LETTERS - Zimbabwe
Biased coverageBy Gilbert Phiri,UK
Monday April 07, 2008 [04:00]
Commendations to The Post for the professional in-depth coverage of Zimbabwe's elections. The same cannot be said of the bewilderingly inept British media whose unashamedly skewed and demeaning coverage of the elections is an insult to Africans proud of their continent.
The noxious daily coverage has ranged from doomsday headlines like: "Zimbabwe waits for the storm" to patronising ones like "We still love the royal family". Terms like "savage", "tyrant", "thugs" are interchangeably used to describe Mugabe and his ZANU-PF.
While conceding that Mugabe is not exactly a saint, it is the perpetuation of an image, by the western media, of Africans as being unable to manage their affairs and consequently unable to resolve their differences that is worrying.
The brain-washing successfully employed by the British media, in particular, is to try to justify some sort of forceful intervention or increased economic strangulation of Zimbabwe. They employed the same tactics against Iraq by alleging that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. The British and American media houses sold this dummy to the unsuspecting public as a precursor to an ill-advised invasion of Iraq.
Great need now exists for more Pan-African news organisations that will objectively report the African's perspective. It is quite baffling that even the respectable publications of South Africa fall far short of objective reporting especially when British and American interests are at play.
Don't we know that Mugabe's returning of land to the indigenous people is what has caused this British and American backlash? It is common knowledge that Tsvangirai is a puppet, financed by the West and his coronation is intended to open up Zimbabwe's resources to western plunder. We are still paying heavily for replacing the venerable Kenneth Kaunda with a puppet show.
http://www.postzambia.com/post-read_article.php?articleId=40004
Zimbabwe on the threshold
By Bright, Concerned citizen
Monday April 07, 2008 [04:00]
I write in response to the article in the Saturday Post of April 5, 2008 by Laura Miti entiltled "Zimbabwe on the threshold". I cannot agree more with the fact that as much as Zimbabweans are in a hurry to oust Robert Mugabe from power, little has been said to highlight the credentials of the person most likely to take over the presidency from Robert Mugabe.
It's widely known that Morgan Tsvangirai had a humble education background. He was a foreman at a mine in Zimbabawe. From 1988 to 1999, he was head of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. If you look back at Zambia, Fredrick Chiluba was head of ZCTU from 1974 to 1991. In September 2000, Tsvangirai told a rally of his Movement for Democratic Change that: "If Mugabe does not go peacefully, he will be removed by force". That surely was not a well thought out thing to say. Even some opposition activists say Tsvangirai has lacked a strategic plan and has consistently been outmanoeuvred by Mugabe's government.
Also, his MDC has in the past years been rocked by internal conflicts, leading to some founder members forming their own faction. They have accused him of being undemocratic.
My point is that Zimbabweans are really in hurry to remove Mugabe and replace him with Tsvangirai. But they have not really scrutinised Tsvangirai to ascertain whether he will be a better president than Mugabe. I have noticed that Tsvangirai and Chiluba have a number of things in common. They are both charismatic speakers, have trade union backgrounds, both over stayed in power as trade union leaders and have humble education backgrounds.
Laura said " So dizzy were we at the prospect of removing Kaunda that not too many voices asked the question, but what is this guy about? Well, we did find out too late, what FJT was about and we are still paying the price of that discovery."
Labels: ELECTIONS, NEOCOLONIALISM, ZIMBABWE
posted by MrK @ 4:34 AM
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