 000 in the mid 1980s, over 200 in the 2008 election and still he continues with the murder of Makamure. They are all dead and buried but not forgotten; Mugabe and his thugs will account for them all!
For Mugabe and his thugs judgement day is upon us!
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Petina Gappah argues there is something worth celebrating on Zimbabwe’s 30 th year of independence. A good education system, legal reforms that have allowed black woman to be equal to black man, etc. (See Mail and Guardian 15 April “Mugabe inflames Afro-pessimists, but Zim's story is much deeper” She missed the point completely.
Millions of Zimbabweans now live in abject poverty because of the years of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption by Mugabe. In the last ten years Zimbabwe's education system has all but collapsed. Hospitals have closed and thousands of our people have suffered and died unnecessarily.
On the human rights front; the whole nation has been denied their basic human rights on mass all these years. Thousands of our people have been murdered by Mugabe for no other reason than that they dare exercise their democratic right to have a meaningful say in the governance of the country. What is there to celebrate in that?
To present whatever Mugabe has done right in the last 30 years as if it was a piece of meat to be weighed and compared with what he got wrong is wrong. It was not a matter of have a good education but no freedom of expression because we could and should have had both. Those who still want this presented as an either or but not both choice then the price the nation has had to pay for Mugabe’s few achievements is unacceptably high.
It is an insult to all Zimbabweans who have lost and suffered so much and gained so little and still have the dictator lording over them to “celebrate” Zimbabwe’s 30 th year of independence. To do so is like finding your mother raped and murdered and be told the man who committed the outrage fed her well and therefore you celebrate that she died with a full stomach.
What Mugabe has done to Zimbabwe infuriates me greatly; he was our country’s worst curse. After Mugabe, no one annoys me more than a Zimbabwean “intellectual” talking nonsense. It seems the country has more than its fair share of men and women who would say a lot with not a simple grammatic error but alas it is all rubbish!
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