via Mugabe BBC interview an insult to suffering Zimbabweans Nehanda Radio Apr 24, 2014 by Wilbert Mukori
The BBC has rightly earned the world’s trust as a media house that has produced outstanding quality programmes but like all good things in this world it takes only one bad apple and the whole bushel will be spoilt. Roy Agyemang’s Our World: Mugabe at 90 on BBC was one such rotten apple.
For anyone who has never followed the tragic story of Zimbabwe in the last 34 years they would come out with the impression that Mugabe is a great national hero much loved by the people of Zimbabwe, admired by his fellow black African leaders but misunderstood by the West.
“Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the world. Which world!” Mugabe said in the programme with obvious satisfaction. Roy Agyemang too must have enjoyed that bit because he showed it twice in the programme! If anything, the line epitomizes what is wrong with Mugabe and the shallowness of those who admire him.
The war of independence was not fought to end British colonial rule, that was merely an unavoidable bye product; the same as breaking the egg is an unavoidable bye product if you want an egg omelette.
The war was fought so that we; the oppressed, exploited and discriminated black majority; can at last end the oppression and enjoy freedom, liberty and human dignity. We have waited for the last 34 years and we are yet to enjoy any of these things. We know the egg has been broken but where is the omelette?
Roy Agyemang asked Mugabe about the rampant corruption – this has been given so wide coverage in Zimbabwe and the world that it was impossible for anyone to miss – to which the tyrant replied that his government was carrying out investigations.
Any self-respecting journalist much more one carrying BBC’s reputation on his shoulders would have asked why corruption has been allowed to go on for 34 years with the disastrous consequences to the nation.
In Zimbabwe, life expectancy; the definitive qualitative and quantitative measure of a country’s economic progress or regress; has dropped to from 68 years in 1980 when Mugabe came into power to a miserly 34 years today! This did not happen in the last two months but has been going on for decades.
Gross mismanagement and rampant corruption have been at the very heart of Zimbabwe’s economic melt-down. It is therefore willfully inadequate for Mugabe to say he is investigating corruption after all these years of doing nothing about it. It is smacks of professional impotency for any journalist to let the tyrant off the hook so easily.
Roy Agyemang must be the only one who does not know that Mugabe blatantly rigged the 2013 elections or else, like Mugabe, he too does not believe blacks have a right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country.
Indeed the BBC reporter does not believe blacks have the right to life itself! Over 30 000 Zimbabweans have been murdered by Mugabe and his thugs since independence and the report talked of political violence but not even one death!
The whole report was a chance for Mugabe to once again crow from the rooftop about the demise of the British Empire, something the British have themselves accepted as a historic fact and have moved on.
Meanwhile Mugabe has continued to deny us Zimbabweans our basic human rights and dignity and the report seemed to endorse the tyrant’s view that we should forget our suffering and misery and join him in celebrating the demise of the British Empire. What an insult!
(Roy Agyemang’s Our World: Mugabe at 90 is available on BBC News iplayer.)
COMMENTS
Mr Mukori is it possible that the BBC respects its audience enough to know that they will draw their own conclusions. Seen in this light Mugabe has condemned himself over and over in this interview.
I agree that Mugabe has condemned himself over and over again in the interview and on many other occasions; God knows the many chances he has been given to do just that by Zimbabwe’s the Zanu PF controlled media. The point here is that BBC is a respected media known for its quality programmes and not trash.
Roy should have asked Mugabe the obvious follow up questions to counter Mugabe’s lies and rhetorical nonsense that is what the public expected from a competent journalist working for a respected media house. If anyone wants to hear Mugabe belittle and insult Zimbabweans they can listen to ZBC.
Roy was cashing in on the black Zimbabweans’ misery no more than those black Africans who sold their own kith and kin to white slave traders for a piece of calico clothe! Something Mugabe has been doing for the last 34 years!
Haven’t seen the interview and wont make the effort, but I think it is a widely held perception that the bbc panders to all sorts of tin pot dictators in the name of news.
I saw part of the interview. I was so disgusted by the journalist’s shallow questions and eagerness to please the dictator that I changed channels 10 minutes into the interview.
Well they did just that this time!
The AntiChrist is misquoting in his usual smug malice. ‘Waves’, not ‘world’, duh. Agyemang should learn the culture of his adopted country before promoting its enemies.
I was NOT impressed with is interview. Where is the genocide, the murder, the plunder, the hate, the destruction, the violence, the torture, the rape, the wholesale theft, the lies, the spite, the bitterness. The BBC tried interviewing people in Zimbabwe but everyone was too scared to speak the truth. This destroyer has ruled by fear. A satanic weapon. Dig a lot deeper BBC. A lot deeper. We want the truth
The BBC were conned by this Ghana born reporter and they have to suffer that embarrassment. This fellow should be arrested and charged with aiding and abetting a person on the sanction list.
