President Robert Mugabe on Thursday fired a broadside at Western media for biased coverage of events in Zimbabwe, ignoring an adultery case involving his staunch opponent, former archbishop Pius Ncube.
”If one of my own ministers does mischief and takes another person’s wife, it will be carried on television and they will say this is what Mugabe’s ministers are doing,” Mugabe said.
”It will be carried on BBC, CNN, everywhere, but let the man who speaks their language and does their work, even if he is archbishop, commit adultery they will not publish it,” he said at the official launch of the country’s Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) policy.
”They will seek to hide it, even on CNN and BBC, and say nothing, absolutely nothing about it. Or if they do, it is just in passing. So let’s take care.”
Ncube (60), a leading critic of Mugabe, resigned on Tuesday following an adultery scandal after a state newspaper published compromising pictures alleged to depict the Bulawayo archbishop having sex with another man’s wife.
However Ncube, who has been head of the Bulawayo Diocese since 1998, said his resignation was intended to save the church from further attacks and enable him to challenge the adultery charge in court in his private capacity.
Mugabe also said Zimbabweans should not risk being fascinated with new communication technologies, which posed risks due to the content they allowed people to access.
”We have our own sphere, our own space, which we must self-determine and govern as a sovereign people. We will never be that image the British or Americans have put on BBC or CNN. We are in the middle of a fight for our heritage.
”Our very space or territory is being channelled by the British … They have used propaganda and their global news networks to leverage international opinion against us.”
Mugabe’s government has often accused the West of trying to bring about regime change in the country using ”hostile” media.
Many Zimbabweans have turned to foreign-based radio stations and television channels for an alternative to broadcasts by government-controlled radio and television stations.
Leaked document
Meanwhile, a controversial document criticising Britain over the crisis in Zimbabwe, which was leaked at a Southern African regional summit last month, came from Harare, not South Africa, a senior Zambian official said on Wednesday.
The briefing paper on talks between Mugabe’s government and the Zimbabwean opposition circulated among diplomats ahead of a summit in Lusaka of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in mid-August.
Reuters news agency and some newspapers reported — after being briefed by officials and diplomats in Lusaka — that the document came from South Africa and was to be presented to the summit by President Thabo Mbeki, who is mediating in the crisis.
Media reports said South Africa blamed Britain for the deepening crisis in Zimbabwe by accusing Britain of leading a campaign to ”strangle” the beleaguered African state’s economy and saying it had a ”death wish” against a negotiated settlement that might leave President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF in power.
”The most worrisome thing is that the United Kingdom continues to deny its role as the principal protagonist in the Zimbabwean issue and is persisting with its activities to isolate Zimbabwe,” the report said. ”None of the Western countries that have imposed the sanctions that are strangling Zimbabwe’s economy have shown any willingness to lift them.”
South Africa denied it had produced the document, which blamed former colonial power Britain for Harare’s isolation by the West and said London was trying to destroy dialogue between Mugabe’s government and the opposition. — Sapa-AFP, Reuters