Not content with using Zimpaper to brainwash the nation Mugabes wants papers to "to pay me"!

One of the crying needs in Zimbabwe is the need for a free media and freedom of expression. The new Copac constitution that Mugabe has just signed into law still left his Zanu PF with total control and monopoly of the media.

 

Zanu PF owns all the public print media and has effectively muzzled the small independent print media with oppressive laws like AIPPA and POSA. The country has no independent radio or TV station. Mugabe and Zanu PF have stubbornly resisted all call to implement meaning reforms necessary for a free media and the exercise of freedom of expression.

 

Not that PM Tsvangirai and MDC, the parties who should have ensured all the democratic reforms agreed in the GPA were implemented, pushed hard for the reforms. Indeed, one can even say PM Tsvangirai completely forgot about the reforms for five years. He was engaged in other matters; globetrotting, chasing women of ill repute, etc.

 

Ever since independence Mugabe has used Zanu PF’s control and monopoly of the country’s media to brainwash the people and to stifle all meaningful debate – one of the key supporting pillars of the Zanu PF dictatorship. Mugabe considers the Herald his personal property to do as he commands.

 

“They (Zimbabwe’s public papers) should pay me because they use my name, ‘Mugabe this, Mugabe that’ so their papers can sell. I am going to acquire those Mugabe papers and demand that they pay me for promoting them, but don’t tell lies ka, hatidi,” Mugabe said so after signing the Copac constitution into law.

 

Not only has he used the country’s media to brainwash the nation now he wants to be paid for the privilege! He knows the Copac constitution will never deliver a free media and freedom of expression, an open wound to all thinking Zimbabweans, and he is just rubbing salt and pepper into the wound!