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Statement on the Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC) developments
MISA-Zimbabwe
May 24, 2010
Recent media
reports have indicated that the statutory Zimbabwe Media Commission
(ZMC) is finally holding its inaugural strategic and board meeting,
after allegations of haggling over logistical, financial and human
resource issues. The meeting which reportedly ends today, 26 May
2010, is intended to map out its work plan.
Although MISA-Zimbabwe
is unwavering in its demands and support for self-regulation, as
epitomised by the Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe (VMCZ), which
was established by civil society and the media fraternity in 2007,
it hopes the meeting will provide the Commission with an opportunity
to selfintrospect and address all the issues that are increasingly
eroding its credibility as a vehicle for media diversity and vindicating
doubts that it would usher media freedom.
This is because
while Zimbabweans were begrudgingly willing to give the ZMC a chance,
their hopes have been dashed by its entrenchment of the repressive
and intrusive media registration requirements contained under the
Access
to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) and its
reincarnation of the old Media and Information Commission (MIC)
blamed for the decimation of the private media.
Worse still,
the same personnel that oversaw the muzzling of the independent
media in Zimbabwe are still in charge of the administrative functions
of the Commission.
Although the
Commission has tried to justify this on the grounds that it is a
temporary arrangement and a permanent secretariat can only be appointed
after its strategic meeting, it boggles the mind why the Commission
found it prudent to hire controversial and discredited figures to
man its office in the meantime.
Except for the
application fee structure, the regulations remain the same with
the widely condemned stringent requirements that have been used
as instruments to stifle media diversity in the past.
The new regulations
issued in Statutory Instrument 91 of 2010 indicate that these were
made by the Minister of Media Information and Publicity when the
2008 amendments to AIPPA stripped the Minister of the powers to
make or issue regulations. These powers are now vested in the ZMC
with the minister's role being merely to give its approval. It is
therefore, not clear under which legal provision the minister issued
these regulations for a constitutional body, which is supposed to
make its own independent decisions.
It is in this
light that MISA-Zimbabwe calls on the Commission to inspire public
confidence in its work by:
- Taking a
strong position against the continued use of AIPPA as the legal
framework for regulating media activity
- Pushing
for the repeal of all laws that stifle the free flow of information
and impinge on Zimbabweans' full enjoyment of their constitutionally
guaranteed right to freedom of expression.
- By urgently
approving license applications before it.
- Revising
its registration requirements and crafting democratic ones that
are compatible with the best practice in media regulation stipulated
in regional and international instruments on freedom of expression.
- Recruiting
untainted individuals to run its secretariat.
- Hedging
itself against political interference from all political parties
and public officials.
Failure to do
so will not only grossly erode the credibility of the Commission
but also reinforce the view that it is just another bureaucratic
layer imposed above the old Media and Information Commission (MIC)
to perpetuate media repression. Loughty Dube MISA Zimbabwe Chairperson
Visit
the MISA-Zimbabwe fact
sheet
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