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Years of Hell” on the one hand, and subsequent images of a 60 000 seater stadium packed to capacity by Zimbabweans thronging to celebrate those same thirty-one years of “hell”?
More images came from all major celebration centres throughout our country’s ten provinces. The story was the same.
People thronged to mark the thirty-one years that have gone by since our Independence. Does it mean that on that fateful day of April 18, 2011, Zimbabweans came under a mass seizure of a giant masochistic impulse? That Zimbabweans – toddler to the hoary – decided, let us all self-immolate by deriving strange collective pleasure from the 31 years we have been gnashing, the 31 years of fire and brimstone? I leave this one.
The saving image
How is one supposed to relate to reports on MDC-T intra-party violence which are illustrated by an enraged riot policeman in a giant dash to sjambok a visibly hapless suspect?
No one contests that Mai Makone is a Co-Minister of Home Affairs, itself the parent Ministry for the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP). Or that she is a member of the MDC-T in charge of Women Affairs. Well, at least for now vaChihera!
Equally, no one contests that she being challenged in that party post, hotly challenged! But is it being imputed through that picture story that ZRP is involved in MDC-T’s intra-party violence?
On whose side? More fundamentally, if the issue of MDC-T violence is a fresh one covering its current and – if you ask me – future state shaped by wanton violence, is the picture of a charging police officer correspondingly fresh? Is it this year’s picture? Is it this month’s picture? Is it a picture from MDC-T’s latest round of violence?
Or, is it coming from morgues of certain newspapers? To communicate what? If it is, does the caption help the reader know this is a file picture? Why is it usable in these particular circumstances of party-related violence? Again, I leave this one for now.
Choosing the chosen one!
How is one to relate to a front-page banner headline titled “Tsvangirai the Chosen One”, in respect of the MDC-T presidential candidature of Morgan Tsvangirai in the on-going violence-wreaked congress of that party?
The headline itself is composed well ahead of the Congress itself, which only started this Thursday. If my knowledge of congresses is anything to go by, parties do leave this one particular item for the last day. Yet, here is a paper with the temerity to drape a candidate in a Biblical language register!
Oh, don’t read me wrong. I am not saying the paper will not be vindicated by subsequent developments. It may. It will. But for goodness’s sake, this is a newspaper, never an MDC-T publicity organ or one of MDC-T’s cheering minions. Or is it both? How does it then analyse the “win” in circumstances in which it prepossesses itself with such aura-stricken headlines?
How does a dispassionate paper show such political predilection well ahead of the selection process, however rigged or phony? That, too, I will leave for now.
The robber who draws bottoms
Then you have this strange NewsDay thief (no pun intended!) who is in the habit of wanting to “rob” the editor’s bottom . . . sorry bottom drawer! This drawer of bottoms triggers a group photo from the “victims”, a picture populated by a camera-conscious NewsDay media crew, all well arranged for the occasion!
It is a picture so akin to those traditional birthday cake photos, only built around naked computers in all manner of indecent poses! I said a strange thief. Very strange thief indeed! He times his break-in to coincide with a few days before World Press Freedom Day! And, NewsDay, only too conscious of the hazards of a reader who is not calendar-conscious, takes the selfless but enormous trouble to remind forgetful readers that the robbery has come “a few days away from World Press Freedom Day celebrations.” Very helpful reminder indeed!
Drawing bottom accounts
Then comes a “smasher” of a paragraph: “He (Khumalo) said the cost of replacing the (cannibalised) computers was a drawback coming at a time the daily paper was making a serious impact on the market.” Ha ha ha! Laughter, surely, is the best medicine.
One is reading about a very strange robber who so helpfully strikes a few days before World Press Freedom Day, all to attack computers of a newsroom so sorely in need of new and more computers, newsroom of a paper doing so well in the market but which bleats fatally wounded by such pilferage! We are all too grateful to this strange thief. We now have heroes and empathetic figures to sing praises to, come our World Press Freedom Day Commemorations. Don’t we?
