By Paul Nyathi|The state run Herald Newspaper on Monday ran a long editorial taking swipe at MDC Secretary for legal affairs Senator David Coltart.
The daily took an uncalled for swipe at Coltart apparently because the MDC Alliance candidate for Bulawayo East had demanded the paper to withdraw a false story on Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa.
The editorial has received widespread condemnation from political commentators and analysts for its overly very personal attacks on the person of Coltart who is apparently one of the few highly respected politicians in the country.
Coltart retains a record of being the best Minister of Education in the country since independence.
The full editorial comment from The Herald reads as follows:
Indeed election times are upon us and these are interesting times when national discourse is centred on which political party has the vision, the stamina and indeed the depth of character to take our great country forward. In this rough political discourse, those who speak without applying their mind, more often than not, find themselves trying to apply the thought process way after it is too late.
One such character is former Rhodesian cop and MDC politician David Coltart. Coltart is a beneficiary of the colonial Rhodesian government that did everything in its powers, including spilling blood, to suppress the rights of the black majority.
The same Coltart was a beneficiary of the Zanu-PF goodwill policy of national reconciliation enunciated by former president Robert Mugabe at Independence in 1980.
The same Coltart is a beneficiary of the Constitution of Zimbabwe that gives him rights equal to all other Zimbabweans including those he spiritedly sought and still seeks to deprive their rights. Surprisingly, that does not seem to cross his mind or provoke his conscience.
He has never masked his distaste for majority rule in Zimbabwe, which he describes in his book as a continuation of Rhodesian tyranny.
Two weeks ago, before he left for London on his party’s trip of shame, he insulted Zimbabweans, stating brazenly, “For all Zanu-PF’s rhetoric about Zimbabwe being open for business, the one thing they have never learnt in 38 years of misrule is that the single most important factor in any investor’s decision to invest in a country is security of the investment.”
In other words, Independence has been bad for people like Coltart, and he is happy to campaign against investment in the country so long as the MDC continues to be rejected by the people of Zimbabwe.
Then in the past week or so, Coltart has sought to turn his frustration on The Herald, citing the Constitution of Zimbabwe, Section 61 (4) to be precise, by accusing the newspaper of bias. He deliberately ignores the fact that the same section of our supreme law gives public media the right to publish without interference from those suffering from a sense of racial superiority.
It is fact not fiction that Coltart has found the going hard in the MDC-T Alliance top echelons after he made an analysis of Nelson Chamisa’s performance during an interview on BBC HARDtalk, which did not go down well with Chamisa.
The poor fellow said what his master did not want to hear. Coltart, typical of those used to benefiting from all systems, he now wants to use The Herald as a smokescreen behind which to hide his real opinion on Chamisa’s performance.
His is nothing, but a blatant attempt to abuse the Constitution of the country by picking part of a section and leaving out the other parts. And, now he blames The Herald.
The Constitution is for us all. Yes, Coltart benefited from Rhodesia, Zimbabwe-Rhodesia and indeed Zimbabwe and now he thinks he can be taken as a neutral between Zanu-PF and the MDC-T Alliance. No!
It is just the Zanu-PF Government is too humane, too tolerant and too considerate. And people like Coltart know they can take advantage of that to traffic their quisling politics in the name of democracy.
It’s obviously something he wouldn’t do in Europe and America where nationalist politics is in ascendancy.
Freedom of expression, freedom of the media and all freedoms cannot continue to be reserved for a single person or political formation. Freedom should not be freedom only when it benefits David Coltart.
NO! Hiding behind The Herald is not a good idea. If Coltart is principled and said what he felt was the truth about Chamisa’s performance in London, he should stand by his opinion. That is what “democracy” is about or he should carry his own cross.