Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has been stripped of his title in news bulletins aired by the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC), as the broadcaster worsens its attacks on him, an observer as noted.
According to the observer based in Zimbabwe, ZBC news readers now regularly refer to Tsvangirai as the “leader of the MDC (T) party” instead of “the Prime Minister” as part of its hostile campaign against his party. In another example of the biased wording the ZBC news bulletins are using to
ridicule Tsvangirai, last Wednesday night the newsreader said: “Mr Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the MDC (T) party, has chickened out of elections.”
Political analyst Bekithemba Mhlanga says this is part of a bigger plot to make Tsvangirai appear insignificant, and that there is worse to come for him as the country nears an election, marked for
2011.
“ZANU PF is already in election mode and therefore they will do their best to denigrate Tsvangirai and render him as a non-person as it were. They realise if they continue calling him Prime Minister it gives him some sort of stature that ZANU PF does not believe he has earned,” Mhlanga said.
Despite the country being under a government of national unity (GNU), the state broadcaster remains tightly controlled by Robert Mugabe’s party and is used as a machine to churn out ZANU PF
propaganda.
Recently George Charamba, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Information, announced that the government has no plans to issue licenses to independent broadcasters, which is contrary to what is required by the global political agreement (GPA).
Charamba’s statement means that millions of Zimbabweans will be force-fed propaganda as the country goes into elections and beyond, if ZANU PF is allowed to continue ignoring the GPA.
Mhlanga says the best tactic the MDC has against ZANU PF propaganda is to rely on the support of ordinary people in Zimbabwe. “The MDC will have to rely on the moral integrity it has earned with Zimbabweans since the GPA was signed. The number of seats the MDC won last time and the number of votes that Tsvangirai got at the last presidential election were accumulated against a very violent and vitriolic ZBC,” he said.Mhlanga’s comments are in line with those of another political analyst,
Professor John Makumbe.
Makumbe says that the MDC will need to rely on its supporter base, rather on the Southern African Development Corporation (SADC), to force Mugabe to respect the GPA. This weekend both the MDC-T and MDC-M were outraged that the SADC troika did not meet to discuss the crisis in Zimbabwe, as planned.“The MDC and Tsvangirai must focus on what the people of Zimbabwe can do and this demands mass mobilisation of people in preparation for elections and demonstrations that can force the intervention of the international community,” Makumbe told the Daily News.
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