And, Western ambassadors shall all come to commiserate with us, some even offering computers a hundredfold what this indecent robber has disabled! Who will say the Americans and the British have, true to their budgetary allocations for overseas operations, channelled resources to Trevor Ncube’s AMH? Who?
I am sure Philip Kotler, the authority on marketing in distressful times, is holding his ribs in wrecking laughter at this creative expansion to his marketing mix. Khumalo, quite truly, is a master at reviving products that wither on the vine.
Of course no one will tell the world that one day last year, the same Khumalo was so livid with a senior official at Zimpapers for refusing to accompany him to the American embassy to make a joint case for “free” newsprint donated to media houses by Americans through USAid.
I bet no one, not even Nathaniel Manheru! After sending distress calls to the Americans, the Americans had indicated USAid would only make such donations provided the State media was part of the request. This, the embassy said, would cover its back! Zimpapers would not oblige. Let Khumalo deny that!
Voice of the voiceless
I have left too many puzzles hanging. Let me now rest them on terra firma. The first piece on 31 years of “hell” raises a fundamental question about the media and the people. Often, the media calls itself “the voice of the voiceless”, the assumption being that “the voiceless” are real beings whose voices have been denied.
But, as you will notice from the afore-quoted headline, the media can indeed truly be the voice of the voiceless, the voiceless ones being nobodies or non-beings! Which section of the Zimbabwean populace did that headline speak for? What becomes of such a claim when the commemoration attracts a crowd which is the equivalent of the paper’s year long cumulative readership? So, voiceless-ness arises not from denial, but from inventing reality, from inventing voices from newsroom computers. And once one is in that creative zone, being a voice of the voiceless becomes carte blanche! Anything goes, anything flies. And because you are operating in that realm where reality does not matter, you might as well have written the story well before the paper was registered. And, written it from an embassy that pretends to be a newsroom. As was the case in this particular story! Who is served; what politics are advanced by attacking a nation’s patriotic will? What is supposed to replace it when Zimbabweans begin to relate cynically to their own being?
The one violence that is never photogenic
The second piece is even more pregnant. First, why is MDC-T violence not photogenic? Both in the sense of exciting photographers, and then exciting picture editors who daily sit in newsrooms to select pictures that go with given stories?
We have many pictures of recent MDC-T violence, including the horrible ones from MDC-T violence in Warren Hills cemetery. Tsvangirai Mukwazhi exhausted spools and spools for a comprehensive coverage. Sorry, I said spools as if he is still operating in the old world. No, he is now digital. All newsrooms do have pictures of MDC-T violence, both from the cemetery and from provinces. Yet, this is one visual story which was covered through words, never through images. Newsrooms will not use these images. They would rather use those which indict the State, both by recall and by a sleight of propaganda hand.
MDC-T must never be cast as a violent party. No, it must not be! I was stunned that even at the Warren Hills Cemetery incident where violence not only took place before the very eyes of Tsvangirai and Khupe, but actually with loud exhortations from one of them, no such sordid details were published.
Or in Bulawayo where a whole Deputy Prime Minister was implicated – not once but twice, with one incident yielding a death. Or, during the Harare Copac meetings where two whole ministers from the MDC-T where visually implicated.
The proof was there, indubitably there. It was used in one session of the National Security Council – I am told – which is why the MDC-T beat a hasty retreat on that matter. No, the MDC-T must never be cast as a violent party, which it is, and will be in future. One day, this nation will have to come to terms with its fatal reticence.
Compensatory guilt and conspiracy to hide
Zanu-PF and Government must be cast as such, even in MDC-T’s stead. That means both have to be guilty, including by compensation in respect of instances where MDC-T is caught being violent. This is why file pictures are used to rig truth, never mind the mismatch between image and story, coverage and time.
Editorially, when MDC-T is caught up in violence – intra- or inter-party – the slant becomes one of making general condemnation of politically motivated violence, using of course examples and images ascribed to Zanu-PF and Government. Not fresh ones from the actual incidents and perpetrators of violence. Such is the level of dishonesty in newsrooms. Some violence is more visible than the other. Or the obverse, some genus of violence is more camera-shy than other violence.
