A former Zimbabwean state media executive once described George Charamba, President Robert Mugabe’s acerbic spokesman as “an idiot in a suit”.
The epithet followed Charamba’s acquiescence to the 2001 dismissal of some state media editors Information Minister Jonathan Moyo had not been fond of, and the pleasure the spin doctor seemed to derive from administering pain and suffering on luckless journalists.
Thus Charamba’s infantile tirade during a recent interview with a London based radio station and his theatrics at the Africa Union Summit on Tuesday gave the world a quick glimpse into the measure of the cabal that is ensconced in Munhumutapa Building, and the desperation that now pervades the scared regime.
In a fit of pique, Charamba badgered and howled rabidly at Zimbabwean exile Violet Gonda of SW Radio, in consequence vindicating Robert Mugabe’s growing band of critics who believe the administration has lost the plot: and its marbles, it would appear.
Charamba, aping his equally coarse boss, flew off the handle after Gonda asked him uncomfortable questions on the state of the economy, 2 000 000 percent inflation, unmitigated violence, the controversial election runoff, growing paranoia in Zanu PF and the belief within his party that it was ordained by God to govern Zimbabwe in perpetuity.
Clearly frothing at the mouth and punching the air with a clenched fist as he is wont to, Charamba trotted out tired arguments that targeted Western sanctions had crippled the economy; that anyone who dared criticise Mugabe was a stooge of the West; that the British wanted to re-colonise “my country”, and – for good measure – that he would “fight again” to preserve Zimbabwean independence.
Still in his early 40s, Charamba was too young to have fought in the 1970s Zimbabwean liberation war, placing him in the same bracket as modern day “war veterans” – Mugabe’s callous rag-tag reserve army that is renowned for committing heinous crimes; and is reminiscent of former Malawian strongman Kamuzu Banda’s Young Pioneers.
Ironically, Charamba’s rise to national prominence – and infamy in equal measures – coincided with the downward spiral of Zimbabwe’s wellbeing: the economy, politics and social health came cascading down as Mugabe and his acolytes became increasingly petulant and repressive.
The sea change in the administration’s temperament followed the emergence the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), of a broad-based opposition political party which threatened to wrench power from the rapidly declining Zanu PF; and the record loss in the 2000 referendum on a new constitution.
Before then, Zanu PF had never lost a national political contest.
As if on cue, Charamba transformed himself from an affable and decent government information officer into an angry freak, given to stomping around newsrooms of state media barking orders and demanding total obedience from editors and their underlings on pain of punishment.
Like a child mistakenly given a sword on its birthday, Charamba - swinging from the coat-tails of his former storm-trooping boss Jonathan Moyo - set about scything down journalists perceived to be too “independent and professional” to control, leaving the public media bereft of depth and integrity.
As a result, Herald House, Pockets Hill and Media House lost their best and most experienced journalists; and nearly a decade later, Zimpapers, ZBC and the re-named New Ziana, are still feeling the effects of the Moyo-Charamba pogroms.
Thus Zimpapers titles, especially its flagship The Herald and The Sunday Mail, are now weak excuses of their former selves, and should fittingly be used to show journalism students ‘how not to practice journalism’.
Today, the papers are run by poorly educated rookies who lack history, excessively breach ethics, scramble to outdo each other in peddling government propaganda and keep their jobs by dint of patronage.
Hence, the Herald perfectly mirrors the rot that pervades the state media; where the doyens of Zimbabwean journalism who plied their trade in the third floor newsroom during the first two decades of independence from Britain in 1980, have given way to Zanu PF apparatchiks, typified by the efforts of the inimitable Caesar Zvayi.
The other Zimpapers titles based in Bulawayo and Mutare are mere footnotes run by straggling minions, given to parroting their more recognised stable mates in Harare.
At Pockets Hill, however, the decline has been rapid and more surreal.
The finesse of Joseph Madhimba, David Mwenga, Gavin Reddy, Anani Maruta, Busi Chindove and Godfrey Majonga that epitomised the professionalism of electronic journalism in Zimbabwe, has been replaced by the fecklessness of Reuben Barwe and the pedantic Judith Makwanya.
To their credit, though, Barwe and Makwanya, who have perfected the art of bootlicking, have done well for themselves: they have amassed immense wealth due to frequent travel abroad serenading Mugabe; and by using their camaraderie with Charamba to access state assets like prime farmland and scarce commodities.
at the turn of the century, the rotund Barwe, lived in a tiny township flat he had bummed off former Housing Minister Enos Chikowore, but now lists a spacious mansion in leafy Belvedere, a luxurious German car and an expansive farm next to Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono’s property in the fertile farming district of Norton among his many prized assets.
But If Charamba and Moyo’s “re-organisation” of Zimpapers and ZBC was chaotic, then their handiwork at Ziana was novel. The tag-team reshaped the organisation in its own image, which to say the least was, well, ugly.
Once flaunted as the pride of Africa, under Farayi Munyuki and Wilf Mbanga, Ziana is now a caricature of a news agency. The new New Ziana suffers chronic funding problems, and like Zimbabwe itself, has haemorrhaged top notch journalists to the diaspora and Charamba’s sword.
Zimbabwean journalist Mthulisi Mathuthu likens charamba to someone locked in a time warp: “This is a lowbrow fellow who apparently represents a whole retinue that is hostage to an archaic Victorian character who resents new things and is as irascible and malevolent as the Kings of that time”.
Mathuthu believes Mugabe’s wordsmith lacks the acumen to formulate his own ideas and will dutifully mimic his boss, regurgitating Marxist mantras and staid revolutionally slogans which are bound to declared dead on arrival even in post Cold War Russia and China.
“Generally, tyrants want navigable front men who hardly question anything. The type of service people who never bother to prowl for other ideas outside the dictates or the syllabus of the leader,” he adds in article for New Zimbabwe.com, an online newspaper.
The demure Gonda need not be horrified by Charamba’s antics as his actions are now the stock-in-trade of the struggling regime. When cornered, it spews out unvarnished venom in the hope of scaring off its detractors as Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga discovered on Tuesday.
Odinga, who has harshly berated Mugabe for stealing the recent plebiscite, got a mouthful of Charamba’s undiplomatic invective in Egypt, thus: "Odinga's hands drip with blood, raw African blood. And that blood is not going to be cleansed by any amount of abuse of Zimbabwe. Not at all."
And of his former Western benefactors Charamba shrieked: "They can go and hang. They can go to hang a thousand times. They have no claim on Zimbabwean politics", shocking even the hardened journalists at the press conference into an eerie silence.
His ire was raised after the West branded Mugabe an election thief and, therefore, illegitimate.
In a twist of fate, Charamba, who liberally sprinkles his tortuous ‘Nathaniel Manheru’ column in The Saturday Herald with bombastic and uncouth language, was partly educated at Cardiff University, in Wales – on British taxpayers’ money.
Cynics, however, equate Charamba’s increasingly bizarre behaviour to that of slain Iraq leader Saddam Hussein’s last Information Minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf fondly dubbed ‘Comical Ali’ for his wild claims and colourful quotes.
Even as American tanks rolled into Baghdad in 2003, al-Sahaf insisted, "There is no presence of American infidels in the city of Baghdad." Adding: "There is no presence of the American columns in the city of Baghdad at all. We besieged them and we killed most of them."
Maybe Mugabe’s spin doctor should shed off his Saville Row suit for al-Sahaf’s more appropriate military fatigues, because the MDC is now at the gates to Munhumutapa Building.