PART 1

A GLIMPSE INTO A TV STATION WITH A REGIME CHANGE AGENDA.

By Wilfred Sameta

PROLOGUE-Humble Beginnings

The Suspension of the Prime TV license is a sad development that has been festering for some time.

Those of us who have followed this media house from the time it was born in 2013 took pride in its Zambian ownership and were very happy with their variety of programming with emphasis on local content including traditional and cultural content; and even my tribal mbuyas very silly but nice social commentary in the form of comedy by the Mazabuka boys and their muvela va mene ni fotokoza banter.

Prime TV signal at the time was generally poor and the news presentation was punctuated with poor grammar and misspellings in their graphics. But those were just teething problems and they began to improve even though they still have a lot of misspellings in their graphics.

On the news side of things, they introduced a fresh kind of programming from as far back as 2013 which included *Introspection*, *News Analysis*, *Prime TV Update* and *Oxygen of Democracy. programmes. Most of these were anchored by the Ayatollah- like bewhiskered Kasebamashila Kaseba, dressed in his signature African Print Shirts. The news analyses mostly ended up being critical of government.

At their inception, these programmes featured a variety of players across the political landscape, and although they were often highly critical of government, they were by and large within the minimal confines of acceptable journalism and were crucial to holding the governing powers accountable. However, as time went by, the criticism eventually swung to the extreme, and it became borderline partisan.

Around December 2016, with the rolling out of Top Star as the sole carrier of digital television in Zambia, Prime TV was included on this platform. And with the TV Station being added to the DSTV bouquet in the third quarter of 2017, not only did Prime TV picture and sound significantly improve to HD quality, but their increased viewership and advertising revenues also followed suit on the upward trajectory.(Sadly workers emoluments remained stunted).

AN INSIGHT INTO PRIME TV’S INTERNAL UN PROFESSIONALISM AS SEEN THROUGH THE EYES FORMER STAFFER KASEBAMASHILA

It is very interesting that these other wise positive developments coincided with Prime TV surreptitiously parting company with Kasebashila Kaseba in unexplained circumstances. Whether this was by design or default is anybody’s guess.

Kaseba highlighted his displeasure with the stations lack of Human Resource Ethics on his face book page as per following extract:

• “I have not featured on Prime Television for Introspection, News Analysis, Prime TV Update and Oxygen of Democracy programmes for the last four months since Friday, 17th August, 2018.”
• “To that day, since the year review of December 2013, I had been on Prime TV for just four months below five years and on News Analysis since Tuesday, 05th April, 2016 among other programmes.”
• “…I acknowledge receipt of the innumerable phone calls, social media comments, Prime TV questions, SMSs of solidarity or whereabouts and welfare.”
• ” Sadly, I have received these questions without answer.”
  On the other hand, Prime TV, too, though duty bound to answer, has not just refused to answer the questions of my absence but also refused to explain the presence and performance appraisals of replacements.”
• “Instead, Prime TV sought public sympathy and played victim of me.”
• “For example, while I kept quiet and away from other media outlets, Prime TV in a matter of hours engaged my replacements or displacements for Introspection, News Analysis and Oxygen of Democracy, without my information and handover either as producer or presenter or news analyst.”
• “In a sense, Prime TV eagerly befriended and overcompensated the new with fresh negotiations and estranged the old by stalling the negotiations with silent treatment and constructive dismissal.”
• “The new were only not facilitated to succeed the old but also negotiated for the old or produced for the old. It seemed an offense and insubordination of the old to negotiate for self and negotiate for the new. The old was frustrated and punished even for negotiation or doing right whereas the new got rewarded even for wrong or underperformance. It also seemed long service was an offense.”
• “Prime TV conducted a hostile takeover using divide and*_ _rule of the new against the old plus constructive dismissal that, exploited *unprofessionalism*, *desperation*, *opportunism* and *treachery by the new”.*
• “For example, *there was unprofessionalism, desperation, opportunism and treachery of the part of the new* because despite being informed of the negotiation, the new deliberately ignored the negotiation in order to benefit from the stalled negotiation and the situation”
• Otherwise, there were other Prime TV frustration and interference of the old. For example, on 27th January, 2017, analysis of five minutes was arbitrary cut to two minutes.”
• “Again, at the start of 2018 there was another attempt to cut analysis from 10 to five minutes.”
• “While there is no argument, not from me, who the proprietor of Prime TV is and Prime TV is a member of Media Owners Association, there is an argument, from Prime TV, as who is the producer and presenter of Introspection and News Analysis and *Prime TV has no labour union”.
• In a normal situation, such arguments of interference and censorship are offenses just as the censorship by MOIBS and IBA.
• Further, Prime TV does not believe in unionism, negotiation or separation by mutual consent.”

