First to state that I have been to Zimbabwe.  Photographic evidence.

Hello from Zimbabwe, back then in 2012.

It was the visit there (and only one so far…but would jump at the chance to repeatedly return there) that opened my eyes to the true situation on the ground, and from observation, way diffe….rent… from the exaggerated tales in the western media.

If, Zimbabwe is as dire as western press have projected it, you will be pleased to here that their embassies remained open throughout the tumultuous times they chime about.

Besides if you have a read through the tourist guide books in the UK on Zimbabwe in their public libraries, you will see that their nationals carried on being lured to Zimbabwe to visit its memorable scenic attractions.

Even in the ‘terrible times’ of Mugabe, notably the hyper inflation days and the exodus of its people, the British government did not see it fit to stop its citizens from going over to Zimbabwe’s. If Zimbabwe was that horrid, it definitely was not for British citizens.

To prove it is not just my words you can visit online sites like eg tripadvisor’s to see the eye catching facilities of Zimbabwe, the views European visitors left behind then and still do of a country the western media depicted to be in such doldrums. I almost carried my own groceries right to toothpaste when visiting but was thankfully advised by my host who has been to Zimbabwe countless times, that it was not necessary.

It is while in Zimbabwe that a huge scale fell off my eyes. Seeing is indeed believing.

It is there that I got to understand why Mugabe-inspite his faults-is revered by his people and in Africa (not to discount his mistakes) whilst reviled, in the west.  A picture below that I took of Zimbabwe’s parliament.

Parliament of Zimbabwe

May I declare too that I am a journalist by education and career (self practising in the last few years) and inform my observations of the Western Media’s bias. Media bias is a subject taught in journalism school and any journalist worth their salt can spot its symptoms if they invest time studying the media.

And now, back to the subject matter of this blog post…

Robert Mugabe’s resignation on November 22nd 2017, was to me the final straw of western media’s relentless and overt maligned reporting about. The fixation of the person of Mugabe for nearly 17 years of which the culmination was some British journalist’s celebration of his overthrow and then death is fodder for media Academic studies.

Mugabe had in the west’s mainstream media personified the country of Zimbabwe so that the two had become one. Mugabe became Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe became Mugabe.

Hardly any story by the west’s mainstream media (or legacy media as it is often referred to in media studies and western media journalistic circles) was reported about Zimbabwe, without Mugabe being mentioned.

In the West, states Professor Mahmood Mamdani FBA (the distinguished Ugandan scholar and also Prof Political Science and African Studies at Columbia University), it is hard to think of a figure more reviled than Robert Mugabe.

In his 2008 essay ‘Lessons of Zimbabwe’, Mamdani said, the West’s Liberals and Conservatives portray him as a brutal dictator and blame him for Zimbabwe’s descent into hyperinflation and poverty.

African dictator, strongman, wily politician, awful steward, deeply flawed, autocrat etc,  were some of the commonly used adjectives the west’s main stream media adopted and regurgitated about Mugabe, from 2000 onward.

At time of his resignation when he had turned 93, the new additive was ‘the world’s oldest Head of State’ and this being so….. repeated…. as though it was such a difficult fact for the public to comprehend that the western media found it necessary to tirelessly drum it into society’s ears, so ‘complex understanding’ could be understood through repetition.  

It was from 2000 onward, when white settlers reneged in apportioning land to the landless Black majority- and subsequently forcing the Government of Zimbabwe to fast track land redistribution-that the western media descended into an uncanny preoccupation with Mugabe’s character.

It was not until white settlers who represented white privilege and entitlement to pillaging Africa’s resources-were ‘touched’ by Mugabe that the western media, their home governments and cheerleaders sprang into action, ‘to teach him a lesson’. From henceforth, he became the ogre whose traits had to be endlessly regurgitated to showcase the reaction of overrated white men to the “inferior race”. Everything about him was tolerable….but not touching the land “the superior” were entitled to for simply being white.  

By attempting to correct historic land injustice in which the minority farmers controlled  39% of the land in Zimbabwe and covering 15.5 million hectares and also accounting for all the prime land, Mugabe was turned into the West’s archenemy.  

