ZNBC’s Coverage of Bizwel Mutale Exemplifies Abuse of Public Resources

By Dr Parkie Mbozi

On 10th OCTOBER, 2020 and repeated at 05:00 hrs on 11th October, the Zambia Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) broadcasted an exclusive 10-minute documentary featuring one Bizwell Mutale, a member of the Patriotic Front (PF) mobilisation committee, during his recent mpbilisation tour of the Southern Province. The documentary featured on the Saturday Tonga Programme titled Kantuumya Kamunsabata, presented by Wellingtons Mooyo and Charles Mucholo.

The close to one-hour Kantuumya Kamunsabata programme features news and development programmes in Tonga. On the material day it featured three programmes: 1. School feeding programme in Mumbwa, early child learning and an agri-business programme. Within the course of the same week Mutale was reported by the same ZNBC making partisan campaign and mobilization statements from Livingstone and later in Dundumwezi and I guess a few other places. This means he had an entire crew of TV and radio staff from ZNBC to himself for the whole period.

You will be excused to ask who Bizwell Mutale is. The fact that many of you don’t even know him is in itself part of the problem. It justifies my argument in this article that we have a case of a purely private citizen literary abusing public (our) resource, the ZNBC and its staff, staff time and equipment for a private (PF party) affair. The brief I know about Mutale is that he hails from the Southern Province. Until 28th July 2019, Mutale was a member of the UPND South Africa branch. He defected to the PF soon after the departure of Geoffrey Bwalya Mwamba (GBM) from the party. Like GBM, Mutale was immediately coopted into PF’s mobilization committee. He seems to be specifically assigned to mobilise PF and to dismantle the UPND in the Southern province.

Look, who Mutale is and what sort of businesses he was involved in down South is not your and my business. That’s his personal life. What is and should be your and my business is what he does with ZNBC, our heritage institution. Mutale is not a government official to be carrying around a ZNBC radio and TV crew to himself. Whoever was responsible for making such decisions at ZNBC must know that one day, when politicians are gone as it naturally happens, s/he will be alone to account for the reckless actions.
They say memories of Zambians are quite short. I would argue that some amongst us have shorter memories than the rest of us. We are not a homogenous lot. Otherwise how else can we describe an individual at ZNBC who can forget that Chanda Chimba III (or Chimbwi according to Sata) was convicted for the ‘Stand Up for Zambia’ programme because it was deemed to have been a private programme abusing public resources. Minister Shikapwasha and PS Sam Phiri were prosecuted, albeit not convicted, for abuse of office.
From start to finish Mutale’s programme in question was purely PF party mobilization and campaigns for 2021. Nothing in it was developmental. Hence it opened with Mutale pleading for the people of Southern Province, and Pemba in particular, to switch to the ruling party and vote for President Edgar Lungu next year. He said he had decided to consult them where the people of the province and the ruling party were at odds and to try to bridge the gap. He paraded three headmen, all clad in PF regalia, who claimed to have ‘repented’ and were asking for forgiveness from the ruling PF for ‘voting wrongly’. One of the headmen was literary on his knees begging for forgiveness from the head of state and ruling party.
Although a representative of the Kusiya ward in Pemba, a Londson Munkombwe, made a plea for help from government especially on water and farm inputs, the closing remarks by both the presenter and Mutale were, however, clear about the primary purpose of Mutale’s tour. He said, “Now I am happy with what has happened. What has happened today in Pemba is that these are headmen leading people in various villages. These headmen are tired. They are tired of waiting (and hoping) that one day they will be receive development. Today they have arrived. Today we have visited them. We have asking through radio that please give chance to PF. President Edgar Lungu has sent a lot of development to Southern Province. The massive developments are visible. Where is the misunderstanding. President Edgar Lungu has sent a lot development. Now he is asking that we extend the partnership for our partnership. Let’s extend our partnership to headmen and people of Pemba. Now we want the headmen to choose their own MP and they will choose councillors. Now what we want here is partnership with the ruling party.”

Again, what Mutale and others do for PF and against their competitors is not our business. What is our business is abuse of our ZNBC, an institution that is constitutionally mandated to cover everybody fairly and to distribute the resources we endow into it equitably and in an accountable manner. The ZNBC’s coverage of Mutale’s mobilization tour is not in isolation. It follows other one-sided broadcasts featuring other senior PF members. Just over a month ago, for instance, the broadcaster sent a crew to Northern and Luapula provinces to accompany Davies Mwila, the PF Secretary General and Mumbi Phiri during the Lukashya and Mwansabombwe by-elections.

