adminmanaged to unravel plots and sub-plots that have left a lot of individuals within the commission, the Prime Minister’s Office and legal fraternity with rotten eggs on their faces.
What has not been interrogated, however, is the role of the private media in the whole drama, particularly the involvement of the Daily News, the paper that purported to have busted “the biggest scandal since 1980”.
If you read the syntagmatic outplay of the so-called ‘Nieebgate’ in the Daily News, the temptation is to believe the paper did some research in coming out with articles on the purported scandal yet real analysis can show that the so-called scandal falls within a prominent MDC-T political schema borrowed from the Soviet Union KGB which the party has adopted by its code name called “Active Measures”.
Documents generated by self-proclaimed staffers in the Prime Ministers’ office who are salaried by the Institute for a Democratic Alternative in Zimbabwe (Idazim) which have been leaked to the media by some disgruntled employees of the same, show that the whole ‘Nieebgate’ scandal was a well-planned election strategy emanating from Number 14 Bath Road Belgravia which found accomplices in Gama and Dr Gideon Gono.
This Active Measures programme as described in one of the documents from the Prime Minister’s Research and Development Office funded through Idazim, describe the “Active Measures” as constituting“ a cocktail of activities such as disinformation, the expert forging and distribution of forged documents as a form of subversion against political opponents and the publication of material targeted at a specific audience in order to achieve defined political objectives”.
The document also claims that “a large part of Active Measures constitute of media manipulation”.
To this extent, one of the key institutions driving the MDC-T’s “Active Measures” is the Daily News that, in the ‘Nieebgate’, conveniently got forged documents implicating Minister Saviour Kasukuwere in some shady deals in the indigenisation of Zimplats and Mutumwa Mawere, whose interest in the Zimplats indigenisation emanates from his belief that Mhondoro-Ngezi Community Share Trust was not supposed to benefit from the indigenisation funds allocated to it, instead the funds were supposed to be directed to some dubious Royal Ngezi Community Trust he has connections with which was being fronted by Bright Matonga.
So the Daily News conveniently got the forged documents and as these fell into its party’s “Active Measures” propaganda scheme, gladly fabricated stories out of them fully aware that their authenticity was as dubious as the warrants of arrest that Zacc obtained from Justice Charles Hungwe.
If one then reads the various papers that Thabani Mpofu and his co-accused have been dutifully producing as counter-strategies to the indigenisation policy that needed to be propagated through the “Active Measures” using colluding human instruments at the Daily News, then one can establish the centrality of the so-called Nieebgate in the MDC-T’s fight against Kasukuwere and Zanu-PF’s indigenisation policy.
In one of the papers, Mpofu et al, purports that
“Many in the international community view Kasukuwere as the face of Zanu PF’s internationally unacceptable trails of violence and torture and consequently regard him justifiably with revulsion”.
They further allege that “the indigenisation drive that he is championing is perceived in the international community as the latest Zanu-PF ploy to engage in acts of racially driven violence and looting” and that “this perception of the Indigenisation drive by the international community is not without foundation and should be constantly reinforced through tying the indigenisation [policy] to Kasukuwere’s violent character”.
Mpofu and his co-accused then recommend that the funds availed to his party through the so-called Global Advocacy Campaign (GAC), amounting to US$6million which is kept at Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition and presided over by Minister Jameson Timba, be used for sustained media onslaught on the person of Kasukuwere and other Zanu-PF Ministers perceived to be key to Zanu-PF’s election campaign like Minister Obert Mpofu and Dr Ignatius Chombo whom the MDC-T accuse of weakening their city councils thereby exposing the MDC-T officials in the councils for their lack of competence and desire to fulfil service delivery requirements of citizens.
It is quite interesting that, while the media, in their coverage of the Zacc saga, have managed to unravel the intricate interests of some individuals and organisations in the unfolding drama, have failed to analyse the important role that the media themselves have been playing. Is it a question of the media failing to look themselves in the mirror?
Whatever it is, the Daily News ‘Nieebgate’ raises fundamental ethical questions on cheque book journalism, political activism disguised as journalism, and blatant journalistic incompetence in that the Daily News failed to investigate the interests of their chief informant and his onslaught against Kasukuwere, Mpofu and the Zanu-PF Indigenisation policy.
We hear someone at the reserve bank is heavily borrowed in most of the banks which he is helping fight indigenisation, is it that he has found a willing accomplice in his tenant, at the Daily News?
So much about private media, the ‘Nieebgate’, MDC-T “Active Measures” and Live-in Reserve Bank media correspondents.
Kudakwashe Gogoma is a journalist based in Harare. He writes in his own capacity. He can be contacted on [email protected]
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