PART ONE
THE POST,MMEMBE-GATEKEEPERS TURNED POACHERS
As Gatekepers
The Post newspaper created a niche for itself as a crusader for democracy and free speech in 1990. It sided with the newly-created Movement for Multi-Party Democracy Party (MMD) and readily climbed into bed with its leader Frederick Jacob titus Chiluba. The venom against then president Kenneth Kaunda and his UNIP Party was relentless. The newspaper called Kaunda a thief for having stolen K6b, the foreign debt that Zambia had acquired since independence. Aided by their support of the MMD, and Chiluba, the paper coined new words like 'demagogue' to described Kaunda and UNIP. The paper was colourful in its description of Kaunda as an incompetent leader, a dictator of the worst kind and one whose government had plundered the nation's coffers. The Post and MMD had come to redeem the country.
Things began to unravel around about 1995, the paper slowly gegan to turn against its erstwhile friends and by the end of Chiluba's rule in 2001, the enmity between him and his government and the newspaper was palpable. The Post coined a new phrase 'The Matrix of Plunder'. The name Kaunda had then been replaced with Chiluba and the paper was once again spewing its venom on a goverment and its leader.
In the meantime, Kaunda had been transformed into a saint. when no stolen money was found, the paper did not apologise to its readers or KK, but began an era of rehabillitating him. From demagogue he became a democrat. From vitriol for KK comes a huge love. He has been allowed to white wash his image in a column, the paper has been sucking up to him to the extent that the newspaper pays his DSTV subscription and sponsors his birthday parties. Nothing is too much for KK now. From pariah to high priest.KK coughs, the newspaper catches a cold. Of course, the paper has also gained from the reflected glory of being associated with the former president. The Post conveniently forgets the hate it had direct at the first president.
The other gatekeeper,the Newspaper's editor-Fred Mmembe
The newspaper had started with a posse of shareholders, who for some unfathomable reason, had never been able to reign in the the excesses of its then editor. The newspaper today is a majority owned by Fred Mmembe. No matter what he has said about the independence of his editorial team, the fact is that the newspaper follows his agenda especially when it comes to his pet interest- Chiluba.
He claims to be a journalist having received a diploma through a part-time correspondence course. However, he has never written anything but editorials where his style does not reflect any professional training.
His writing is easily identifiable as it is often filled with hate-filled invectives or he is praising himself. Mmembe takes personal credit for Chiluba's prosecution and any successes thereof. He aligned himself to the government of the late President Levy Patrick Mwanawasa and has curried favours with the donnor communtiy.
Mmembe has assumed a self-righteousness that has stamped itself on the newspaper and took advantage of the fact that he can attack and insult people knowing they have no way of hitting back at him as he refuses to publish letters or opinion critical of him or the paper. The other daily newspapers still live by the old school ethos of not attacking another media, even though Mmembe himself does not abide by this maxim.
Mmembe has taken the moral high ground and is fond of pointing fingers at other people's shotcomings, but he has many of his own. For example he condemned opposition leader Edith Nawakwi for having a child with her erstwhile polygamous common law husband Hambulo. He said as a political leader she set a bad example because unprotected sex was a driver of HIV infection. What he neglected to mention was that he too has at least two (known) illegitimate children, the youngest of whom is with his casual partner at the Ministry of Justice. The child is now about five years old, much younger than Nawakwi's daughter, meaning that while he was pointing fingers at Nawakwi, he was also having unprotected sex with a woman who was not his wife.
It is only these later years that Mmembe has stopped picking up muzungu backpackers (whom he used to employ as 'sub-editors') and muzungu women and men from the workshops he used to attend. All these lived with him in the house in Sable road. He might have been using condoms but the fact is he had many concurrent partners, a driver for HIV infection.
Mmembe has often made insulting remarks about Chiluba having stolen his wife Regina from her husband. Recently he did the same thing. His present wife Mutinta wwas married to a cancer victim, she got a quick divorce (just like Regina).But she was already two months pregnant-meaning that while she was married, she was having unprotected sex with Mmembe.
