Zimpapers Logo

Mr Charamba

On Wednesday, all eyes were glued on Zimbabwe, to see if the country that has been under the spotlight for over a decade would deliver a free, fair and credible election.It is intriguing that over 880 local and foreign journalists accredited to cover the polls were beaming the developments live from the country and Zimbabwe should be saluted for allowing these organisations to operate in the country without hindrance.

However, it’s no longer an opinion, but a fact that the majority of the journalists from some of these western countries came with preconceived notions that there would be violence in the country before and after the polls.

Zimbabweans should be congratulated for conducting themselves in a mature way that shamed the country’s detractors.
Traditionally, the media are supposed to inform, entertain and educate and it is against this backdrop that many Zimbabweans expected the hordes of journalists that trooped into the country to play their part by inform the world that Zimbabwe is a peaceful country and that what Britain and its allies have been saying was wrong.

However, we want to authoritatively say that a number of these journalists failed this litmus test and instead of educating their people about the positive achievements of Zimbabwe under very limited and locally sourced resources to finance the harmonised elections, some of them were busy sniffing around for negative stories that discredit the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and Zanu-PF.

Some of them become tourists while others became part of MDC-T leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai’s press corps as they were busy following up on his numerous press conferences throughout the election period missing or completely ignoring poll endorsement.

Some of them become Mr Tsvangarai’s lap dogs, feeding their countries with contrived and sensational information about developments in Zimbabwe.

We will, we are sure we will not be blamed if we say these organisations some of them from far afield as United States of America were sponsored to discredit the country’s harmonised elections that were given a clean bill by all observers who matter.

Friendly organisations such as Sadc, the AU, Comesa and Chinese observers who understand conditions Zimbabwe is operating under endorsed the polls.

Surely, there is every reason for us to be angry with the way some media organisations turned a blind eye on positives about the elections while dedicating their energy on inventing faults about the flawless process.

Media, Information and Publicity secretary, Mr George Charamba, is correct by saying; “The foreign media came here with a mindset for violence and it took quiet some interactions to get them to drop that template into looking at us with a fresh pair of eyes.”

However, what makes it sad is that even some journalists from our neighbour, South Africa, displayed annoying arrogance and ignorance about the developments in this country, worse than journalists from some Western countries.

With such an attack on the country’s sovereignty, journalists should not be amazed in the future when the Government refuses to accredit some the foreign journalists if it feels they will portray a negative picture on the country after being accorded the opportunity to see and report objectively about the developments in the country.

Zimbabwe has been under devastating illegal sanctions for the past 10 years from some of the countries that sent their reporters here and not even a single one of them bothered to report on how the country has been affected by the sanctions.

It’s is against this background that no foreign media organisation should be allowed to send it reporters to report on elections in the future, but rely on their locally based correspondents.

Maybe, these will have a better appreciation of the country’s challenges.
We also feel it is high time that journalism is transformed to a profession that has universally accepted ethics and standards where a positive story will remain positive to all media organisations and vice versa.

In the medical fraternity, a surgical syringe will remain the same in all countries in the world it is against this background that the foreign media should also look at the world with eyes that see what we all see.