Opinion / Columnist
State media parrots Grace Mugabe's shameful lie
10 Sep 2015 at 15:52hrs | Views
That former Vice President Joice Mujuru has rattled the cage of the warring post-congress Zanu-PF, after she dramatically and unexpectedly announced her re-entry into formal national politics last Monday, is obvious for all to see.
What particularly appears to be giving President Robert Mugabe's brawling party the jitters is the prospect of an electoral pact between Mujuru, who is widely respected both inside and outside Zanu-PF, and the popular opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai -- which would complicate the life of the already reeling and seriously divided former liberation movement.
A clear manifestation of the anxiety wracking the post-congress Zanu-PF as a result of Mujuru's stunning gambit is the rage and desperation that has been evident in the actions and utterances of senior party officials and their followers, including those working within lickspittle State media.
In that light, it was entirely expected and also wholly in character that the ever enthusiastic, bum-kissing print propaganda mouthpieces -- The Herald and Chronicle -- would parrot, as they did today, the egregious lie by the country's controversial First Lady that Mujuru supposedly owns a non-existent 10 percent shareholding in the country's leading newspaper, the Daily News.
Which all raises discomforting questions about whether Hurricane Grace, that Grand Mistress of the politics of lunacy in the country has now also directly commandeered State media as she has done with important government functions -- as per her own public boasts.
Just recently, Calamity Grace relished in telling the nation that she instructs the country's two lame-duck vice presidents what to do, revealing embarrassingly that they come to her with pens and notepads in hand, like timid schoolboys, to be told what to do and how to do it.
In that light too, it will also not have escaped the surviving bootlickers within State media that a rather naive former editor of one of the State's weekly newspapers was recently jettisoned on the alleged say so of the "Queen of Grace" because he had been critical of the First Family in a previous life.
Indeed, and we have said this incontrovertible truth many times before, Zimbabwe's lickspittle State media fully embody the proverbial principle of "seeing no evil, hearing no evil and speaking no evil".
Turning a blind eye to, and abetting Zanu-PF's misrule is their indisputable stock-in-trade -- never ever daring to question their master's voice. Rather contemptibly too, bashing the country's independent media is their other speciality.
The crime that newspapers such as the Daily News have committed in the eyes of these numbskulls, who in fact are the real enemies of Zimbabwe's nascent democracy, is that we continue to tell it like it is, without fear or favour, as our motto goes.
This has seen all the now familiar, well-worn and disgraceful fabrications routinely thrown at us -- ranging from claims that we are supposedly unpatriotic; that we are somehow "opposition media"; and, in our specific case, the egregious lie that Mujuru supposedly bought a non-existent 10 percent shareholding in our newspaper.
It is frankly disgusting the extent to which this regime and its minions will abuse State apparatus and lie so blatantly to long-suffering Zimbabweans in their desperate bid to extend their dying kleptocracy.
Of course, there is method to this madness and Grace's malicious and patently false claims that Mujuru supposedly owns a 10 percent stake in the Daily News.
Indeed, police - clearly moving at the behest of the First Lady - obtained a court order from Harare Provincial Magistrate Vakayi Douglas Chikwekwe late last year, authorising them to storm and seize key documents pertaining to the ownership of our newspaper.
The court order directed them to search for details of our shareholders - information that is easily obtainable from the Registrar of Companies and from the Zimbabwe Media Commission. And even more surprising, a casual perusal of the warrant of seizure itself suggested that they already had this information anyway, rendering their mission wholly malicious.
As most Zimbabweans also know, our newspaper and staff have operated under incessant threats and pressure from Zanu-PF bigwigs since it came back from its eight years of forced closure by the government, including facing hundreds of millions of dollars in vexatious lawsuits by ruling party heavies, many of which never even reach the courts because they have no substance.
And until Mugabe's and Zanu-PF's disputed electoral victories in 2013, the newspaper was also banned from circulating in certain parts of the country, with our editorial staff often still barred from covering some State functions even up to today.
This is why we say there is method to this madness, and that for us the ramifications of Grace's lies, enthusiastically assisted by lickspittle State media, are potentially severe - because we have many painful memories of the terrible experiences that we have suffered at the rough hands of Mugabe's government.
For those who may have forgotten, our staff were harassed and imprisoned willy-nilly in our early years, and when this did not yield the desired results, our printing press was completely destroyed in a barbaric bombing in January 2001 - that was widely believed to have been carried out by State agents who were never brought to book for their dastardly act.
And finally, Mugabe's government contrived to shut down the Daily News violently and unjustly in September 2003, after it enacted a legal instrument solely for this morbid purpose. The paper was only able to return to the market in late March 2011.
Sadly, history has recorded that some of the worst excesses of Zanu-PF's well-documented misrule of the past 35 years occurred around the time that the Daily News was out of circulation - including Operation Murambatsvina, a record hyperinflation and the vengeful murders of opposition supporters that followed Mugabe's stunning loss to Morgan Tsvangirai in the disputed 2008 elections.
