Zimbabwe Mainstream Media, Journalism in Context and in Trouble.

By Takura Zhangazha*

Zimbabwe’s media sector has not been in a good situation for a long while.  And I am not just referring to the country’s consistently precarious freedom of expression context. The challenges it faces are fundamentally about professionalism and sustainability.  Two elements that are symbiotic in keeping it viably afloat.  These can also be contradictory because either can cancel out the other.  That is to say, the sustainability of the media in Zimbabwe can be considered to be more reliant on its own unethical conduct in order to garner more readers, viewers, listeners based on preferential journalism.  The latter being journalism that is biased, non-factual and in keeping with what its authors deem to be what a paying public prefers. 

It sort of fits into what I consider the rather awkward adage of ‘news is what sells’.  Particularly for mainstream print and broadcast media globally and in Zimbabwe. 

The particular uniqueness of Zimbabwe’s media situation is as interesting as it is now worrying.   In at least five respects. Namely, ideological preferences, political bias, the profit motive, caution about crossing government’s media policies and the interface between old and new tech motivated media platforms.

I will address each of these elements separately in this brief write up.

But it also remains important to mention from the get-go that Zimbabwean journalists are also caught up in this conundrum as it affects their own welfare and/or unionism.  Even where and when they seek to be as professional and ethical as possible, they are beholden to these aspects I have mentioned above and will explain below.

To initially understand Zimbabwean media’s current situation requires understanding its ideological positioning. Before we even talk of assumptions and realities of political bias.  Our mainstream media is cut from a very similar ideological cloth.  It is essentially, in the contemporary, a liberal media ideologically.  This is largely by way of the legacy of colonialism and our media training institutions. Particularly where and when it covers issues relating to the national political economy and private capital. Even where we try and consider its ideological approach in the first ten years of national independence, it remained enamored to a relatively liberal understanding of Zimbabwean realities.

I know that this is a disputable point but our media and our journalism were generally designed in the framework of colonial legacy journalism. Hence by the time the Nigerian government bought, on our behalf, Argus Publications (now Zimpapers) the tradition of what journalism can be had already been ‘liberally’ set. Despite our attempts at socialism.

Structurally however Zimbabwe’s media was designed to be pro-capital as a legacy of Rhodesian settler colonial hegemony.  Both in its state owned or private forms. Hence even with the then Information and Media Panel of Inquiry (IMPI) one of its primary recommendations was that of considering the ‘media as a business’.  We may never have gotten out of that mindset, hence our current mainstream media reflects more the views of political and private capital powers that obtain.  It is not valued as much as a purveyor of freedom of expression in the public interest than it would be considered for its representation of elitist interests.

This brings me to the second element of ‘political partisanship’ in our contemporary mainstream media.  As highlighted earlier this partisanship or bias in our media is linked to elements of its sustainability.  Taking specific sides is not as ideological or as value driven as it would be in say for example the global north’s media.  Here it is almost as though bias and a lack of media ethics is what leads to a sustainable mainstream media based on target audiences which include those in power or those in opposition politics and their supporters.

And even more significantly those that create advertising or other revenue for the mainstream media. Such a situation enables journalism that is unprofessional as it relates to what is required for the mainstream media outlet to either make money or be accepted as credible in the eyes of its target audience.  We can argue that this is typical of all media but in our Zimbabwean context its exaggeration is that it is considered the norm and not the exception.

The third element is that of the assumption of the profit motive of the media.  It tallies closely with the discussion on the matter of political bias.  Media owners are largely responsible for putting pressure on senior level journalists (editors in particular) to function like chief executive officers.  At the expense of their journalistic roles.  And all at the same time thinking that journalism in and of itself can only be successful if it ratchets up sales via increased eyes and ears. In this sense, the ‘media as a business’ model falls short of expanding free expression and public interest access to information.  This approach commodifies not only journalism but also free expression.  Though the media owners have limited interest in this as they crunch dwindling profit numbers. 

