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The
Monitor
A publication of the Public Information Rights Forum
ISSUE No 35 The News Monitor is published by the Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe for the November 30, 2011
benefit of its Public Information Rights Forum (PIRF) members around the country
BAZ hands radio licences
to ZANU PF favourites
The controversial
Broadcasting Authority of
Zimbabwe (BAZ) – in a
move that did not surprise many – on
November 24 announced the
awarding of the two radio licences on
offer to two applicants aligned to
ZANU PF, a move that vindicated
many skeptics who have always
doubted President Robert Mugabe’s
commitment to opening up the
airwaves.
BAZ chairman, Tafataona
Mahoso, announced that Zimbabwe
Newspapers (Zimpapers)’s Talk Radio
and ZiFM had emerged winners in a
race that started off with 14
contenders.
State-controlled Zimpapers, are
the publishers of more than half-adozen
publications, including The
Herald and the Sunday Mail, both
staunch pro-ZANU PF publications.
ZiFM is a subsidiary of AB
Communications, a company owned
by journalist and black empowerment
crusader, Supa Mandiwanzira, who
was recently unveiled by President
Mugabe’s party as one of their
parliamentary candidates for
elections proposed for next year.
When invitations were made for
the two commercial radio licences,
there were concerns that the same
partisan BAZ board – working under
a veil of secrecy – would deliberately
favour pro-ZANU PF applicants.
The Mahoso-led BAZ board –
unilaterally appointed by the ZANU
PF arm of the coalition government
and largely made up of retired army
officials and other ZANU PF
sympathizers – was out-rightly
rejected by the two Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC)
WHAT’S INSIDE
2 Businessman Kereke
accuses Standard
journalists of
extortion
3 Press makes a feast
of Tsvangirai’s
‘marriage’ mystery
• Republic of
Bambazonke cartoon
4 Police summon
MMPZ officers
• Letters
• The News Monitor
cartoon
ALL SMILES BUT… Prime Minister Tsvangirai, leader of smaller MDC Welshman Ncube and President Mugabe.
formations after it was appointed
without consultation as required by
the GPA.
Towards the end of the selection
process, when it was obvious that the
two radio licences were set to go to
ZANU PF apologists, the Media
Monitoring Project Zimbabwe
(MMPZ) warned, in its weekly
commentary, that the short-listing of
Talk Radio raised ethical issues and
contradicted the spirit of the Global
Political Agreement (GPA), which,
according to Article XIX of the
agreement, is: “Desirous of ensuring
the opening up of the airwaves and
ensuring the operation of as many
media houses as possible.”
“Licensing Talk Radio, which is
‘tipped to clinch one of the two
licences up for grabs’ (NewsDay),
would not only deprive prospective
private broadcasters of the chance to
operate, but would expand and
entrench the biased state media’s
monopoly of the broadcasting sector,
already the preserve of the country’s
sole broadcaster, ZBC.
“Of course, the entire selection
process has been flawed from the
start, tainted by a lack of
transparency and partisan influence.
Without BAZ’s reform, this was
inevitable.”
The media body added: “Supa
Mandiwanzira’s ZiFM is most
unlikely to provide a non-partisan
programming schedule, given that
The Manica Post reported Didymus
Mutasa, ZANU PF’s national
secretary for administration,
officially introducing Mandiwanzira
as the party’s “next representative in
Parliament” for Nyanga South
constituency.”
The Voluntary Media Council of
Zimbabwe said the selection of just
two of several wide-ranging
applications for private broadcasting
licenses was not carried out
transparently adding that
broadcasting laws governing the
powers and membership of the
authority which weigh in (President)
Mugabe’s favour needed to be
reformed.
“Until we have an independent
broadcasting authority and
democratic broadcasting laws we will
continue to have this sort of conflict,”
said Takura Zhangazha, head of the
council.
The Media Institute of Southern
Africa (MISA) Zimbabwe chapter
• To Page 2
BAZ CALLS
FOR LOCAL
FREE-TO-AIR
RADIO
APPLICANTS
The media reported that on
November 27, the
controversial Broadcasting
Authority of Zimbabwe (BAZ)
invited applications for free-to-air
local commercial radio
broadcasting service licenses and
content distribution broadcasting
services in terms of Section 10 of
the Broadcasting Services Act
[Chapter 12:06].
