By Wilbert Mukori
The BBC has rightly earned the world’s trust as a media house that has produced outstanding quality programmes but like all good things in this world it takes only one bad apple and the whole bushel will be spoilt. Roy Agyemang’s Our World: Mugabe at 90 on BBC was one such rotten apple.
For anyone who has never followed the tragic story of Zimbabwe in the last 34 years they would come out with the impression that Mugabe is a great national hero much loved by the people of Zimbabwe, admired by his fellow black African leaders but misunderstood by the West.
“Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the world. Which world!” Mugabe said in the programme with obvious satisfaction. Roy Agyemang too must have enjoyed that bit because he showed it twice in the programme! If anything, the line epitomizes what is wrong with Mugabe and the shallowness of those who admire him.
The war of independence was not fought to end British colonial rule, that was merely an unavoidable bye product; the same as breaking the egg is an unavoidable bye product if you want an egg omelette.
The war was fought so that we; the oppressed, exploited and discriminated black majority; can at last end the oppression and enjoy freedom, liberty and human dignity. We have waited for the last 34 years and we are yet to enjoy any of these things. We know the egg has been broken but where is the omelette?
Roy Agyemang asked Mugabe about the rampant corruption – this has been given so wide coverage in Zimbabwe and the world that it was impossible for anyone to miss – to which the tyrant replied that his government was carrying out investigations.
Any self-respecting journalist much more one carrying BBC’s reputation on his shoulders would have asked why corruption has been allowed to go on for 34 years with the disastrous consequences to the nation.
In Zimbabwe, life expectancy; the definitive qualitative and quantitative measure of a country’s economic progress or regress; has dropped to from 68 years in 1980 when Mugabe came into power to a miserly 34 years today! This did not happen in the last two months but has been going on for decades.
Gross mismanagement and rampant corruption have been at the very heart of Zimbabwe’s economic melt-down. It is therefore willfully inadequate for Mugabe to say he is investigating corruption after all these years of doing nothing about it. It is smacks of professional impotency for any journalist to let the tyrant off the hook so easily.
Roy Agyemang must be the only one who does not know that Mugabe blatantly rigged the 2013 elections or else, like Mugabe, he too does not believe blacks have a right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country.
Indeed the BBC reporter does not believe blacks have the right to life itself! Over 30 000 Zimbabweans have been murdered by Mugabe and his thugs since independence and the report talked of political violence but not even one death!
The whole report was a chance for Mugabe to once again crow from the rooftop about the demise of the British Empire, something the British have themselves accepted as a historic fact and have moved on.
Meanwhile Mugabe has continued to deny us Zimbabweans our basic human rights and dignity and the report seemed to endorse the tyrant’s view that we should forget our suffering and misery and join him in celebrating the demise of the British Empire. What an insult!
(Roy Agyemang’s Our World: Mugabe at 90 is available on BBC News iplayer.)