Not, never Mr Clean
Why is the issue of MDC-T violence so important to a fair and balanced media? Well, simply because MDC-T has itself built its politics and political campaign on the ticket of being a hapless victim of political violence from Zanu-PF, the State or both. This was its main claim in Livingstone. This has been its main claim since its violent inception. Yet the media reminds no one that far back in 1998 and 1999, MDC announced its advent into this world through violence, and that this violent streak has been growing bolder and bolder ever since. No one reminds readers that apart from violence that is outward, the MDC-T has been generating violence which has been self-destructively inward, precipitating the first split which gave Welshman Ncube a party and a cause, and another split which might follow its current congress.
Missing the larger story in violence
What is worse, because the media are so protective of the MDC-T and so defensive on this phenomenon of intra-party violence, there has hardly been any mapping of this seemingly mindless violence to come to grips with the fractious politics that underpins it, politics which are set to shape the politics of the party and also of country into the future.
Additionally, no one has sought to read this latest spate of violence against Livingstone. If, as is claimed, the issue of violence turned Sadc against President Mugabe and Zanu-PF at Livingtsone, what does the latest spate of violence suggest will be Sadc’s attitude towards MDC-T at the forthcoming Sadc Summit in Windhoek? Could that be why the media is being protective in its reportage of the issue? Is it to suggest that MDC-T violence is democratic and fulfills a major outstanding issue of the GPA?
Why is this violence acceptable and seemingly taking place with media connivance?
Violent at home, peaceful abroad?
I am sure fair-minded people are asking how a party which metes out violence against its own can ever spare those outside of it who stand opposed to it, politically? Can a party which is so violent at home ever be peaceful abroad? And, when the President made the point that isolated violence which the country has witnessed in the few weeks, have been both intra- and inter-party, why didn’t Tsvangirai and Welshman Ncube bear this point out?
Why were they dragging State agencies into the whole mess? Was it to suggest political parties are congenitally incapable of generating their own violence? Can Welshman say that, himself having suffered and emerged from such party mediated violence? If Tsvangirai thinks all violence in this country is either caused by Zanu-PF or by State agencies, why is he not addressing Zanu-PF and State agencies on the violence which is now engulfing his party?
Why does he need an MDC-T congress resolution to expel those responsible for violence he ascribes to outsiders?
As always, I turn to Shona wisdom: For as long as time marches on, no pregnancy can be hidden for much too long. The Windhoek Summit shall be an interesting affair, what with gratuitous violence that has accompanied the MDC-T congress. The Windhoek Summit shall be an interesting affair, what with the “progress” that negotiators have made on their own. Shall it be an inquisition as speculated by the private press, or merely a Summit that hears progress report on Zimbabwe as seems likely? Or shall Zanu-PF use it to turn the tables? Let’s wait and see.
Voiding real voices
The last item is the claim that Tsvangirai is the “chosen” one. No problem. Except five months ago in December 2010, Zanu-PF held a Congress at which Robert Mugabe was confirmed the “chosen” one, well after he had long emerged so through provincial processes? Why did he not merit such a headline from a paper that claims to be “everyday news for everyday people”?
What made this one choice so Biblically everyday, while making the other choice so earthly un-everyday for unusual people? Or, was it another case of voicing the voiceless while voiding real voices? Why are equal, parallel processes so unequally and so contrapuntally handled by the supposedly balanced and fair newspapers of everyday record? Can the Zimbabwe Media Commission educate all of us on this one?
So many long questions
Which takes me to major questions of this instalment. Here we go. Can one possibly criticise Zanu-PF without rubbishing one’s National Independence? Can one rubbish Zanu-PF without traducing the founding process of national liberation, including its heroic component of liberation war? Can one dismiss certain Zimbabweans without dismissing Zimbabwe?
