New Broadcasting Services law puts BAZ under Mnangagwa’s armpit

By Veritas Zimbabwe

In Bill Watch 3/2025 we analysed the Broadcasting Services Amendment Bill before it was considered by the National Assembly.

The Bill has now been passed by both Houses of Parliament with some amendments, and was published in the Gazette on the 23rd May as Act No. 2 of 2025.

Concerns have been expressed about several aspects of the Act, particularly:

· The effect of the Act on freedom of expression, and

· The provision requiring vehicle radios to be licensed.

We shall deal with these in turn. In what follows we shall refer to the Act – i.e. Act 2 of 2025 – as “the amending Act”.

Freedom of Expression

In Bill Watch 3/2025 we noted that what is now the amending Act would add a new objective for the Broadcasting Services Act, namely to develop freedom of expression by:

“providing … programming that reflects Zimbabwean attitudes, opinions, ideas, values and artistic creativity.”

As we said in that Bill Watch, this is not likely to enhance freedom of expression because reflecting existing Zimbabwean attitudes, opinions, ideas and values will not encourage the development of new ones and may shut out foreign opinions and ideas.

What it will do is to give effect to the Government’s new media policy, one of whose objectives is:

“to nurture and instil national values, ethics and citizenship, promoting a shared understanding of Zimbabwe’s history, vision, and developmental aspirations”.

Unfortunately “national values” in this context are likely to be distorted to mean the values of the ruling ZANU-PF party, so the Broadcasting Act will be used to ensure those values are disseminated to the exclusion of all else.

Anyone querying those values may be prosecuted under section 31 (“publishing or communicating false statements prejudicial to the State”) or section 33 (“undermining authority of or insulting President”) of the Criminal Law Code.

Membership of the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe

Up till now the Authority has consisted of 12 members appointed by the President, three of whom were appointed from a list submitted by the parliamentary Committee on Standing Rules and Orders.

The amending Act has reduced the Board to seven members, at least three of whom must be women, appointed by the President after consulting the Minister. The parliamentary committee has no role to play in the appointments.

This will bring the Authority more directly under the control of the President and, as we pointed out in our earlier Bill Watch, it is inconsistent with the African Charter on Broadcasting which, in article 2 of Part 1, states:

“All formal powers in the areas of broadcast and telecommunications regulation should be exercised by public authorities which are protected against interference, particularly of a political or economic nature, by, among other things, an appointments process for members which is open, transparent, involves the participation of civil society, and is not controlled by any particular political party.”

Again, freedom of expression will not be enhanced by this amendment – quite the opposite, in fact.

On a more positive note, the terms of service of members and staff of the Authority are now aligned to the Public Entities Corporate Governance Act, which means appointments of senior staff will be based on merit, renewal of their contracts will depend on their performance, and they will have to declare conflicts of interest.

Community broadcasting licences

Community broadcasting licences are issued to persons who wish to cater to the interests of particular communities. The amending Act alters the requirements for issuing these licences in order to ensure that members of the communities are involved in the licensees’ operations and are represented on the licensees’ governing bodies. This is eminently sensible. However, the Act does not clarify how far community licensees may venture into politics. It should have clarified the point because community licensees are prohibited from broadcasting “any political matter”, and “political matter” is defined broadly so as to cover almost any public issue of legitimate interest to local communities, whether it be repairing school buildings, improving roads, improving rural water supplies, etc.. Hence community broadcasters are reluctant to raise such issues for fear of breaching the conditions of their licences – which inhibits freedom of expression. An amendment restricting the words “any political matter” to party political matters would have been helpful,

Vehicle radio licences

Section 13 of the amending Act has caused concern by prohibiting the issue of vehicle licences and insurance to persons and companies that do not have “current radio licences” unless the owners of the vehicles have been exempted or the vehicles are shown not to be equipped with radios.

In fact, as we pointed out in our earlier Bill Watch, this provision does not change the law much if at all, because persons who own or drive vehicles equipped with radios are already supposed to have an appropriate licence for the radios [normally a “sound – employer owned vehicle licence” or a less expensive “sound – private vehicle licence”]. The new provision actually confuses things by allowing drivers and car owners to avoid taking out vehicle radio licences if they can show they have “current radio licences”, which could mean the much cheaper licences for radios in their urban or rural homes.

All the new provision really does is make it more difficult to evade the existing obligation for vehicle owners to take out licences if their vehicles are equipped with radios.

The National Competitiveness Commission has issued a perceptive analysis of this provision [link], in which it makes the following points:

· The fees for vehicle radio licences are so high that companies will have to pay US $200 a year per vehicle for the licences alone, which is a burden that will fall particularly heavily on companies owning fleets of vehicles.

· The high cost of complying with the law may be an incentive for companies to try to evade it through bribery and fraud; in other words, the new provision may lead to increased corruption, particularly if the exemption procedures are not transparent.

· Zimbabwe is the only country in SADC that imposes a licence fee for vehicle radios.

· Unpopular laws, like this one, that are seen as coercive are likely to deter investors, dampen the business climate and reduce trust in government.

· On a more positive note, there are about 1,2 million vehicles in Zimbabwe so the radio licence fees are likely to generate substantial revenue for the ZBC which, if properly utilised, may improve the quality of its programmes.

To ameliorate the adverse effects of the new provision, the Commission recommends that lower licence fees should be levied on companies that have fleets of vehicles, and that companies should be given tax credits or deductions for paying the fees. To build up trust, the Commission suggests, the ZBC should publish detailed reports on how it spends its licence revenues.

There is a further point which the Commission did not mention, probably because it falls outside the Commission’s mandate. It is this: compelling more people to pay higher fees to the ZBC makes it even more important for the ZBC to comply with section 61(2) of the Constitution, which requires all State-owned media to be impartial and to afford fair opportunity for the presentation of divergent views and dissenting opinions.

Conclusion

When we examined the Broadcasting Services Amendment Bill in our earlier bulletin (Bill Watch 3/2025) we were concerned about its impact on freedom of expression and media pluralism. Now that the Bill has been published as an Act, those concerns remain. Apart from the matters we have already mentioned in this bulletin:

· The Act does not clarify the role of the Zimbabwe Media Commission in relation to broadcasting. It should have given the Commission specific statutory powers enabling it to exercise its constitutional role of monitoring broadcasting in the public interest.

· No attempt is made to give Parliament power to monitor the activities of the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe

· A provision in the Bill, which would have allowed foreigners to hold up to 40 per cent of the shares in licensed broadcasters, was dropped during the Bill’s passage through Parliament. This deprives the broadcasting sector of much-needed foreign investment.

In sum, the Act does not demonstrate a commitment on the part of the State to promote a truly independent and diverse media environment in Zimbabwe.