(MISA/IFEX) – The National Development Assembly’s (NDA) High Court legal challenge of the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation’s (ZBC) ban on the Talk to the Nation live phone-in programme will be heard on Wednesday 14 November 2001. NDA is challenging the ban of its programme and is demanding its reinstatement. Minister of Information and Publicity Jonathan Moyo […]
(MISA/IFEX) – The National Development Assembly’s (NDA) High Court legal challenge of the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation’s (ZBC) ban on the Talk to the Nation live phone-in programme will be heard on Wednesday 14 November 2001.
NDA is challenging the ban of its programme and is demanding its reinstatement. Minister of Information and Publicity Jonathan Moyo is also cited as one of the respondents. Although the Department of Information and Publicity has distanced itself from the ban, arguing that it was a ZBC board decision, the NDA insists that Moyo appear as a respondent in the matter.
Kindness Paradza, the coordinator of the NDA radio programme, said that they are not seeking any compensation but simply wish to have the programme reinstated. “We want our programme to be reinstated because we think we have a constitutional right to access the public media. The public media is not a preserve of any individual. We were removed from [the] air illegally and we want that to be corrected,” said Paradza.
Background Information
On 5 June, the ZBC banned the NDA’s live programme on the grounds of a restructuring exercise. The programme was said to have failed to meet set criteria. The NDA, a civic grouping largely made up of black business persons championing what has come to be called the “indigenisation of the economy”, had launched the weekly programme Talk to the Nation on 17 May.
In a letter to the NDA, Musi Khumalo, the ZBC’s head of programmes, said that the ZBC had taken a policy decision in withdrawing the programme from its production and transmission. “This letter serves to advise that the TV live discussion programme, ‘Talk to the Nation’, sponsored by your organisation, has been withdrawn from ZBC production, transmission and broadcasting service with immediate effect. The last programme was the one broadcast on Thursday May 31, 2001. The decision has been taken on policy grounds,” reads the ZBC letter.
MISA-Zimbabwe and Paradza dismissed the assertions made by “The Herald”, stating that the whole production, in terms of selecting speakers, was done in consultation with the ZBC. Paradza noted that the decision to ban the programme was not taken by the ZBC but rather by Minister Moyo.
“He thought that the programme was giving exposure to the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC),” said Paradza. In its last programme, the NDA featured MDC Parliamentarian and shadow minister of finance Tapiwa Mashakada and Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) Parliamentarian David Chapfika.
ZBC Board Chairperson Gideon Gono also denied that the Talk to the Nation programme was banned on political grounds.