The fourth element is that of how the mainstream media remains wary of our national government’s media laws.  And how they curtail free and independent journalism.  While these laws have been undergoing reforms that have been cautiously welcomed by stakeholders, the government’s approach to media freedom has also led to skepticism, anger and mistrust.  It has also had the end effect of creating a very public perception that the private media is always correct when reporting on government transgressions. Especially because of the continued arrest and harassment of journalists that are either just doing their jobs or perceived as being pro-opposition.

Finally, mainstream media has a dilemma with social media because of the disruption of its long obtaining ‘news cycle’.  To the extent that no one can really say which leads the other at the moment.   From social media influencers through to bloggers/vloggers the mainstream media I Zimbabwe appears to be playing catch-up most of the times. It is a development that has opened up the journalism profession to that perennial question, “Who or what is a journalist?” 

In essence however this question is really about how does the Zimbabwean public value journalism.  Both in its more traditional or newer formats. I do not think the profession is as valued anymore largely due to the fact of technology enabling almost anyone with mobile telephony and access to social media the capacity to tell their own version of a news event.  But more significantly because freedom of expression is now highly individualized in tandem with its individualization. 

I do not know if Zimbabwean journalism is in need of a rescue. Only practicing journalists and media owners, organisations can respond to this matter.  What I do know is that it is in trouble and that as elsewhere globally, it is losing ground on the public interest value of free expression as a fundamental democratic right.

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)                              

 

Questioning the Commodification of Free Expression in Zimbabwe

By Takura Zhangazha*

There are many issues about our general and specific political conversations that require flagging out in Zimbabwe.  Not only as they relate to our hard held opinions but more significantly our political consciousness.  While this may appear to be abstract, we probably need to understand the necessity of getting ourselves as Zimbabweans to be a bit more frank with each other.  Particularly about what we consider to be progressive politics and its full import on our society. 

I am going to make an attempt at this. 

In the first place what I have noticed is that there is indeed a political economy to our opinions or our right to freely express ourselves. The foundation of this is our long drawn historical assumptions of what it means to be successful in life.  Both by way of education and materialist accomplishments.  Key questions that Zimbabwean society asks of us, including the Church, are how educated are you?  What degrees do you have (including if you have a PhD), what car do you drive, do you have urban property (stand), and where do you work? 

This is a general global trend in capitalist/neoliberal societies.  We may not quite be such a society in the strict sense of the term our national mindsets appear set on it.  Especially based on our desires for departure to the global north. An issue I will come back to later. 

What has been more interesting is the fact of the carry over habits of assumptions of what it means to be successful in Zimbabwe.  It’s a very complex argument but the general impression is a given with how we relate to each other at work, in churches, families, schools, rural associations and also political parties. 

So when we express our political or even other opinions we are, by default, mindful of this political and economic framework of consciousness.  We quite literally reflect it more than it does our own perception of who we are and who we can be.  Beyond ourselves and as we pass it on to our children. 

Our opinions appear to have become rigid beliefs.  Especially where they concern politics.  It is as expected but it also has specific queries that would accompany understanding our realities.

Almost as though if someone says in your face that ‘Jesus Saves’, you should be allowed to ask a question as to. How does he save?” And proceed as you consciously desire.  But this is not the case in contemporary Zimbabwe. 

We have been made by many to believe that free expression is dogmatic and partisan.  That even our mainstream media can only be found on one side or the other of our political divide and therefore are only worth listening/reading to where and when they reconfirm our own perceptions for what we may already have decided we should think. 

The title of this blog is however more interesting. The political economy of free expression in Zimbabwe reflects the fact of the material and political desires that a majority of us have. Both in the urban and rural areas.  That is, to own a car, house and to send our children to the best private schools/ universities.  In order to again reap the material wealth of our efforts.  From the children. 