Mr. Kasebamashila gut wrenching choice of words describing his unceremonious severance from the Prime TV is very revealing of the inner going ons.

He says there was a *_”hostile takeover”_* of the current affairs programmes particularly News Analysis segment, Oxygen of Democracy and Introspection.

SIMUWE A PRIME TV MEMBER OF UPND MEDIA TEAM PUSHING FOR REGIME CHANGE

At the centre of the Hostile Takeover was Mark Simuwe- a personality known for his fierce anti-government style while he was a presenter on UNZA Radio’s Lusaka Star. Simuwe is a known active member of the United Party for National Development (UPND) Media Team, so his objectives and agenda are obvious.

While Kaseba often became vehement and emotional in his interaction with viewers who disagreed with his fierce criticism of the Government, the experienced journalist in him would periodically turn the spot light of his scathing analysis on the UPND and its leader as well as other political parties in a bid to balance his analyses.

Yet, although Kasebamashila is a fierce critic of the government, his Evelyn College old school journalism training and practise forbades him to abandon his professional ethics and unconditionally prostrate before HH to be used as a tool for civil disobedience and regime change.

However when Simuwe took over, he sold his soul to HH and he entered the fray like a new partisan sheriff on steroids, with guns blazing from his high horse; Shooting to kill anything PF no matter how good it was; while massaging and mitigating anything UPND no matter how gruesome or atrocious it was.

If Kasebamashila was a critic; then Simuwe lowered the the scale to sub levels of acceptable journalism right down to the gutter of hostile opportunistic and arrogant cynicism. They had sunk to the depths of yellow journalism.

Prime TV News Analysis became a segment of partisan journalism bent on stirring up anti-government sentiment and regime change.

While news is unpredictable because anything can happen at any time, Simuwes analyses and programme presentations where predictable for two things; firstly, his analyses would be boasful in the manner of an overzealous new-to-knowledge simpleton; secondly the PF government would always take a bashing and the UPND would get a spa-style massage.

Prime TV news and current affairs programmes became heavily opinionated in their delivery, and out right disparaging of the government in their content.

The Prime TV News broadcast of Saturday 9th February 2019 which has led to the suspension of their license for 30 days carried a sensational and inflammatory lead story _”ARMED STATE POLICE, PF CADRES CHASE OF HH IN THICK FOREST TOOK EIGHT HOURS”_ .

This distorted story- that was really a piece of dramatized fake news was cooked by Simuwe in the Prime TV News Room in conjunction with his colleagues in the UPND Media Team.

It was designed to stir up a revolt and civil disobedience against government.

Those of us with kith and kin in Sesheke actually received reports about a known Prime TV Camera man campaigning alongside HH whilst wearing regalia for UPND and filming at the same time. In fact Mr. HH was also directly involved as a producer as evidenced in part of the footage where he is heard and seen directing the cameraman regarding where to focus the camera.

This is highly irregular in journalism.

To apply Kasebamashila Kasebas phrase; there was unprofessionalism, desperation, opportunism and treachery of the part of the new(Simuwe and Prime TVs UPND linked news room).

All the adjectives that describe yellow journalism!

In Part 2 I share and reflect on how yellow journalism has landed Prime TV a K5,000,000 (Five million Kwacha) law suit.

The Author is a Retired Social Scientist turned Agrarian residing in Central Province

By Sishuwa Sishuwa

On 5 March 1988, Shem Michael Mlevhu, commonly known as Keith Mlevhu, a multitalented artist and upstanding citizen of our country ceased to breathe. Born in the mining town of Chingola 37 years earlier, on 14 September 1950, Mlevhu grew up on the Copperbelt, the economic power of Zambia and the training ground for political and musical education for many Africans. In his early twenties, as part of the exploration of his unique capabilities and interests, he took to the guitar and ultimately found a calling in giving expression to the deeper purposes of his life through music. From 1975 to his death, Mlevhu’s remarkable genius found manifestation through song. Through music, he sought to use the life, talents and opportunities he had been given to afflict the comfortable, comfort the afflicted, and make the greatest and most valuable contribution he could to enhancing the lives of others and participating in writing a new script for the country. In the latter task, Mlevhu was helped by the wider context, including a government that attempted to create the larger narratives of nationhood through the use of the media (newspapers, radio, television), educational systems (classrooms from primary schools to university), church, popular forms of entertainment (music, theatre etc.) and other mediums that could bring various fora (be it chiefs, children, artists etc.) together to participate in the creation of a genuine national identity.

