Zim: Pressure mounts for new broadcasters

The ZMC registered four new daily dailies - The Daily News, NewsDay, The Mail and The Daily Gazette. The move is expected to break the state monopoly on the daily newspaper market, which has been dominated by the state-owned The Herald and The Chronicle newspapers.

Although the ZMC is also responsible for the registration of all media, including broadcast, it is however the responsibility of the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe (BAZ) to allocate any aspiring broadcasters wavebands on which to broadcast.

BAZ board dispute

But BAZ is embroiled in controversy over the appointment of its current board last October, which has done nothing to move the process of opening up the country's broadcasting space.

A dispute over the BAZ board, which Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said had been irregularly appointed by ZANU PF's Information Minister Webster Shamu, is still to be resolved.

The Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe (MMPZ), run by veteran editor Andrew Moyse, said in a public note: "Without some resolution to this stalemate, there will be no new local broadcasters and Zimbabweans, especially those beyond the limited urban reach of the press, will still need to tune to foreign-based Zimbabwean stations broadcasting into the country to escape (state-owned) ZBC's turgid programming."

The MMPZ said it was constructive for the ZMC and the inclusive government to clarify the situation over new broadcasters without delay.