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IT was the hawk-eyed Joram Nyathi who this week observed that, “What’s killing journalism in this country is that everyone is trying to double as a prophet and a politician.”
That is about the correct diagnosis of the current situation in the country and field of journalism — especially so at the other side of town — the lunatic fringe. We are grateful that given that perceptive comment Nyathi had the modesty not to pretend that he was a prophet himself! You see, he could very easily have done so.
After all, prophecy is such a big business, what with all we are seeing at the new churches where charlatans are making indecent amounts of money by purporting to prophesy everything and anything from soccer match results to gold raining from the skies and money miraculously appearing in bank accounts.
In other words, given the relatively difficult socio-economic times that we are experiencing as a country, such things are signs of the times, indeed symptomatic of the national condition.
But let us go back to our story.
If you have your last dollar, spare it for the fair bet that Nyathi may have had the Daily News in mind.
Interestingly, just before the ink of his diagnosis had hardly dried, the paper gave us its vintage-type stories these days, titled: “Mujuru plotting more surprises” written by its ever so hard working chief writer.
The story told us that, “The People First movement says the surprise moves it has sprung on President Robert Mugabe and his post-congress zanu-pf, including former Vice President Joice Mujuru’s dramatic re-entry into formal national politics a fortnight ago, are only the beginning of many such gambits that it plans to launch over the next few months.”
The people planning these gambits (to borrow from our learned colleagues) are, we come to know, “liberation struggle stalwart” Rugare Gumbo and Didymus Mutasa.
Well, there are no surprises there, surely?
As a matter of fact, we are sure that readers of the newspaper are sick and tired of these two morons that were ejected from zanu-pf, and have not had anything meaningful to do except staying on the phone and commanding their lackeys at the newspaper to yap on their behalf.
And, by the way, what was dramatic, indeed shocking, about the so-called People First sponsoring adverts in the private papers which they purported to be a manifesto.
Who would be “shocked” and “surprised” and “rattled” by that?
Gumbo and co. will not “relent” and they imagine that there has been “palpable fear and worry in the corridors of power”.
“They are going to get a lot of shocks,” Gumbo warns zanu-pf, and promises that, “we will shock them even more”.
Prophet-politician-journalism
You can hardly escape the reality that the brand of journalism at our friends’, is political and it is seeking to fulfil its own prophecy about a political force to rival the establishment of zanu-pf.
They have been hoping and praying for this to come to pass.
This is the reason why every day someone has to wake up and call Didymus Mutasa or Rugare Gumbo to check on the progress towards a new party.
It is like checking a pfimbi — the autochthonous hidden place where you stow unripe fruit for it to warm to ripeness.
Or a hatchery upon which you wait, patiently.
And you begin to sense of the same patience wearing thin, a body growing frantic, when one asks, when is the big day — the day of ripeness; of hatching — and the answer is this:
“We are working hard on various aspects of forming a party, such as writing a constitution and finalising the legal documents, and when we are ready, we will shock them even more”.
We have heard that line more than once before.
It must also be tiring out many who continue hearing it, including chief writers.
But then, if you are in a position where you are working hard enough to see the fulfilment of a dubious political prophecy that you wrought, does it ever matter?
So long a letter
In light of this embarrassing brand of journalism, it is quite laughable and ironic that a few days back one of the editors at the paper wrote an open letter to President Mugabe trying to pose as a paragon of journalism.
We understand that the paper, which always misses no chance to praise itself, has ego and legitimacy issues and likes to play victim to the extent of continuously lying to its readers that it was “forcibly and unjustly shut down by your Government in September 2003, for eight long years; all for the crime of telling it like it is, without fear or favour, as our motto goes.”
(It is a known fact that the struggling paper wilfully refused to register in compliance with the law to provoke closure, even when all other media houses registered.)
Now isn’t it incredible that the paper that gives us a surfeit of worthless prophecies touts itself as a paragon of virtue and claims that, “our duty is to our country — not to individuals, businesses and political parties: which is why we, as a national and patriotic newspaper always ‘tell it like it is’, unequivocally without fear or favour.”
How come the paper is having its duty to Gumbo and Mutasa and the mirage of People First?
We all know that before the advent of People First the paper was beholden, as it indeed still is, to the opposition MDC and its leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
What national value is in moronic fellas like Gumbo and Mutasa?
And does the paper feel quite edified to be telling “it like it is” when it gives us daily dosage of hallucinations and delusions from the likes of Rugare Gumbo?
We do not envy them.
Given a choice, you would kindly rebel against the tradition and exhortation to regurgitate nonsense from such individuals as Gumbo.
Perhaps that would be the best way not to kill journalism in this country, as feared by those with it at heart.
Online Reporter