The media quoted the Media
Institute of Southern Africa (MISA)
Zimbabwe chapter explaining that
“free-to-air broadcasting service”
means any broadcasting
service transmitted otherwise than
by means of an encoded signal
while “local commercial radio
broadcasting service” referred to
an audio-broadcasting service
operated for profit or as part of a
profit-making enterprise and
is provided in a particular area.
The two fall under the free-toair
local commercial radio
broadcasting service licenses.
According to the advert placed
in The Sunday Mail of November
27- December 3, 2011, the local
free-to-air licenses will each be
allocated to Harare, Bulawayo,
Mutare, Gweru, Masvingo,
Chinhoyi, Bindura, Gwanda,
Marondera, Lupane, Plumtree,
Kariba, Victoria Falls and
Beitbridge have all been allocated
one license each.
The initial application fee for a
“free-to-air local commercial” is
US$2 500 and for a radio
broadcasting service license the
• To Page 3
POLITICAL WILL TO DETERMINE POLL ROADMAP
The private media reported
that prospects of Zimbabwe
going for elections next year
had become slim following the
decision by Finance Minister Tendai
Biti to make no budgetary provision
for any polls in his 2012 budget
The no-nonsense Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC)
secretary-general who is also the
party’s chief negotiator to the Global
Political Agreement (GPA) said he
did not include elections in next
year’s budget as the political parties
were far from fully implementing
agreed reforms that could lead to
credible elections.
Since mid-2010 President Robert
Mugabe and members of his ZANU
PF party have repeatedly said the
country will go for elections next
year, even without any reforms,
which include a new constitution.
His party officials, led by chairman
Simon Khaya Moyo, have been
traversing the country canvassing
for political support.
But Biti did not give in to
President Mugabe’s political
brinkmanship and went on to
allocate the Zimbabwe Electoral
Commission (ZEC) a paltry US$30
million for a referendum on the new
constitution.
Biti said failure to implement
reforms agreed to under the GPA,
and not money, was the major
impediment to early elections.
“The issue of elections is not
about resources or whether we have
a budget for that or not. The issue is
about commitment that the
principals themselves have agreed
on. They have to agree on a roadmap
NO SHORTCUTS... Tendai Biti.
first to those elections,” Biti told a
business post-budget seminar a day
after presenting his budget before
Parliament.
“The electoral roadmap has sign
posts and such sign posts include
the constitution-making process
with signatures of people, a new
voters’ roll with signatures of the
people.
“Those things are in black and
white in the Global Political
Agreement,” said Biti.
South African president and
chairperson of the SADC troika on
politics, defence and security
cooperation Jacob Zuma is
supervising the drafting of an
electoral roadmap which will lead to
elections.
The roadmap has so far stalled
with the MDC insisting on security
sector reforms which ZANU PF has
described as a no go area.
• To Page 3
The News Monitor is produced and circulated by the Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe, 9 Knight Bruce Road, Milton Park, Harare,
Tel: 263 4 741816 / 778115, E-mail: monitors@mmpz.org.zw
Feel free to comment on the news in this publication. We may not able to respond to all the correspondence but we plan to establish a letters column,
especially for our Public Information Rights Forum members. For more information about MMPZ, please visit our website at http://www.mmpz.org/

2 THE NEWS MONITOR November 30, 2011
MEDIA AND HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES
Businessman Kereke
accuses Standard
journalists of extortion
The media – largely online –
covered the unfolding saga
at Alpha Media Holdings,
the publishers of the weeklies
Standard and The Independent and the
daily NewsDay newspapers, had
taken a new twist with prominent
businessman Manyaradzi Kereke,
accusing journalists from the stable
of demanding bribes from him.
The damning accusation comes
hard on the heels of the suspension
of NewsDay political editor Kelvin
Jakachira over allegations of
corruption involving Kereke.