Full blown condescending language and overt prejudice towards Mugabe became the norm in western media’s narrative for afterall, the white settlers in whose “blessed hands the entire country’s economic and agricultural success lay”, had departed from Zimbabwe.  In my mind, I wondered why the “green-handed” white settlers could not be recalled to the UK so its soils could benefit from the farming talent of their own. 

All Mugabe’s fault: Why the Western media cried more than the bereaved. 

At time of Mugabe’s resignation, the western media-until then banned from Zimbabwe yet continuously sneaking in and creating an eerie feeling of the risks they were under while reporting from Zimbabwe -returned in full gear.

Forget journalistic impartiality which is a core tenet of professional journalism. Mugabe’s resignation was yet another return of YELLOW JOURNALISM which western media had adopted for nearly 17 years, in covering ‘Mugabe the Zimbabwe’.

YELLOW JOURNALISM is a style of newspaper reporting that developed in America from 1895 and known to emphasize sensationalism over facts.

Some of the techniques used in YELLOW JOURNALISM include scandal mongering, exaggeration of news events and sensationalism, dramatising news, engaging in limited research and biased news in order to sell more newspapers or increase viewship and online engaging in click-baiting.  

To me, the live broadcast that best depicts YELLOW JOURNALISM by western media, was Sky News awful coverage of the events leading to Mugabe’s final resignation.

When Mugabe resigned, their reporter relayed his live stories with full blown tremendous elation on his face,  caught up in the euphoria  of the  crowd that he should have been reporting about of which he made himself a part of the story.

As professional journalists, we are not allowed to become part of the story we are covering (unless this conflict of interest is declared at start of the story) or allow our personal biases to inform our reporting. There are countless stories where western media reporters covering Mugabe used countless derogatory adjectives that evidenced their disdain of him. Literally the media was courting hatred of Mugabe through their stories and it had become so predictable how say BBC or SKY would cover a Mugabe related story that I had learnt to just change channels.

Back to the Sky News Reporter that was reporting about Mugabe’s resignation. At one point, during his live coverage, he walked over to a group of young Zimbabwean men that were part of the euphoric crowd and attempted to seek their reaction to the resignation. 

They responded by speaking out their remarks but reporter was not impressed with this. Instead, he seemed to be in seek of a more dramatic expression and in soliciting it, the reporter proceeded to ask the young men to “demonstrate their reaction”. In response to the instruction, they proceeded into a sing-song after their short remarks, to much beaming from the reporter. 

Later on in the night, another Sky staff member-a presenter updating viewers on the latest developments in Zimbabwe since the awaited resignation, descended into an apology to viewers “for disappointing you with a no-resignation update”. Viewers had otherwise been propped up to await a resignation an obvious conflict of interest from Sky’s presenter.

As a journalist I am aware of the principal of journalistic impartiality.

Being concerned at the lack of journalistic impartiality in Sky News coverage of Mugabe, I decided to appraise myself of its editorial guidelines. I checked out their website to learn about their stance on impartiality- if any.

Below is some of what I noted as stated under their editorial guidelines on due impartiality. 

Item 11: Due Impartiality and Due Accuracy

Sky News must always be duly impartial and duly accurate. We always strive to solicit a broad range of views and voices on our stories and never to show favour to-or to be influenced by-any side of a story.

Still under their impartiality guideline, they state consent to special impartiality requirements for coverage, for matters relating to political controversy by

• not allowing our personal views or opinions to form a part of our coverage.
• making sure all views and facts are not misrepresented
• making sure any personal interest of a reporter or presenter is made clear to the viewers-they must not use their position to express their own views
• making sure particular views and opinions are not given undue prominence over others

If Sky News editorial guideline above on impartiality, is a mirror of that of other western media houses and the journalism profession, you don’t have to be a journalist to spot what western media flouted in its coverage of Mugabe.

Under the cover of celebrating the hope the resignation had brought to ‘long suffering Zimbabweans’, western journalists and their home governments disguised the true intentions of their euphoria. 

In the west, the celebration of Mugabe’s resignation was cosmetic because it is their governments that imposed sanctions on an entire nation from the actions of one man. 

Mugabe who was an affront to the West for standing up to their sense of entitlement to pillaging Africa and obsessive control of it- even after independence- had at last stepped down. The removal of this threat is what was celebrated in the west under the cover of “suffering Zimbabweans”. 

