By
Alois. P. MbawaraPROFESSOR Jonathan Moyo, Zimbabwe's former Information Minister who famously banned the BBC from the country and many other foreign journalists while on the other hand suffocating the local media has today become a hero in some circles with some he persecuted yesterday surprisingly giving him acres and acres of space.
As I write Moyo is appearing on the BBC’s HARDtalk programme this week in a two-part interview. As a young activist I have been and continue to be baffled by the way people in Zimbabwe can manage to forget so quickly, especially journalists. Anyone who cares knows Moyo caused untold suffering at the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC), Zimpapers, Zimbabwe Inter-Africa News Agency (Ziana) and did worse to terrorise and instil fear in journalists working in the independent media.
He was ruthless and frankly I think he did much worse as an information minister than any other minister has ever done in the country. Most of the problems we face today as a nation were out of Moyo’s own making. He came into Zanu PF when the party was running scared and it was him who crafted messages that revived the dying party – he demonised the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), founding president Morgan Tsvangirai and others.
The man has an imaginative mind, he is crafty and today Zimbabwe remains burdened by laws he crafted to tighten not only Robert Mugabe’s grip on power but also his own control over all levers of power and information as he became the de facto prime minister. I wonder why after destroying the lives of so many people, Jonathan Moyo is being given acres of space to rant and rave and teach us about democracy.
I think we should leave him alone and confine him to his constituency and parliament when it is sitting. I think it is a mockery for us to believe we can get salvation from the same man who helped destroy our innocence as he helped Mugabe to maintain a tight grip on power. The acerbic Moyo should be laughing all the way to the bank after realising how quick those he tormented for about five years quickly embraced him when he left Zanu PF to become an independent MP.
Allow me as a young Zimbabwean to express my own analysis on the fall of press freedom in our motherland. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think freedom of __expression is one of the fundamental rights we human beings cannot exist without. Moyo made sure he took away our freedoms and Mugabe will not give them back either. In the United Nations Universal Declaration of human rights it is stated in bold that it is a fundamental right for every human being to have the right of freedom of opinion and __expression, and this can be expressed in different views i.e. freedom to hold an opinion without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers. But unfortunately this has been taken away from us in Zimbabwe since 2000 when the Mugabe regime decided to put in place a number of controversial draconian pieces of legislation which were designed and moulded to kill and silence public opinion.
Till now I fail to understand why a government which claims to serve the will of the majority after fighting against minority white rule could put in place pieces of legislation like Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA), the Public Order and Security Act (POSA) and the Broadcasting Services Act (BSA). The Ministry of Information and Publicity, then under Moyo's experiments, spearheaded the enactment of these laws in a major bid to stop the media from continuing to write about what the government was doing against the will of the people and also to silent angry and hungry innocent civilians who at the constitutional referendum gave a big vote of no confidence in the Mugabe regime.
Before even AIPPA was forcibly legitimised there were critics within the regime who highlighted that it was calculated and determinate to be an assault on civil liberties. POSA and AIPPA remain a direct attack on the independent press and opposition parties seeking regime change in Zimbabwe. The laws make it impossible for people, the opposition especially to campaign for office, run a private publication or protest against human rights abuses. Moyo's AIPPA (even thought he denies it as usual) was his chemical reaction to close the Associated Newspaper of Zimbabwe (ANZ), publishers of the popular Daily news and its sister paper Daily news on Sunday. The Daily News was giving the state-controlled Herald newspaper a run for its money with a big drop in readership as people opted for a newspaper that told the other side of the story like it was. Things got worse for the media in Zimbabwe with the regime's appointed Media and Information Commission (MIC), chaired by Tafataona Mahoso, being designed to be the distillation instrument or system of information in Zimbabwe in the name of national security. Moyo and Mahoso since 2001 have been implicated in many media cases. They played a major role in destroying press freedom in the country, reversing all the gains that had been gained in the 1990s. Independent press journalists were harassed, intimidated and even thrown into cells with others having their licences withdrawn while others were deported at Moyo’s instructions. He would breathe fire on local television as he berated independent and foreign journalists.
It is the passion with which Moyo did this that causes me to ask today how soon we forget. Moyo believed in what he was doing and should stew in his own mess. Examples abound about what Moyo did to destroy the media in Zimbabwe, not only the independent media but the state media as well. He fired willy nilly and seasoned journalists soon became extinct from newsrooms as he sought to create a loyal team that would pander to his whims.
To us the Youth Jonathan Moyo will always be remembered as the former Minister of Misinformation and Wufflicity, an outcast, outlaw - we all remember how he, together with Joseph Made, used to mislead the nation that we did not need food aid yet the nation was starving. People should be wary of such people, even the opposition MDC as well as there have been claims that other political parties in Zimbabwe have been trying to lure him into their fold. I'm surprised with some in the independent media who have gone out of their way to give the former minister columns and space. Are were forgetting that these are the individuals who destroyed Press Freedom in Zimbabwe causing many journalists to leave the country. He was the Chief Architect of Mugabe's propaganda. Moyo was in control of all press, radio, and publishing in the country. We should not just let him come back into the pro-democracy groups so easily. This will make a mockery of our independent sites and newspapers. He should at least apologise for all he did – what pains me is that he remains unapologetic for what he did when he was working side by side with Mugabe. Please we have lost so many innocent Zimbabweans who fought and are fighting to restore democracy.
Let’s have respect for these fallen soldier's like Tichaona Chiminya and give Moyo and his colleagues what they really deserve. Let him be a victim of his own laboratory experiments which have seen the shrinking of media space in the country resulting in the death of independent __expression. As the youths here in the UK, we don't have any interest in his Tsholotsho constituency but we are just representing the Constrained Youth of Zimbabwe who for many years will suffer the consequences of Moyo and Zanu PF’s actions.
The repressive AIPPA and other such laws are unjustifiable under international law and have been widely condemned but its a shame again that these oppressive and suppressive pieces of legislation are still to be repealed or amended regardless of the spirited campaigns by those who love democracy. The laws even violate SADC laws. We Young Zimbabweans will express and expose these betrayals by the Mugabe regime to our African counterparts so as to pave way for transition in Zimbabwe.
I know Moyo has a right to air his opinions like everyone else but I will never defend his right to be given the same rights he took away from us when he was minister.
And as always we say our criticism is liberty, because the Mugabe regime have never done anything for us the Youth, with all our nation being denied their civil rights.
Alois .P. Mbawara
Free-ZimYouth