Kereke, an advisor to the Reserve
Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor
Gideon Gono, recently filed criminal
and theft charges against Standard
editor Nevanji Madanhire and
reporter Nqaba Matshazi after
the paper published a story
alleging that the businessman’s
medical aid society was facing
imminent collapse.
However on November 16, 2011
Madanhire and Matshazi were
ZANU PF favourites get radio licences
• From Page 1
said the legal status of the new
licences was in doubt citing the
dispute around the appointment of
the board of the BAZ board, which
issued the licences.
MISA Zimbabwe said the
licensing of Zimpapers’ Talk Radio was
set to raise eyebrows on whether the
radio station will truly be
independent as stipulated under the
African Charter on Broadcasting
considering that the government has
a controlling stake in Zimpapers.
“The licensing of the two
applicants also brings into question
the sincerity of the government’s calls
for Zimbabwean journalists manning
foreign-based stations to return home
and legalize their operations,” said
MISA-Zimbabwe in a statement to
the media.
Prime Minister Morgan
Tsvangirai, and Welshman Ncube,
the leader of the smaller faction of the
MDC, have in the past publicly
demanded the reconstitution of BAZ,
which is headed by Mahoso, who
earned the notorious nickname
“media hangman” after he closed
several newspapers – among them
the popular Daily News – during his
tenure as executive chairman of the
Biti said once the political
party principals have agreed to
an election, he could organise the
resources “even if it means doing
so in just a day.”
“What Zimbabweans are
saying is that we are going to
have an election but we cannot
have an election like the June
granted US$100 bail each by Harare
magistrate Sandra Mupindu on
charges of criminal defamation.
But Kereke immediately
published several public letters
alleging that he was a victim of
extortion from the journalists from
the stable.
He, however, denied bribing
Jakachira with a vehicle as alleged
by Alpha Media.
In his public letters Kereke did
not mention the names of the two
Standard journalists but warned that
he would be ready to expose them
when asked by the proprietors of the
newspaper.
Kereke also claimed to have
written to Raphael Khumalo, the
chief executive officer of Alpha
Media, requesting that they meet to
discuss what he claimed to be
“rampant corruption” within
newspaper stable to no avail.
The letter was copied to the
Voluntary Media Council of
Zimbabwe (VMCZ), the Zimbabwe
now defunct Media and Information
Commission.
Mahoso – a longtime Zimpapers’
columnist and State media analyst –
also doubles-up as the chief executive
officer of the Zimbabwe Media
Commission, which registered the
newspapers.
Tsvangirai’s office said the
awarding of Zimbabwe’s “first
independent” radio licences to
companies aligned with President
Mugabe as a “farce”.
“(The) granting of the two licences
is the final nail in the coffin of media
plurality in Zimbabwe. It is
unacceptable,” Tsvangirai’s
spokesman Luke Tamborinyoka said.
Tamborinyoka said the
announcement “is a farce that flies in
the face of true media reforms and
media plurality in Zimbabwe.”
MDC-T party spokesperson
Douglas Mwonzora added: “The
ZANU PF front has given licences to
ZANU PF-related institutions
and that does not translate to the
liberation of the airwaves but (the)
strengthening of ZANU PF’s
monopoly in both print and electronic
(media).”
Ncube from the smaller faction of
POLITICAL WILL TO
DETERMINE POLL ROADMAP
• From Page 1
2008,” said Biti.
According to ZEC, for
Zimbabwe to hold a round of
harmonized elections, the country
needs about US$240 million. Biti’s
move could see elections being
held earliest in 2013, exactly five
years are the last disputed poll.
Media Commission, the Zimbabwe
Union of Journalists and the
Media Institute of Southern Africa
(MISA) Zimbabwe chapter.
Kereke said in his letter he was
disturbed that Khumalo had
rebuffed his repeated requests for
meetings to discuss bribery at the
group.
“I write to once again kindly
request to meet with you at your
earliest convenience so that I
highlight to you the grievances I
have on the following two cases: The
continued silence by your office to
give me feedback on the formal
complaint I raised about a journalist
at The Standard who explicitly
extorted money from me.
“As you are aware Sir, I
highlighted this to you, as well as the
Editor and Deputy Editor of The
Standard about the abuse I suffered.