The content was poor and questions most probably set by Bob himself as all they did was concentrate on the anti British and land issue and brush off the economic crisis, rule of law, murders, dis-respect for the constitution etc etc.
Oh and if he thinks he can fool us with the shot of him pleading with Bob for an interview at some public function, he has to think again, we all know he would only get that close with full clearance thus confirming he is in with them.
An utter insult to all Zimbabweans.
He did get his piece of clothe and a handful of beads alright!
moyokumusha you frustration with this man is understandable. We have said it over and over again the black people in North and East Africa are mesmerized by Mugabe that even if you tell them about the atrocities they won’t believe you. All they hear is his rhetoric about the West and they get satisfaction that he continuously tells the west off and gets away with it. I know because I work on projects with people from Ghana, Nigeria, the Gambia Senegal and other countries. I never commented much later on because I found myself talking to educated idiots(excuse the term). Some that I still communicate with are changing their opinions because of the way their fellow men have been treated in Zimbabwe and Mugabes rantings. He is almost like Haile Selassie is to the Rastafarians.
I agree that many black Africans have been “mesmerized by Mugabe “! His anti-British, anti-Western and anti-white rhetoric have always gone down well with them. But I would include black Zimbabweans in those mesmerized!
Mugabe allowed the seizure of the white owned farms to go ahead with as much gratuitous violence as possible against the white farmers. He knew there are millions of blacks who have harbored a burning hatred of the whites and would do anything to see them humbled. I have spoken to black Zimbabweans who took part in these farm invasions, jambanja they called it, and one could see it was the greatest thing they had ever done.
Most of the jambanja activists were kicked off the farms as soon as the white owners were driven off and the farm given to the Zanu PF ruling elite. The farm invasion resulted in the total collapse of the agriculture, the back bone of the Zimbabwe economy, resulting in food shortages and the collapse of the economy itself. Most of the jambanja activists are themselves starving and out of work.
The violent farm invasions provided Mugabe with the smoke screen be-hind which to hide his sinister plot of using violence to remain in power. The violent farm invasions always flared out of control before important elections and spread into urban centers and rural areas.
Mugabe has never admitted to any serious human rights violation in Zimbabwe and insisted the West imposed sanction on his regime because he took back the land from white farms.
I did try to explain how Mugabe has used these jambanja activists for his selfish gains but did not get through to them. A few of them accepted that Mugabe has short changed them by denying them the freedom, human dignity and a share in the nation’s riches. They have, however, resigned themselves to that political reality. They were still proud to have played a part in the jambanja; that is their consolation price!
Soon after the rigged 2013 elections Mugabe boasted that the “British did not know what hit them!” to the myth and applause of the gullible Zimbabwe audience. No doubt convinced that if by rigging the elections Mugabe was hitting and hating the British then the fact that they had just been cheated of their birth right to a free, fair and credible elections was a price well worth paying.
Zimbabweans have been mesmerized by Mugabe which is the reason why the country is in this political and economic mess. It does not take much to mesmerize Zimbabweans; in the last ten years it was the blundering and incompetent Tsvangirai who has mesmerized Zimbabweans.
Zimbabweans aren’t “mesmerized” by Mugarbage,
they are deceived, robbed and raped by him.
‘Mesmerized’ meaning: To hold spellbind; enthrall; hypnotize” – hardly!
This pig of an excuse certainly never hypnotized, enthralled
or held me spellbound – did he you?
Mesmerized, bulls*^t!
May be Mugabe did not mesmerize you but he did many other Zimbabweans and the reason he was able to rob, cheat and even murder so many of them with complete easy!
That the BBC sees it fit to interview an individual who has been sanctioned and largely unrecognised by the nation that pays for its upkeep tells us a lot about the lack of morals of its governors
It’s so shocking that people always tend to want to read the wrong and believe in the untrue stories about President Mugabe and undermine the views of individuals.
Mugabe spoke his mind like the Mugabe we have always known, so what was is problem.
The broadcast was on point and those foolish negative comments are totally misguided and the truth be told it was a great documentary and history will tell.
If it is history you are after then the programme should have talked of the suffering of millions of ordinary Zimbabweans whose lives the tyrant has turned into a hell-on-earth and had over 30 000 murdered. Just because he has ridden roughshod over their hopes and dreams does not mean they are not humans and have no place in history. That is the reason why the broadcast was an insult to millions of Zimbabweans, it airbrushed them out of history!
Yes Colin 20 000 dead Matebele is quite shocking.
