Dzumbira has been a fool

Dzumbira has been a fool

• Even Decibel hates 'urban grooves'

• New Zimbabwe.com in the community

• The great music promotion scandal

This is week three of New Zimbabwe.com editor Mduduzi Mathuthu new weekly column, Stories From Many Places, exploring the showbiz scene and the highlight of his weekly diary activities

Tuesday, August 1, 2006
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It has been a good week for New Zimbabwe.com. George Charamba's alter ego Nathaniel Manheru was deeply indignant last Saturday over our coverage of the MDC's Supreme Court victory.

A day later, The Sunday Mail was also frothing at our coverage of Cont Mhlanga's brutal examination of the ZBC over the Amakorokoza debacle. So angry are the Mail's "sources" and "observers" that they are suggesting there is a "third hand" as if there is anyone who does not know how fiercely independent-minded Cont Mhlanga is.

The Mail has promised its readers an interview with Charamba on the Amakorokoza issue and other matters next week. We keenly await to read the revelations about this "third hand" and how Cont Mhlanga will respond to that.

As if having Robert Mugabe's PR men in a fix is not satisfying on its own, my libido was taken to a higher level when New Zimbabwe.com got a very honorable mention in the biggest selling British tabloid Sun newspaper (they shift over 3,2 million copies daily).

The Sun was keen to tell its readers that its story outing asylum-cheat Joseph Dzumbira was a hit around the world -- and they knew where to turn to see how the Zimbabwean media handled the story.

Then there was the disturbing rantings of Geoff Nyarota in last week's CIO owned and controlled Financial Gazette -- the kind that evokes pity than anger. Nyarota was miffed at some "free debate" comments posted on our public discussion forum by anonymous contributors suggesting he was a cheer leader during the Gukurahundi massacres in Matabeleland and Midlands provinces while editing the Chronicle newspaper.

Nyarota seems to have taken those comments so seriously as to dedicate his whole column to dealing with the nameless writers. In his now typical folly, he then attempted to drag me into this by describing New Zimbabwe.com as "a Ndebele based website". By the same token, would it be fair or reasonable to describe Nyarota's weekly contribution to the Financial Gazette a "Shona Column"?

Even more preposterous is Nyarota's claim that I colluded with then ANZ boss Sam Sipepa Nkomo to leave the Daily News without his knowledge. It is beyond me to understand what the issue is here besides Nyarota's tribal hallucinations. I have told him repeatedly that he cannot continue pursuing this lie about my alleged collusion with Sam Sipepa. But like a man locked in the trophy cabinet of his imagined glorious past, Nyarota still mistakes fantasy for reality and dreams he can get away with it.

For the record, if anyone cares, I only ever met Nkomo TWICE in my whole life. Once was when he briefly came to the Daily News office in Bulawayo, and it was a brief chat. The second time was on my flight to London. Nyarota was also on that flight.

But Nyarota will not accept or understand this simple fact because he has these grand theories about an imagined troop of Ndebele tormenters who are out to get his head. To paraphrase Cont Mhlanga, part of Nyarota's problem is that anything and everything done by a Ndebele person is tribal, or South African, and must be viewed with suspicion, whilst anything done by a Shona is nationalistic and progressive. This is a shame.

It is unfortunate that a man whose later works I admire, and my former boss, has been reduced to peddling tribal nonsense week-in and week-out in his Fingaz column, without any due regard of the destructive and divisive nature of his misguided discourse.

To attempt to lampoon New Zimbabwe.com as a tribal outfit, in the same manner he refers to the Arthur Mutambara faction of the MDC, is disgraceful and it will not wash.

The majority of our readers are a new generation of cosmopolitan Zimbabweans -- both Shona and Ndebele -- who want to correct the wrongs of Nyarota's irresponsible generation that has thrived on tribalism that is sometimes disguised as nationalism. The new generation of Zimbabweans is not just cosmopolitan but it is also very global in outlook and is ready to move on and to build a new Zimbabwe as one people.

