HARARE - This comment is probably the hardest we have had to write since the Daily News was given the green light to re-launch  two years ago, following nearly eight years of forced closure by President Robert Mugabe’s government for the crime of “telling it like it is, without fear or favour”.

Very hard because it involves the sensitive issue of faith — and a man whom tens of thousands of Zimbabweans, as is their right, follow fervently for spiritual guidance.

Indeed, we should ordinarily not be writing this kind of leader because there is absolutely no good reason why the Daily News should be sparring with “men of God” as we are now being forced to do unnecessarily by self-proclaimed prophet Emmanuel Makandiwa.

It is very sad.

In his latest, inexplicable assault on the Daily News, this evidently wealthy preacher has taken our newspaper to the dreaded Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC) — a move we can only surmise as meant to coax the ZMC to shut down Zimbabwe’s top newspaper, given our well-documented experience with State media regulation bodies.

Indeed, and as we reported in our lead story yesterday, Makandiwa is asking ZMC to “punish the Daily News”. Among its powers, ZMC can deregister newspapers.

This gobsmacking move follows Makandiwa’s recent withdrawal of his ill-advised $2 million lawsuit in the High Court against our paper, which was initiated despite the fact that the Daily News had immediately and magnanimously — and in hindsight, unnecessarily — apologised to him both in the paper and in a personal letter to him in December last year.

Our crime then was an unwitting error in which our production team mistakenly produced a street poster that read ‘Anglican Saga sucks in Makandiwa’ — when they meant to say ‘Anglican Saga sucks in Banks.’

The poster did not mention the “precious” name of Emmanuel Makandiwa, and we did not run any story in the paper that had anything to do with Emmanuel Makandiwa in this regard.

Why and how Emmanuel Makandiwa came to believe that the Makandiwa in the poster was him is still a big mystery. It’s an even bigger mystery why this “prophet” also went on to conclude, rather self-importantly, that his standing and reputation had been sullied by the poster — hence his ridiculous demand for a staggering $2 million payment from the Daily News.

Even more galling, Makandiwa’s representatives went on the offensive in State media soon after he withdrew his vexatious legal action, unashamedly lying about the sequence of events that had led to his objectionable decision to sue us.

Among a litany of falsehoods the representatives spread, in their wisdom or lack of, was the blatant lie that the Daily News had only apologised to Makandiwa after the preacher had gone to court.

The critical question to ask is: Why is Makandiwa doing this — and why is he lying so embarrassingly for a supposed “man of God”?

Further, is his intention also to cause the Daily News to be shut down? Why?

Let us re-state our position again. It does not give us any joy to be seen to be fighting with preachers or men of God.

But you, Emmanuel Makandiwa, are leaving us with no choice but to defend ourselves vigorously.

And because you are acting maliciously towards us, for no good reason at all, you have tickled our
curiosity about you, what it is you are doing and what you intent to achieve?

Mr Preacher Sir, we are happy to accept your challenge.