I had hoped we would have closure
on this matter in a much more
diplomatic way Sir; and I wanted to
get the opportunity to bring to your
the MDC also dismissed the
development saying it was just a
reproduction of well-known ZANU
PF mouth pieces in the form of ZBC
and The Herald.
“These are not new players. If you
licence ZBC then you say you have
another new station, you license The
Herald then you say you have another
newspaper; that is plain nonsense.
“That is certainly not the idea we
had, the idea was that we have
plurality of interest in the media. You
can have a hundred licences but if
you are issuing them to ZBC you
have not done anything.
“What has happened is they are
trying to deceive us that new players
have indeed been introduced when
in fact they actually reproduced the
players which are already in
existence by another name.” Ncube
added.
He attributed the latest
development to the ineffectiveness of
the Global Political Agreement (GPA)
in dealing with the broadcasting
issue.
“One of the mistakes we have
made in the GPA was failure to create
an independent broadcasting
authority. It is that failure that has
given us this outcome; it is actually a
deception.”
However, Ncube vowed that his
party was not going to watch while
ZANU PF attempts to hoodwink
SADC into believing that the election
roadmap was properly being
implemented with regards to the
liberalization of airwaves in the
country.
In the past decade BAZ rejected
five applications from aspiring
broadcasters for what the authority
called failure to meet its licensing
requirements allowing ZBC, which is
biased in favour of President Mugabe
and his ZANU PF party, to continue
enjoying its illegal monopoly.
Munyaradzi Kereke
attention that another journalist
under Mr Nevanji Madanhire
illegally entered my residential
house whilst I was at work after
misrepresenting to my security and
domestic maids that he was my
relative,” reads part of Kereke’s
letter.
He claimed the unnamed
journalist went as far as “my
bedroom ostensibly looking for
news”.
“The sad thing is that this
journalist too later demanded
payment from me and I have
evidence and witnesses to that
effect.”
In another letter to Khumalo,
which was publicly copied to
stakeholders in the media fraternity
in Zimbabwe, Kereke denied
allegations that he bought a car for
suspended NewsDay political editor,
Jakachira.
In a short response to Kereke’s
“open letters” the VMCZ chairman
Aleck Muchadehama wrote: “VMCZ
has got a mechanism for dealing with
complaints against the media and
Aleck Muchadehama
media practitioners. Should you
wish to lodge a formal complaint
you are free to do so.” He went on
to attach copies of the VMCZ Media
Code of Conduct, the Complaints
Procedures and the Complaint Form.
Unfazed by Kereke’s legal action
against itself, the Standard of
November 27 reported that Kereke
was trying to use his influence to
stop investigations into two rape
cases he allegedly committed against
minor relatives.
“(Kereke)...has been accused
of raping his 12-year-old niece.
She was 11 years old when the
alleged rape took place last year
at the businessman’s home.
“Kereke is also accused of
sexually assaulting the girl’s 15-
year-old sister.”
The weekly went on to give
details of the alleged crime –
quoting victims’ medical records
and letters written by their
lawyers – and how Kereke was
allegedly trying to use his
influence to defeat the ends of
justice.
Nevanji Madanhire

THE NEWS MONITOR November 30, 2011 3
Press makes a feast
of Tsvangirai’s
‘marriage’ mystery
All the media extensively
covered reports which
claimed that Prime Minister
Morgan Tsvangirai had, on
November 21, married a local
businesswoman Locadia
Karimatsenga Tembo in a traditional
ceremony at her family home on the
outskirts of Harare.
It was not until November 30 that
Tsvangirai finally broke his two-week
silence to clear the air over the
rumours and speculation in all the
media regarding his relationship
with Locadia. But the statement –
which came in two versions – did not
seem to help clarify anything at all.
In his press statement reported on
by the country’s four major dailies,
Tsvangirai admitted to have had a
“relationship” with Locadia, who was
allegedly pregnant by him, but he
claimed that he had since terminated
the relationship. Desperately pointing
fingers at his political enemies and
possibly the country’s spy agency, he
claimed his “genuine intention has
been betrayed” after the purported
marriage rituals became a subject of
“frenzied” and “choreographed”
media publicity allegedly to cause
“political damage” to his reputation,
apparently by an “underhand and
active political hand”.
