has the power to impose “any” standards he/she may choose and this will be dependent on “his [sic] opinion”. This is obviously open to abuse and selective application. If the power of the Minister to control programme content was restricted to situations of gross abuse of licences such as hate speech or direct incitement to racial or ethnic violence, the restrictions may well be considered reasonable. However, the ministerial discretion is so wide as to cover any possible situation, which the Minister may decide to prescribe. This therefore renders his/her powers unconstitutional. Section 39 and the Fifth Schedule (Part III) of the Act also state that: “if there is an event which in the Minister’s discretion constitutes a major accident, natural disaster, epidemic, civil unrest or public disorder or war and there is a declaration to this effect by the Minister, a licensee shall provide his [sic] facilities to anyone to communicate an emergency free of charge… in addition a licensee is obliged as a public service to provide sufficient coverage of national events.” And: Further, by simply publishing a notice in the Gazette, the Minister becomes entitled to broadcast free of charge on a commercial broadcast “such items of national interest as are specified in the notice. Commercial broadcasting exists to make profit, thus, every single second of broadcast time counts for money. If the government wants to broadcast anything, it has access to four state radio channels and one state television channel, so why should it legislate that it can use a private broadcaster’s resources to broadcast “national events” or “national interest” items gratis becomes difficult to understand! If the government wants to utilise the airtime of a private broadcaster, it must pay like any other client for that service as is common practice in most democracies. Besides, what constitutes a “national interest” item? The Minister in his/her sole discretion determines the answer to this question. For community broadcasters, there is a prohibition against broadcasting material of a “political matter” (Fifth Schedule, Part IV). “Political matter” is loosely defined as “including the policy launch of a political party.” Without a universally agreed legal definition of what a “political matter” is, this clause exposes all community broadcasters to the caprices and whims of the Minister of Information, who has the discretionary power to determine what is political and what is not political. This means that community broadcasters are in fact gagged even before they go on air in direct contravention of the individuals’ rights to freely express themselves as guaranteed under Section 20 (1) of the Constitution. Mandatory local content requirements: In order to promote and protect their local arts industries, most countries the world over prescribe mandatory local content requirements in broadcasting. Zimbabwe is not an exception in this regard. Local content quotas help to promote local languages, culture and national identities in an era where Western domination of the global arts industry threatens to render smaller cultures and languages extinct. However, the local content quotas stipulated under Zimbabwean law are, if not ridiculous for a country that has such a poor arts industry, prohibitive to say the least. In the Sixth Schedule of the BSA, 75% of all broadcast content is supposed to be of local origin (section 11(3) and (4)). According to the Sixth Schedule, all television broadcasters are required to have 75% local or African programming (Clause 2(1)), of which 70% or more of its drama, current affairs, social documentary, informal knowledge building, educational and children’s programming must be from a Zimbabwean source (Clause 2(3)). -2-