HARARE - After following the Conway Tutani and Daily News saga, one wonders whether the “seasoned proof reader” has suffered a temporary bout of amnesia or simply lost his marbles?

In recent weeks, the self-styled paragon of virtue seemed to believe – bizarrely – that state regulatory bodies are not that bad and that our cousins at Zimbabwe's biggest media brand were justly clamped, and shut down in September 2003.

However, two weeks ago Tutani revised and improved his initial argument, in which he propositioned, rather disingenously, that the fact that he had earlier said the Daily News should have registered under Aippa did not mean he supported that law.

And all one can say is well, well.

In his incisive rebuttal of Tutani's original tosh published in the paper two weeks ago, the Daily News’ executive deputy editor Chris Goko thought the elderly scribe was merely suffering from extreme bouts of jealousy – tinged with a bit of competitive malice – when he launched his full frontal attack on the Daily News.

While professional jealousy is one thing which many people can in fact relate to in some degree, it is quite another for a so-called veteran journalist to try and ingratiate himself with some erstwhile hostile elements – and in the process go on to unashamedly distort the publication’s rich history.

For someone who has once worked for the same paper, it is extremely difficult to understand or comprehend what this fellow was up to – prompting the paper to ask: "why Conway why?"

In the latest development, it is clear that Tutani is now engaging in desperate semantics as he unsuccessfully tries to wriggle out of this self-created sticky situation, but the fact remains, he has made his bed and he must lie in it.

Isn’t it amazing that those living in glass houses have somehow developed a penchant for throwing stones, big ones for that? Isn't it also funny that those with fake egos and in the habit of dishing it out to others, cannot withstand the heat themselves?

In this charade, isn’t it possible that the likes of our dear comrade may soon tell us that he does not remember that the Daily News's presses were bombed by suspected state agents in 2001 and, actually if they do, it was an inside job!

While many have not been amused by Tutani's newly-found alliances with the enemies of Zimbabwe's democracy, what he has done crucially, but clearly unwittingly, is to open the space for scholars and other interested parties to begin to ask the key question: How indeed did those "independent" media houses who escaped unjust closure over the past decade manage to evade the fury of serial political flip flopper Jonathan Moyo?

It really is time that one of our famed researchers delved into this important matter to see who owned what, and was connected to whom – and how – during this mad period that saw some private media players shut down, and others surprisingly spared.

Who was not targeted and why, in the madness that saw even papers like The Tribune, owned by known supporters of Zanu PF being shut down?

Surely, this is a PHD thesis for one of the clever scholars as these closures certainly had absolutely nothing to do with alleged necessary applications for registration as the Tutanis of this world now want to tell us.

And can there be a better time to embark on such this topic than when the political terrain is changing fast – and even more importantly, the major players during that barbaric time are all still around. In this regard, one can think about the Tsholotsho North legislator, George Charamba, Tafataona Mahoso and the various publishers of private newspapers who survived the blitzkrieg!

In my humble belief, l bet there are many a hidden skeletons in some people's cupboards and that such a thesis could even be published into a book, which could be an overnight and runaway success as Zimbabweans may desperately want to know what transpired in the media space and their country when such papers as the Daily News were off the streets, and political games of that time.

For all we care – and wittingly or unwittingly – Tutani could be part of a small, but disparate group of political, and economic interests working to undo certain enterprises like the Daily News – and we hope not.

And where many of these nutters used to incorporate crude and outrightly barbaric methods such as jailing newsmen, bombing presses and enacting AIPPA to silence paper, this – owing to changing circumstances – has been replaced by slightly more subtle torture method such as vexatious lawsuits and the use, if not abuse, of confused small minds such as Tutani to badmouth others and airbrush Zimbabwe's ugly recent political history.

Of course, one doesn't need to be a prophet to realise that all this will fail dismally and the evidence for this is abundant. To the Daily News and other progressive forces’ hundreds of thousands of followers, readers and advertisers, we say aluta! – Weekend Post