Wednesday, 7 May 2014

Zimbabwe media failed to see the importance of democratic reforms and thus failed in its duty to inform!


“The current power tussle in the opposition MDC has become the talk of town, with screaming headlines of suspensions and expulsions surrounding the opposition party,” said Jeffrey Muvundusi, Daily News. I agree we have read of little else for the past few weeks.

 

“While this has consumed much of the local media space, observers say it is a fortuitous diversion of attention from the prevailing harsh economic conditions faced by the public,” continued Jeffrey. I too have heard many people say that.

 

Whilst I would agree with the rest of Jeffrey’s piece on the basis that the media’s focus on the MDC infighting has diverted the nation’s attention from what really matters, the very serious economic melt-down the nation is going through. What Jeffrey failed to understand and so did the media is the weeks of screaming headlines were all barking up the wrong tree.

 

The Genesis of all this infighting in MDC – T can be traced back to Mugabe rigging the July 2013 elections. This was an election Tsvangirai and MDC should have won; they had the numbers on their side but alas not the quality leaders to turn popular public support into electoral victory.

 

If the media, now writing all these endless commentary on the MDC-T split, had been object and alert as they should have been then they would not have failed to see that MDC had failed to implement the democratic reforms agreed in the GPA. And, worse still, that there was no way MDC would win the elections without the reforms.

 

“We failed to secure critical reforms before participating in the elections,” admitted Samuel Sipepa Nkomo in a recent interview. “The whole world advised us not to get into the elections without reforms, and so in everything that we have been saying we have failed to acknowledge that we also made a mistake.”

 

MP Nkomo did not include Zimbabwe’s Independent Media in “the whole world advised us” on reforms because most if not all Zimbabwe independent media houses were all solidly behind MDC going into the elections. None of them even notice that not even one of the pre-requisite reforms had been implemented or gave it a second thought if they did.

 

The importance of the reforms was missed by Zimbabwe public and the media played a role in that in that it failed in its duty to INFORM the public.

 

Tsvangirai, Biti, Ncube and the rest of the MDC leaders’ failure to implement the reforms and then ignore the warning not to go ahead with the elections without the reforms was a monumental blunder for which there was no excuse. None! They were distracted by the trappings of power and “forgot why they were in the GNU” as SADC leaders rightly pointed out.

 

The MDC leaders’ breath-taking incompetence in failing to implement the reforms shows that they cannot be trusted to hold public office ever again.

 

In a health and functioning democracy the media would be leading from the front calling for all the MDC leaders who played a part in this monumental blunder to resign from their party and public office. Sadly Zimbabwe clearly does not have such a focused media capable of distinguishing the woods from the trees.

 
Politics and the economy are in fact intertwined and not one a distraction of the other if viewed from the right angle. The immediate cause of the country’s economic melt-down if the Mugabe’s regime’s failure to get even the Chinese to contribute one Yuan in the ZimAsset begging bowl. But the trace the problem back; and it is the breath-taking incompetence of MDC that looms large because if these idiots had implemented the reforms as they should have done that Mugabe would not be in State House!

3 comments:

Zimbabwe Light said...

The real tragedy with Tsvangirai is he is so incompetent he does not even see just how incompetent he is.

“We have been victims of Zanu PF for a long time and we are not going to be stopped. We can-not stop our programmes because Zanu PF has thrown a few stones,” said Tsvangirai.

The violence he dismisses so casually as Zanu PF throwing "a few stones" has resulted in 14 people being injured and one of them is in intensive care! What is certain is that with the GPA out of the way and therefore SADC no longer playing the monitoring role Mugabe and Zanu PF can step up the violence to the nightmare levels of the past.

What Tsvangirai has completely failed to grasp is that if he had implemented the democratic re-forms as he should have done, he had five years to do it, then Mugabe would not have rigged the 2013 elections and the nation would have put the corruption, the chaos and all this violence behind us once and for all!

Following their leadership retreat in Inyanga last year MDC - T leaders decide that they would still take part in the elections even if there was violence. Tsvangirai is just reiterating that posi-tion. When he suspected that Zanu PF thugs were after him he disappeared to the Netherlands Embassy to even Usain Bolt would have caught him. It is another matter of course if the violence is directed against the ordinary Zimbabweans. They are cannon fodder!

It is ok for him to carry with his programmes, whatever they are (not that any of them have achieved anything in the past), he will drive back to his $4 million mansion leaving his supporters to face the violence on their own.

MDC's failure to implement the democratic reforms has proven just how breathtakingly incompe-tent leaders like Tsvangirai are; it is sheer folly for the nation to entrust the destiny of the nation to the likes of Tsvangirai. Because as long as tyrants like Mugabe has opponents like him the tyrant has the edge as we have already seen.

Mugabe has remained in power these last 15 years because of Tsvangirai's breath-taking in-competence! It is not enough to want Mugabe out; getting a competent leader to get the tyrant out is more important than ever, especially after the three Tsvangirai bungled attempts.

Zimbabwe Light said...

“Bahar Dar, Ethiopia - The figures are staggering: At least $1.8 trillion illicitly flowed out of Africa between 1970 and 2009.

“This is far more than the external aid the continent received over the same period, and almost five times its current external debt. According to researchers, the continent also loses at least $100bn a year in this financial haemorrhage,” said an Al Jazeera report. That is Africa!

One of Africa’s many tragedies; the continent has the wealth, one of the richest, but is the poorest continent of the planet because it has consistent failed to manage its wealth!

Zimbabwe Light said...

@ Dog Star

Rigging elections is treason, helping a tyrant to rig elections is treason, dealing in stolen property is illegal, etc., etc. The Chinese will have no leg to stand on and they know it.

There two reasons why the Chinese have changed their minds and took the risk to buy Mugabe's junk bonds:

1) Zimbabwe's opposition is breathtakingly incompetent and so they think Mugabe and Zanu PF are likely to remain in power for a lot longer - long enough for them to rack in the huge profits from looting Zimbabwe's resources.

2) When there is regime change - decades down the line - it will be the usual incompetent government one has learnt to expect from Africa. China will only have to give the new regime a few million dollars and all will be forgiven and forgotten.

All I would say to the Chinese is think again.

The Mugabe regime is too rotten to be saved and so regime change is set to happen a lot sooner than you think.

Tsvangirai and his MDC friends have proven to be breathtakingly incompetent we are competent enough to see that and, more significantly, to ensure the nation's destiny will never be entrusted in the hands of tyrants or incompetent village idiots ever again!

Think again China, think again! Chinese resentment in Africa has been growing over the last few years because of the indifference of the Chinese to common justice and fair play in the way the Chinese treat Africans. The barefaced injustice in the deal with Mugabe may well be the last drop that breaks the dam-wall of hostility against the Chinese.

The Chinese can be sure that we will do our best to make sure the details of the deal are broadcast far and wide and are remember for generations to come!