Spotlight on proposed media reforms

Zimbabweans have been waiting with bated breath for the licensing of new newspapers, the re-licensing of the closed Associated Newspa-pers of Zimbabwe (ANZ) titles and the freeing of the airwaves.
With 29 years gone after gaining Independence from Britain in April 1980, there is still very little to suggest that President Robert Mugabe’s administration is serious about media pluralism.
Journalists continue to be harassed on trumped up charges. The ANZ has been going round in circles in its fight to get its daily and weekly publications back on the newsstand after they were shut down in September 2003 for violating the draconian Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA).
The Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe is still to license private players which can rival the state-run Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) nearly nine years after it was formed.
Reports about the emergence of two independent dailies, one of them owned by Modus Publications, publishers of The Financial Gazette, have been received as refreshing.
But the question still remains: Will these new entrants survive the existing harsh media laws?
The inclusive government of President Mugabe and his old foe, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is seen holding answers to this niggling question.
After its retreat in Victoria Falls last month, the all-inclusive government stated that media reform was one of its priorities, much to the delight of journalists and other media stakeholders.
A crucial but controversial all stakeholders’ conference has been scheduled for the resort town of Kariba next week as a precursor to the media reforms.
There is therefore renewed anticipation that new media players would come on stream as part of the media reforms in a country where ZBC enjoys unbridled monopoly in the electronic media while state-run dailies — The Herald and The Chronicle — dominate the print media.
Jameson Timba, the Deputy Minister of Media, Information and Publicity, told The Financial Gazette this week that the government was serious about media reform and had already outlined a roadmap to effect the necessary changes.
“The government is serious about media reform and you are aware of the media conference that we would be holding next week at which all the media stakeholders are invited,” said Timba.
“You are also aware that the inclusive government has identified media reform as a priority,” added Timba.
But not many people are convinced that the inclusive government which still has a catalogue of outstanding issues to iron out can walk the talk.
Critics believe President Mugabe might still want ZBC to maintain its monopoly ahead of the elections in 2011. They also doubt if the veteran nationalist can allow competition to overrun the struggling Zimbabwe Newspapers (1980) Limited (Zimpapers).
Events of the past few days seem to vindicate skeptics. The police manhunt for freelance photojournalist, Andreson Manyere, who was released on bail from Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison recently along with co-accused Movement for Democratic Change activists — Gandhi Mudzingwa and Kisimusi Dhlamini — shows that there hasn’t been any let up on government’s stranglehold on the media.
Manyere and his two other accused were granted bail by High Court Judge Charles Hungwe on April 9, and were released on April 17 as their lawyers were unaware of the fact that State Prose-cutor Chris Muta-ngadura had on April 14 lodged an appeal against the bail granted before Justice Bhunu.
The appeal im-mediately evoked Section 121 of the Criminal Proce-dure and Evidence Act, which sets out the procedure for an appeal against bail.
The application was granted the same day that Manyere was relea-sed from Chikurubi and automatically suspended the de-cision by Justice Hungwe to liberate the accused persons.
With the granting of the application, the police on April 20 immediately re-arrested Mudzingwa and Dhlamini who were admitted at the Avenues Clinic in Harare and are currently searching for Manyere whose whereabouts were this week still unknown.
Manyere went missing after he had taken his vehicle to a garage in Norton about 40 kilometres west of Harare on Dece-mber 13 2008 until his appearance in court on December 24 2008 together with Zimbabwe Peace Project director, Jestina Mukoko. He is charged under section 23 (1), (2) of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act, which criminalises acts of insurgence, banditry, sabotage or terrorism or alternatively Section 143 of the same Act, which relates to aggravating circumstances in relation to malicious damage to property.
Justice Yunis Omerjee dismissed his first application for bail before the High Court on February 19. Justice Omerjee subsequently granted him leave to apply to the Supreme Court.
Analysts say efforts to re-arrest Manyere underline government’s determination to continue with its old ways.
But as the world marks World Press Freedom Day on May 3 under the theme “Info-powered — the right to know, the right to speak,” what does the future hold for the media in Zimbabwe.
“There is nothing that has changed as far as the media environment is concerned since the political arrangement of the government of national unity,” said Okay Machisa, the national director of Zim-Rights.
“Journalists are still being harassed and the case in point is that of Manyere,” he said.
Rashweat Mukundu, the media specialist at the Media Institute for Southern Africa in Namibia, said the inclusive government should move with speed to repeal the controversial AIPPA and the Broadcasting Services Act.
“The inclusive government should convene discussion on new progressive media laws specially the need for access to information law, a democratic broadcasting law as well as support media activities such as a voluntary media council,” said Mukundu.
He said the unity government needed to enact a Zimbabwe Broadcasting Cor-poration Act, which separates the management of the national broadcaster from the President’s Office at Munhumutapa Building as well as disinvest from Zim-papers, which owns The Herald, The Chronicle and other publications.
Machisa concurred with Mukundu that the all-inclusive government should annul the current tough media and security laws if it was serious about media reform.
The Zim-Rights di-rector said it was shocking that a forthcoming media reform conference in Kariba on May 6-9 had “oppressors” of the media or media hangmen as resource persons and keynote speakers.
“The very people who have been at the forefront of abusing the media have been thrust into the frontline of media reform. We find this strange,” he said.
“We need a complete change in the State media.
“We need airwaves to be opened to more stakeholders.
“The repressive media laws should have gone at the inception of the inclusive government,” he added.
Phillip Pasirayi, the coordinator of the Centre for Community Development in Zim-babwe, said it would be folly to talk of media freedom in Zimbabwe when politicians continued threatening journalists.
Pasirayi was making reference to a statement in the government media in which Webster Shamu, the Minister of Media, Information and Publicity, said newspapers and journalists reporting on Cabinet meetings could face the full wrath of the law.
“We cannot talk of media freedom when media practitioners are still being threatened by politicians for writing Cabinet and the on-going farm invasions,” said Pasirayi.
“The unjust laws should be proscribed and government does not need money to do this. New media laws that are agreed to by all stakeholders should be put in place,” he said.
Pasirayi suggested that practical steps should be taken to re-assign some editors and retire others accused of deliberately using hate language.
Since the closure of The Daily News and its sister paper The Daily News on Sunday, The Tribune and the Weekly Times in 2003, nearly 500 journalists have been thrown out of employment.
The closure of the papers and state sanctioned retrenchments at ZBC resulted in the proliferation of Internet-based websites and pirate radio stations.