Thus, our ongoing harassment is intended to silence us, so that the hyenas in power can continue to loot, rape and pillage the country with reckless abandon - without fear of ever being exposed.
We have news for these lowlifes. This won't happen. Certainly not on our watch!
What particularly appears to be giving President Robert Mugabe's brawling party the jitters is the prospect of an electoral pact between Mujuru, who is widely respected both inside and outside Zanu-PF, and the popular opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai -- which would complicate the life of the already reeling and seriously divided former liberation movement.
A clear manifestation of the anxiety wracking the post-congress Zanu-PF as a result of Mujuru's stunning gambit is the rage and desperation that has been evident in the actions and utterances of senior party officials and their followers, including those working within lickspittle State media.
In that light, it was entirely expected and also wholly in character that the ever enthusiastic, bum-kissing print propaganda mouthpieces -- The Herald and Chronicle -- would parrot, as they did today, the egregious lie by the country's controversial First Lady that Mujuru supposedly owns a non-existent 10 percent shareholding in the country's leading newspaper, the Daily News.
Which all raises discomforting questions about whether Hurricane Grace, that Grand Mistress of the politics of lunacy in the country has now also directly commandeered State media as she has done with important government functions -- as per her own public boasts.
Just recently, Calamity Grace relished in telling the nation that she instructs the country's two lame-duck vice presidents what to do, revealing embarrassingly that they come to her with pens and notepads in hand, like timid schoolboys, to be told what to do and how to do it.
In that light too, it will also not have escaped the surviving bootlickers within State media that a rather naive former editor of one of the State's weekly newspapers was recently jettisoned on the alleged say so of the "Queen of Grace" because he had been critical of the First Family in a previous life.
Indeed, and we have said this incontrovertible truth many times before, Zimbabwe's lickspittle State media fully embody the proverbial principle of "seeing no evil, hearing no evil and speaking no evil".
Turning a blind eye to, and abetting Zanu-PF's misrule is their indisputable stock-in-trade -- never ever daring to question their master's voice. Rather contemptibly too, bashing the country's independent media is their other speciality.
The crime that newspapers such as the Daily News have committed in the eyes of these numbskulls, who in fact are the real enemies of Zimbabwe's nascent democracy, is that we continue to tell it like it is, without fear or favour, as our motto goes.
This has seen all the now familiar, well-worn and disgraceful fabrications routinely thrown at us -- ranging from claims that we are supposedly unpatriotic; that we are somehow "opposition media"; and, in our specific case, the egregious lie that Mujuru supposedly bought a non-existent 10 percent shareholding in our newspaper.
It is frankly disgusting the extent to which this regime and its minions will abuse State apparatus and lie so blatantly to long-suffering Zimbabweans in their desperate bid to extend their dying kleptocracy.
Of course, there is method to this madness and Grace's malicious and patently false claims that Mujuru supposedly owns a 10 percent stake in the Daily News.
Indeed, police - clearly moving at the behest of the First Lady - obtained a court order from Harare Provincial Magistrate Vakayi Douglas Chikwekwe late last year, authorising them to storm and seize key documents pertaining to the ownership of our newspaper.
The court order directed them to search for details of our shareholders - information that is easily obtainable from the Registrar of Companies and from the Zimbabwe Media Commission. And even more surprising, a casual perusal of the warrant of seizure itself suggested that they already had this information anyway, rendering their mission wholly malicious.
As most Zimbabweans also know, our newspaper and staff have operated under incessant threats and pressure from Zanu-PF bigwigs since it came back from its eight years of forced closure by the government, including facing hundreds of millions of dollars in vexatious lawsuits by ruling party heavies, many of which never even reach the courts because they have no substance.
And until Mugabe's and Zanu-PF's disputed electoral victories in 2013, the newspaper was also banned from circulating in certain parts of the country, with our editorial staff often still barred from covering some State functions even up to today.
This is why we say there is method to this madness, and that for us the ramifications of Grace's lies, enthusiastically assisted by lickspittle State media, are potentially severe - because we have many painful memories of the terrible experiences that we have suffered at the rough hands of Mugabe's government.
For those who may have forgotten, our staff were harassed and imprisoned willy-nilly in our early years, and when this did not yield the desired results, our printing press was completely destroyed in a barbaric bombing in January 2001 - that was widely believed to have been carried out by State agents who were never brought to book for their dastardly act.
And finally, Mugabe's government contrived to shut down the Daily News violently and unjustly in September 2003, after it enacted a legal instrument solely for this morbid purpose. The paper was only able to return to the market in late March 2011.
Sadly, history has recorded that some of the worst excesses of Zanu-PF's well-documented misrule of the past 35 years occurred around the time that the Daily News was out of circulation - including Operation Murambatsvina, a record hyperinflation and the vengeful murders of opposition supporters that followed Mugabe's stunning loss to Morgan Tsvangirai in the disputed 2008 elections.
Thus, our ongoing harassment is intended to silence us, so that the hyenas in power can continue to loot, rape and pillage the country with reckless abandon - without fear of ever being exposed.
We have news for these lowlifes. This won't happen. Certainly not on our watch!
Source - Dailynews
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