They also come when we have just celebrated the 3rd anniversary of the GNU which essentially was supposed to be a vehicle towards the realisation of our freedoms — including the freedom of the media.
Given the background of where we are coming from, it wouldn’t be amiss if one was to ask whether Zimbabweans can say they are now enjoying the freedom of expression and access to information as a fundamental human right.
Last month, the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe (BAZ) closed the door for applicants who wish to be considered for licences under the category for local private radio stations. The applicants were coming from designated cities and mischievously chosen centres around the country. The current call for applications is phase two of the purported freeing of the airwaves by BAZ, which has faced criticism since day one of its existence as an appendage of the Zanu PF commissariat.
Phase one started with the call for two slots in the national free-to-air radio stations category that were controversially awarded to Zimpapers Talk Radio and Supa Mandiwanzira’s ZI FM. Controversial because the two were too close to the protagonists at BAZ for comfort.
The third and last phase in the radio category, presumably, will involve the calling for applicants and licensing of community radio stations.After the third phase Zimbabwe will, technically be in conformity with the African Charter on Broadcasting, which calls for a three-tier broadcasting system (public, private and community) as well as Article 19 of the GPA.
But the question remains: Are Zimbabweans happy about this progress? Are the media reform proponents happy with the current moves? And most importantly, does this make our media environment in Zimbabwe better?
My answer to the above three fundamental questions, whose satisfaction should be the driving philosophy behind the work of BAZ, is a big NO. And the reason for that is simple. It is found by situating all that is happening withand at BAZ, in the context of the Capital Radio Supreme Court challenge against the monopoly of ZBC more than a decade ago, and the subsequent campaign for media freedom resulting from there.
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Diversity and plurality have been the key concepts that have underlined the call for media reforms in Zimbabwe since 2000. The Broadcasting Services Act was enacted purportedly to give effect to the two named concepts above and we have waited 12 years to get to where we are today.
The waiting has not been without incident with various court challenges being thrown at BAZ asking them to do what they were being paid to do. For, how could we have a BAZ that has been sitting in office for more than 10 years but has failed to make an attempt towards their key result area of calling, just inviting applications, even before talking of licensing?
And so for 12 years we have waited for diversity and plurality. And 12 years is such a long time to wait for one’s rights.
The way BAZ handled applications for the free-to-air national radio stations already tells us that there will be nothing diverse or plural with our radio stations under the current regime. If you hope to get diversity from Talk Radio, then either you are myopic or totally brainwashed, or both. Talk radio will in essence be Radio 5, a sister to ZBC channels.
And local private stations whose applications closed at 5pm last Wednesday, and the pseudo-community radio stations a former ZBC employee-now-turned-legislator, has been setting up in the Midlands -— will only operate as satellite stations for Radio 5. The only diverse element about the whole arrangement will be in geographical location. Believing in there will be diversity and plurality under this scheme is like believing that currently there is diversity because we have Radio Zimbabwe and National FM!
It’s a waste of time to talk of Mandiwanzira’s ZI FM because they have already confessed publicly that they will work closely with ZBC. You can only imagine what they will learn. Already, it is difficult to be impressed with what Mandiwanzira himself learnt while at ZBC.
The end result for Zimbabwe is neither a diverse nor plural media environment. And the most frightening possibility is that this will not take the nation back to square one, the era of the ZBC monopoly, but will leave us deeply entrenched in a skewed media environment in which, while previously we used to fight with only a partisan ZBC with six outlets (four radio and two TV stations), we are most likely to end up with the same old ZBC with more than 50 nauseating outlets spitting the same venom.
BY GIFT MAMBIPIRI
