I had the opportunity to shadow the parliamentary public hearings on the Broadcasting Services Act (BSA) Amendment Bill, which commenced in Harare on the 16th of December 2024 and took a whirlwind tour around the country's provinces before concluding in Kwekwe on December 21.
The BSA, which is the law that regulates the country's broadcasting services is earmarked to be changed mainly to align the regulatory framework with the constitution and to modernise the law in light of technological advancements.
There are other secondary objectives to the intentions to amend the law - that of aligning the BSA with the Public Entities Corporate Governance Act and to enforce new measures in the license fees collection by the state broadcaster, the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC).
Should Parliament pass this Bill into law, it will make it mandatory for motorists to pay for the national broadcaster license fees prior obtaining vehicle insurance and the Zimbabwe National Road Administration (Zinara) license fees.
The latter objective on the state broadcaster was by far the dominant narrative during the parliamentary public hearings with a fair majority of citizen participants in support of the government proposal of this mandatory tax for motorists.
Whether these participants were expressing views lobbied for by the sponsors of the Bill or the ruling party is neither here nor there.
Holding a position and advocating for the position to be adopted is a democratic right.
As a media development practitioner myself and press freedom advocate, I also hold and do advance for views that the network of organisations that employ me hold.
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And together with my colleagues and those whom we represent - mainly professional media practitioners and defenders of press freedom - lobby citizens to support these positions.
Holding alternative views - including but not limited to those that the government holds should never be demonized.
Neither does it make anyone an agent of regime change or other such labels - with the government and ruling party favourite being that of calling alternative views "western sponsored" and those that advance them "agents of imperialism".
It was no surprise that at one of the public hearings, a citizen participant labelled concerns held by another on why citizens should pay license fees for a partisan broadcaster as noted in the Southern Africa Development Community Election Observer Mission (Sadc EOM) as a view driven by "western puppets".
But I digress. Every person's view matters and all citizens that participated in these hearings enjoyed parliamentary privileges to expression without fear of reprisals.
What concerned me the most was how the dominant discourse in the much awaited and long advanced media reforms, particularly in broadcasting was an issue of license fees.
Yes, the Media Alliance of Zimbabwe (MAZ), a network of journalistic professional associations and media support organizations, which include the Media Institute of Southern Africa (Misa Zimbabwe) and the Zimbabwe Association of Community Radio Stations (Zacras) and others with vested interest in changes to the broadcasting regulatory framework made broader submissions, which were however subsumed by discussions on the ZBC license fees.
One hopes that the legislators in the portfolio committee on Information Media and Broadcasting Services, who will lead the debates and presentation of the report in parliament will not lose the baby with the bath water to negate submissions outside the ZBC.
Submissions on parliamentary oversight in the appointment of the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabe board members as one of the measures of ensuring the authority's independence, public participation in the licensing process, transparency in transfer of licences and broadly in the frequency allotment and numbers of licenses to be issued per year should also be central in the debates.
Zimbabwe is moving from plurality in broadcasting services to diversity and this law should constrain multiple ownership of licenses for citizens to enjoy diversity rather than more of the same.
Transitional mechanisms towards convergence should be a key discussion point in reforming this law for Zimbabwe to move with the times.
All these issues are important and must also inform the report of parliamentary public hearings and indeed the committee stage as submitted.
On ZBC, the debate must not necessarily be about citizens refusing to fund the national broadcaster.
It is on whether the ZBC is indeed public.
Public in how it is governed and the accountability measures thereof.
That is before we even discuss whether the content is reflective of that public and how the ZBC is diverse on all accounts.
In any event, audit reports are often critical of the state broadcaster's governance structures.
The public isn't involved in the budgeting process of the ZBC - unlike all state institutions and neither citizens nor the parliament debate the national broadcaster's allocation of resources raised by and through them.
The closest the public gets this opportunity is when parliament summons the minister or members of the executive and sometimes the ZBC itself.
But that counts for little as the legislature's input is subsumed and only advisory and or to compel measures post the fact - for example to investigate cases of corruption or resources misappropriation.
The long and short of this is that the public pays for a tax they don't have a say on either through representation or an opportunity for participation.
In any event, through the commercialization law, the ZBC is allowed to compete for advertisers with independent broadcasting houses.
With the intention of this law being for the state broadcaster not to burden the national budget and public funds raised through license fees but to operate more effectively.
The very same citizens, this time in the form of motorists have adopted the debts by the state broadcaster and the relationship between the public and their national broadcaster is now becoming parasitic.
So even if we are to force motorists to comply with the law, as already it is law that they should pay - only that now they can't insure their vehicles before these fees - are we still in the spirit of promoting diversity in broadcasting as envisaged by the constitution?
By all means, the public broadcaster is the very fabric and identity of any country and should be protected and supported but what more support can we afford having adopted debt, allowed commercialization and still support through the fiscus?
Are we not breeding a cry baby of a broadcaster whose default approach is to milk citizens in taxes and fiscal support but with little effort to resonate with audiences to persuade them to pay or attract advertisers that the state long allowed them to?
What other mechanisms are going to be implemented to force citizens to meet the costs of the state broadcaster?
Attaching ZBC fees to electricity? To charge a ZBC fee on cellphones?
The options to enforce ZBC license fees in the similar manner targeting motorists are plenty but these won't respond to the imperative need for a public broadcaster that resonates with the audience it serves and general citizenry.
The answer from how I view it is simple - reform the ZBC and citizens will pay.
*Nigel Nyamutumbu is a media development practitioner serving as the coordinator of a network of journalistic professional associations and media support organizations the Media Alliance of Zimbabwe (MAZ). He can be contacted on njnya2@gmail.com or +263 772 501 557