Added Tsvangirai: “Reputations
have been bruised and mutual trust
upon which such relations are built
and maintained has been lost...
When these values are undermined,
that relationship is irretrievably
doomed from the start.”
Tsvangirai’s comments followed
widespread media publicity that he
had paid US$36,000 bride price for
Locadia at her father’s plot in
Christon Bank. The “scandal”
threatened to overshadow the
national budget presented by
Finance Minister Tendai Biti in the
same week.
The media speculation sparked
by the marriage rituals conducted
by Tsvangirai’s emissaries at the
Tembo home attracted a spate of
PM Morgan Tsvangirai and his supposed wife, Locardia Tembo.
coverage in 32 stories, several of
them front-page headlines. Of these,
12 appeared in the official press,
while the remaining 20 featured in
the private media. The state
broadcaster, the Zimbabwe
Broadcasting Corporation largely
ignored the story altogether.
None of the media however,
quoted Tsvangirai, members of his
family or Locadia, confirming the
BAZ CALLS FOR LOCAL FREE-TO-AIR RADIO APPLICANTS
• From Page 1
cost is US$7 500.
The basic license fee is
US$50 000 plus one (1) percent of
annual gross turnover or deemed
turnover. The Broadcasting Fund is
0,5 percent of the audited gross
annual turnover or deemed payable
annually. The frequency fee is
US$30 per frequency per month.
The license is valid for 10 years.
Meanwhile, the “Content
Distribution Service” applies to
service provided by a content
distributor comprising content
aggregated within or
outside Zimbabwe that is made
available in Zimbabwe with or
without payment of a subscription
fee and the reception is through
satellite transmission.
The Content Distribution
Service application fee is US$2 500.
The basic license fee is US$100 000
per annum plus three (3) percent
monthly subscription turnover
or deemed turnover monthly. The
Broadcasting Fund 0,5 percent of
the audited gross annual turnover
or deemed payable annually. The
license will be valid for a period of
10 years.
The deadline for submission of
applications for both types of
licenses is January 31, 2012.
SW Radio Africa quoted
Givemore Chipere, communication
and advocacy officer for
Community Radio Harare
(CORAH) saying the steep
application fees being charged by
BAZ was a major obstacle for most
prospective broadcasters.
“But this new process will take
time, even a year, and its just a
gimmick to hoodwink SADC into
believing there are media reforms in
Zimbabwe when there is nothing,”
Chipere said.
In a comment in its weekly review
of the media, the Media Monitoring
Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ) accused
the ministry of Information and
Publicity, under whose ambit the
country’s media falls, of subverting
broadcasting reforms. Below is
MMPZ’s comment.
“Barely a week after the disputed
Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe
(BAZ) courted controversy by
awarding the country’s first ever freeto-air
independent national
commercial radio station licences to
two companies linked to ZANU PF,
the authority was making headlines
again with advertisements seeking
applications for more, free-to-air local
commercial radio broadcasters.
“BAZ, whose members were
unilaterally appointed by the ZANU
PF-controlled Ministry of Information
in 2009, flighted adverts in The Sunday
Mail inviting applications from
potential broadcasters to establish
private local radio stations, one in
each of 14 towns and cities around the
country.
Given BAZ’s irregular
appointment and clearly partisan
allocation of national broadcasting
space, this latest effort by the
authority to appear to be reforming
Zimbabwe’s restricted broadcasting
environment is sure to reignite
fierce debate over the unity
government’s desire to implement
genuine media reform as envisaged
under the Global Political
Agreement.
It is on record that, as a result of
its irregular appointment, the
Principals in the Government of
National Unity have agreed to
reconstitute the BAZ governing
board in terms of the Broadcasting
Services Act as amended in 2007.
“Until this is achieved, the
activities of the group of individuals
claiming to be representing BAZ
should be considered to be of no
legal force or effect and should be
dismissed as the actions of an
illegitimately appointed body.
