I have a story about the story. The African story. I returned home from Zimbabwe to a story in this paper about this story of African news media editors talking about how to tell the African story. Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the outgoing Chairperson of the African Union Commission, was there too. She also wrote a story about the story in which she called upon the African media to "take the lead in telling the African story.”

Everyone there agreed. The African story, they said, is being told by the international media; that this was a bad thing because that media is driven by an agenda that is at odds with the interests of Africa and Africans. In one tweet, a person in attendance asked rather rhetorically, "Who are the shapers of the African narrative?”

It helped that I had just come from Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is no ordinary country. It’s a country at war, a propaganda war. But maybe I didn’t need to have gone to Zimbabwe to appreciate the power of propaganda as a weapon of war.

Rwanda itself has been a victim of this war, at the receiving end of a barrage of attacks at the hands of the international media. Think of the worst a government can be accused of, that and much more have been levelled against Rwanda.

Ditto, Zimbabwe. No other countries on the African continent, with the exception of Eritrea possibly, suffer worse treatment from the international media more than Rwanda and Zimbabwe. The question is: Why?

To understand this, one has to recognise that the media – including NGOs and civil society organisations –has an active role to play in the foreign policy of powerful countries. In countries they consider hostile, this role has been to spread harmful propaganda in order to justify the nefarious policies they adopt against the weaker ones.

It is not to the benevolence of the French that ‘regime change’ has not taken place in Kigali over the past 22 years; it is also an open secret that the British wanted to remove President Robert Mugabe by force only to somewhat back down following Zimbabwe’s neighbours’ refusal (except one country) to play along.

When all else fails, turn to the tested and reliable weapon: political propaganda. Armed with decades of anti-Harare propaganda I descended onto that country. I expected to find a broke and broken place where security forces roam the place harassing everyone and demanding bribes; I expected debilitated infrastructure – potholes, electricity and water shortages, and the like. I expected a ghost city with little to no commercial activity. Far from it.

It was not what I had read about Zimbabwe over the years. I saw an urban infrastructure that an old friend, who has virtually travelled the entire continent due to his status as head of an organisation with a network that cuts across Africa, told me is only rivalled by South Africa, among countries south of the Sahara.One’s intake of propaganda is likely to dismiss the gentleman as a Mugabe crony. He is not. As a matter of fact, he told me that he thinks Mugabe should retire. But his reasons for this are different from those peddled by the international media. He, along with many of his colleagues, feel frustrated that the media has usurped their prerogative to shape the narrative on the transition from Mugabe.

They feel like a rug has been pulled from beneath, rendering them unable to articulate an authentic programme for engineering change. Instead, they are disempowered by something akin to a reality show concocted from elsewhere.

Consequently, they have to decide whether to rebel against their government – by giving credence to the distortions of their reality – or to rebel against the forces that distort this reality as they live it. Or to simply sit it out altogether.

But there is a pattern: Countries that insist on shaping their destiny will face a concerted smear campaign. For Rwanda, it is the insistence to hold France accountable for its role in the Genocide here; for Zimbabwe it is the seizure of farm-land belonging to Zimbabweans of the European ethnic stock.

This is farfetched, right? Consider this: in this country we had land redistribution in 2008 limiting individual ownership to 25 hectares. This policy was enforced with the support of the army and the police who were deployed to ‘facilitate the expeditious redistribution exercise.’ As in Zimbabwe, the vast majority of the citizens approved of this policy and supported this move on the part of the government.

I stand to be corrected but I do not recall any denunciations, let alone sanctions for property rights violations in Rwanda. Not a finger was lifted, let alone wagged. And rightly so because the policy was responding to inequities in land ownership.

President Mugabe might have neglected to apply the due diligence in how the policy was implemented (something most reasonable people disagreed with) in Zimbabwe. However, this is not what he is being accused of through the barrage of propaganda warfare. His real crime is the audacity to touch the untouchable.

And so, #MugabeMustFall. Again, fine and dandy – if Zimbabweans say so. However, let’s separate any desire of the Zimbabwean people for change from the concoction of lies that has (mis)informed most of us for decades.

Africa’s media is missing. They say they are after the truth. So do you. Can you handle it?

Follow: @LonzenRugira