The only catch with this is that we assume we are now in control of our opinions via social media.  Yet is generally established that the latter pushes us in specific directions about how we should think about ourselves and our opinions.  It reconfirms, in general, an assumption that our individual opinions matter. Collectively.  And therefore because of the combination of the individual opinions in to a numerical collective we are therefore correct in the same said opinion.  Even though we do not own any of the social media platforms that we belong to.  They are owned by individuals who determine, via algorithms what can be shared and posted on them. This includes our angst at local  mobile telephony and internet service providers when their services break down,

So the political economy of free expression in Zimbabwe is probably three fold.  It begins with the actual political economy which is neoliberal (an assumption that the free market will solve all of our problems).  And it is then followed by a desire for individual recognition for your opinion as it fits the latter narrative and sadly a simultaneous recognition from the global north. Not only for our social media influencers but also for our mainstream media.   Thirdly, it combines the ideological with the emotional. Your feelings are reconfirmed with your desires. What you believe, even without facts, is what obtains. And it is what you go with.  The only key difference is that at the moment in Zimbabwe, there is no drastic motivation to act on it.

This has been a relatively complicated blog. What appears to be real is that free expression is increasingly becoming a commodity in Zimbabwe.   Both by way of who owns the platforms you use to express yourself and the ideological parameters you chose to do so.

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)        

 

 

 

A Changing Pan Africanism: A Need to Return to the Source.

By Takura Zhangazha*

The current chairperson of the African Union (AU) and president of Senegal, Macky Sall recently met with Russian president Vladimir Putin in the former capacity.   In representing the African continent, not much was reported on the geo-political implications of such a meeting save for stories claiming that agricultural products that Africa heavily relies on from Ukraine and Russia are still able to reach our African shores.  For any discerning mind there was probably more to the meeting than what was reported.  Hence on social media there were memes on how close Sall was to Putin as compared to for example the president of France, Emmanuel Macron.  A meme in which one can assume a deliberate ploy by Putin to demonstrate that at this time of the Russia- Ukraine war he intended to demonstrate greater Russian proximity to Africa in international relations.  Not only based on the number of United Nations (UN) votes from African countries (Zimbabwe included) that refused to suspend Russia from the  UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC)   

Be that as it may, Africa’s response to the Russia-Ukraine conflict has been interesting to observe and reminiscent of a Pan Africanism of yesteryear to reflect upon.  

And it is an historical given that a majority of African states were closer to Russia during their anti-colonial struggle than they were to what we then referred to as the global West.  While mired in the global politics of the Cold War, a majority of African countries in all of its regions (East, North, West and Southern) did have greater solidarity with the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).  Even until the latter collapsed in 1989. 

But before that as far back as the 1960s, the inimitable Ghanaian and African hero Kwame Nkrumah had sort of set the framework for Africa’s interaction with the rest of the world with his now famous dictum, and I am paraphrasing here, “We face neither east or west.  But we face forward.”  This was in relation to the fact that Africa would undertake a Pan Africanism that related to its intention to play an even hand with global superpowers in its particular interests.  Especially where it concerned the outstanding task of liberation from colonialism but also the economic development of already independent states on the continent. 

We also had a phase post the Cold War and its global international residues that our post-apartheid era African leaders decided that it would be important to rename and reframe the then Organization of African Unity (OAU) to the AU which obtains today.   The main thinking was that we were almost done with the primary purpose of the OAU barring the Saharawi Republic of the liberation f the African continent from colonialism. 

We moulded the AU along the lines of the European Union (EU) yet the two organisation’s geneses are historically incompatible.   The former having been formed for liberation, the latter for primarily expanding economic cooperation between European states and eventually coagulating that into liberalism beyond economics. 

I remember the big academic and continental debates about what we then referred to as the African Renaissance with a new crop of intellectual leaders.  These included for example the still inimitable Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, the long duree Olusegun Obasanjo, the now late Abdel Aziz Bouteflika and the one who eventually hosted the AU monument in Senegal, Abdoulaye Wade. 

The thing we did not to fully comprehend at that time and probably now is that taking charge of what we would call our own destiny as Africans is as historical as it is grounded in catching up with the rest of the world.   A process which is historically ongoing as opposed to being considered in phases as we did when we formed the African Union. Noble as it was.   And I do not make this point lightly. 

Where the AU is now setting us on course for Agenda 2063 and insisting for example on what it calls a ‘youth dividend’ in terms of our continental demographic, we are saddled with the sad reality that this is no longer our own organic Pan African narrative.  We regrettably may be returning to being slaves of a ‘free’ market that commodifies us again. 