Indeed, civil society, media
watchdogs and two of the three
parties in the unity government
have all dismissed BAZ’s allocation
of national broadcasting licences to
Zimpapers’ Talk Radio and AB
Communications’ ZiFM radio,
owned by former ZBC newscaster
Supa Mandiwanzira, as exactly
that.
But instead of paying attention
to the self-evidently necessary legal
requirement for it to be
reconstituted, BAZ is pressing
ahead with its media reform
window-dressing by seeking
applications for local private
broadcasters.
It is equally self-evident that for
BAZ to do so it must have the
support of the ministry of
Information and Publicity that
supervises its activities.
It can only be concluded that
BAZ’s present invitation for local
radio broadcasters constitutes a
deliberate, arrogant violation of the
unity accord under which a
genuinely representative and
independent broadcasting
authority would be appointed to
oversee genuine broadcasting
reforms that would give
Zimbabweans a diverse choice of
radio stations.
Clearly, the ZANU PFcontrolled
ministry of Information
– which has already admitted that
it has brought in eight radio
transmitters for broadcasting
purposes – believes it can get away
with subverting this process and
present it to SADC – as the brokers
of the GPA – as the media reforms
required under the agreement.
This brazen disregard for the
rule of law is nothing more than
fraud – and should be exposed as
such with immediate effect.
marriage. The breaking news reports
on the payment of lobola,
remarkably similar in detail across
the country’s four dailies (The Herald,
Chronicle, NewsDay and Daily News)
as if it had been revealed at a news
briefing, were mostly based on the
accounts of members of the Tembo
family and unidentified sources,
most of which were vehemently
refuted by the PM’s office.
One such claim was that
Tsvangirai was part of the delegation
that visited the Tembo family to pay
the bride price (The Herald, NewsDay
and Daily News).
Comments by the PM’s
spokesman, Luke Tamborinyoka,
denying reports that his boss had
married, appeared to expose poor
public relations skills by his
information department.
One such comment bordering on
the hysterical appeared in The Herald
where Tamborinyoka was quoted
saying: “If you can believe that my
brother, it is the same as believing
that former South African President
Nelson Mandela is now 12 years
old”.
NewsDay also carried a similar
retort from Tamborinyoka: “If you
believe that you may as well believe
that Jonathan Moyo is white”.
Despite the denials, The Herald
carried a follow-up story reporting
Locadia as having visited
Tsvangirai’s rural home where she
was introduced to the family and
performed traditional duties
expected from a new wife. This
Herald story included a picture of
Locadia sweeping in the presence of
Tsvangirai’s mother.
But it was only The Herald that
pointed out that Tsvangirai’s
statement did not explicitly clear up
the essential mystery of whether he
did actually marry Locadia under
customary law.
The two convoluted statements
from the PM’s office on the issue did
not help matters much, just as
journalists failed to pin either
Tsvangirai or his spokesman to
answer specific questions.

4 THE NEWS MONITOR November 30, 2011
SPOTLIGHT ON PIRF
POLICE SUMMON
MMPZ OFFICERS
Fadzai December
Molly Chimhanda
AT THE time of going to print, Media Monitoring
Project of Zimbabwe (MMPZ’s) advocacy officers,
Fadzai December and Molly Chimhanda had been
summoned by police in Gwanda for questioning in
connection with a Public Information Rights Forum
(PIRF) meeting they facilitated in the town on
November 24.
The police, who also summoned Gwanda PIRF
chairperson, Gilbert Mabusa, claimed that the trio
had convened a public meeting without notifying
them as demanded by POSA despite the fact that the
meeting was convened by the membership of MMPZ’s
PIRF committee Gwanda and was therefore not a
public meeting as contemplated under POSA.
The Gwanda police authorities also alleged that the
MMPZ advocacy officers had distributed illegal
material in the form of a DVD which the MMPZ
produced essentially calling upon the media to
contribute to peaceful elections through fair,
accurate and balanced coverage of election
campaigns by Zimbabwean political parties.
THE NEWS MONITOR CARTOON
Letters
Mahoso must be told: Zimbos
are not poodles
Editor—Former media hatchet man Tafataona Mahoso and his team at the Broadcast Authority
of Zimbabwe (BAZ) have sunk to the deepest and darkest enclave in the abyss of parochial
shame.