If Agyemang was a white man would he have been granted an interview with Mugabe ? The BBC have taken Bob’s idiotic ‘rule the world’ quote and are televising it nightly to promote their news channel.
How much of this interview ended up on the cutting room floor !!! I agree that the interviewer should have been more incisive in his questioning. Perhaps questions about “the genocide, the murder, the plunder, the hate, the destruction, the violence, the torture, the rape, the wholesale theft, the lies, the spite, the bitterness” were in fact asked(see comment from NBC above), but Mugabe refused to answer. If so, such refusal should have been stated.
However, it is far more likely that a full list of questions had to be submitted before the interview, and “uncomfortable” questions would have been removed by the Zimbabwean “side”. Naturally, the BBC wants to keep a presence in Zimbabwe, and any “negative commentary” would soon see them on a hiding to nowhere.
Good attempt BBC. Perhaps I am “lucky” to have lived in Zimbabwe through the economic melt-down, and the 2008 elections ….. so can view this interview with a healthy dose of cynicism !!!!!
In short, Roy sold out for a chance to hobnob with the tyrant! After all the “right” of the tyrant to plunder, rig elections and even murder is now more important than those of his victims whose lives he continues to destroy at will!
Your “health dose of cynicism” is doing nothing to end the heart breaking suffering millions of Zimbabweans are facing every day and things are set to get even worse. What they need is for Mugabe to be seen as the corrupt and murderous tyrant he is and not black nationalist hero who out witted the British.
The country attained its independence 34 years ago his fights against the British are a smoke screen to hide his corruption and brutal repression.
Just repeating what has already been said… it’s the BBC, so what did’ja expect? Com’on…!
The truth lies in graves and caves and the sunken eyes of diseased children of fathers with no arms, who watch from the roadside as the luxury vehicles of their heros roll past to visit their latest farms.
As Zimbabweans, we hv gone thru lots of miseries that we r able to identify a framed interview like this one. Zim history can never be complete without Gukurahundi truth. Anyone who excludes that wd be bribed
You know what Mugabe banned BBC for over 10years. The bbc was only trying to mend relations with th dictator
So the BBC are “mending fences with the dictator” by insulting his victims! Well we the victims of this tyrant’s corrupt and murderous rule and here to thank the BBC for the insult! Thank you!
This interview was the ZBC equivalent of Reuben Barwe interviewing ‘The President’, useless, shallow and very disappointing. What but can you expect of the BBC who have spent decades supporting left wing policies and providing a platform for dictators to justify their excesses. Mugabe would never agree to an interview with someone who may actually ask him some really ‘hard’ questions that may require some difficult answers.
Yes I believe he would not or did not answer any compromising questions, he has NEVER, in his 34 years been put in a corner by a journalist and is not about to at the ripe old age of 90.
BBC stooping to new lows.
All I know is believe it or not hate President Mugabe or not, he is a man demonised because of his warrented stand for the truth. Yes he can never be the vicar as some are he is a normal being with all its frailties but I would want a leader like him. Romove sunctions and all so called restrictive measures and see how our Zimbabwe blooms like a flower. Stop, think, see, read Zimbabwe history you will come to a point where you will see this champion of Africa called Mugabe. Don’t get everything the papers tell you about politicians.
Let me guess Anold Anderson
1) YOU ARE NOT FROM MATABELELAND.
2) You DID NOT EXPERIENCE MURAMBATSVINA
3) You are not white or Gay.
4) YOU LIVE A GOOD SAFE DISTANCE FROM ZIMBABWE.
Do I tick all the boxes Anold?
You ticked them all correctly Granny!
That idiot Anderson you replied to, is a Zanoid,
thief, plunderer, killer and rapist sympathizer,
I believe.
You are free to vote for him any day but is he free to rig elections and impose his tyrannical rule on everyone else? Mugabe has never held free and fair elections in all his 34 years in power; he is a tyrant who has never had the people’s free mandate to rule.
Arnold has always been a confused man. He comments once in a blue moon then 2 months no hear. Must be a asylum candidate.
Disgrace to the African history the tyran
Fools! Why do you hate the man so much? Kumutya mudhara we 90yrs!
You talk as if Mugabe has always been 90 years old. Mugabe is a corrupt and murderous tyrant who has had 34 years to establish his one party dictatorship and it is now a efficient killing machine. What chance does an ignorant and powerless peasant have against the tyrant with all his state machinery and looted wealth?
Over 100 children below the age of five are dying everyday of curable diseases whilst the tyrant lives in a $20 million mansion, throws a $ 1 million birthday bash and a week latter has a $5 million wedding for his daughter. And all you care about is him and spare no thoughts of the many lives lost needlessly.