We need to insist we are not a market for global neoliberalism.  Neither should our Pan Africanism, or what remains of it gladly be open sesame to the dictates of global capital.  

Where we return to the origins of our initial Pan Africanism ideologically and in relation to the Cabralist aspirations of our people, we become a better continent. Based on our Pan African liberatory history and an understanding of the promise of the future.  

But back to the meeting between Sall and Putin.  Whatever motivated it and how Africa places or argues for itself within the ambit of this increasingly globalized conflict and its potentially devastating impact, we need to revive our organic Pan Africanism.  As taught by Nkrumah, Nyerere, Cabral, Fanon, Mbeki and others.  There has never been a better time to remember those famous words of Nkrumah, “Africa Must Unite!”

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com) 

 

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“We are What We Are Not!” The Ironies of Zimbabwe’s Political Economy.

By Takura Zhangazha*

So back in my youthful days I used to read Wole Soyinka.  Particularly the biography that was titled ‘The Man Died’. 

Reading such a book was as fashionable as it did not get you girls.  I remember telling an amazing heart crush female cde that I had read such a book and she was completely blank.  With the benefit of hindsight I should never have mentioned it.  That was not how courtship was done.  Unless one wanted to do the impressionability of TK Tsodzo’s “Pafunge” satirical narrative on love and its meaning.   Or even Shimmer Chinodya’s ‘Harvest of Thorns’ character who wrote one of Zimbabwe’s most humorous love letters.  Almost as though to confirm how love between a man and a woman was arrived at in courtship. 

It appears to be as abstract as it remains a reality based question.  In post Covid 19, does ‘love’ mean the same?   In our African contexts? And no, this is not a self-righteousness individual question.  But one that asks of us “ Are we still the same people. Post Covid19?”

The easy answer is ‘yes’. Including a perspective that we can easily revert to what obtained.  With or without relatives that we lost due to the Covi19 pandemic.

This is something that would be fair and if only memories did not come back to haunt us.  We died and many of us almost died as Africans.  That it spoke of us who survived Corona does not mean we remember it as an integral part of our lives.  Instead we choose to forget.  Because of our own personal helplessness. And our continued admiration of the global north that reflects more an inferiority complex than it does an existential reality.

But essentially this is who we are.  We consider ourselves as lesser people in a desire for perpetually inferiority motivated recognition from elsewhere. 

With our current government, we know it has the challenge of confronting itself in the mirror.  A task that it ambiguously does and contradicts itself on social media.

One of Dambudzo Marechera’s most contradictory statements based on one of his underrated lines  his novella “Black Insider”is, “We are what we are not.  That is the paradox of Fiction.”

There are many ways to translate or view this. We either believe our own lies or we believe in ourselves. 

Its as simple as that.  Unfortunately a majority of us have chosen to believe in our own lies.  To ourselves.  In the images and expectation or the other.  It sort of works but it again unfortunately remains hollow. 

But I sort of get it.  A majority of urban Zimbabweans live almost as an urban performance gallery.  Its as tiring as it is abstract.  A recognition that means no more no less beyond the ghetto gate and street you grew up in.  Almost like an escapism that you have to prove eventually worked. Mainly because you left for the Diaspora or Diaspimbi. And there is no way you should allow anyone back home to consider you a failure.   If they would even consider it, it would remain better never to  return home altogether.     

 

But let us think about it. We live and we die.  We try to make the most of our existence as given by societal norms.  But we have no option but to believe in an organic progressive future. And to be stubborn about it. 

It does not matter that you were founder of one party or the other.  We can only ask you what do you believe in? And what does your belief mean for the rest of us.

Because we understand the passage of time. That things at some point will never be the same. And it is this passage of rime that makes remember who we are and who we can be.

That’s why I initially quoted from Soyinka’s “The Man Died”. Because African intellectualism died.  Wjhat happens next I do not know. But I am not tired. We suffer, we continue.

By Takura Zhangazha (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)*