It was as if Mlevhu was spurred by the question, ‘how does one effect strategies for broad-based societal change?’ itself perhaps driven by his gradual loss of faith in top-down revolution and the belief that most societies transform when there is a sense of crisis, or a re-analysis of self after a crisis or following a serious conflict. How do we identify the narratives of the country crisis that are particular to us, tap into the spirit of the times and offer possibilities of what could be, and not only what is? Mlevhu appeared to have realised at a very early stage that the option to carve out a national agenda is open to whoever is willing to create larger narratives of nationhood through available media that resonate on a very phenomenological level with the masses and which would need to be hopeful and tempered by a hard realism of all needing to pull together. For him, music served that purpose and he deployed it with admirable skill as an effective tool of implementing social change from below.

Mlevhu, perhaps way ahead of his time, also warned we Zambians of the danger of unlearning all the useful things that ground us, such as land, the importance of kingship and heritage. He further urged Zambia’s leaders to watchfully guard the country’s sovereignty and natural wealth. Once lost, Mlevhu cautioned, taking back and reshaping our assets in our own ways would be a tough process, one that would require an ideological mind shift, a strong and enlightened leadership and significant consensus. People would need to be willing to endure a temporary period of upheaval. One of the most poignant and classic tunes that perhaps sums up Mlevhu’s foresight is Ubuntungwa, composed in 1976 and taken from the album ‘Love and Freedom’. In honour of the memory of this unsung and extraordinary artist of our country who died 31 years ago today, Tuesday 5 March 2019, I reproduce the song’s lyrics below in their original language, Bemba, followed by the English translation and meaning.

Ubuntungwa

Ubuntungwa twalipoka,
Mu chalo chesu icha Zambia
Nomba mune wemwina Zambia wishitishe chalo
Nga wa mona umulwani aisa no lupiya ulwingi
Wikokola umusebe we mwine wa chalo

Ubuntungwa ubwa Zambia
Natusunge ichalo chesu
Webuteko niwe wine we mwine wa chalo
Pantu nga washitisha chalo ukepaisha abantu
Kanshi mune uchenjele kuli aba ba mwisa
Abalefwaya ukonaula ichalo chesu

Ala mune, ukose fye
Uchimfye abalwani mu chalo chesu

Freedom

We attained our freedom
In our country Zambia
Now for you the Zambian citizen,
Do not sell our country.
When you see the enemy coming with a lot of money
Don’t even waste time; reject them, you the owner of the country.

Zambia’s freedom,
Let us safeguard our country.
Especially you the government, the guarantor of the freedom we attained
Because if you sell the country, you will cause the death of many people
So please be careful with these foreigners
who just want to destroy our country.

Please be strong,
You have to conquer the enemy in our country

What would Mlevhu think about Zambia today? Were he to resurrect, I shudder to imagine what he would communicate to us in song. For one thing is clear: his head and soul would be pained and outraged by the pitiful state of our wretched existence today. He would, for instance, immediately find a most unequal society where obscene wealth live side by side with dehumanising poverty; a Zambia that is ripe for all sorts of extreme changes because the conditions of life are objectively demanding a revolution. He would find a shameless set of corruptible leaders, who have betrayed Zambia to foreign commercial interests, who pawn off the country for a few trinkets, who accumulate through brazen theft of public resources and massive sale of Zambian land to so-called investors, and who strut around with self-importance when they are nothing but disposable playthings of even bigger global kleptocrats. He would learn that the country for which he spoke is being completely ripped off by a very shadowy partnership between state actors and mining companies – it seems all the mining companies have to do is to pay peanuts into the back pockets of a few corrupt politicians, laughably known as our government. He would unsuccessfully fight back tears when he learns of the self-serving elite class at the heart of public life, including those who occupy key positions in several state institutions and are complicit in the fall from grace and selling of Zambia, and in sustaining our state of backward poverty and extreme cultural impoverishment.

Mlevhu would find chiefs, the custodians of our history and culture, who find no shame in adorning imported Western outfits and commemorating the same as part of our identity during significant traditional ceremonies – the Litunga clad in a uniform of a British admiral officer during Kuomboka, the Mwata Kazembe clothed in French national colours and a French fire brigade helmet during Umutomboko, the Chitimukulu clad in a designer suit complete with a necktie during Ukusefya pa Ng’wena. He would also find Chieftainess Nkomeshya in Brazilian hair, a royal princess who is also Zambia’s Vice-President Inonge Wina wearing an ugly wig, and learn that Mpezeni has banned the practice of Ngoni women baring their breast during Nc’wala and decreed that the boobs be tucked away in bras, blouses, T-shirts and all manner of Western-manufactured cloth. Mlevhu would further find a disturbing and growing particular kind of Christian theology that seem to have disrupted ideas of cause and effect among many Zambians. He would note that people no longer attribute outcomes to their likely causes, but often to supernatural phenomena. They do not recognise their own agency and the agency of those around them. He would weep uncontrollably on learning that at a time when others are talking about a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, we are reverting to some of the most backward and irrational modes of thought and practices.  Pastors and men of the cloth preach from a gospel that is too foreign even to God Himself and use their positions to accumulate and support a leadership that is far removed from God’s words and teachings.