On November 24, 2011, they gave the country’s first two commercial private radio broadcast
licences to two institutions aligned with ZANU PF: Super Mandiwanzira’s AB Communications’
ZiFM and Zimpapers’ Talk Radio.
Mandiwanzira is a former Zimbabwe television reporter and former president
of indigenisation pressure group, the Affirmative Action Group (AAG) while Zimpapers is a Statecontrolled
public company.
The tragedy of this blatant act of partisan theatrics is aggravated by Mahoso’s cult worship
of President Robert Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF, masquerading as head of a board ostensibly
meant to protect and defend media freedom! He has a democratic right to be a member of an
ideologically bankrupt party, but must be stopped dead in his tracks in attempting to force-feed
its malignant institutions on progressive Zimbabweans.
In fact, BAZ have to be really narrow-minded to take citizens so much for granted that they
will accept Zimpapers / AB Communications outfits as ”alternative, independent media”.
By a stroke of fateful coincidence, in neighbouring South Africa a few days earlier, the African
National Congress (ANC) had itself engineered a systematic return of that country’s media to
the Inquisition. The so-called “Secrecy bill” meant to muzzle freedom of expression passed by
229 votes to 107 attracting criticism from the Nobel prize-winning trio of that country’s former
President and Robben Island prison’s long time inmate Nelson Mandela, author Nadine
Gordimer and human rights defender Bishop Desmond Tutu.
Opposition Democratic Alliance parliamentary whip Lindiwe Mazibuko threatened to seek
Constitutional Court recourse if the Bill was passed into law.
In Zimbabwe, ZANU PF treats court verdicts with contempt, yet if Mahoso insists on his
Kamikaze mission, enlightened media stakeholders will have no choice but lace the arteries of
BAZ with populist venom.
Zimbabweans have a right to protest, and vigorously. BAZ’s raison de etre is entrenching the
hegemony of ZANU PF on media as inherited from Ian Smith’s Rhodesia. Zimbabwe Newspapers
group is a ZANU PF loudhailer manipulated to exalt authoritarian dictatorship.
In no way can one argue for media diversity when President Mugabe and his cronies control
all local broadcast networks and the public press. What Zimbabweans are basically fighting for
is freedom of, not multiplicity in media.
Whereas the ANC wants to classify most government information as ‘secret’, ZANU PF is
intent on perpetuating totalitarian insanity during the 2012-13 plebiscite era. Therefore Mahoso’s
decision must be met with objective hostility to prove that Zimbabweans are not political poodles
rolling over for their bellies to be caressed.
BAZ is duly constituted under the Commissions of Inquiry Act and Section 10 (8) of the
Broadcasting Services Act. Coalition partners Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) are
disputing its legitimacy, thus BAZ has no moral standing to stifle media freedom through an
imbecilic and mythical ‘qualification and selection process’.
It would be a tragedy of incalculable proportion if truly independent broadcasting continues
to be excluded from Zimbabwe’s pre-election landscape.
ZANU PF, under a smokescreen of ‘indigenisation’, will camouflage its predatory gluttony
by using so-called ‘independent’ analysis on Zimpapers’ Talk Radio and ZiFM stations. The
externally-based Voice of the People, SW Radio and Studio 7 will be no match to locally modulated
ZANU PF propaganda.
Zimbabweans should take up the challenge of discrediting BAZ by making life intolerable
for Mahoso and his compliant board. Media Institute of Southern Africa, Media Alliance
Zimbabwe, Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe, Editors Forum, African Media Initiative,
Zimbabwe Union of Journalists, Advertising Agencies, human rights organizations,
media students at National University of Science and Technology, Midlands State University,
Zimbabwe Open University and University of Zimbabwe, Bulawayo and Harare Polytechnic
must unleash a relentless cyber revolution against this contagious monster called BAZ.
Our politics must, once and for all, be inoculated for immunity against ZANU PF’s irritatingly
arrogant pre-election partisan paranoia. – Rejoice Ngwenya
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