Moyo attacks media for comparing Mugabe and Mandela

By Never Kadungure

Information, Media and Broadcasting Services Minister Professor Jonathan Moyo on Monday attacked western media organisations for comparing President Robert Mugabe to the late former South African President Nelson Mandela. 

“It is kind of disappointing that Nelson Mandela’s passing on has attracted gratuitous comparisons between him and other African leaders including our own President Mugabe whose iconic standing as a liberator and empowerer is now an indelible imprint of history,” Moyo whinged.

“While the subtext of the gratuitous comparisons has been that other African leaders such as President Mugabe should emulate Mandela, the more important and rather self-evident fact that cannot therefore be masked by the shrill comparisons is that God created only one Nelson Mandela with no clones in the same way he created only one Winston Churchill; one John F Kennedy, one Mao, one Lenin and one Mahatma Gandhi with no clones.

“The notion being peddled in some propaganda quarters that some African leaders should style themselves as Mandela clones has no precedence in the history of civilised nations,” Moyo went on.

“In the same way that Britain has not had another Churchill and America has not had another Kennedy, Africa will not have another Mandela and this means that the gratuitous comparisons of Mandela and other African leaders are ultimately a waste of time,” Moyo added.

Commentators however said Moyo’s remarks were an attempt to cover the uncomfortable fact that while Mandela’s iconic status was achieved through preaching peace, unity and reconciliation, President Mugabe has survived in office through the torture, rape and murder of thousands of political opponents.

The frosty relationship between Mandela and Mugabe is widely documented. Only this year Mugabe slammed Mandela’s reconciliation policies, and labelled him “too much of a saint” in a television interview.

“Mandela has gone a bit too far in doing good to the non-black communities, really in some cases at the expense of [blacks]…,” Mugabe told talk show host Dali Tambo in an interview.

“That is being too saintly, too good, too much of a saint,” he said.

In July last year Mugabe brought his quiet feud with Mandela into the open, jealously claiming his coalition partner Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai had nothing to celebrate from being likened to the anti-apartheid icon.

There is also video footage in which Mandela in a meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that an increasingly unpopular President Robert Mugabe did not want him (Mandela) released from prison.

When Mandela passed away on Thursday evening, it took Mugabe’s office over 24 hours to issue a statement, generating unnecessary headlines.