In Zimbabwe the ordinary people, especially in rural areas with no access to internet, outside radio and newspapers, are starved of useful and quality information. The regime has stifled all meaningful, open and honest debate on any subject remotely considered political. Instead povo are overwhelmed with propaganda with zero intellectual content designed to brainwash them into zombies; who will do as they are told, no questioned asked.
The election season is upon us and the volume of propaganda is steadily increasing although be it the propagandist are finding it increasing difficult to seal Mugabe and his Zanu PF regime as a competent and loved regime in the face of the political and economic realities on the ground in Zimbabwe. That is not to say the regime has given up and as long as they are paid the propagandists will continue to chain out the misinformation regardless how nonsensical it happens to be.
In the book “Why Mugabe Won. The 2013 Elections in Zimbabwe and their Aftermath” Stephen Chan and Julia Gallagher, argue the tyrant has been winning elections because “tangible deliveries to the electorate and has loyal supporters who stick to the values of the revolutionary party”.
“Tangible deliveries”! What tangible deliveries? Zimbabweans are the poorest in Africa, according to an AfrAsia Bank report. Its finding is supported by the facts on the ground, poverty is everywhere in Zimbabwe; there is no denying it. So, one has to ask again what tangible deliveries and these two wittering about?
In its 2013 election manifesto Zanu PF promised 2.2 million new jobs in five years. So far the regime has failed to create any new jobs, unless Chan and Gallagher believed Minister Patrick Zhuwao, Mugabe’s nephew, who wanted those selling airtime card and roasted maize on the streets as new jobs!
Of course, this is cheap propaganda information, biased and misleading, used to promote a political cause – that Mugabe is popular and won the 2013 elections fair and square. The truth is totally different, we all know that Mugabe blatantly rigged the 2013 elections.
The closest the people of Zimbabwe ever came to having a free, fair and credible elections was probably the March 2008 vote. In that vote, Tsvangirai won 73% of the vote, by Mugabe’s own admission. Since the regime had ZEC in its pocket the results were withheld for six weeks whilst the regime “cooked” up the figures to produce a more acceptable 47% votes for Tsvangirai.
Every time, without failure, towards elections the nation is bombarded by all these research results showing just how loved and popular Mugabe and his Zanu PF party are and yet every election without failure the regime blatantly rigs the elections.
“Its (MDC) supporters felt that the party’s once strong networks and unifying spirit — forged in the difficult days of opposition — had melted away as elites had begun to taste the pleasures of office,” they wrote.
“They appeared to have pulled the ladders up after themselves, leaving their grassroots without moral or material support. This left activists unable or disinclined to attempt to woo voters who had begun to question the party’s abilities, either to perform in government, or to represent their interests.”
This is all very true but the same if not worse can be said about Mugabe and Zanu PF cronies. Right now, the tyrant under fire from with the rogue war veterans, who done the most of regime’s dirty work of imposing its no-regime-change mantra, they are accusing Mugabe enjoying the spoils of power of dumping them. Many of them, like millions of Zimbabweans, are languishing in abject poverty!
Given a free vote, millions of Zimbabweans will still vote for the opposition regardless of their pathetic record of corruption and incompetence if only to get rid of the corrupt, tyrannical and vote rigging Zanu PF!
If Stephen Chan and Julia Gallagher really did a thorough research before writing their book then why did they fail to ask any Zanu PF official why the party has stubbornly refused to implement the democratic reforms necessary to ensure free, fair and credible elections?
Propaganda is a very serious and obnoxious crime in that it does not only seek to misinform the victim but, worse still, brainwash him/her and thus deprive them the power to think and reason for themselves. Zimbabwe’s opposition politicians are not the cleverest kids on the block and it is therefore not surprising that they have shown worse signs of being totally brainwashed than the average rural peasant in Zimbabwe’s back waters with no internet and other enlightenment to counter the propaganda.
After the 2013 elections Tendai Biti said the 2013 elections were rigged. He later changed his statement and said Zanu PF had won because it connected better with the electorate than MDC had done. He has done worse; failing to get even one reform implemented in five years of the GNU being one of the worst things Biti and his MDC friends have done.
Indeed, if there was anyone in Zimbabwe’s opposition camp with even a few still firing brain cells then they would see Stephen Chan’s Zanu PF propaganda book for what it is, a smokescreen behind which to hid the regime’s planned vote rigging scheme. For as long as the world can be made to believe Mugabe is popular any vote rigging that takes place is that much easier to dismiss as soar grapes. Therefore, folly of contesting a flawed election is glaringly obvious – to anyone with still a few firing brain cells.-Zimeye
