By Staff Reporter

INFORMATION, Media and Broadcasting Services deputy minister, Kindness Paradza on Friday harassed NewZimbabwe.com journalist James Muonwa, who was seeking comment over a story involving the top Zanu PF official.

The Mashonaland West-based scribe sought comment from the politician, who is also Zanu PF Makonde DCC chairman, over ructions within the district amid reports party youths had planned a protest against him on Saturday.

In a bid to thwart the machinations against his detractors, Paradza wrote a pre-emptive letter to reiterate he would brook no-nonsense from functionaries who attempted to disrupt the inter-district meeting.

The Makonde lawmaker could neither confirm nor deny the letter written to DCC members but chose to verbally attack the journalist.

“You are the one always writing negative things in Chinhoyi…aagh no young man! Let me tell you that it’s not journalism you are practicing. I saw you wrote a useless story that Paradza had forced Cottco and so forth and also that (former Labour minister Prisca) Mupfumira was struggling) when all these were lies.

“Young man, your life must not be like that, journalism is not done that way if it’s journalism, unless you do other things which are not journalism,” said Paradza who sounded very agitated.

When pressed further to confirm whether he had authored the document, Paradza went ballistic.

“Get away!!!! Protest against me, for what reason and to achieve what? Which DCC members would protest against me? There is nothing like that.

“I have an inter-district meeting in Chinhoyi tomorrow like what l have been doing in Mhangura and Makonde with my DCC. So where is the protest coming from? Hey you, write what you want, write what you want, you hear me? Write what you want.”

Although Paradza seeks to discredit the NewZimbabwe.com journalist, a trending video recording reveals himself confessing he had pressured the Cotton Company of Zimbabwe (Cottco) to enlist the services of unqualified administration clerks, who don’t have requisite five Ordinary Levels, at collection depots to be established in his constituency ahead of the cotton marketing season.

The lawmaker, whose politically calculated move bordered on influence peddling, made the uncanny revelation during a Zanu PF inter-district meeting held at Muvhami recently.

“We agreed that at all cotton depots in Makonde, they (Cottco) will take children from Makonde. They had put a prerequisite of 5 ‘O’ Levels and l said where do five ‘O’ Level (holders) come from in Makonde.

“In Makonde there are one, two, three and four ‘O’ Levels. There was corona (Covid-19) so the passrate was not all that good,” Paradza says in the video.

On Saturday, Paradza was at it again at a MISA Mashonaland West chapter organised Press Freedom Day commemorative event in Chinhoyi where the Zanu PF official was one of the guests.

Regrettably, the deputy minister reduced his address to an attack on Muonwa’s professional integrity while also issuing a veiled threat against the journalist.

Again, Paradza repeated the words, “you will not make it in life” throughout his address.

Paradza’s threats against the journalist cannot be taken lightly given the violence given the weekend violence he instigated within Zanu PF Makonde DCC where he unleashed hordes of machete-wielding youths on fellow party members.

Muonwa has since lodged an official complaints with the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA-Zimbabwe), Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe (VMCZ) and the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ).

Coincidentally, Paradza is a former journalist and one time newspaper owner.