Zimpapers Logo

The cover of yesterday’s NewsDay edition

Zvamaida Murwira Senior Reporter
Government yesterday dismissed as blatant lies reports in yesterday’s NewsDay publication that Cabinet skipped nine meetings owing to President Mugabe’s foreign trips, with the paper alleging the last meeting was on January 27.

In a statement yesterday, Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet, Dr Misheck Sibanda said the story was making spurious allegations in wanton disregard of the cardinal principles of accuracy, fairness and balance.

He said the assertions were made by someone ignorant of the facts on the ground and bent on fomenting malicious slander.

“The writer of the article alleges a Zanu-PF Politburo member and top Government official as his ‘source’. The writer and/or indeed, the ‘source’ as it may be, is evidently unaware of the fact that on instances when Cabinet meetings are not held on the traditional day (Tuesday) the Chairman of Cabinet His Excellency the President has often fixed alternative days in the same week for the meetings, as has been the case a couple of occasions,” said Dr Sibanda.

After all, said Dr Sibanda, the Cabinet office had been advising members of the alternative days for the holding of the rescheduled meetings through the public media.

“The ‘source’, and indeed, the paper, should have known this practice. In any case, unlike Parliament whose business is carried out in public, Cabinet transacts its business in private in line with the established conventions the world over,” said Dr Sibanda.

“Perhaps that explains why the paper concocted such a wild allegation. But then, at least what one should have done was to seek the view of the appropriate offices, in the interest of ensuring fairness, balance and accuracy.”

In the end, said Dr Sibanda, Government would be obliged to conclude that the publication of such a blatant lie was driven by ill-will, with the intention to arouse public disaffection towards it and its leadership.

“We therefore appeal to our media houses to respect the basic tenets of their profession and to desist from engaging in the deliberate distortion of facts. Journalists should play a part in upholding the age-old Cabinet conventions of confidentiality, secrecy and collective responsibility,” he said.

Information, Media and Broadcasting Services Minister Professor Jonathan Moyo said the story was false and should only pass as a Fools’ Day story.

“It is blatantly false, it is so false that it does not warrant a comment because everyone knows it is false. There is no one in Zimbabwe who is a serious person in politics, business and media who does not know that this is a false story because there have been several reports of Cabinet meetings, making decisions since the 27th of January,” said Prof Moyo.

He said the import of the story was that Cabinet never convened meetings in February and March.

“You cannot get a more preposterous thing than that. There is no one serious whether in that newsroom at NewsDay, across the media, in business, in politics, among diplomats who think that story is true. This leaves us with one question: Why did they publish such a blatantly false story? Answer: Either they have lost their marbles or they don’t have a normal calendar. They thought that today (Tuesday) was Fools’ Day. But they are the only ones with that foolish calendar,” he said.

He said the story was a disservice not only to the journalism profession, but to the media house’s shareholders and that explained why it had closed some of its publications like the Southern Eye.

“They have done such a disservice to themselves, their profession, the profession of journalism and to the owners of their business. There is no reason why anyone should ever take such a newspaper seriously whatsoever. Perhaps that explains why they have been shutting down their papers. If I were their owner, I would close them down because you don’t want such a useless newspaper,” said Prof Moyo.