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(ZIMBABWE GUARDIAN) African journalists leading the miseducation of our people

African journalists leading the miseducation of our people
By: Nancy Lovedale
Posted: Thursday, April 29, 2010 6:33 am

AFRICAN journalists have a very long way to go, especially the breed that is employed in western-run media houses. Ironically, they are the biggest chunk of reporters on Africa, but not in Africa.

I chuckled when I heard a recent interview between Lance Guma of SW Radio Africa and Andrew Cranswick the CEO of African Consolidated Resources (ACR) - the company claiming to have rights to mine at Chiadzwa in Marange District of Zimbabwe. ACR's claim was cancelled by government over claims that it was obtained fraudulently.

As someone who has been following that case, I expected to hear crucial questions like:

Can you please tell us how you got your licence?

Can you comment on why top officials within the mines ministry are being investigated for fraudulently granting certificates of registration to your company?

Why did you name ACR subsidiaries that were not registered, at the time of application of Certificates of Registration, (e.g. Dashaloo Investment which was incorporated on 29 June 2006, yet from the records kept in the Mining Commissioner’s Registry, it registered its claims on 4 April 2006 and 1 June 2006)?

Why is the main company registered in England and banking offshore, with all white directors, yet it claims to have black directors on its books?

Why are you not in Zimbabwe at the moment? How did you mine 129,000 carats of diamonds from the Marange diamonds when you claim government was killing people there?

Where you complicit in that process? Why did you not stop mining when you discovered these "killings"?

Why are the 129,000 carats now labelled "blood diamonds" when they were mined by ACR?

Is ACR a blood diamonds company now?

These are just some of the questions that could be asked. These are the issues that Zimbabweans want to know.

The lopsidedness of the interview was interesting. It happens everytime a white or MDC-T interviewee is on that station. They are treated with kid gloves and it seems there's a presumption of innocence on these people. They can never do wrong, yet everytime a Zanu-PF member appears on that station it is almost confrontational and it always ends with, "We told you how these people are!" It seems there's always that need to present Zanu-PF in bad light, rather than to question, probe and find out exactly what is going on.

A recent story on President Ahmadinejad's visit to Zimbabwe was interesting. SW Radio got a highly speculative story from the UK's Telegraph newspaper that claimed a uranium deal between Zimbabwe and Iran had been signed, and ran with it. One would think The Telegraph should learn from Zimbabwe, not vice versa. Why should The Telegraph, based in a former colony, tell the Zimbabwean story? This is the excitement and incitement that feeds into the mentality of our people.

Mr Guma sounded sympathetic with Mr Cranswick and severally referred to "your claim" in reference to the revoked claim. He (Mr Guma) played judge and jury. Because of that "compassion", he failed to ask the right questions and Mr Cranswick almost took advantage of that soft line of questioning and started formulating his own questions and answers, and Mr Guma ended up as a listener on his own show.

Mr Guma is just a microcosm of a larger problem in the media. He is an employee of an organisation that has its own agenda. The "news" that is broadcast on SW Radio is lopsided, and one can almost sense some desperation in the line of reporting: desperation to darken Zimbabwe's successes. The website looks like a campaign group's website, yet they claim to run a programme called "Newsreel". This would give the impression that they are broadcasting news on Zimbabwe. But how could news be one-sided? You almost have the feeling that Zimbabwe does not exist anymore when you are on SW Radio, yet on a recent trip back home, I saw a different Zimbabwe. The irony is that, that "station" claims to fight for democracy and media neutrality by constantly attacking The Herald and Zimbabwe's ministry of information and publicity.

One of the problems that organisations like SW Radio have is, they are run by western-based African journalists who rely on "eye-witnesses" and pseudonymed reporters to come up with negative stories about Zimbabwe daily, inorder to promote a particular agenda. The journalists who "tell the story" have their own agenda: to feed half-baked stories that support a particular line of reporting and thereby earn a living. This works well for both parties. It's a marriage of convenience. The problem is that Zimbabwe loses, Africa loses.

This problem is reinforced by a number of "political and economic commentators" who are also trapped in cradles of inferiority; and are happy and forever grateful for that job in the west, or that "leave to remain" in the country, or that cheque sent through the post. You can almost feel the sense of thankfulness in their commentary (serving the master well). These analysts are fed on Euro-centric education and taught about "human rights" and "freedom of speech" to a point where they accept, without question, the western packaging of Africa.

