Zimbabwe Accuses BBC of Being Used to Caricature AfricaThe Zimbabwean government has accused the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and other British mouthpieces of being used to caricature Africa and its leaders, the country's official newspaper The Herald reported on Monday.The BBC allegedly carried out a survey which concluded that the rating of a number of African heads of state, including Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, is plummeting. Zimbabwean Minister of State for Information and Publicity Jonathan Moyo Sunday described the BBC survey as similar to a number of recent "bogus" surveys which have become a trademark of the Helen Suzman Foundation's propaganda machinery in South Africa. One of the foundation's surveys concluded that land issue is not a priority for Zimbabweans. Moyo also accused the British of trying to hijack an indigenous democratic process in Ghana in the vain hope of dictating and imposing a British political agenda in Africa. "For the British to rely on such surveys to describe a whole continent and its leadership not only smacks of colonial arrogance gone whacky but is also contemptuous of the democratic right of African people to choose their leaders through the ballot box and not via the British contaminated Internet survey," he said. The minister said, "happily, Africans know only too well that, like its historic independence in 1957, Ghana's change of leadership came, not as an act of British colonial charity, but through the will of the African people of Ghana as an expression of their hard-won democracy and sovereign independence." "This is the point lost to the Standard newspaper, which is always quick to peddle British and Rhodesian propaganda at the expense of the African view, let alone the Zimbabwean national interest," said Moyo. |
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