Mediagate: beyond Ibbo Mandaza

Mediagate: beyond Ibbo Mandaza

• High Court confirms Mandaza ouster

• CIO grills Mandaza over Murambatsvina

• Mandaza: CIO robbed me of my paper

• Defiant Mandaza takes fight to High Court

• Independent wary of CIO media infiltrators

• Mandaza suspended from Mirror

• Journalists targeted in CIOGATE

• Mandaza fires Mirror board

• Mandaza admits to CIO ownership

• Hollow tales full of sound and fury

• Parliament probes Mediagate

• Media scandal deepens

• CIOGATE: Mandaza muzzled

• Panic as Zim rocked by media scandal

• Newspapers sell their souls for survival

• Scandal rocks Zim media industry

• Sex pest Kaseke forced to resign

• Mujuru rape scandal causes stir

• Mujuru sucked into rape scandal

By Nixon Mao Nyikadzino

I HAVE been following the Mediagate but with much interest because to me it’s not all about Ibbo Mandaza but rather about the state of our media in Zimbabwe.

Many a people have had to show sympathy and empathy with Mandaza as if he did not see the message on the wall before he engaged in his affair with the CIO.

Whilst we cannot condone the control of our media by the CIO, we must not be seen to be condoning misappropriation of organisational funds.

Whilst it is still an allegation, I had the opportunity to discuss this issue with one of the employees at the Daily Mirror. He alleges that there were times when they would go for a week without their salaries just because Mandaza had ordered the finance department not to process. Why? Because Mandaza needed the money desperately more than all the workers at The Mirror!

Here we are given a picture of a man whose selfishness and money mongering tendencies were so extreme as to juxtapose him with Shylock in the Merchant of Venice. He loved money more than those who worked for it. It is also alleged that he would come to the offices and demand thirty million dollars without any justification for it. Could we condone that?

That was Mandaza.

But at the same time we must be able to scrutinise the implications of such a takeover by the CIO. Is it a mere takeover or it has a project with projected returns in future. There have been rumours circulating to the effect that Robert Mugabe and his cronies have gone back to the drawing board to push for the once failed one party state. I am persuaded to accept this rumour as reality.

A one-party state idea can be mooted if the ruling party has assumed control of the major arms of the country. Whilst the government has managed to deploy former army generals into different strategic companies, it is clear that this would not be enough if they leave the powerful media outside their control. Whatever gains they would have made would be futile without media support and control.

The takeover of the Daily Mirror is a ringing bell to the media fraternity about the pending hurricane that shall sweep all independent papers. It is a hurricane that has come and which we must resist. This is not a Mandaza issue. It is a Zimbabwe issue which demands everyone to stand up and denounce the regime.

By denouncing what is happening at the Mirror and what might befall the Financial Gazette, we will be denouncing the one party state phenomenon. It is this phenomenon that is poisonous and extremely unfriendly to democracy. It will destroy all the gains we have made in our fight for democracy.
Mao Nyikadzino is a former student leader and journalist
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