There's not many of them, but they are enough to do the damage. They are often recycled and ready to comment even on issues that are clearly beyond their comprehension.

Then there is a western media organisation like CNN that grants accolades and prizes to "African journalists of outstanding stature", whom they never subsequently employ in their organisations. These African journalists win prizes by telling negative stories about governments that are at loggerheads with the west.

That is always the trend. We see this trend repeated in other non-media western organisations, for instance, Finance Minister Tendai Biti was awarded the Euromoney Emerging Markets award for Best Finance Minister in Africa 2009.

The irony of this award is interesting. The west does not consider Zimbabwe an emerging market, and FM Biti is actually calling Zimbabwe a basket case that needs to declare itself a Highly Indebted Poor Country. Mr Biti had only been in that position for only one year, and was complaining that his job was muzzled by politics. How could he have won that award? Does he truly believe he is "The Best Finance Minister in Africa"?

Feels like the Nobel Committee awarding US President Mr Barack Obama, a peace prize, for work "he will do" in future. Now that work is proving to be different, for instance, sending more troops and equipment to the Middle East "to ensure peace", the Nobel Committee stands in disrepute.

I find it difficult to believe that the CNN MultiChoice African Journalist Competition is now looked at with so much prestige by African journalists; yet the station does not carry anchors from the continent.. The competition is now in its 15th year, and now truly established as a way for African journalists "to better their lives.”

A close look at CNN would reveal the following:

no positive coverage on Africa (almost confrontational, e.g. when President Mugabe was recently on the Armanpour programme);

Africanisation of HIV/AIDS, violence, civil wars (yet the black population in the US has high HIV/AIDS incidents and violence is rife in Iraq and Afghanistan);

no appreciation of Africa's past, e.g. slavery, colonialism and imperialism (yet the Holocaust takes centre-stage in reporting on Israel);

no appreciation that Africa is a work-in-progress, shaped by past depredations (yet the Arab-Israeli, the Taliban, and the Irish problems are considered as such).

There is no appreciation that the crude lines that mark African nations today were drawn by the west (at the Berlin Conferences of 1884-86), and are the source of land problems in Africa today.

Western media today rarely hires black newscasters, or they hire one or two to silence critics. And where they do so, they hire biracial (or light-skinned) newscasters, not the ones from Africa that they give accolades to. Most of the journalists who get accolades have to struggle to get back into newsrooms back home, but that becomes difficult because what earned them the accolades in the first place, would not earn them a job back home.

When Africa is viewed with such scorn and disdain, we have to ask the African journalist being fed on western crumbs the following questions: Why are you purveyors of African mediocrity? Why do you need tokens, hollow awards that are not recognised both in the west and back on the Motherland? Why are you the subtext of our inferiorization? Why are you eager to cheer westernism, and support western jaundiced views of the African?

Unless Africans start showing the true light of what Africa has gone through and present it as an unifinished story and a continent that has gone through a traumatic time instituted by the west, there can never be peace on the continent.

The arguments peddled by west about corruption, violence, etc on the continent are just a distraction to the role the west continues to play in the unfolding African story.

When Mr Obama says Africa can no longer blame the west for its ills, he is being ahistoric and arrogant. Its like saying you cannot accept that you are a product of your parentage. History cannot be erased, and people should read his book, "Dreams From My Father" to see how history shapes the person, no matter what you go through or who you think you are.

For Africa, that history is the history of plunder by the west, of removal of 90 percent of its able-bodied people over decades, through slavery; of extraction of its resources to feed "development" in the west.

If the media, especially our own journalists, cannot tell the African story and contextualise it, they cannot expect those who have caused Africa to be what it is today, to tell that story because it will implicate them. If the African journalist fails to ask the right questions or continues to treat the west with kid gloves, all will be lost in translation and the miseducation of our young people will become commonplace.
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Nancy Lovedale writes from Beijing, China. She grew up in Arcadia in Harare and supports Dynamos FC and Arsenal FC. You can reach her via nancy_lovedale@yahoo.com

Labels: ANDREW CRANSWICK, BLOOD DIAMONDS, DIAMONDS, MEDIA, NANCY LOVEDALE, PROPAGANDA, SW RADIO

posted by MrK @ 3:54 PM