Opinion / Columnist
Zanu PF, like Nazi, stifled freedom of expression and now has to fill columns with wittering from Manheru!
09 Jan 2016 at 16:54hrs | Views
In the beginning the Nazis burnt all the books consider subversive to the narrow Aryan Race Nazi ideology and then they tried to fill the gap with trash chained out by Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels, dim-witted philosophers, etc. History has the habit of repeating itself!
Soon after independence President Mugabe has institute a ruthless control of the Zimbabwe's media turning the country's public print media and the country's only licensed radio and tv stations into some of the most tightly controlled media in the world into total disregard to the people's right to a free media and freedom of expression. The regime has haunted the country's small independent print media arresting the journalists and shutting down the paper at the drop of a hat.
The public media has been there to air Zanu PF's point of view and no other; for all intent and purpose, Zimbabwe's public media is nothing but Zanu PF's publicity department in all but name. Having eliminated everyone else with an opposing point of view to Mugabe is a great leader ethos there thousands of square metres of newspaper column space and thousands of hours of radio and TV air time to be filled. In stepped Zanu PF apologists, propagandists and all manner characters with all manner of idiotic ideas, chief amongst them was Nathaniel Manheru cum George Charamba, to fill the columns and air time.
Nathaniel Manheru has had a column in the Herald and Sunday Mail for donkey years; he is President Mugabe's spokesman, who would dare deny him all the column space he wants to say whatever! And that is exactly what he has done too subjected the reading public to column after column, week in week out, of trash!
"2016 arrived nine days ago," wrote Manheru in his latest article. "Or so we allege. As before, and before, on New Year the sun still rose from the east, still set in the west. The clock - not time - ticked as before, giving us an illusion of recording reality, of time past, time present, time future. Arguably, there is no time past, no time future. Only a continual, eternal present in which we inhere for a little while, and, when our life is spent, then decay or depart to . . . we don't know where. And not to know where is not quite the same as not to believe where. The priest — or is it pastor nowadays — tells us we head heaven-or hell-wards, depending on our goodness or its deficit. Gentle reader, I hope you notice I slipped. Nowadays? How nowadays when I have repudiated a past-present-future continuum? How nowadays when I have repudiated time and periodisation?"
The article was entitled "Zimbabwe: New Year, Old Thinking!"
"What is the nincompoop wittering about?" you may well ask. Like the Nazi, Zanu PF has stifled all meaningful debate, free media and freedom of expression and so the regime has to file the empty columns with nonsense from the modern day Josef Goebbels, Nathaniel Manheru!
Soon after independence President Mugabe has institute a ruthless control of the Zimbabwe's media turning the country's public print media and the country's only licensed radio and tv stations into some of the most tightly controlled media in the world into total disregard to the people's right to a free media and freedom of expression. The regime has haunted the country's small independent print media arresting the journalists and shutting down the paper at the drop of a hat.
The public media has been there to air Zanu PF's point of view and no other; for all intent and purpose, Zimbabwe's public media is nothing but Zanu PF's publicity department in all but name. Having eliminated everyone else with an opposing point of view to Mugabe is a great leader ethos there thousands of square metres of newspaper column space and thousands of hours of radio and TV air time to be filled. In stepped Zanu PF apologists, propagandists and all manner characters with all manner of idiotic ideas, chief amongst them was Nathaniel Manheru cum George Charamba, to fill the columns and air time.
Nathaniel Manheru has had a column in the Herald and Sunday Mail for donkey years; he is President Mugabe's spokesman, who would dare deny him all the column space he wants to say whatever! And that is exactly what he has done too subjected the reading public to column after column, week in week out, of trash!
The article was entitled "Zimbabwe: New Year, Old Thinking!"
"What is the nincompoop wittering about?" you may well ask. Like the Nazi, Zanu PF has stifled all meaningful debate, free media and freedom of expression and so the regime has to file the empty columns with nonsense from the modern day Josef Goebbels, Nathaniel Manheru!
Source - Patrick Guramatunhu
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