The stuff real sellouts are made of

via The stuff real sellouts are made of November 21, 2014

One of the worst kept secrets is finally out: The 2002 elections were neither free nor fair, but a tragic farce, as stated in the report by South African judges commissioned by then South African President Thabo Meki, released last week.

That day in the city centre when the poll results were announced, people looked dazed as they hardly spoke when they passed each other.

They were stunned into silence. Now the release of the report tallies with their shock. Sadc should have acted faster and tougher, but they were slow and soft. The regional bloc should have been decisive, but they dithered despite over 117 being killed in politically-motivated violence.

So, MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s anger and disappointment with South Africa expressed this week is understandable, having been clearly robbed of victory in 2002. This emboldened Zanu PF to again blatantly subvert the people’s will in 2008 when, true to form, they again reversed a Tsvangirai victory, with over 200 deaths documented.

The intention to manipulate and overturn the results was so obvious.

That Zanu PF is still in power is not because Tsvangirai failed, but because he was plainly robbed. If people still fail to see that we are dealing with such monstrosity, what else are they failing to see?

Now this monstrosity is being directed against Vice-President Joice Mujuru. Yes, this open, brazen, unashamed rigging is being unleashed against their own. If Mujuru didn’t have the numbers, they wouldn’t be moving so fast, systematically and brutally in decimating her support base, suspending her perceived and real allies before the Zanu PF elective congress next month, reducing her chances to next to nil, indicating that she would win a free and fair contest.

It is this overplanning that points fingers of lying and deceit back at them. Any and all lies have been told. There is something twisted and perverted about this.

But given the choice between Mujuru and her attackers, people would back Mujuru, not necessarily because they like her, but because they dislike her attackers much more. Most people are practical.

They know that you cannot have a perfect world.

Despite the fact that Mujuru is tainted with Zanu PF’s many sins of commission and omission, she is, increasingly in the eyes of the people, a better option than her rabid hardline abusers who have a fierce reputation of human rights excesses.

She is not hated with passion like most of her detractors. To hate a person with a passion means that you hate them with your entire being — body, mind and soul — and it takes something huge to remove that kind of abhorrence.

To further elucidate, many in the top leadership of the German army were not Nazis, and were concerned with the disastrous way the Second World War (1939-1945) was going and actually wanted to surrender for the sake of the nation.

They were unlike the SS, an elite corp of the Nazi Party that carried out the party’s dirty work as special regiments loyal to dictator Adolf Hitler and nobody else.

One, the Mujuru faction represents relative sanity and sobriety in Zanu PF, not the jingoism and stubbornness that has left Zimbabwe in perennial political and socio-economic paralysis.

Two, Mujuru has never headed a security portfolio or been linked with dirty tricks.

The lead story in this week’s The Sunday Mail titled VP Mujuru linked to President assassination plot, was not believed by the overwhelming majority of that paper’s online readers, with one of them commenting: “The story has more holes than Swiss cheese.”

Indeed, anyone who believes that story — yes, it’s a mere story, not substantiated report — can believe anything. The blanketing of all Mujuru backers as plotting to assassinate Mugabe is no different from accusing all Muslims of plotting to murder decent white folk.

Or saying “that woman from Dotito” in attacking Mujuru, as has become the jarring and annoying habit of First Lady Grace Mugabe, thereby branding all people from Dotito as bad to the bone, instead of restricting her attacks to her target.

Remember when President Robert Mugabe referred to Mbare people as “totemless”?

But it’s tragic that some journalists are dancing to the tune of these dirtiest of players. It’s extremely worrying when some journalists across the board celebrate blatant unfairness and injustice.

Look at the disproportionate publicity being given to Gokwe-Nembudziya MP Justice Mayor Wadyajena’s co-ordinated gratuitous and mindless insults.

These journalists are doing a great disservice to the profession out of ignorance, dishonesty and for 30 pieces of silver, barely short of “blood money” received for the life of another human being because they are indeed endangering lives of others.

Such journalists who sell themselves to the highest bidder also endanger the safety of their colleagues as they will be singled out for victimisation by these corrupt politicians for refusing to play ball in the same way flatterers and bootlickers in the Zanu PF infighting have endangered men and women of integrity in the ruling party who do not feel obliged to pay homage to anyone and are greatly offended and revolted by the goings-on.

There should be mutual accountability in the relationship between journalism and society. The media should provide the truth about the lies.

It is very easy to get to the top of any political organisation or employment structure like in journalism if you are prepared to sell you soul to the devil, if you do or are willing to do anything, no matter how wrong, in order to succeed or get money or power, fatten your pocket or inflate your low self-esteem to look big in the eyes of others.

We see this in the bootlickers regaling the First Lady and their sidekicks in both the public and private media.

That is the stuff real sellouts are made of.