CAN POLITICS GET DIRTIER THAN THIS?

MONTHS AGO, a number of senior army officers died – literally one after each other. One particular officer met his death at a rail crossing. His wife has been raising hell over his death. She has virtually accused the government of President Robert Mugabe of killing him.

She inserted advertisements in the government’s own newspapers, raising doubts about the cause of her husband’s death. In one reply to the accusations, the goertnment insisted the man had died in an accident. Period.

Most people, long suspicious of Zanu PF’s and the government’s respect or the truth, sympathized with the general’s wife. They also expressed suspicion that there had been an attempted coup.

The accident deaths of the army officers were not mishaps. A few people decided the government could kill army officers, why would it hesitate to kill them, mere civilians and mostly liberation credentials?

Then just a few weeks ago, a number of soldiers were reportedly picked up after a massive theft of rifles in an armory. One of them was sentenced to 15 years in jail.

A number were to be court-martialed.for their part in the theft of the submachine guns.

The soldiers are fed up: they are not being fed enough or being paid enough. There has been no coup in Zimbabwe since independence. But there have been attempted coups.

One reason cited unofficially by the disgruntled soldiers is the corruption in high places – among politicians and the top military brass. So, Mugabe’s government is not only unpopular with the bulk of he civilian population – their vote against him and Zanu PF in 2008 is eloquent testimony of that. The unpopularity has spread to the uniformed forces.

In plain language, the targets of the Zanu PF’s assassination squads are both soldiers and civilians, including the former ZTV cameraman Edward Chikomba. He was taragetedspeciorically because he aws seen as having turned against Zanu PF – and joined the MDC.

In spite of all this murder and mayhem,, Zanu PF insists it is on the right path, "right enough" to expect the people to vote for it against the opposition in any election. The insult to the intelligenceof the people is staggering. 

In most political systems, it is not unusual for the chief players – and even the bit players – to take the people for granted. In Zimbabwe , Zanu PF and the government have been hard at work, trying to sell us the fiction that the media – its newspapers and the electronic media – are entirely balanced in their coverage.

I was reminded of the amazing contention by an independent newspaper columnist that Zimpapers was owned by the people. Its newspapers, by such a definition, were to serve the people –all the people, regardless of their political inclination.

Incredibly, this suggested the newspapers were answerable to the people, in general. This was a naïve contention.

Since 1981, when the government took over all the levers of national communication, nobody has been continued in that job if they so much as hinted the journalist’s job was to decide what was news and what was not.

That decision was wrested from the editors. It now belonged to the Minister of Information or his minions.
In the Soviet Union , Izvestia was said to serve "the people’s interests" similar function, rather than Pravda (The Truth) which was the party newspaper. But there was no difference between the two – they were lapdogs of one-party The System.

Imagine the head of the state-run ZBC-TV squandering people’s precious by trying to convince them that that lapdog of a network is balanced. There can be only be a handful of people in the entire nation who sincerely believe every bulletin on State radio and television bristles with genuinely news. This is the news that people can listen to with riveted attention, for its originality, its lack of bias, its topicality.

Happison Muchechetere became increasingly strident as he tried to defend his outfit. For moment, he sounded as if he would scream at us: "What other kind of fairness can you expect us to dis out? We are government owned , for heaven’s sake! We are not Studio 7 or the old Joy TV which once featured a full-length interview with Morgan Tsvangirai when he was not even in the government?

Muchechetere is a genuine war veteran. I doubt if he can conceive of radio and TV station which doesn’t take its orders from Shake Shake building and State House. This, to him, it would only be an imperialist network, controlled by London, Washington, Paris, Berlin and Ottawa, apart from Rome, Canberra, Auckland and other cities such as Rome, Warsaw, Vienna, Oslo, Stockholm and Copenhagen

Muchechetere came back from the war loaded to the ears with knowledge about journalism "in the bush". This is the kind that is one-dimensional. In civilian life, he started working for the government media and has never branched out of there, or smelt the coffee of independent journalism, as it is understood to mean that which was not controlled by the government. independent journalism, as understood to mean that which was not controlled by the He is a loyal party cadre: he is someone whose view of journalism is that it must serve only the interests of government and the party.

The Zanu PF hierarchy has always believed in that doctrine, of the Marxist-Leninist. Mugabe is particularly aghast at any suggestion that there must an independent media working in a country as freely as the government media.

The Access to Information and Protection of Pirivacy Act (AIPPA) was crafted for that purpose. The widespread expectation among libertarians that AIPPA is to be repealed is understandable. But it might be misplaced.

The government media is patently Zanu PF. News of the two MDC formations is rare. If it is published, it is either negative or scandalous. There is little the MDC can do to counter this open bias. Once in a while, one of the formations puts out a free news bulletin on its own perspective of what the real news is. It’s mostly sold out whenever it appears. This is not surprising. It circulates in he cities and does not match the Zimpapers titles in circulation.

Zanu PF is not subtle in its aim of scandalising the MDC reputation as an election looms. The question if this campaign getting dirtier need not be speculated on for long. It is bound to happen. Zanu PF is aware there is no magical formula it can employ to turn the tide against the opposition parties. But it will try and thereby hangs the real possibility of the campaign getting dirtier.

The likelihood of the country being plunged into a Somali-like scenario ismnot so remote. Zanu PF has to be naïve to believe that, this time around, the MDC will just lie down and die.