Zimbabwe only country without community radio stations

By Staff Reporter
for ZimEye.org

July 2, 2010

Harare(ZimEye)-PANOS Southern Africa  is going to engage the inclusive government and push it to open up the  air  waves which it say is critical for  national development, and present media  research document it carried out through the region which Zimbabwe should adopt if  it wants to promote broadcasting.

Zimbabwe has one state controlled broadcaster,the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC), which has four radio stations and two television channels.

In an  interview in Harare on the sidelines of a  media workshop it held PANOS Southern Africa Executive Director  Parkie Mbozi said it was disturbing to note that Zimbabwe  is the only country  which  has  no  community radio stations.

He said he was going to engage the government through relevant authorities and find out its position towards the issue of opening up the airwaves.

"Plans are underway to engage the Zimbabwean government through the Zimbabwean Broadcasting Authority and the Zimbabwe Media Commission and political parties concerned and find out what is happening in as far as the opening up of the airwaves is concerned.

"The encouraging development for  us as an organization that support media development is  that  there are now  structures that we  can deal with to promote media  plurality and  our  intention is  to very soon engage those  structures and present  findings  from the research we did on the state  of the media in Southern Africa.

"The  study compares  Zimbabwe  with other Southern African countries and its (Zimbabwe)the only country in the region which does not  have community  radio stations," he said.

Mbozi said given the  chance he was  going to share  lessons on democratic  media laws  which prevail in other countries, that  have made  it  possible  for community radio stations  which cater  for the marginalized  communities to  flourish.

One  and half years have passed since the formation of the inclusive government and no attempt has been done to open up the media waves. The only move  was that  of the creation of the Zimbabwe  Media Commission which is responsible  for licensing new  print  media players.

ZMC is still  operating  under the repressive media   Access to Information and Protection of  Privacy Act.(ZimEye, Zimbabwe).

Source: Zimbabwe only country without community radio stations « National « -ZimEye- http://bit.ly/br6dlk

(Yimber Gaviria, Colombia) 4 Julio 2010