Reaching out and working in partnership with the public is what good governments do and ZANU PF-controlled Zimbabwe government does not. In its tyrannical nature, ZANU PF is building barriers to free speech through draconian legislation – the Patriotic Bill being the latest – to withhold information and ensure state control of the flow of information. This goes against the grain of the liberation movement. The fight was to extend freedom of expression to the people, and communication and media are central to that.
To foster freedom, citizens must have access to good quality information; liberalisation of the media and communication must be a priority to include members of society in decisions about how the country should be governed, at least that is what the public thought independence would mean.
Good government entails the collective protection of freedoms and liberty of all citizens; it is about the aggregation of a myriad of diverse opinions, norms, and values, developing and implementing policy and drafting laws.
From being marginalised by the minority white rule that kept black natives out of decision-making processes and governance, we moved onto the Zimbabwean state that has proved to be worse. The black majority government has become too powerful to fear and/ or care about the ordinary man’s desires.
Just like the other former liberation movements across the region, the ZANU PF-led government has convinced itself that it is its responsibility to define the nature and extent of freedom and liberty; it gives and takes human rights at will. And its biggest vehicle is a tightly controlled media and communication space.
The systems and institutions of Zimbabwe are the handywork of delusional supremacists. The political model is designed to advance favours to some and withdraw power from certain population groups, thus the breakdown of Matabeleland public trust in government. It is a mechanisation of ethnic Shona supremacists who have managed to convince the poorest ethnic Shona person that he or she is better than the best Ndebele person. The poor ethnic Shona person stands captured by the delusion of superiority and lost to the reality of his poverty.
Advancing the idea of ethnic Shona superiority ensures longevity of not only ZANU PF rule but also that of ethnic Shona hegemony. Shona supremacism which permeates even the mainstream opposition promotes socioeconomic disharmony and erodes potential nation-wide working-class coalition likely to empower people and pose greater threat to the ZANU PF elite.
ZANU PF – a default political home for many ethnic Shona people – has effectively used the mass media to sustain its hold on Ndebele people with full support from its Mashonaland base. Each time people of Matabeleland try to raise their heads above the water, the system pushes them down and the majority ethnic Shona people do not view it as resulting from political injustice, but believe all stereotypes fed about people of Matabeleland – uneducated, stupid, immoral, etc.
The importance of trust in politics cannot be overstated, political trust is a vital resource for creating systemic legitimacy that is needed for organisational stability and effectiveness. Because the public do not trust ZANU PF and the government it leads, it frequently finds necessity to use threats and other coercive measures to enforce public compliance.
Instead of a government for and by the people, the ZANU PF government experiment has become a human catastrophe, a rabid, out of control, human rights bursting, state that only responds to controls set by boundaries of its delusions. A two-tier system has been created where the state limits freedoms, and liberty is used to defend elite interests.
In its pervasive display of power, ZANU PF thinks it is its duty to shape society. The political narrative is tightly controlled through a partisan media. Dissent is broadly suppressed, only allowed within a very narrow spectrum determined by the ruling party.
Restricting and/ or controlling media access and content on top of the use of fear lie at the centre of ZANU PF politics of coercion. Fear affects the effective use of social media as a vital source and political weapon.
The dictatorship recognises the important role of the media in modelling public perception of politics and its influence on power, so the government has placed tight controls over it to interfere with the quality of the narrative.
What we have for mainstream media houses are highly compromised state-controlled establishments prepared to withhold facts that risk damaging the State narratives and publications that would readily make up facts that will fit without damage into the State narrative.
The result is a toxic socio-political space constantly shaped by media whose communication language marches in step with that of the State at the expense of public empowerment. The media perpetuates glaring delusions of Shona supremacy to deflect attention from real problems of ZANU PF governance by taking digs against certain population groups.
It is difficult to get a balanced view of the world for working class communities whose only source of information is the public broadcaster.
We need to break ethnic barriers; we do appreciate that the working class is not in control over how media projects its activities, but we do have control over the ways in which we conduct ourselves. When working classes stop reading right wing news, progress would be immediate. Picture what would happen if the ethnic Shona working class no longer believe in the socio-political delusion of their supremacy and see their lives for what they are – poor and deprived – and are prepared to engage with other oppressed masses in the country against the manipulative elite.
MTHWAKAZI INDEPENDENT 