Distribution of the two Acts still continues to all stakeholders.
A debate on the ZNBC Amendment Act was held. Discussants were the ZNBC acting director
general, Zambian Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) Chairman General, Zambia Media
Women's Association (ZAMWA) president and a senior lecturer from the Evelyn Hone
Journalism section. As expected the participants expressed worry at the delay in taking the names
of board members to Parliament for ratification.
A sensitization workshop was held in March 2004 at which a communiqué was issued urging the
minister to take the names to Parliament for ratification.
DEVIATIONS
• A meeting with the IBA and ZNBC boards has not taken place because they have not yet
been ratified by parliament.
• IBA and ZNBC (Amendment) Acts have not yet been put on the MISA Zambia website
because it is still under construction.
COURT CASE
Because of the Minister’s stance over the board members of the IBA and ZNBC, MISA Zambia
and other Media Associations decided to take the matter to court to seek the court’s
interpretations as regards the minister’s powers. Parliament is supposed to ratify the names
selected by the adhoc committees, but the minister feels she has the power to veto the names and
that she is not comfortable with some of the names and categories chosen by the adhoc
committees. The court case is still to be heard.

6.9.10 Zimbabwe .
The major activities around this programme have been around Community Broadcasting. MISA
Zimbabwe’s objective is to create awareness among communities in the country. The strategies
used up to now are road shows and dramas through the advocacy communities. During the under
review, MISA Zimbabwe held very successful road shows in Bulawayo and Gweru. The shows
were attended by an aggregate of 4500 people. During the shows, publicity materials such as Tshirts and flyers were distributed. The people expressed interest in knowing more about
Community Broadcasting. MISA Zimbabwe had planned to hold 10 road shows, but this was not
possible because under POSA law organisations need police clearance to hold meetings. Many
of the requests to the police were turned down.
In addition, two Community Broadcasting initiatives have been put up in Gweru and Kwekwe
and the existing ones such as Radio Dialogue are working very closely with MISA Zimbabwe.
An association of community radio aspirants, the Zimbabwe Association of Community Radio
(ZACRAS) has been set up to spearhead advocacy activities around community broadcasting.
However, it has not been easy to extend the road and drama shows to the rural areas due to the
political environment which is not conducive.
Despite MISA Zimbabwe lobbying and publicity around the Broadcasting Services Act (BSA),
there has not been any positive amendments to the law and government has still not granted radio

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