Ideology is not considered
The Zimbabwe National Students Union recently sent an appeal to Ian Khama the President of Botswana concerning the recruitment of Caesar Zvayi as a lecturer in the University of Botswana’s media department. Blessing Vava, spokesperson for the students union had this to say
We the students of Zimbabwe write this letter to appeal to your government to urgently act and deport former Zimbabwe Herald newspaper editor Ceaser Zvayi who is now working at the University of Botswana as a lecturer in the media department. Your Excellence, we salute and commend your efforts in not recognizing and condemning the 27 June one man election in Zimbabwe. Your country is a good model of a democracy and good governancy in Africa and people like Zvayi should not be accommodated as they propagated hate among Zimbabweans because of his vitriolic writings in the daily newspaper. We commend the European Union who added the journalists on the sanctions list. Ceaser Zvayi should be deported and come back to Zimbabwe lest he pollutes those students in Botswana with his dirty and unclean background, as his past is not clean.
Apparently when approached for comment on the issue, the Head of the Media Studies Department, Professor David Kerr, said that the University of Botswana hires on academic merit as well as experience, but ideology is not considered. One wonders how Professor Kerr would have reacted to an application for employment by Joseph Goebbels, because he was clearly good at his job too.
If you would like to help Zimbabweans protest Zvayi’s appointment and put pressure on this propagandist who aided and abetted the publishing of Zanu PF’s lies for so long, please write to the University of Botswana at mokgado@mopipi.ub.bw
Tuesday, August 5th 2008 at 11:25 pm
Consider it done. thusly:
Dear Sir
Zimbabweans at home and in the Diaspora are appalled to hear that Mr Caesar Zvayi, formerly of The Herald, is teaching students at a respected University in Botswana.
He may be skilled as a communicator, but then so have many other promoters of Hate Speech been skilled at their job – to lie and distort the truth! This man did much to abuse the function of the Press in Zimbabwe, and as such his actions have contributed to the death of press freedom in that country, and to the imprisonment, torture and murder of journalists. He’s as much use to an aspiring journalism or communications student as Lord Haw Haw – students need to learn from someone they can respect and look up to.
I suggest that your students be encouraged to read editions of the newspaper that were published on his watch for themselves, and to analyse the discourse therein to see how he and his colleagues exercised his “art” to destroy the truth and conceal the facts – then let them decide if this is someone they would like to emulate in any way.