It is Western governments that caused this long suffering by imposing sanctions on a nation because of the axe they had to grind with its leader who cut off their privilege. Who imposes sanctions on a nation, simply because they have issues with the leader?

Whilst demonising Mugabe and solely blaming him for the implosion of Zimbabwe’s economy-and this to much buying in from their home governments, public and other cheerleaders-western media white washed the far worse contribution of the sanctions. This narrative they have cleverly omitted from their coverage.

However, as with all one sided narratives, the other alternatives that offer balance exist and are found by those intent on getting a balanced story and seeking further research. 

To me, Dr. Gideon Gono, the retired Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe from 2003-2013, best reveals the impact caused by the punitive land-sanctions from Western governments and their institutions on Zimbabwe.

They were imposed on Zimbabwe after white farmers left. It was all about the land- that was dubiously acquired in the first place- and the correction of this injustice, resulting in the punishment and scapegoating of Mugabe.

In an exclusive interview with Baffour Ankomah, the Editor of London based New African magazine of July 2014, Gideon the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (2003-2013) in the sanction days, gives best insight into the sanctions effects on Zimbabwe. Extracts below (not in chronological order) from the big length interview with him in the New African.

Gideon Gono-former Governor Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (Picture The Standard-Zimbabwe)

Q: Turning to the economy, what was the greatest challenge that precipitated the decline in the country’s fortunes for almost a decade?

A: Sanctions, sanctions, sanctions! The country’s liberation struggle was centred on the land and it became inevitable that in order to fulfil the aspirations of the people, land redistribution, which was part of President Mugabe’s government agenda from 1980, had to be tackled head on. You know well that land is an emotive issue the world over.

To put the land question into perspective, one needs to go back to President Mugabe’s historic speech on the eve of our independence: “There are people without land who need land, people without jobs, children without schools who need schools, and patients without hospitals who need them. My government will certainly do its best to meet existing needs in these areas.”

Twenty years on, there was no land redistribution to the landless majority, so the masses took the matter into their own hands and demanded that the president fulfil one of his inauguration promises. The government had no option but to embark on a Fast Track Land Redistribution Programme and this was the whole genesis of the illegal Western sanctions that were imposed on the country from 2000 onward.

The economic measures and tactics employed were brutal, vicious and dirty and all aimed at bringing the Zimbabwean economy to its knees and causing “regime change”.  Uninformed people will talk about economic mismanagement, human rights abuse, absence of the rule of law, and all other forms of nice-sounding descriptions as he causes of our economic problems, but the real reason was the illegal sanctions that were imposed on our small country. They led us to behave and react the way we did, as we tried to survive the unprecedented onslaught against our country.

No other country in Africa has been visited by such sanctions and pressure from all corners of the West, and survived a change of government or regrettable re-enslavement and re-colonisation of its people other than Zimbabwe.

Q: So in effect, you are saying the implosion or whatever you call it, was not due to your and the government’s mismanagement of the economy as your critics say?

A: No, what was there to mismanage tell me. If anything, it is heroic survival. The figures are there for all to see. So we had to think outside the box, guided by the President! It was like having a car that has no fuel, and yet you must take the children to school in Mutare (the capital of Manicaland, 250kms away). You have to think outside the box how to get there! 

Q: You have been saying that “sanctions are equivalent to massive military action against poor societies”. Is that how dramatic it is?

A: It is worse than that. It is genocide. It is indiscriminate. Therefore, it is a fallacy, the height of hypocrisy, for any nation to have said these were targeted sanctions. What targeted? When a country cannot get funds to buy drugs, there is nothing “targeted” about it. 

The lack of medicines in hospitals affects the unborn, it affects the woman who is in labour, it affects the newly born, it affects the elderly, it affects the child who is going to a kindergarten, it affects teachers, nurses, priests, drivers; it affects adults who are supposed to be working, it affects even the dead in the sense that when they are in the funeral house waiting to be taken to their final places of rest, they stay in the morgue longer than they should.

The reason behind that the hearse does not have fuel or has broken down, and there are no spare parts. This is the nature of the banditry called sanctions.