15 applications have been put forward, after the May announcement by the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe (BAZ) that the commercial licences were up for grabs. But the plans have raised a number of eyebrows for different reasons, including the fact that the BAZ Board is improperly constituted and still headed by known ZANU PF strongman.
Tsvangirai’s spokesperson, Luke Tamborinyoka, said on Wednesday that the “illegality of the BAZ board is a matter of public record,” likening the board to a “group of thieves.” He was speaking on SW Radio Africa’s Question Time series on Wednesday, and said the call for radio licence applications “is all part of ZANU PF machinations ahead of the next SADC summit.”
SADC will be meeting in Angola next month and Zimbabwe will again be high on the agenda, with the region still trying to negotiate a working plan towards elections. Real media reform, including the licencing of independent broadcasters, has remained an outstanding issue in the Global Political Agreement (GPA). The plans to licence commercial radio stations is now widely believed to be an attempt by ZANU PF to go along with SADC’s demands for reform, without making any real changes.
“This is a ruse by a board that is improperly constituted to give the impression that the airwaves are being freed in Zimbabwe,” Tamborinyoka said.
The Director of the media rights group MISA-Zimbabwe, Nhlanhla Ngwenya, told SW Radio Africa on Thursday that Tamborinyoka’s opinion echoes what civil society has been saying. He explained that the whole process, since announcing the radio licences would be available, has been questionable.
“Last week the BAZ board addressed the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on the Media and they remained very ambivalent on plans to free the airwaves completely, saying they have the incapacity to monitor the independent broadcasters,” Ngwenya explained.
He added: “Why are they prioritising monitoring over liberalising the broadcasting sector? They are clearly still interested in control over what is being said and not real reform.”
The Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe (MMPZ) has meanwhile insisted that the illegal BAZ board is standing in the way of genuine reform. The group said in a recent statement that: “Only with the appointment of an independent, credible, new board, which Zimbabweans can trust, will there be any genuine reform of Zimbabwe’s broadcasting sector.”
The MMPZ has also questioned the transparency of the licence application process, after its requests for details about who has applied were rejected by BAZ. The Authority has insisted that the application process will be fully transparent, and the public was invited to request more information about the potential broadcasters, who in turn had to publicise their intentions in the local press.
But the MMPZ said in a statement this month that it was “denied access to any information beyond that published in the Press, on the grounds that it was confidential. The only information about the applicants in the Press notices was the names of the companies applying and their head office addresses.”
“Denying such information to the public subverts the open and transparent process of selection… and the right of Zimbabweans to have a say in the selection of these broadcasters,” the MMPZ said.
Post published in: News