Is it journalism or perpetual brainwashing?

Reason Wafawarova
It appears it is becoming hard to find examples of journalists who use their brains in carrying out their duties, and minimum scrutiny of media practice points to a systematic behavioural adaptation clearly designed to survive a ruthless filtering system that keeps dissident opinion out.
It is not only media organisations that rely on this complex filtering system to perpetuate self-serving brainwashing and compliance levels.
Political parties and governments also rely on perpetual brainwashing in order to ensure submission, and so do corporations in many cases.

Generally, the conventional educational and professional training system is an elaborate filter in itself — eliminating people deemed to be too independent, and those viewed as incapable of being submissive.

Richard Branson is one classical outcast of the conventional educational system, and that is by self-admission on the part of the billionaire.
Media houses are owned by people with power and interests, and as such it is viewed as dysfunctional to have people whose thinking patterns are a threat to the power and interests of media owners.

When Joram Nyathi began to question the politics of Westerners over the internal affairs of Zimbabwe, his departure from The Independent was immediately written all over his face. Everything was just predictable.

Using his popular “Candid Comment” column as deputy editor of the Western-funded rightwing paper, Nyathi would occasionally lambast the illegally imposed Western sanctions as harming ordinary Zimbabweans, and also as providing scapegoat cover for failing ZANU-PF politicians. These comments were quite fair.

He also used the column to write in support of the popular land reform programme, and occasionally he would castigate the Western blue-eyed politicians in the MDC-T for lacking meaningful strategy in their political fight with ZANU-PF.

Matters came to a head after he penned an article titled “Why I wanted to be a white man.” In this piece Nyathi lambasted one white commercial farmer for allegedly referring to a land beneficiary as a “kaffir,” after she had produced an eviction letter meant to make the white commercial farmer vacate the farm, as it had been designated for redistribution.

Wrote Nyathi then, “Mugabe has tried to demystify the white man through land reform regardless of his other human foibles. It (the white race) hawks itself as the donor race. It is the same race which maintains sanctions on Zimbabwe which have become as indefensible as rape, whatever the perpetrator’s defence.”

He was reportedly sent on forced leave by the powers that be at the Zimbabwe Independent, and some media outlets then reported that some board members had described his views as “outrageous.”

The reports also alleged that Nyathi had been forced to resign while on forced leave. Although this was never officially confirmed, the next time Nyathi found himself back at work was at the inclusive Government’s JOMIC offices, not at his office at The Independent.

After the dissolution of JOMIC in 2013, Nyathi joined The Herald as the Zimpapers Group Political Editor.
By the time one becomes an editor or a bureau chief, the expectation is that one has got all this compliance stuff in their bones, that they have internalised values that make it clear that certain things cannot be said or done, in fact that certain things are not even thought of.

George Orwell is the favourite author of all time for many people, including, if not particularly, those on the right.
The introduction in the later editions of his book “Animal Farm” states that the commissar’s bludgeon over the heads of those who said the wrong things in totalitarian Soviet Union was no different to the purge by the wealthy owners of the media over those who said the wrong things in England. To Orwell the means were different but the results were the same.

If you are a well-educated Zimbabwean, you went to the right boarding schools in the country, you are a graduate of UZ, now you are a big shot somewhere in the country’s enterprises, you stay alongside your like-minded somewhere in the leafy suburbs of Harare — it is assumed you have simply learnt that there are things that are not proper for you to say or do. Ordinarily you would not see in good light things like the media corruption expose currently targeting some elites running the corporate sector in Zimbabwe today — the so called “salarygate.”

The noise on corruption is coming from the bewildered masses and there is no good reason to assume overwhelming support from our society’s elites. The truth is most of them are scared to bits and pieces.

One of the cabinet ministers recently questioned what the matter is with The Herald “of these days.” This was after he had been quizzed over his decision to extend the contract of a CEO who has been fingered in an obscene corruption scandal. Clearly Minister Dzikamai Mavhaire has expectations of The Herald, and being taken to task over his decisions is not part of these expectations.

There are good reasons for this paradigm. The minister is a state minister, and the state is the major shareholder of Zimpapers, the parent company for The Herald. Expectedly, the minister expects to enjoy a certain level of impunity when it comes to how The Herald covers his work, or at the least he expects acceptable moderate criticism.

