Moyo blasts Herald over Biti-Gono story

via Moyo blasts Herald over Biti-Gono story ZimbabweMail 19 December 2013

Information, Media and Broadcasting Services Minister, Professor Jonathan Moyo has described a lead story in today’s issue of the Herald titled: “Gono, Biti ties raise suspicion” as based on emotive and false assertions that smack of a hidden political agenda.

In a statement, Professor Moyo said the story has many falsehoods among them the claim that Dr Munyaradzi Kereke is a Zanu PF legislator despite him being expelled before the July 31 elections.

Moyo also said in the story the Herald falsely claimed that only Zanu PF’s Manicaland province has endorsed Dr Gono’s nomination to fill the vacant senatorial seat in Manicaland.

He said the Herald deliberately ignored that on the 11th of December the Zanu PF Politburo unanimously endorsed the nomination of Dr Gideon Gono as Senator for Buhera.

“There’s therefore nothing amiss or untoward about the nomination which was done in a transparent manner and in terms of both the law and Zanu PF procedures,” said Moyo.

Moyo added that the daily paper surprisingly took the route of a shameless smear campaign against Dr Gono using the cover of cheap politics.

“Even worse, the Herald’s undisguised smear campaign against Gono is based on quotations from faceless and nameless sources described as “senior Zanu PF officials and “a Zanu PF Politburo member with close ties to the Zimbabwe Defence Forces”.

“One does not need to be a rocket scientist to realise not only that the faceless and nameless sources in the unfortunate story are uncreative inventions but also that it is not possible for Kereke, who is clearly the main source of the scurrilous story, to be at one and the same time rolled into “senior Zanu PF officials” and “a Zanu PF Politburo member with close ties to the Zimbabwe Defence Forces,” Moyo said.

Minister Moyo said it is sad that the Herald, of all papers, found it so easy to use an out-dated and discredited tactic of basing serious allegations, false claims and emotive assertions on faceless and nameless Zanu PF sources, adding that such tactic is not journalism, but political mischief propelled by cowardice.

He described the Herald’s attempt to bring the Zimbabwe Defence Forces into disrepute through Kereke’s story as not just disappointing, but as very shocking, unprofessional and totally unacceptable.

Moyo said while the fact that Dr Gono has hired Tendai Biti as his lawyer might raise some eyebrows within Zanu PF as he is the MDC-T secretary general, it should be understood in the clearest of terms that like any other Zimbabwean, Dr Gono is entitled under the country’s constitution to choose his own lawyer.

The Minister said the notion that there are Zanu PF lawyers and MDC lawyers is a sad commentary on our national politics whose polarisation ‘has gone too far’.