(MISA/IFEX) – The Zimbabwean government’s temporary measures to regulate broadcasting represent an undisguised freezing – and not freeing – of the airwaves, according to media analysts quoted in the “Zimbabwe Independent” newspaper. Commentators quoted by the newspaper said the legislation signified an attempt to contain a growing crisis unleashed by a Supreme Court decision to […]
(MISA/IFEX) – The Zimbabwean government’s temporary measures to regulate broadcasting represent an undisguised freezing – and not freeing – of the airwaves, according to media analysts quoted in the “Zimbabwe Independent” newspaper.
Commentators quoted by the newspaper said the legislation signified an attempt to contain a growing crisis unleashed by a Supreme Court decision to liberalise the airwaves. It also communicated a paranoid need by a beleaguered regime to manage the flow of information, they said.
Analysts noted that the new broadcasting law – from which the state-run Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) is exempt – proved that government was intent upon blocking the advent of a new information order in the country. The critics said the legislation engineered by Information Minister Jonathan Moyo was tantamount to a major policy failure. “It’s the most draconian legislation I have ever seen in any broadcasting system,” said Andrew Moyse, director of the Media Monitoring Project. “It’s severely repressive, grossly prohibitive and restrictive to the extent of being absolutely punitive,” he said.
Moyse said the law exposed glaring contradictions in Moyo’s information policy. He said the minister’s strategy to put a ceiling on democratic debate was bound to be a fiasco. “The minister made promises of embarking on a consultative process but within a few days he cast that aside. In other words he ignored his own promises,” said Moyse.
Shortly after unveiling the new regulations, Moyo told a press conference that they were in line with legislative precedents on broadcasting elsewhere. But the Civic Forum for Media Reform, a coalition of local media organisations, firmly rejected his claim. “We reject with the contempt it deserves the government’s assertion that the regulations are based on best international practice”, said the Civic Forum. “Rather, they represent a retrograde attempt to stem the strong currents in Zimbabwe flowing in the direction of legitimate broadcasting liberalisation”, the group said.
Analysts observed that the regulations betrayed government’s resistance to democratisation and heralded further repression. “It’s clearly a scrambling effort to contain what government sees as a crisis engendered by the liberalisation of the airwaves,” one analyst told the “Zimbabwe Independent”. “The context is that this comes in the middle of a searing economic downturn and also ahead of a crucial presidential election. Government wants to maintain a totalitarian grip on information,” the commentator said.
Issues that analysts identified as profoundly undemocratic included the idea of a government-controlled broadcasting authority, stringent laws on programming and content, licensing and giving Moyo – and ultimately President Mugabe – unfettered powers to dictate how the whole broadcasting system should work.
Commentators also queried why government demanded that all broadcasters should ensure that at least seventy-five per cent of their programmes should be Zimbabwean content and be produced in the country when ZBC’s programmes were at least eighty per cent foreign. “It is well-known that it is ten times more expensive to produce local programmes than it is to import. So why does the minister expect other broadcasters to have seventy-five per cent local programming when ZBC, which is publicly-funded, does not do that. As a public-service broadcaster ZBC should be the first to comply with that sort of an order,” a University of Zimbabwe lecturer who declined to be named said.
Commentators said it was ridiculous for Moyo to demand an hour per week from every broadcaster to explain government policy. It was equally preposterous, they said, to say community stations should not be allowed to broadcast political material because that was almost certainly ultra-vires certain provisions of the constitution.
Other issues queried related to the order that there would be one independent national broadcaster other than ZBC, which most analysts said was likely to be owned by government apologists. The stipulation that broadcasting licensees would not be allowed to hold transmitting licences was perceived as an effort to strangle new players, some of whom could already have bought transmitting equipment.
The management of conduct was also questioned. It could not be left in the hands of interested parties or, in fact, a government that has axes to grind with the media.
The Zimbabwe Chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA-Zimbabwe) strongly condemned the new regulations as undemocratic and yet another draconian law imposed on an already restrictive media environment. The organisation called on the people of Zimbabwe to fight the new laws and urged the government to “repeal the stringent laws and commit itself to genuine media reforms, which promote diversity, pluralism and access to information”.
The Zimbabwe Union of Journalists, whose secretary-general, Basildon Peta, described the legislation as “laughable,” has added its voice in denouncing Moyo’s legislation. “The immediate challenge for civic groups is to pull their resources and energy together to fight Minister Moyo’s rules, which should only exist in a totalitarian state,” said Peta.
“Civic society also faces an urgent challenge to fight in the courts the validity of the Presidential Powers through which many defective laws have been introduced. ZUJ is particularly irked by the clause which makes Minister Moyo the final authority in the issuance of licences. This is a laughable circus. The destiny of broadcasting in Zimbabwe should never be the prerogative of one man,” he said.
The Civic Forum for Media Reform stated: “The new draconian regulations, gazetted using presidential powers, maintain tight restrictions on all aspects of broadcasting in the country.
The regulations make the minister the final authority in the issuing of licences and establish a Broadcasting Authority to oversee the electronic media, which can be hand-picked by senior government officials… numerous conditions have also been introduced which restrict the content, number and operations of prospective broadcasters”, the group observed.
Analysts said it was common cause that there should be an autonomous regulatory authority whose members were appointed through an open consultative process and that all other issues should be governed by that body, not a minister who is an interested party.
