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Herald don't be hypocritical
Youth Forum
August 20, 2009

This is a response to a Thursday 20 August headline of government and ZANU PF mouth piece, The Herald. It was titled 'Aids levy spent on luxuries' where the reporter Fortious Nhambura was narrating a story whereby National AIDS Council has spent on luxuries such as salaries and perks and administration costs at the expense of critical needs such as anti-retroviral drugs and food for the victims.

The Herald masqueraded as a public eye in issues of transparency and accountability yet they sweep under carpet many such tendencies carried out by their bosses. It boggles the mind as to why the paper is mum on multiple farm ownership, purchase of luxurious vehicles, homes and other properties by senior government officials using tax payer's money, let alone the Chiadzwa fiasco. This done at the detriment of equally distributing resources among generality of suffering masses in Zimbabwe.

Most Zimbabwean politicians especially from ZANU PF boast of vast wealth when they do have any meaningful business investments but the paper in question never question the origins of these riches. Further to this they are always on unjustified globe trotting missions on tax payer's money and this again goes unquestioned. The priorities in the national budget have again been repeatedly misplaced willy nilly unabated in the past 30 years.

Youth Forum is greatly disgruntled by such crystal clear bias, particularly in this dispensation when there are consented efforts to bring about democratic reforms in critical areas such as media, constitution and social delivery system. Such behavior is retrogressive and therefore unwarranted for the unsuspecting generality of Zimbabweans.

Not to say that we condone extravagance with public resources but just to make a call to strike a balance in reporting on issues to do with the latter.

We also take this opportunity to register our displeasure over the delay in setting up a media commission and disregard of objections by some media institutions in the process of coming up with the best possible democratic commission. The continued hate speech and state media dominance by ZANU PF should also not go unchallenged.

Meanwhile we support the Prime-Minister's appeal in his speech at a rally at Sakubva, Mutare for dialogue with National Constitutional Assembly and its like minded grassroots partners ZCTU and ZINASU to find common ground in the constitutional process. (We hope he is sincere) That is the kind of attitudes and behaviors which we call for in this dispensation where all progressive Zimbabweans are itching to heal the nation from the divisions which had been necessitated by irreconcilable political orientations of ZANU PF and MDC in their bids to battle for political supremacy.

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