Instead of formulating weird tribal theories about Ndebeles, especially those who are either prominent or do not agree with him, Nyarota would do well by spending his retirement in the comfort of Harvard in the United States answering genuine and very serious questions on why as a fine journalist, who was supposedly always "against the grain", he failed to shine during Zimbabwe's darkest hour as Mugabe's 5 Brigade killed 20 000 people.

Can Nyarota tell us what the "grain" was during the Gukurahundi massacres? Which is a better story -- revealing the true extent of Mugabe's murders or writing about cars (Willowgate) using information voluntarily given by the very same CIO who now are said to own and control the Fingaz for which Nyarota is now proudly writing?

Those who question the consequences of Nyarota's poison pen in the 1980s are the same people who are watching his tribal-drum-beating today and wondering whether he is up to his murderous old tricks again.

It is a grim fact that after the 5 Brigade had rampaged through Matabeleland purportedly looking for a dozen dissidents, killing 20 000 people and displacing more in the process, Nyarota, in his wisdom, called for its return in an editorial titled Bring Back the 5 Brigade on 3 June 1987. There are many other examples of Nyarota's poisonous editorials that incited mass murder of innocent people in Matabeleland and the Midlands provinces whom he conveniently labeled as "collaborators" and others that put Joshua Nkomo's life at risk.

Reacting to the kidnapping and murder of a tourist, apparently by the dissidents, Nyarota ignored the carnage that this unit had just inflicted on the people, saying: "Now the dissidents are trying to set the clock back.

"This should not be allowed to happen and the government must act strongly and decisively. The only way we can think of that would effectively check this dissident menace is to deploy the crack 5 Brigade in Matabeleland and the Midlands again.

"This seems the only language the dissidents and their collaborators (read poor and innocent villagers) understand."

There are other equally scary and shocking editorials Nyarota penned, including one saying Time to Call in 5 Brigade on 29 August 1987, followed by another plea to his then hero -- Robert Mugabe -- in September of that year in which he observed that "while the return to such virtually wartime conditions, with all their attendant inconveniences (read murders) will not be welcomed by some (read the entire population of Matabeleland and the Midlands) this may be a necessary measure to end this scourge".

Of course Nyarota had a right to declare death onto the dissidents and their alleged collaborators, in the same manner, I guess, that some will find no qualms with Israel targeting Hezbollah. But having seen the brutal killing and suffering wrought on the people of Lebanon by Israel in the name of fighting Hezbollah and what Nyarota calls 'collaborators', what normal person would six months from now invite Israel to come back for Hezbollah in Lebanon?

Sadly, Nyarota not once, not twice but many times over called for the butchers of the people of Matabeleland and the Midlands to return again and again!

Is anyone, let alone Nyarota, surprised that this sits uncomfortably with many people of good conscience not just in Zimbabwe but around the civilised world?
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Last week, Zimbabweans in the UK woke up to yet another of those depressing headlines about one of their own caught admitting to taking bribes in exchange for asylum.

Joseph Dzumbira, in his defence, has told friends this week that the Sun which secretly filmed him claiming that he had dealt with 200 asylum cases and could get asylum for anyone with £800 was now embarrassed by finding that he is not quite the big fish they thought they had caught.

Dzumbira also says he does not work for the Home Office and has no role or say in the asylum process. He wants us to believe that he was clowning all the time and just pleased that the Sun picked up the bill for his meal at McDonalds.

The truth is out there, but what is clear is that many Zimbabweans undergoing the torment of the asylum process now face the prospect of having their cases reviewed -- simply because they have Dzumbira's fingerprints.

This is a totally unacceptable situation, and Dzumbira must bear the responsibility for the suffering that he has visited on all the people who now live in the fear that their asylum decisions may be reversed.

Coming just a week before the Immigration and Asylum Tribunal hands down judgment in the important case of AA, Dzumbira's actions are at best, unhelpful.

Dzumbira has been a fool. He has potentially screwed a lot of people's lives and brought unnecessary attention on Zimbabwean asylum seekers who simply want to get on with their lives.

Mathuthu is the New Zimbabwe.com editor and his column is published every Tuesday. Contact Mathuthu: mathuthu@newzimbabwe.com
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