Zimbabwe -- Cathy Buckle --Total bombardment

Letters from Cathy Buckle ^ | July 10, 2004 | Cathy Buckle

[Clive]

Dear Family and Friends,

Almost since the beginning of Zimbabwe's land seizures in late February 2000, we have been bombarded with propaganda jingles on the state run radio and television.

I don't just mean the odd jingle here and there, I mean total bombardment, every half hour, day and night, telling us that now the land has been taken away from white Zimbabweans, life is just wonderful.

The irony is that throughout the four years of jingles about land and prosperity we were hungry. We were standing in food queues, waiting for hours for just one loaf of bread and traipsing from one shop to the next desperately searching for a kg of sugar or a bag of maize meal.

About a month ago the airwaves went blissfully quiet making us realise for the first time the meaning of that old saying :"silence is golden."

This week a new propaganda jingle started up again and every half hour, day and night, it is being played on state owned TV and radio. This time the new jingle is not about land but about electricity. According to the jingle it doesn't matter where you are, be it a castle or a cave, in a city or under a tree in the middle of nowhere, electricity is going to be available for all Zimbabweans.

The irony of this jingle is that in the same week as it was launched, the electricity supplier ZESA announced that due to chronic power shortages, load shedding was being introduced across the country.

Even more ironic is the fact that ZESA can afford to advertise over 50 times a day on TV and radio and yet it has an outstanding debt of US$ 51 million to electricity suppliers in South Africa, the DR Congo and Mocambique.

So while we sit in the dark with candles waiting for the power to come back on and women stream out of the bush with firewood on their heads because they can't afford electricity, the jingles go on and on and on.

Zesa do not often talk about the massive amounts of money they owe to our neighbours but say that power cuts are due to "regional imbalances." Perhaps I've gone mad but I must admit to wondering if there isn't, at long last, a shift in our neighbours policies towards Zimbabwe.

This week, after a lot of stormy debating, the AU almost got to talk about electoral and human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. Even though the report was already 2 years out of date and even though it never actually got publicly debated by the AU, it seemed for a brief moment that someone turned the accountability lights on in the AU.

There is a distinctly different tune beginning to emerge. It is a tune which holds promise and gives hope, unlike the ZESA jingle which has been on the radio 4 times since I began writing this letter, typing faster and faster, praying that the power wouldn't go off in the middle.

Until next week I leave with you the closing line of the ZESA jingle which I am sure doesn't mean to, but has a strangely appropriate message for the Zimbabwean crisis:

"Power to the people"!

With love, cathy.

[Clive]

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[flashbunny]

There was an article just posted related to this. Seems as though the propaganda minister has a new double CD coming out. Inspirational songs to show the masses how good taking away land from the white farm owners was.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1168744/posts

[Bahbah]

"There is a distinctly different tune beginning to emerge. It is a tune which holds promise and gives hope...."

I am not hearing the tune of which she speaks.

[GeronL]

That CD might just make Cathy, um, buckle and leave!