Or, should one get closer to the bone? Can one be anti-Zanu-PF, anti-Mugabe and still be nationalistic, and still be fiercely patriotic, fiercely anti-sanctions, anti-external interference, anti-British, anti-American, anti-European, pro-African?
Can one hate Zanu-PF, hate President Mugabe, while supporting land reforms, indigenisation and economic empowerment? Can one be an MDC member or supporter who is anti-sanctions, anti-intrusive West, anti-intervention? Can one be an MDC supporter without being pro-Western? More closely, can one be pro-MDC and pro-Zimbabwe at the same time, pro-Zimbabwean in the material sense of pushing for the untrammeled interests of Zimbabwe first and foremost?
What is the real question?
To be a critical Zimbabwean without being Mungoshi’s self-hating Lucifer: that to me seems the question and dilemma inherent in circuits of protest politics of our country. In this globalised world, it is inevitable that as before, nations will always be defined in apposition to their equivalents, whether here in our region or abroad.
To love one’s country is always at the expense of rival pretensions to greatness of the next nation. It gets worse when, within the push for globalisation, certain identities are flagged up, while others are flagged down, with those flagged up happening to carry flags which before have been hoisted once in the pre-independence days of our country. Both the British and the Americans are not just other powers of the world for us. They are powers who have enslaved us in the past. They cannot pass for a neutral force in our affairs. Their interests and ours will always contradict until we become another India which earns an equal status, another China which has become a rival force set to rule the world in 2016, if Fukuyama is to be believed, and America does not brew a war against China.
To imagine both countries can be friendly to us in our circumstances of challenged sovereignty, is surely to self-delude. Not many of us are keen on such a path.
The one happy black man abroad
I keep getting a response from one of my readers who pontificates about the virtues of the white man, illustratively citing the wonderful things that have happened to him, thanks to this Caucasian goodness.
I am sure there are many such fortunate beings who have happy stories to share and are thus ready to beat the white drum. But, I honestly wonder how many other black people out there do have sob-stories which contradict these happy ones. I wonder what result we would get from a world happiness census that measures black happiness against white happiness in the causal sense. Much worse, I wonder whether or not that happy mouth which is so uniquely happy has not been made so for the sole purpose of countermanding arguments on the aggravated condition of black millions.
Does the goodness of the white world subsist in dispensing charity to black folk, who in turn become so grateful, itself a debilitating complex? Is that not a power equation that betrays a giver race and a receiver colour? I don’t know. I am still young in the ways of the world. But I find it very difficult to avoid this overbearing reality that makes colour such an abiding dynamic, right from well before the days of W E B Du Bois. Why hasn’t the world changed? Why has it not revolved around any other hub other than that of race? Even when a black man protests against race, he is charged with racism?
Another from an ascetic Zimbo
I also had another piece from an ascetic reader who doubts whether we deserve to own, let alone run, anything at all. I suppose it includes this column too! This bitter self-abasement was illustrated by many “failures” which have been explained as proof that nothing owned and run by a man of colour ever comes to any good. Gentle reader, you immediately pick the uncanny resemblance such reasoning bears to Mungoshi’s Lucifer! I am Lucifer Mandengu. To be born here is a biological and geographical error! With the history we have had, such self-doubt and self-contempt is not unexpected.
Which is why I strongly feel that the national soul badly needs massive repair, well from the days of our Independence. That is the missing link, one which makes it so burdensome for President Mugabe to make a case for you and me, for both of us: we rich non-believers who will not own.
So wonderful a royal wedding!
How about a valedictory chuckle, dear reader? I had a hilarious “sms” from a percipient friend who is visiting relatives and friends from down South. She works for a British NGO, but has surprisingly kept her liberating cynicism. Reacting to the British royal wedding, which was yesterday, and to Zesa’s uncharacteristically uninterrupted power supply for the duration of the live broadcast, she had this to say: “Special thanks to our power utility (Zesa) for not turning off the electricity today. We monarchists are ever so grateful!” Who says we are not British subjects? I, too, pay my homage: happy marital tidings your Royal Highnesses! Icho!
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