All for 30 pieces of silver

By Evans Taps Dakwa

The advent of new media has seen the proliferation of countless online news outlets and publications supposedly telling the Zimbabwean story. Majority of these outlets are domiciled outside the country, operating with no regard media ethics whatsoever.

Post the January disturbances there has been an attempt to artificially exacerbate the extent of force used by security forces to return the country to the state normalcy it is enjoying now. Most of these fly by news outlets have been falling over each other to paint a gloomy picture of the situation during and in the aftermath, with news devoid of facts, but premised on hearsay and social media creations being the order of the day.

However it is not surprising to see this kind of narrative from these activists disguised as media personnel; they are simply singing for their supper. It must be noted that these disguised news publications survive at the mercy of mostly western funders for their survival. Theirs is a deliberate smear campaign which they know augurs well and resonates with what their erstwhile funders want to hear.They know which buttons to press to get funds trickling into their coffers albeit at the expense of their motherland. Selling your birthright for money.

The Zimb Leadership magazine, an online publication decided to join the bandwagon of peddlers to tarnish the image of the country, unfortunately for them, they did a shoddy job of constructing their baseless narrative. The magazine has claimed that it lost a veteran journalist in the name of Elizabeth Zimunda (may her soul rest in peace if she really does existed in the first place)after being shot by the army doing her job, a story which they have dismally failed to corroborate.

While the hostile Crisis in Coalition Zimbabwe claims Zimunda was buried on the 27 of January, Zim Leadership the supposed employers of the late buried her on the 22nd of January. Wait a minute, how on earth are we having a single person being buried on two different days? or all does add up.

Let me forgive them on the above and say maybe it was a typing error.The aforementioned publication is online based one with wrong presence on the two social media sites, Facebook and Twitter.Given that scenario one would expect their media personnel to have a strong footprint on these two sites. Alas what do we find? Elizabeth Zimunda has only one Facebook follower, no activity on her Facebook account, no traces of activity on micro blogging platform Twitter. More questions than answers are once again generated.

Anyone who comes from the media fraternity or simply follows news will tell you the death of a1 journalist in the line of duty is never taken lightly across the globe. Locally, we have the Zimbabwean Union of Journalist (ZUJ) which never commented on the supposed death. How does the death of a “veteran” journalist skips the attention of both local and international journalist representative organisations? It raises the question whether Zimunda existed as a journalist , if she indeed existed with the eagle eye set on Zimbabwe the story would have made headlines locally and on the international scene. The silence thereof raises stink but then every sane will be now have known; it’s all because of the 30 pieces of Silver.

What boggles the mind then is how Elizabeth Zimunda is seemingly a veteran in the mind and world of peddlers in Crisis in Coalition in Zimbabwe and her employers. No disrespect to her but in my young journalistic career , l have come across and read about all the seniors in the profession of journalism except one name, Elizabeth Zimunda.