GUEST COLUMNIST RASHWEAT MUKUNDU
The State media has continued on its “exposés” on Baba Jukwa inciting the police to arrest those allegedly involved with Baba Jukwa, more so who communicated, supplying information, among many other high-sounding nothing allegations being made.
We are being bizarrely told that those involved will be extradited. We surely wait to see that happen. And the arrests of locals involved with Baba Jukwa will not be surprising as it will be continuation of a known Zanu PF strategy of using fear to silence citizens.
Ironically, it is the same State-owned media as I stated last week that celebrates the likes of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange for leaking secrets of the American government.
While Assange (pictured right) and Snowden are heroes of The Sunday Mail, The Herald and Zanu PF, Baba Jukwa is a traitor because he dared expose the ills in Zanu PF by hook or crook.
For the majority of Zimbabwe’s citizens, the Baba Jukwa story is a desperate attempt to divert attention from the glaring failures of the Zanu PF government post-July 31 elections.
Baba Jukwa is an attempt to keep citizens locked in a high-sounding nothing drama that allegedly involves national security issues when all this exposes is a fascination of Zanu PF with the absurd that add no value to national progress.
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Noting its failures since July 31, evidenced by failure to pay civil servants on time and discordant economic policy, Zanu PF and its mouthpieces have now latched onto Baba Jukwa to create unfounded and unnecessary anxiety when the real anxiety remains the failed economic policies.
It is most shameful that The Sunday Mail went to the extent of calling for the arrest and creating charge sheets for those reportedly involved with Baba Jukwa, when the police have not said anything to that effect.
We sense desperation to make the Baba Jukwa story make sense to citizens and translate it into a national crisis when obviously it is not. We are all then expected to start running around looking for Baba Jukwa under our beds and in the forest.I repeat that only foolish national leaders took Baba Jukwa seriously hence gave him an agenda on his childish shenanigans.
It is an agenda that fooled not only those in Zanu PF now desperate to blame Baba Jukwa even for the potholes in Harare, but also those in the opposition who thought Baba Jukwa was campaigning for them and his Facebook page likes would translate into votes for the MDC parties.
We essentially see a political class, ruling and in opposition, that is fascinated with simple issues and has no capacity to engage on serious national issues and debates where their shallowness is easily exposed, and on both sides.
By sticking to the Baba Jukwa story, and making it headline news, what are supposed to be national newspapers have suddenly become yellow tabloids that focus on the bizarre, rumour-mongering and incitement for the arrest of citizens over fictitious allegations and evidence collected through violation of citizen privacy rights.
Throughout the world, leaders are lampooned online, online platforms are created to attack government decisions and actions, and no serious leaders and no self-meaning media takes that seriously.
The State media and Zanu PF strive on creating and perpetuating a siege mentality, in which citizens are supposed to be fearful on their actions, who they talk to and what they say.
We are reminded by this Baba Jukwa obsession nonsense that all that matters in Zimbabwe is not a government that delivers on its promises and drives a development agenda, but the protection of the interests of the ruling elite.
It is no surprising therefore that instead of focusing on the rights of citizens violated by hacking and surveillance, the State-owned media has become experts in legal issues digging deep to find all sorts of laws that Baba Jukwa is said to have violated.
We are hearing for the first time legal jargon and all sorts of laws that Baba Jukwa and associates are supposed to have violated.
We wonder whether South Africa and Britain will really extradite the concerned individuals over such drivel. What we are not hearing consistently from the State media is how the Zanu PF government will or is fixing the comatose economy.
We have heard so much of policy statements made by President Robert Mugabe (pictured left) and Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa at funerals and workshops and nothing written done and passed by Parliament.
If indigenisation is not working and has in all essence been reversed, then let the Zanu PF government simply write so in a policy so that investors are not waylaid by known hoodlums who grab what they have not worked for.
We hear economic policy being announced at Zanu PF politburo meetings, wobvawashaya kuti zvirikufambasei?
The contradictions and discordance in Zanu PF economic policies can be traced back to a confused leadership that is more focused on succession than leadership and prosperity.
Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation(ZimAsset), the Zanu PF economic blueprint, has become a contest of words with Zanu PF saying it is working without evidence thereof.
If ZimAsset is working, then let us simply see the results, let us see the new factories opening, let us see GMB full of maize, water flowing from our taps, roads fixed, hospitals well-staffed and resourced.
ZimAsset cannot be a high school debate where one group says it is working while another argues it is not. It is a national programme that is being ignored through unnecessary and childish stories of Baba Jukwa being highlighted as a national crisis when real issues are right in front of us.
If there are individuals aggrieved by what Baba Jukwa wrote about them, then let them pursue him or her as private citizens. Deploying State resources is an unnecessary waste of resources and we hope the State media stops misleading citizens that Baba Jukwa is suddenly the most important issue confronting us now – it is not and will not be.
Let Zanu PF focus on the economy and let the State media focus on the economy and people’s stories.
No normal leader was ever expected to follow and listen to Baba Jukwa, but the fickle-minded among us now they want us to cheer and join them in this madness.
