By Conor Walsh
After it was falsely reported that he was dead, the great American humorist Mark Twain famously said, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated”. Today the Governor of Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank, Comrade Gideon Gono, is entitled to say the same thing. His death was announced by a UK based Zimbabwean website last Thursday.
It was alleged that he died in a motor vehicle accident on the Chiredzi Road on Wednesday night. No source was given for the report. Later it was stated that there were two sources, in government, for the falsehood. We will return to that. As soon as the rumour surfaced, excited SMS messages started to fly around Zimbabwe. And the cyber-world of the Zimbabwean diaspora went into overdrive.
In successive, impressively creative and highly detailed and imaginative news reports from other websites, not only was it confirmed that the reserve bank governor had expired, but the mourners were thoughtfully convened out of thin air for the funeral obsequies at his Norton home and a State Funeral at Heroes Acre was kindly announced on his behalf.
I will admit that as has been reported online I was one of the first to comment on the news. I too foolishly accepted the initial reports. I too should have known better. I am glad I had the decency to send condolences to those who mourned. I quoted the aphorism “Afa anaka.”
But, having established from sources I trust completely that the rumours were indeed false, I remarked on Facebook that even though some of us had criticized VaGono in the past, it was too much to bury the man – even at Heroes Acre – without first having the courtesy of confirming that he really was dead.
Knowing the man was alive allowed me to make some other minor light-hearted comments. The rumour-mill nevertheless continued to grind. It was explained that the only reason the man’s death had not been announced was because the President was in Maputo and he had to return to Harare before it could be revealed to the world – and the unsuspecting Dr Gono – that he had indeed shuffled off this mortal coil.
Zimbabweans were faced with the ridiculous spectacle of a battle of the websites, which’ it seemed’ were almost evenly split between those who were relying on fact and those who were powered purely by gossip. Let us not praise the responsible websites. They know who they are. They did what we expected them to do. Milk needs no salt. And let us not name and shame the guilty websites.
We know who they are. One of them has a bad track record, as I can tell you. But two points arise from this farcical and ridiculous series of events. The first concerns the Governor of the Reserve Bank. He is one of that small and select group of mortals who have’ in a sense’ been dispatched and then miraculously returned to life. He has read his own death notices and obituaries.
This must involve pleasure and pain. I hope he sees the funny side of it all. But the serious side is that many, many people connected him to the systematic acts of violence and oppression of the Zanu PF power structure in Zimbabwe. Some of the comments were truly horrible. The trouble is, some of the comments were also horribly true. Cde Gono was a member of JOC.
What does he feel about that today? Did Lazarus change his ways when Christ resurrected him? Scripture does not tell us. The second point concerns those online journalists who have discredited themselves and insulted our intelligence by their readiness to try to sell the farts of drunkards and the halitosis of gossipmongers as hard news.
They say their reports were properly sourced. They say two sources in government corroborated their story. How is that possible? Gono’s heartbeats tell us something else. The facts speak for themselves. Someone is trying to cover rumours with spin. Mushrooms are kept in darkness and fertilized with horse manure. Zimbabweans are not mushrooms.
We are educated, politically literate people who need and deserve ethical accurate factual reporting to inform us about the events of the day. We shouldn’t be kept in darkness. None of us want to swallow manure. It is the truth and not lies that will set us free.
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