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Media Commission interviews
Munyaradzi Bwanya
August 15, 2009

There has been extensive media coverage by the State system on the issue of conduct and results of the Media Commission interviews at Parliament earlier this week. One wonders if the public is so gullible as to believe the Herald or ZTV versions of anything apart form soccer results. Right minded Zimbabweans have their curiosity stimulated each time state media tries to force down their throats a certain point of view.

The facts

Standing Orders and Rules Committee is the administrative authority of Parliament in which the three political parties are represented. The composition of the SORC is reflective of the composition of Parliament. The ruling MDC and opposition ZANU PF have almost the same numbers of representatives. The current composition was agreed in the GPA and is a departure from the usual one. The provision constituting the current SORC forms part of the temporary amendments to the constitution and falls away at the end of the lifespan of the inclusive government. Its main function is to run Parliament as a Board of Directors would do a private company. What this generally means is that decisions are made by consensus or by majority vote. Given that, the minority, it is not likely to get its way with appointments to senior parliament jobs or other posts.

The Zimbabwe Media Commission was the smallest in terms of the number of applicants, it had around eighty and only 28 were short listed. The Commission has a minimum membership of 12 and SORC had settled for that minimum. A report was presented to the SORC indicating that a panel of experts was selected to avoid the cumbersome job task of having politicians do the interviews and adjudicating that report was accepted without objection. The task of the Panel was to, shortlist the applicants, craft the questions and withhold them from the politicians until just before the interviews. It was resolved that all applicants would be asked only the same questions without the option of follow up questions as it would be a departure from the set questions. It was agreed that the public would be invited only as observers and that the candidates would be ranked thereafter according to performance as number 1 to 28 (one candidate was absent on the day of the interviews, therefore 27)

What transpired?

On the morning of the interviews, the secretariat having organized all necessities promptly for the 9am interviews to start at 9am sharp, some senior ZANU PF members showed up and questioned the integrity of the panel of experts as if they were not represented in the SORC. The ploy, which succeeded was to become part of the adjudicating panel in order to determine who would land the posts. Eventually, it was agreed that for progress sake, the politicians would have a parallel grading process. This meant that each candidate was interviewed once but graded under two separate processes. The interviews then commenced.

The interviews

The caliber of applicants was generally high and public opinion was not far from the actual results. Lawyer/journalist Chris Mhike was outstanding even some of the ZANU PF judges ranked him highly. Several others did very well. There was some comic relief in the public gallery when Dr Chivaura, for some odd reason decided to play the language card to sway the judges by addressing them in Shona, it failed dismally. The judges politely asked him to use English instead. By far the most dismal performance was from the unpopular Dr Tafataona Mahoso, who, in all frankness chose not to answer the questions put to him at all. Instead, he chose to arrogantly tell the panel what he thought they should know about him. The gentleman seated next to me could not resist whispering "off topic" a popular term used mainly by teachers such as Mahoso himself to mean irrelevant or more politely to mean that the answer is wrong or divorced from the question.

Adjudication

It is common cause that with interviews, the candidate who answers the questions best to the satisfaction of the judges, normally gets the job. As for the candidates who attempt to answer but do so incorrectly, their fate is obvious. Very little is known on how to handle a candidate who decides not to answer the questions asked at all.

The parallel processes produced almost entirely similar results. Of the panel-s first 12 "successful applicants" almost 10 were also part of the first 12 on the list of politicians. There was a variation of about 3 or 4 names as well as the placing of candidates on either list. This means the politicians agreed with the panel as far as at least 9 of their choices were similar. Funny enough, the bottom 5 on their list had the same names, this pointing to the inescapable conclusion that there was agreement as to which candidates performed the worst. Surprisingly a Dr so and so came last on one list and 22nd on the other, it reminded me of the famous Learnmore Jongwe statement on a TV debate to the effect that if this was the caliber of DRs we had in the country then we were doomed. Remember that these rankings were done separately. The question is whether the names of the failing candidates should be forwarded to the President as eligible for appointment to the Commission.

It seems the right thing to do for the SORC is to submit the names of the candidates on whom both the ranking processes agreed as being irrefutably eligible. To discard the whole bottom 10 names as they failed the interviews and then submit the names of those falling within the grey zone as possible appointees. The purpose of the interviews would have been achieved as opposed to having the failed candidates being treated the same as those that passed. To do otherwise would be to say the President can unilaterally appoint anyone short listed which is exactly the mischief meant to be addressed by having interviews.

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