Some mistook my query to @nickmangwana on propaganda as an exhortation to support state lies but that's not it. My issue is on the government communication machinery being able to defend and support it's various courses of action and policies.
Propaganda as the concerted dissemination of biased information is just one aspect of the practice but it can also be about selling your vision and showing its positives to the people. It is that which I feel the government communication machinery is failing to do.
It has been overrun on social media& its message drowned out. Those defending the policies are generally weak in their arguments& can't provide valid standpoints to convince people. Mostly they resort to cheap shots that carry no weight in the larger national narrative.
The shortcomings are more explicit when contrasted with how the previous admin managed to defend the Land Reform Program which was an international scandal of great damage both to the country's global fortunes and for @ZANUPF_Official as a party.
They managed to craft a narrative that located what was happening in the greater struggle for black freedom from political bondage (1980) to economic freedom (2001). It won the government enough local support for the initiative though it was done in a manner that was disastrous.
The point here is about the communication ability& not the merits or lack thereof of the policies themselves. The current government has not had to defend anything of the proportion of the Land Reform which angered the West but they are failing to support&defend their positions.
Doing a job is just one half the other part is about being able to communicate to the masses. The same with getting everyone aboard the vision. If people dont understand what you are doing or where you are going you will always face challenges.
Don't get bogged down in the trenches of polarisation this thread is a dry and academic take on the communication system of the government neither as support or disapproval of it's policies but as an analysis of how it's failing to do something which we all know it wants to do.