For instance, August 6, 2020, while on a tour with Mwila, Paul Shalala, a ZNBC staffer, filed a story titled, “Mwila Calls for Civility in Politics”. The story said, “Mwila said this when he paid a courtesy call on the Paramount Chief. And Paramount Chief Chitimukulu has advised the ruling Patriotic Front to adopt a candidate for Lukashya Constituency who the grassroots will endorse. He said the Patriotic Front has a good experience in adoptions and it must listen to its lower structures when the adoption starts. He said the Patriotic Front has done a lot in Lukashya Constituency despite the deceased former Member of Parliament being an independent lawmaker.”

These are but just a few examples and incidences of such biased coverage, which is bound to increase as we head closer to the 2021 general elections. I therefore adopt the recent editorials of our two independent and credible newspapers – The Mast and News Diggers – as my own.

In its editorial titled “Public media must start giving equal electoral coverage now” dated 18th October 2020, News Diggers Editor wrote, “As we head towards the 2021 general elections, there is need for media houses, especially those that are funded by taxpayers to provide equal coverage to all political players. It has become a norm in Zambia today that public media is a mouthpiece of government officials; it has become a norm that public media is for the party in power; it has become a norm that the opposition can only get coverage from private media. This is wrong.”

Likewise, The Mast editorial also dated 18th October 2020, under the title “Level political playing field” reads, “An uneven playing field is a central, yet underappreciated, component of contemporary authoritarianism. Today in Zambia, democratic competition is undermined by restrictions on opposition political parties to mobilise public support, unequal access to public news media outlets and state institutions. When opposition are denied permits to hold rallies and other public meetings, access to public news media outlets, their ability to compete in elections is impaired.”

The problem about ZNBC’s coverage of political players is three-fold: 1. Prioritization; 2. Status of political parties (whether they are private or public); lack of adherence to fairness and other journalistic ethos. Let’s take prioritization; for years ZNBC has been complaining about insufficient resources and equipment to cover (especially) development news. So how did they suddenly have enough of these to assign teams to PF party officials at the expense of other political players and development issues? Again on prioritization, surely, if ZNBC has one production crew available for politicians outside government, who deserves it between say, Hakainde Hichilema the leader of the official opposition and who is running over 45 councils and 49 constituencies in parts of the country on behalf of the Zambian people, and Mutale, a mere PF mobilization committee member? And what about the other opposition leaders, especially those with representation in parliament?

Second, as argued by the two media houses, ZNBC, as the sole-called public service broadcaster (PSB), is mandated to be fair and an ‘equal opportunity’ platform for all political players and other groups in the country. As I have written before, both journalism in general and the status of being the ‘public service broadcaster’, which ZNBC claims to be, have principles (just short of being called laws). For a refresher, the key principles of journalism are: objectivity, fairness, truthfulness, accuracy, balance, truthfulness, impartiality and factual.

It is these values that tough-tested journalism professionals swear to protect and defend, even when so-doing means going to jail or losing a job for. The News Manual describes ‘fairness’ as “avoiding bias, treating people equally and allowing people to have equal chances to do things or express themselves.” Two of the eight PSB principles, are: providing “space for free expression and open debate” and providing “objective and impartial information and news.” The ZNBC Act also espouses the principle of fairness and equal coverage to various groups in our society.

In terms status of legal status political parties, for starters, they are private entities, whether ruling or in opposition. That’s why they run their internal affairs without interference. Days of the amalgamation of the party and government or PIG (as we called it during UNIP) as long gone. Welcome to democracy! Following is an example of separation of powers from next door. In September this year the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa organized a trip to Zimbabwe to meet with the leadership of that country over the political and economic upheavals there. They used a jet belonging to the South African Airforce. Upon returning to South Africa, the ANC was forced to pay the state for use of the jet after it emerged that the trip was a purely party affair between the ANC and its ‘sister’ ZANU-PF. This happened thanks to pressure from the opposition parties and civil society.
“We travelled in an unusual manner and profusely humble ourselves where we went wrong during the lockdown,” the ANC said in a statement. It added that it “will reimburse the government for the costs incurred on behalf of our delegation”.

The rallying point and lesson from this experience is that we as a society need to arise to begin to hold our ruling parties more accountable on use of public resources. It’s not that they don’t understand the principle of separation of powers between state and party; it is because they know we care less. No wonder former President Frederick Chiluba once said that he could rule Zambia forever. Never mind what befell him and his Third Term bid.

The author is a media, governance and health communication researcher and scholar with the Institute of Economic and Social Research, University of Zambia. He was recently awarded a PhD in Communication and Media by the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal. He is reachable on pmbozi5ATyahooDOTcom.