1 May 2008
column
A PERUSAL of the state press can be a demanding business nowadays.
Like Isvestia in the Soviet era, much can be concluded by reading between the lines.
The big news issue for most people on Monday was the vote recount in which Zanu PF had placed so much faith.
A pattern of systematic fraud, the ruling party hoped, would demonstrate that President Mugabe had victory snatched from him by unscrupulous polling officers.
Alas, it was not to be.
Whatever the shortcomings of the electoral process -- and there were many -- the number of ballot papers in the boxes remained largely the same. An occasional miscount here or there but nothing systematic and certainly no grounds for the politically-inspired arrest of polling officers.
Zanu PF lost the contest for the lower house but the Herald declined to report such grim tidings.
Instead it led with an interview with Kenneth Kaunda taken from Zambia's The Post saying Gordon Brown wasn't qualified to comment on the "challenges" facing Zimbabwe.
It was a trite little story which, given the outcome of the recount, should have been headed "from one loser to another".
The Herald beefed it up by including the remarks of some little-known Zambian boxer who appeared to think we would benefit from his views on Iraq.
But there was an even funnier story on Page 3 of Monday's Herald headed "President a living legend".
This was a pathetic paean of praise from Obert Mpofu at the opening of the Zimbabwe International Flea Market last Friday.
For the third row in a year there was no head of state willing to open it except Mugabe. Mpofu obviously saw an opportunity to ingratiate himself with some fawning remarks.
Mugabe has worked tirelessly for the economic empowerment of the majority of Zimbabweans who had been marginalised during the colonial era, Mpofu grovelled.
He didn't explain why then they were worse off today than they were in 1980. In fact worse off than they were in 1960 when the trade fair first opened.
And every time Mugabe opens his mouth everyone gets a little bit poorer as investors stay away!
He used the platform provided last Friday to claim that his land reform programme was "the final solution to the land question".
His speech writers failed to warn him that Adolph Hitler was the last person to speak of the "final solution", only on that occasion the German fuhrer was referring to the elimination of Jews, not productive farmers.
And who is Mugabe to decide whether his corrupt and deeply flawed land programme will be accepted by Zimbabweans as the last word on the subject? Mugabe lost the election.
His views on land reform were rejected by the voters. So it really doesn't matter what he says any more.
A land audit will soon establish which criminals got which farms.
There will certainly be a "going back" on land when it comes to multiple holdings.
No wonder some people have been begging Mugabe to stay on whatever the result.
Despite the obvious fact that Mugabe and his party lost the election, Zimpapers' publications have continued to believe this is an occasion they don't have to rise to.
Instead they persist in the view that there has been no material change in the politics of the country -- that voters didn't really know what they were doing -- and comfort themselves with the delusion that Zanu PF won control of the senate and can block things there.
That remained true until Monday when the two MDCs agreed to link up.
But you would have thought a public press would have woken up to the new realities: the people voted overwhelmingly to rid themselves of the criminal gang in their midst, and the fact that the government media continue to betray the public who rejected all their fatuous and dishonest claims shows just how deep the roots of misrule go.
Letter-writers, columnists and cartoonists continue to live in a world of self-deception, a world the people unambiguously rejected.
The Herald seriously tried to tell us on Wednesday that Tendai Biti's team had gone to New York to address the Security Council and were "snubbed".
And who was the newspaper's source? Zimbabwe's ambassador to the UN Boniface Chidyausiku who occupies no position of authority whatsoever. He told the Herald that the MDC team were "told off".
Only governments could address the Security Council, they were told.
All nonsense of course. Nobody was "told off".
Biti's team was happy to brief the UN secretariat on what was happening in Zimbabwe.
And they had an opportunity to speak to Security Council member-states on the margins of the meeting.
Chidyausiku should try and be more professional in his briefings to the gullible state media.
Or is he determined not to survive the advent of a democratic government?
"Zimbabwe will never be a colony again," the nation's threadbare rulers chant.
It's all rather pathetic.
The country has moved on dumping the empty rhetoric, yet Zimpapers continue to parrot its mantras as if nothing has happened.
What happened to the "mother of all seasons"? Is that the situation on the ground? And did a 300% increase in its cover price not wake the Herald up to the chaotic economic policies that have proved ruinous to the country?
Why is the public media so intent upon misleading the nation when it should at least be trying to reflect the diversity of views reflected in the election?
Last week we referred to the manufacture of a whole raft of stories attributed to Tendai Biti.
These turned out to be clumsy lies designed to assist Mugabe's run-off campaign and Biti's lawyers wrote to the editor of the Herald to warn him he was circulating defamatory statements.
They included stories about thousands of white farmers returning to reclaim their land in league with the MDC.
The curious thing about this particular story is that nobody ever actually saw the white farmers in question.
But that didn't stop ministers repeating the lie.
We asked last week which fool would open his mouth next to claim white farmers were reoccupying farms.
Tafataona Mahoso obliged on Sunday with the claim that "former Rhodesians" had organised a convoy from Chimanimani to Mutare which was "intended to announce to Manicaland province that Tsvangirai had won the 2008 election".
They moved from farm to farm, Mahoso said, "telling resettled farmers to prepare to vacate the farms..."
The whites were "instigating MDC thugs and former farm workers to attack some resettled farmers and burn their crops", he claimed.
Our question to Mahoso: Did you personally see this convoy of farmers? What evidence do you have of "750 to 1 000 former white Rhodesian farmers" returning to the country? We know you wouldn't want to circulate unverified reports.
As for the "provocative behaviour" of these farmers, we once again had only vague second-hand reports.
That is until Thursday night when ZTV filled our screens with the ample form of Reuben Barwe -- a land beneficiary -- who claimed eight homesteads of resettled farmers in Headlands had been torched by MDC members.
The Herald repeated the story the next day.
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