The ManicaPost
Tafara Shumba Post Correspondent
Following the hyper-tweeting by the Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development minister Professor Jonathan Moyo, the ruling party’s first politburo sitting for 2016, resolved to ban its members from using social media to communicate party issues.
Speaking to journalists after that lengthy politburo meeting, Zanu-PF spokesperson, Simon Khaya Moyo said: “If they (party leaders) don’t listen to these messages, appropriate action will be taken naturally. Anyway, we have structures to deal with that.”
As matters stand Cde Khaya Moyo, there has been a gross defiance of this standing order with nobody receiving any reprimand from the structures that you referred to. Some very senior members of the party continue to attack fellow party members with impunity.
Some youths, who seem to have learnt it from their party elders, have followed suit with some of them even slating President Robert Mugabe on social media platforms.
Even the President himself has not been impressed by the way some of his lieutenants have become prolific on twitter. During the 2016 annual conference in Masvingo, President Mugabe criticised those who take to the social media to attack fellow party members.
“We don’t address our grievances through such platforms as Twitter and Facebook. Some of us use them and the private newspapers to criticise other party leaders as well as trying to cleanse themselves, we don’t want that. These things are being done by very senior party members and not smaller ones,” said President Mugabe.
Even after the politburo’s resolution, some party’s cyber trolls, particularly Professor Moyo, did not cease to criticise fellow party members through twitter. Perhaps he continued on the basis of his consciousness of his constitutional right to freedom of expression.
Of course those rights are enshrined in the constitution but their enjoyment in not absolute. There is absolutely no problem if one enjoys his constitutional rights without trampling upon those of others.
Yours truly had no qualms about Professor Moyo’s proclivity for tweeting until recently when he tweeted something undisputedly out of order. “Report by @HeraldZimbabwe that “Command Agric exceeds target” is at best premature and at worst needlessly false,” tweeted Professor Moyo last Monday.
The tweet received endorsement from strange people, who should have been sufficed to raise Professor Moyo’s suspicion. In most cases, something is always wrong somewhere when you utter a statement or do something that subsequently receives glorification from your adversary.
That alone must make one stop and take a conscious mental and purposive process of examining his or her thoughts and perceptions. It’s either he is shooting himself in the foot or he has gone totally haywire.
Professor Moyo received a standing ovation, on twittter of course, for taking a pot-shot at a successful government programme. Professor Moyo would do well if he drew a line between factional interests and state interests.
The fact that the programme is being spearheaded by someone he might not like or who might not be politically compatible with his own political interests does not justify his condemnation. Command Agriculture programme is a government project that was sanctioned by the President and nobody in government can or should claim exclusive credit for its success, neither should there be an individual to carry the blame for its failure. That programme is a cabinet product in which the learned professor is privileged to be a member.
Food security and nutrition is one of the key clusters in the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim-Asset), a blue print that Professor Moyo himself immensely contributed in its crafting.
As the farming season is coming to an end, one does not need to be clever or to be a rocket scientist, to borrow Professor Moyo’s favourite American idiom, to see that the nation is set to receive a bumper harvest.
Those who put forward this argument are basing it from assessments they do on farms. After all, agriculture is not done on twitter. Yours truly is a farmer and can unflinchingly reiterate that the Command Agriculture target will be surpassed.
The food and nutrition cluster will be one of the success stories that Zanu PF government will showcase to the people who gave them mandate to rule. President Mugabe is on record telling Zimbabweans that nobody will die of hunger despite last year’s drought.
True to his word, the government supported the command agriculture programme which is set to pay dividend soonest. It then surprises even the devil, to hear one senior government official condemning it.
The successes of Zim-Asset will be a campaign trump card that Zanu-PF will play in the forthcoming election. Obviously, the opposition is not amused by its success and that is the reason why they are generously showering praises to Professor Moyo for his strange statement.
The professor must self-introspect in order to gain insight, lest he scores an own goal. It raises suspicions when supporters of a rival team roars in cheer whenever one of your players gets the ball. The cheer will even become more deafening if that player scores an own goal.
The Professor is singing from an opposition’s hymn book. One of the areas that the opposition is currently harping on for political expediency is the Gukurahundi issue. They believe they can win back the Matabeleland vote which they miserably lost in 2013 polls. Unfortunately, the learned Professor is in the front position of putting the Gukurahundi issue on the agenda of political discourse.
He has applied for permission to exhume and rebury the remains of his late father whom he said was killed during the disturbances. He wants to do this just less than 18 months before the 2018 elections. With all due respect and this must not be misconstrued as factional, the Professor must ask himself whose interests is he serving.