He would also learn that the University of Zambia, previously the hallowed intellectual site of nudging questions, rational inquiry and curiosity, is now reinforcing and lending comfort to the preconceived notions and outlandish ideas of the student, including subscription to superstitious and illogical beliefs that have anointed themselves with the sanctity of a religious faith. He would find that we still cannot speak to each other as Zambians because we do not have a cross-cutting indigenous national language; English, the language of a nation called England and a residue of British colonialism remains our ‘official’ language. He would note that the bar of leadership in the country of his birth has been dropped so low that it is literally on the floor now. He would discover that while we waste time on endless trivialities, forward-thinking leaders elsewhere are taking their countries to new heights; countries that were at war as recent as 20 years ago are catching up and even racing ahead of us. When those in charge of our country embark on self-congratulation and declare that Zambia is witnessing ‘unprecedented development’, Mlevhu would likely respond by reciting the lines from ‘The Nature of Man’, an incriminating and enlightening track composed in 1975 by his peer, Rikki Ililonga, another native superstar artist with exceptional musical talent who, like him, was genuinely committed to nation building:

In the township where I live
There is so much misery
Starving children and the sickly old
They are all living in a world of despair
I don’t understand
The nature of man
Who is to blame?
The nature of man
Up the hill, a politician stands
Preaching freedom and humanity
Hungry faces just below his nose
Hopeless despair on their faces

But then, being the optimist that he ever was, Mlevhu would also likely tell us that we retain the capacity to overturn our national plight into a better state; that our current deep-seated systemic and structural social, economic and cultural crises are a perfect foundation to begin to build a new national consciousness and psyche, to reject what we have become and begin to resurrect the human being in the Zambian. On noting our unacceptable situation of unguided national drift, dampened self-confidence and descent into the abyss, he would quickly remind us about what Ililonga once said in ‘Tree of Unity’: every country needs direction. Livid, he would implore us to refuse to be reduced to the subhuman status our current deplorable social and economic conditions confine most of us to, to rebel against this status, and then, in our many millions of personal life activities, to transmit this rebellion to others, to wage a war against influences in all spheres that define and confine us to subhuman existence. He would assure us that not all hope is lost; that our problem is that we are slow, way too slow, in moving in the right direction. Mlevhu would add that all we need to turn around the corner is a set of brave, enlightened, effective and ethical leaders; that the regression into primitive irrational beliefs and practices during times of great crisis is not unique to Zambia alone. In the absence of strong intellectual and political visionary leaders, people do tend to look for strong extra terrestrial father figures to see them through what they see as ‘impossibly hard times’. They yearn and seek for an external authority from themselves to liberate them. God, Mlevhu would say, is the easiest recourse, in such times.

Pressing us to reject the mediocrity of our lives and leadership, he would question, through song, the quality of a citizen or human being that tolerates a Lungu, a Sata, a Banda, a Chiluba, for a national leader. Then, with the corners of his mouth spontaneously curling up, breaking into a smile, he would possibly sing another song, perhaps entitled ‘Leadership Works’ and with the following lyrics:

Zambia, you have everything
Everyday, there is an opportunity to turn around
But learn this simple truth, country of my birth:
Everything rises and falls on leadership. Everything.
How long would it take for you to arrive at this realisation?
Leadership works, Zambia. It is the difference between you and Singapore
Once you internalise this fact, you are half way there.
Zambians, rescue the 1964 and 1991 dreams
From these who, though fellow citizens, are a part of the enemy forces
Determined to wreck the lives of many, to ruin our country
At present, you can only take the country back through avenues
Provided by our hard-won democracy – which itself may not remain for too long
Stand up, rise and fight, Zambians
Do not be afraid.

Like many other artists who have positively contributed to the rich diversity of Zambia, not anywhere in our country stands a statue or a monument that speaks to us and the future to say that ‘Once upon a time, Zambia was fortunate to have as its citizen this artist who though dead is brought to life by their musical works, the heritage of those that live today’. How invisible and undervalued the great works of some of the best of us. Their real honour comes by way of knowledge of the truth, the whole story that they know and with an inner smile, they narrate it fully to no other but their conscience. For Mlevhu was indeed one of Zambia’s finest stars, as he himself reminded us in another of his classic tunes, ‘I am your star’:

In a way, I appear looking so crap
Looking a tramp
I am your star people
You have got to realise who I am.

Rest in peace, Countryman.