Inside Mugabe's Tower of Babel

Inside Mugabe's Tower of Babel

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By Mary Revesai

THE struggle of the Robert Mugabe regime’s propaganda machine to shape and manage the news has escalated since the announcement of the clampdown on the holding of political rallies about three weeks ago, and the subsequent unleashing of a reign of terror against opposition groups and their leaders.

The officially instigated violence culminated in the cold-blooded shooting of a Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) activist and the brutal battering of MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) chairman Lovemore Madhuku and scores of opposition activists, including two defenceless women, Sekai Holland and Grace Kwinjeh.

Ironically, as Kwinjeh and Holland lay in hospital nursing serious injuries, Zimbabwe’s 83–year-old president was holding fort at an International Women’s Day commemoration about his regimes commitment to eradicating domestic violence. The octogenarian was reported by the state media to have expressed shock at the extent of gender-based violence within Zimbabwean society.

Without a hint of irony, he stressed that women are precious because they are the “mothers of life”. Predictably, he received a deafening round of ululation from the assembled women. The tragedy is that if he had chosen to poke fun at Kwinjeh and Holland’s brutal battering, the women would have been equally obliged to show approval.

“Assaults and sexual crimes in different homes are dealt with as if they have occurred between strangers. The Domestic Violence Act will protect victims of violence as well as prevent violence and its devastating effects” Mugabe said.

But after listening to his earlier diatribe against the MDC and Western diplomats based in Harare, whom he accused of conspiring with the opposition to remove “a democratically elected government”, one would have known that the strongman was shedding crocodile tears for the sole purpose of canvassing the women’s vote,

Mugabe, who once boasted of having degrees in violence, is too hard-hearted to support any initiative to stamp out violence on the basis of principle and human decency. After all, following the battering of opposition leaders, he gloated while addressing the Zanu PF Youth League: “They will get arrested and get bashed by the police. If they want to fight the police, the police have a right to bash …”

Obviously this is not language that should be used by a head of state who is supposed to be the protector of all citizens, but the uncompromising Mugabe relishes resorting to bombast whenever he sees an opportunity to grandstand before a captive audience. He used equally crude language in an earlier harangue against Western envoys whose governments he accuses of plotting to effect regime change in Zimbabwe.

Regrettably, Mugabe’s fighting talk, which should be regarded as the outbursts of a senile and doddering old man, is regarded as gospel by his team of angry spin doctors. They forget that while propaganda can be potent, it is not omnipotent. Opinion is shaped more by events than by words. Consequently, no matter how shrill the denunciations of these attack dogs can become, no decent human being with a conscience can accept that ordering the “bashing” of fellow human beings is a noble act for a government to be proud of.

In normal persuasive campaigns, the propagandist seeks to put highlights on the good and soften the unfavourable with shadows. This approach recognises the existence of other communicators with their own searchlights to cast revealing glares into the dark corners of Mugabe’s dictatorship. But Mugabe is so obsessed with exhibiting bravado that his regime revels in flaunting its own misdeeds and then becomes livid when they are roundly condemned.

His propagandists seem incapable of appreciating the fact they cannot gloat about the “bashing” of opposition personalities and expect anyone except the most gullible; to believe their fabricated claims that the two MDC factions are plotting to remove the government violently. A six-year old video of Tsvangirai speaking at a rally is regularly aired on television to buttress this tired theme and justify the regime’s crackdown on freedom of assembly and expression. They resort to archival footage because they cannot come up with a coherent explanation for the on-going atrocities. Despite fabricating the most unlikely tales, the spin doctors know that the barbaric acts being perpetrated against innocent citizens are motivated by Mugabe’s paranoia, which has been exacerbated by his troubles within the ruling party itself.

As was the case with Operation Murambatsvina, which was a crime against humanity, a fabrication is being belatedly bandied about that the government clamped down on opposition groups because it had intelligence information showing that foreign powers were sponsoring violence against it through them. Mugabe’s attack dogs seem oblivious to the fact that excessive fabrication and exaggeration is counterproductive. It irritates all right thinking people who can see right through the falsehoods and attempts to mislead.

Nevertheless, the regime’s clumsy attempts to whip up passions continue unabated. One moment it is police spokesman Wayne Budzijena brandishing an object that looks like a crude swastika as an example of the weapons supposedly being brought into the country by the MDC. The next moment, the Dear Leader himself is telling the Zanu PF Youth League that the MDC pays unemployed youths US$100 per day to commit acts of violence.

Suddenly it is Nathaniel Manheru’s turn to rail against CNN and the BBC for being the sources of Zimbabwe’s troubles. While he is at it, the raging Manheru cannot resist the urge to make fun of Tsvangirai’s “chubby face” and then proceeds to express exasperation at the West’s lack of sympathy for two police women whose “scalded faces turned completely white after an alleged attack by MDC arsonists”.

He overlooks the fact that the regime he defends so passionately is yet to bridge the credibility chasm it created when it stage-managed the brutal murder of Cain Nkala in Bulawayo in 2001 in order to discredit the opposition. Nothing has changed since then and as one cynic says, “You cannot put anything past the Mugabe regime.”

Mary Revesai is a New Zimbabwe.com columnist and writes from Harare. Her column will appear here every Tuesday

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