TSHOLOTSHO North MP Jonathan Moyo (Zanu PF) has scoffed at media reports suggesting the party is distancing itself from his recent attacks on South African President, Jacob Zuma, following a meeting of the regional SADC grouping in Zambia.
The former Information Minister, writting on New Zimbabwe.com today, said his sharp criticism of Zuma was an exercise in “free speech” which he described as a “self-evident virtue and gain of our heroic independence.”
“There are currently all sorts of reactionary forces that are converging against Zimbabwe for a variety of opportunistic reasons. These forces must and will be resisted by Zimbabweans regardless of their station in society,” a defiant Moyo said, in a clear reference to Zuma and other SADC leaders who have sharpened their criticism of President Robert Mugabe.
Writing in the state-run Sunday Mail newspaper on April 3, Moyo said: "President Zuma is now tainted beyond recovery by the Libyan situation and his commitment to the African cause has become questionable."
An editorial in the same newspaper also dismissed Zuma as an erratic liability adding: “Zuma's duplicity is astounding. With such leaders, Africa is in mortal danger.”
But the Zimbabwe government has been backpedalling furiously since, especially after Zuma’s office retorted that Zimbabwean officials should use the proper channels if they wanted any clarification on South Africa’s foreign policy.
President Robert Mugabe’s spokesman, George Charamba, subsequently published a full page newspaper advert insisting that the Mail’s editorial did not represent government views.
“No one in government is naïve enough to think that the views of SABC stations or The Citizen amount to the views of President Zuma and/or his government,” Charamba said.
“It is not very clever to wilfully expunge institutional distinctions we honour and uphold elsewhere simply because we are dealing with Zimbabwe.”
Foreign Affairs Minister, Simbarashe Mumbengegwi also used a two-hour meeting with SADC ambassadors in Harare on Thursday to make the same point.
But Moyo dismissed the whole affair as a “fake hullabaloo” which had served to expose “media and political charlatans who pose as champions of democracy and free speech when they are in fact the worst enemies of freedom of expression on the loose”.
He appeared particularly angry that the line had been blurred, he claims by the media, in taking his attack on Zuma as representative of the Zimbabwe government and Zanu PF.
“At least we now know that these hopeless malcontents believe in freedom of expression not as a principle or value in its own right to be enjoyed by everyone, but as an expedient claim they invoke only when free expression is an expedient tool to defend their own often inane speech,” he said.
Moyo said defending the country was not a preserve of government officials alone, adding that only “shameless puppets and sell-outs would stand idly by while their country was being subjected to savage attack and demonisation”.
“As such, nobody out there should ever kid themselves that they can make outrageous pronouncements about Zimbabwe in the media and get away with it simply because the government or the political parties that form it will choose to remain quiet, or to communicate through official channels,” Moyo said.