The large part of our education system trains us to internalise conformity skills, to understand that there are things that are not proper to say or do, or proper to even think of. We then use these conformity skills to join various institutions, the media, civic organisations, non-governmental organisations, government institutions, corporations and so on and so forth.

If one fails the conformity test, the typical fate is that they get weeded out of the institution, and Munyaradzi Gwisai and Takura Zhangazha can give testimonies to this in relation to how they were made to leave the MDC and MISA respectively.

Our intellectual culture is cemented in the importance of uniformity of ideology, and this is why the MDC-T cannot stomach Elton Mangoma today.

In the culture of the MDC-T, criticism and opposition is one way — it goes the direction of Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF, and anyone that directs it to Morgan Tsvangirai has to be weeded out, even violently. In fact every form of evil that may ever befall the MDC-T must be attributed to ZANU-PF by definition, and that is why both Mangoma and his assailants are all the works of Mugabe and ZANU-PF. If one is not foolish enough to abide by this kind of nonsense they simply have to “leave the MDC-T and form their own party,” to quote Chalton Hwende.

It is mournful that our institutions run on perpetual brainwashing of those they employ, but it is understandable that the institutions will not do things that will undermine their own existence.

It would be highly unfair for us to assume that every brainwashed journalist lies for a living, or sings for their supper. Some, if not most of these journalists, secure their jobs because they actually believe what they write.

Firstly, one has to admit that people who do not believe in what these media houses stand for would not pass the grade to work for the institutions in the first place.

Secondly, it is very hard to live with cognitive dissonance, unless one is a real cynic that can believe one thing and say another. This writer is convinced that Obert Gutu is a typical cynic who says things he does not believe in order to fit into the political paradigm of his MDC-T party — the neo-liberal capitalist agenda.

Reading most of Gutu’s opinion pieces one sees a committed socialist and nationalist combined, ideologically so related to the politics of his loathed ZANU-PF rival party.

When the MDC-T came with its ill-prepared JUICE policy paper, Gutu had to contradict much of his earlier publications as he ran with the foreign investment agenda propagated by his party. That is the material that makes up absolute crooks.

There are other cynics like Basildon Peta and Lance Guma that basically preoccupy themselves with the business of lying, and we cannot reduce our dignity to the level of honouring their roguery with debate.

I am not so sure if Chalton Hwende is a cynic or worse, but when I read what Sesel Zvidzai writes in defence of the beleaguered Morgan Tsvangirai, I see in his writings a man who actually believes what he says, including publicly confessing that he “licks the boots of Tsvangirai,” to use his own words.

Chalton Hwende was once suspended from the MDC in 2004, after he organised a demonstration to protest the imposition of by-election losing candidate James Makore ahead of himself. Morgan Tsvangirai single-handedly ruled out primary elections, and for his protest troubles Hwende earned himself suspension from the party.

It appears like he has learnt so well the rewards of boot-licking politics, and now he is the indisputable chief praise singer of the oblivion bound Tsvangirai.

This was what Chalton Hwende said after Elton Mangoma had reported the assault perpetrated on him to the police:
“By lying that the president Dr Morgan Tsvangirai was behind his alleged attack and proceeding to report the case at Avondale Police Station yesterday clearly shows that he is now working with ZANU-PF to cause the arrest of the president. This surely must mark the end of Mangoma in MDC.”

It is perfectly true that nobody tells me what to write under this column, but if I did not already know what to write, I wouldn’t be a columnist for The Herald. There is a good reason why I am not a columnist elsewhere.

Our intellectual culture, our political parties, our corporations and our media are all run on the basis of effective systems of ideological control —much more effective than totalitarianism can ever achieve.

Even international relations are run along the same lines, and that is why the World Bank is withdrawing a US$90 million loan that was meant for Uganda, all because the Ugandan government has passed some laws that are deemed to be ideologically at variance with the powers behind international affairs.

Ugandans can consult Zimbabweans if they are not sure about the ruinous effect of Western sanctions, and perhaps that will guide them best on how best to handle this arrogant blackmail.

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!!

REASON WAFAWAROVA is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia.