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Stringent regulations and exorbitant licensing fees
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2004-36
Monday September 6^th – Sunday September 12^th 2004

THE media once again short-changed their audiences by failing to fully analyse bad laws that have negatively affected their operations thereby compromising the quality of information accessible to Zimbabweans. This was demonstrated by their failure to unravel the motives behind the gazetting of stringent regulations and exorbitant fees governing the setting up of broadcasting services in the country.

The Herald (6/9), ZTV (6/9, 8pm) and Power FM (7/9, 6am) merely reported that government had, through the Broadcasting Services (Licensing and Content) Regulations 2004, set licence fees for a 10-year free-to-air national commercial radio at $672 million. In addition, the licence holder would pay $800,000 per frequency per month. The licence fee of a free-to-air national commercial television station would be $840 million. Such a broadcaster would also pay a frequency fee of $1,6 million per month. Both broadcasters are required to pay non-refundable application fees of $5 million and annually contribute 0,5 percent of their audited gross turnover to the broadcasting fund.

The Herald also reported that community broadcasters would have to pay a licence fee of $414 million. However, this figure differed from the one published in government’s Statutory Instrument 185 of 2004, which put the amount at $14 million.

Typically, the government media simply announced the fees without subjecting them to scrutiny or explanation. As a result any contextual debate on the implications of this latest development in the so-called "liberalisation of the airwaves" was glaringly absent in these media.

Only Studio 7 (8/9) followed up the matter and quoted a MISA official and an aspiring broadcaster describing the fees as "excessive" and meant to "perpetuate a broadcasting monopoly" of ZBC. But like the government media, the station confined itself to the fees aspect of the matter and failed to examine the authorities’ regulations on programming. For example, it did not analyse the requirement that the broadcasters’ programming must "uphold national sovereignty, national unity, national interest, national security and Zimbabwe’s economic interests" and "project Zimbabwean national values and national points of view". Notably, the authorities have, in the past, defined such issues along ZANU PF lines.

But while the authorities appeared to be hindering the development of private media through stringent laws and regulations, it emerged on ZTV (6/9, 8pm), The Herald (7/9) and Studio 7 (8/9) that the government broadcaster and its Namibian counterpart had signed an agreement to establish a joint 24-hour satellite news channel to be called Africa World. This follows yet another joint media venture between the government-controlled Zimpapers and the Namibian New Era that saw the birth of a new regional weekly newspaper, The Southern Times.

Although the establishment of such media is not necessarily a regressive development, it is the involvement of government, whose obsession with controlling the media is well documented, that raises fears these media could join the list of existing government propaganda outlets. As Namibian Information Minister Nangolo Mbumba cautioned at the launch of The Southern Times, it is important that government allows these media to operate freely if they are to be considered credible sources of information.

Said Mbumba: "The mass media constitute one of the pillars of democracy… They are also watchdogs and rely on uncovering errors and wrongdoings by those in authority… However, remember the success of newspapers, radio and TV stations in spurring development depends on their independence…" (The Herald, 4/9).

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