Turning poacher
Until about 2002, the Post was considered the most influential paper because it filled the information space left vacuum by the government-owned dailies who practiced an unhealthy form of self-censorhip. But this slowly eroded.
The crunch came in 2006 when it became quite obvious that there was something wrong with the Post. The figures coming out of the polling stations were indicating that the MMD was losing. MMD senior officials went to strong-arm the Daily Mail demanding that it has headlines saying that MMD was taking the lead. The Managing Director at that time, Godfrey Malama refused and continued with the truth at the time which was that PF was in the lead. The headlines which Malama had rejected however, appeared in the Post the next day. This is a matter of public record because Malama took the matter to court.
The Post was frightened of a Sata-led govenrment believing quite correctly that the PF would not give it the leeway and favours thay had enjoyed under Mwanawasa. Sata and the Post have a long running feud which boils over into the public domain every so often.
In any event, the Post began its own form of censorship protecting its powerful friends and business allies. An example of this is how stories of corruption at the DEC were ignored because the officers involved belonged to the 'Family Tree'. The Post will never write anything about Rajan Mahtani or his Finance Bank. In fact, it would go out of its way to protect Mahtani who is part of Mwanawasa's circle of financiers and good friend of Finance Minister Ngandu Peter Magande.
But like everything, things came to a head recently. The recent attempts to foist Finance Minister Ngandu Peter Magande's nomination as MMD party president on the people has been the Paper and Mmembe waterloo. Believing that the Post was still influential, Mmembe went overboard in trying to sell Magande. He misread the mood of the people and thought that just as he did before, he could force public opinion onto his side.
Rather than enhance Magande's chances he alienated the man and in the process the Paper ousted itself as a business sponsoring a candidate so that it can continue to get favours. In Mmembe's usual abrasive style, he begaun to bully people by saying if they did not support Magande, they were corrupt. The attempt to awaken the words of a dead Mwanawasa saying his chosen successor wsa Magande has fallen hollow, because everyone knows that Mwanawasa being a ruler of law, would still have subjected Magande to a democratic election by NEC, MMD governing body. The use of Maureen Mwanawasa to give succour to their Magande camapaign showed a lack a lack of reading of peoples's mood. People are not too well disposed to the former first lady and would oppose her choice no matter who it was.
The Post or Mmembe has made friends along the way to expand his business. His biggest ally is Mutembo Nchito, an upstart lawyer, who has found a niche prosecuting the Post's matrix of plunder. Nchito and his brother own Zambian Airways, a company in deep finacial trouble. The brothers have not paid Zambia Privatisation Agency (ZPA) for the acquisition of the airline. The airline has also not registered its leased aircraft locally and still uses foreign registration. They do this to avoid paying parking fees and other levies. The planes have to be registered locally within three months of bringing them in, it has been three years and still have not changed registration.
It was only because of the favours from Mwanawasa that the airline continue to operate. Any other business would have been closed and would have been dragged to the commercial courts.
The Post and Mmembe would have had much to say about a business which was so blatantly being favoured by goverment and would have harped on about corruption until that business closes down. But because it is in their interest, they even go as far to defend the airline saying it is part of CEE and forcing people to agree with them.
In spite of all these infractions, Magande with full knowledge of the status of the airline wanted it declared a national airline and he got his friend at Bank of Zambia, Caleb Fundanga, to echo his words. It is for this reason that the Post needs Magande in government. It is a matter of survival.
The Post would probably have gotten away with dictating who the people should vote for a few years ago, but the people are wiser now and have come to the realisation that The Post has for too long led them by the nose. More importantly however, there is the realisation that The Post and MMembe have developped a rotten core- they are now doing the same things they accuse the others for. The pot calling the kettle black or to pu it more succintly, they have become the poacher from gatekeeper.
