Zimbabwe state media? You mean Zanu-PF mouthpiece

AFP is reporting that the Zimbabwean state media is blaming the opposition for the deadlock in the power sharing deal and urging President Mugabe to simply go ahead and appoint his own cabinet.

What a load of cockcustard!

This is so far removed from the reality as to demand an explanation lest all those who work for the state media be burdened with the hostility which will surely flow once the situation is resolved. The reality is that Zanu-PF controls what goes in and out of the state media and any attempt to deviate from the party line is slapped back into place.

After the power sharing deal was reached certain members of the Herald tried to put a more balanced slant on the items they were covering only to be told in no uncertain terms that they were counter revolutionaries and better get a grip on what Zanu-PF consider the reality.

Or else.

I have received comments from their members to my articles on “Traps” as well as by email, which suggest that they too would love to see a restoration of normality in Zimbabwe. They would never, however, dare to suggest it in public.

Never forget, lest you be too judgmental, that these people earn their living from working for the state media and, like the National Party spokesmen and women of the South African press during apartheid, are happy to go along with the flow.

You might suggest that this lacks courage, which in a way it does, but that is far too simplistic. Like the apartheid crowd many of them grew up believing in papa Zanu-PF or the National Party and were taught that anything good flowed from Mugabe and all evil emanated from those who dared to oppose him.

Pretty much the same as we in South Africa were taught about the terrorists in the ANC who would slaughter every white and impose communism on the day they seized power.

As in the case of many South Africans who refused to accept the evil of apartheid, they could have refused to work for the Zimbabwe state media. Of course that presupposes that before they started working there they were of the view that Mugabe and the Zanu-PF were in the wrong.

That is not the case for many.

In the main much of the worst of the Zanu-PF onslaught occurred post the 2000 referendum. (Yes I am fully aware of the massacres and history prior to that). The slow train to genocide, which has now become an express bullet train, was not in most of their contemplation as yet.
Now that they are fully involved and aware that this train is going to derail, they are “voting” Zanu-PF, through their writing, but hoping that the power sharing deal stops the train in time.

In other words where the “state media” suggests that Mugabe appoint the cabinet, which will effectively destroy any hope of Zimbabwe’s power sharing deal coming to fruition, it is a Zanu-PF functionary who has dictated what the government mouthpiece has said.

As is common knowledge, if the MDC don’t obtain Home Affairs and Finance as part of their 13 cabinet portfolios, the international community will laugh off the new cabinet in terms of any investment into Zimbabwe.

As we all know the overwhelming majority of Zimbabweans, the international community and dare I say it the SADC region now wants to see Tsvangirai taking the reigns in a power sharing deal.

And that includes many in the State media.