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The Herald
Herald Reporter
The Office of the President and Cabinet has challenged a privately owned newspaper, NewsDay, and an online publishing union to provide evidence linking the president to Tarirai David Mnangagwa.
This comes as President Mnangagwa and First Lady Auxillia Mnangagwa have been the target of a sustained media attack, which seeks, without any evidence, to link the First Family with gold cases, mining claims and also court cases.
It also occurs when some people face charges of revealing their names in the country’s courts after attempting to invoke the names of the First Family to evade arrest.
Yesterday, NewsDay screamed with a headline sensationally claiming that the President’s son is involved in the seizure of a gold mine, prompting the Office of the President and Cabinet to demand a retraction.
“The Office of the President and Cabinet continues to view with dismay what is clearly a media campaign being held by NewsDay and other syndicated online media outlets against His Excellency the President, Cde ED Mnangagwa, the First Lady, Amai Auxillia Mnangagwa, and children of the First Family as involved or associated with alleged crimes and conflicts in the mining sector.
“The latest in a series of insults and innuendoes of this kind was a front-page article (Thursday, November 12, 2020) on NewsDay that creates the impression that Tarirai David Mnangagwa is the president’s biological son.
“His Excellency would be very grateful if NewsDay could provide him and the nation with evidence of a filial relationship between him and Tarirai David Mnangagwa, in order to make good claims in his story.
“In the absence of such evidence, the Office of the President and Cabinet demands an immediate retraction of the harmful falsehood published, as well as an unconditional apology to the President, the First Lady and the First Family, ” said the Assistant Chief Secretary. (Presidential Communications), Mr. George Charamba in a statement last night.
Mr. Charamba added: “The Office further urges the media to refrain from publishing malicious statements that have now become the norm, quite contrary to the standards and dictates of professional journalism.”
Recent investigations into the gold smuggling case involving Henrietta Rushwaya, who was arrested while trying to leave the country, revealed that a former state security agent lied to police officers that the gold belonged to First Lady Mnangagwa to obstruct or thwart the course of justice.
And those cases of omission of names, especially those of members of the First Family, have been on the increase and the Government warned the public against such conduct.
The ruling Zanu PF party has also fired some officials for omitting names, however by choosing to be blind to the principles of journalism, some posts have relied on falsehoods only to insult the First Family.
