Southern Times instrument of decolonisation: Mandiwanzira Supa Mandiwanzira
Deputy Min of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services Supa Mandiwanzira

Deputy Min of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services Supa Mandiwanzira

Southern Times Writer
The Southern Times is an instrument for mental decolonisation of the Southern African region and that vision must continue to drive the newspaper, Information, Media and Broadcasting Services Deputy Minister Cde Supa Mandiwanzira has said.
Addressing guests at the 10th anniversary of the regional newspaper in Windhoek, Namibia, on Wednesday night, Cde Mandiwanzira said the paper was established to complete the emancipation of the people in Southern Africa and the African continent at large.

“The Southern Times was launched as an instrument for mental decolonisation of Southern Africa, starting with our two immediate societies (Namibia and Zimbabwe),” he said.

“Its distinguishing feature was its pan-African, Afro-centric, liberationist perspective. That vision must be the driver of The Southern Times and everything else that might grow out of the NAMZIM project.”

Cde Mandiwanzira said information had never been an innocent commodity while perspective had also never been an uncontested matter of fact.

“The world of communication has always been a world of power and dominance, a cacophony in which the trophy goes to the loudest, longest yell,” he said.

Cde Mandiwanzira said the demonisation of Zimbabwe by the Western media was the best example of how the media could be used as a lethal weapon to assault a people or a nation.

“Ask us Zimbabweans who have been hurt before,” he said. “The media are lethal weapons for assaulting a people, maligning a nation, quite often might be a way of subduing right.

“Much worse, media are a precursor to physical aggression. After all, it is an age-old view that you give a dog a bad name in order to hang it. Most independent-minded, resource-rich Third World countries are always eligible for hanging.”

Cde Mandiwanzira cited the worry expressed by former US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton who a few years ago bemoaned the weak financial support to the stupendous US media apparatus in the wake of the aggressive rise of alternative sites of media opinion such as Al Jezeera, Russia Today and China Central Television (CCTV).

“Much worse, she felt US global cable networks like CNN were fiddling while Washington burned,” he said. “We all know the awesome power of the US media. We all know the age of the US nation-state. It is a superpower, until now the only one. It is a State dating back to the 18th century. Yet it feels that vulnerable, fretful about alternative media sites that propagate viewpoints and values contrary to, and questioning her own. Is that not revealing enough? Is that not instructive enough to us?”

Cde Mandiwanzira said the liberation struggle that Africa waged to free itself from colonialism had inserted into societies on the continent a freedom reflex which was an inconvenient to imperialism.

He paid tribute to President Mugabe and Namibian founding President Sam Nujoma for conceiving the idea of the regional Southern Times.

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