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The party has been trying to hoodwink the public that the images are from Zimbabwe, showing faces of African Americans who readers would not suspect are not Zimbabwean.
Last week the MDC-T was exposed for importing images into its election manifesto, among which was a picture which depicted a South Africa woman planting a tree in Port Elizabeth.
Another picture on page 19 of the manifesto shows a train crossing a rail bridge over the Kwai River in Kanchanaburi, Thailand, and African American medical students on page 21 to mention just a few.
Icons of the US map and Supreme Court also adorned the party’s website, but these were hastily removed on Tuesday morning last week after they drew fierce criticism from members of the public.
Current images include the image of a young African American deejay singing holding a microphone. The image is from Getty Images and is published on the company’s website.
The image is used on an MDC-T flyer labelled “Let The Party Begin,” a slogan which identifies that picture on the Getty Images website.
Another flyer called “It’s Your Choice, It’s Your Secret” features an African American elderly couple. The image is from Fotolia.com, another US stock photography website. The image was also used by US news agency CNBC.com on May 22, 2013 in an article entitled “African-Americans retiring earlier, with less savings”.
Another US image of a nurse is used by the MDC-T party on a flyer entitled “The Time Is Now Civil Servants”. The image was published on the US’s Clayton County Public Health website. Clayton County is Jonesboro in the US state of Georgia.
Contacted for comment MDC-T spokesperson Mr Douglas Mwonzora professed ignorance of the fliers.
“I am not aware of such fliers and they certainly did not originate from my office. However, let me also explain that in certain instances it depends on the context of the message we want to put across.
“If the message is of what we aspire to be we may borrow from outside. For example if we aspire to have skyscrapers or good railway infrastructures we may borrow from outside, I don’t see anything wrong with that. But if it is of something that we already have then we will use local images,” he said.
The latest expose is a huge embarrassment to the MDC-T party which has been trying for a very long time to shake-off the image that it is not a home-grown party, and its political strategy is handled by the West. It is not clear why the MD0C-T decided to use images from the United States, and not from Zimbabwe. — Zimbabwe Guardian-Herald Reporter.
Online Reporter