Programme C: Programme C: Broadcasting Diversity and ICTs The highlight of the 2009 reporting period was the holding of general elections in South Africa, Malawi, Botswana, Mozambique and Namibia. The elections unsurprisingly brought to the forefront the problem of lack of balanced coverage in state owned broadcasters. Opposition parties in Botswana, Malawi and Namibia bemoaned skewed coverage by the state broadcasters in favour of the ruling parties. Research, as well as pronouncements by electoral commissions and foreign election observers, backed the opposition parties’ claims. An analysis by the Namibia’s Institute for Public Policy Research revealed that for the week of October 30 to November 5, 2009, a whopping 82% of the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation’s (NBC) election campaign news coverage was devoted to the ruling SWAPO party, while the next highest party coverage was a mere 4%. NBC further withdrew free airtime from political parties for the election campaign, a move that seriously disadvantaged opposition parties. In Malawi, the Electoral Commission’s Election Monitoring Unit observed that for 3 months before the election, the state-controlled broadcasters gave 100% positive coverage to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DDP) and 0% positive coverage to opposition parties. The leader of the Commonwealth Observer Mission in Malawi, former Ghanaian president, John Kufour, said that the unashamed bias of the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation and TV Malawi against the opposition created an uneven playing field for the competitors and urged the stakeholders to address them ahead of the next polls through capacity building and legislative reform. Botswana witnessed the most prolific contestation of broadcast coverage by state media. Two opposition parties lodged written complaints to SADC and the country’s Ombudsman. Furthermore, some of the youths from opposition parties took their grievances to the Botswana Television studios seeking a hearing over non-coverage of their political party activities. Political interference was 45