Government to stay out of MUZ, Kansanshi Mines deadlock
By Kabanda Chulu
Wed 07 Mar. 2012, 11:59 CAT
ACCEPTING the proposed two-year tenure-collective agreement by management at Kansanshi Mines will result in miserable lives for Zambian miners, says MUZ acting president Charles Mukuka.
And labour minister Fackson Shamenda has said government will not intervene in the matter in which Mineworkers Union of Zambia (MUZ) and National Union of Miners and Allied Workers (NUMAW) have reached a deadlock with Kansanshi Mines over the tenure of the collective agreement.
In an interview yesterday, Mukuka said the unions wanted management to consider two items.
"Issues to do with improved salaries and putting all workers on permanent employment has been addressed by the company but management has displayed the highest level of dishonesty by bringing the tenure of the collective agreement at the last hour of negotiations," Mukuka said.
"We understand Kansanshi Mines brought in negotiators from Australia where a collective bargaining can run for two or three years but in Zambia it runs for one year and accepting what management is proposing will be suicidal for the miners since our economy is not stable. And it will mean no increments for 2013 and this situation can result in our miners living miserably."
And Shamenda said government has put in place labour laws to facilitate matters relating to industrial disputes.
"When they reach a deadlock, they have to find an independent person to arbitrate and help in reaching an agreement, so government cannot intervene but law will facilitate the process," he said.
Under the current labour laws, when negotiations fail, parties can involve an arbitrator and if that fails to resolve the matter, the case is taken to a board of reconciliators for mediation and if that fail still, the matter is taken to the Industrial Relations Court.
And First Quantum Minerals, the owners of Kansanshi Mines, have reported a US$25 million loss in revenue during the five-day strike action by miners who demanded improved conditions of service.
Miners have since resumed work to allow their unions resolve the dispute.
Labels: FACKSON BANDA, MINING, MUZ
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Media, diplomacy and citizens – what else?
By Prof Fackson Banda
Thu 15 Oct. 2009, 16:15 CAT
It is interesting how politics has a way of getting mixed up in all sorts of things. Take, for example, what the ruling MMD is confronted with - on nearly all fronts. It appears to be a party under siege. It is perhaps for a good reason - an uncanny inability to deal with political complexity.
A private media fraternity that is up in arms against the MMD’s plans to statutorily regulate them. We know what the party functionaries think - such a law will fix any erring media organisation.
Because the party is apparently happy with the state-owned media’s reportage of political issues and events, we can assume that such legislation is likely to be tailored for the private media. Because we know that there aren’t that many private newspapers, it is The Post that is likely to feel any negative effect of such legislation.
It would be easy to understand The Post’s fears. And political - or, more accurately, legislative - sensitivity would entail understanding those fears. Now, this is, of course, more than The Post. Our veteran media mogul - the venerable Errol Hickey -has had enough of perpetual harassment by the government of the day. I have had the opportunity to speak to Errol on several occasions, mostly whenever I am conducting media research in the country. I have always got the impression that he is a man who is passionate about what he is doing – he doesn’t appear to have any hidden agenda against the government of the day.
In fact, in my interview with him in July 2009, he was eloquent about the fact that his desire was to provide a point of contact between the people and the government. He told me he had offered the government airtime - free airtime - to converse with the governed.
And now here we are, witnessing a man who has had enough of something that he loves so much. And all because the government won’t set up an Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA). If such an authority was set up, many government officials would sleep a lot more peacefully, knowing that they wouldn’t have to become directly embroiled in broadcasting issues.
Also, the MMD parliamentarians wouldn’t have to lose sleep over statutory media regulation if they accepted the concept of self-regulation and the sometimes chaotic processes leading up to its attainment.
And perhaps, even our beloved Hon Vernon Mwaanga’s lessons in diplomacy would have been appropriately reserved for our own career diplomats, and not the British High Commissioner to Zambia.
For the diplomatic wrangle seems to be locked up in the media question, as well as in all the other affairs of State that the MMD seems to have entangled itself into. What a web of complications! We all know that foreign diplomats are entitled to comment on matters pertaining to the administration of foreign aid. The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness clearly places responsibility for transparency and accountability both on the donor and recipient countries, suggesting that irresponsible expenditure of donor money - and the related politics surrounding it - can be questioned.
But this is what happens when the government of the day always seeks to be everywhere at one and the same time. There does not appear to be trust in the institutions of State set up to carry on the day-to-day running of the country’s affairs - and in the citizens entrusted with the management of those institutions. Which explains why there is constant meddling in the affairs of many of our constitutional and other State offices. Too much government can be suffocating – and stifling!
The dithering in setting up an IBA is precisely because of government never wanting to let go of the business of regulating broadcasters. It might be important for ministers to begin to define ministerial power and authority differently. Sometimes – and I can be forgiven for this – I suspect that the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Services (MIBS) is deliberately not pushing the issue of independent media regulation because it has no idea about what else it will do in the presence of an IBA. Are these personal agendas, then? Forgive me, but I am beginning to think so - and it’s getting on my nerves.
I think a wise approach to many of these issues is to decongest the government’s nostrils congested with too much political mucus! Say, their nostrils are about to burst because of over-involvement in the life of the nation, even in little things. There are reasons why many developed countries opt to have independent regulatory regimes for a variety of issues. In part, it’s good politics, because the party in power can delegate regulatory authority to independent agencies.
So - here is the first solution - get out of the business of media and let the media govern themselves. They may stumble at first, but in time, they will find a formula for self-regulation. Trust your citizens as adults! And yes - let’s be clear - the media do need to get their house in order, but it’s politically unwise to give them political ultimatums that simply escalate the political tension in the country.
As politicians, your role is to keep talking about the need for social responsibility on the part of the media and NGOs, not to set out to regulate them in a heavy-handed fashion. Set out broad or general principles within which they can operate and let them organise themselves as the responsible adults that they are. Naïve - I hear you sniffing. No, I would rather err on the side of naivety than escalate political tension in the country, and possibly lose an election as a result.
The second solution: leave diplomats alone. Here is the logic: given the global financial and economic crisis, bilateral donors may be eager to save every ngwee. Don’t give them a reason to withhold financial support from vital sectors, such as health. The tough talk consuming the likes of Hon Vernon Mwaanga can be “diplomatically” reserved for behind closed-door meetings between the government and donors. It is diplomatically unwise - methinks - to attack the diplomats the way our government officials have done.
A history lesson: in 1995, just before the 1996 general elections, an embattled Frederick Chiluba had so antagonised donors that some, including the British, withheld their assistance. The usual writing of “national sovereignty” was on the wall, but does that help a party’s socio-political cause? In the absence of electoral malpractice or maladministration, it could lose the party concerned an election.
The third lesson: empower and entrust citizens with responsibility. Too much government can be such that it muffles and stifles individuality. In Zambia, individuals excel only when they are in good books with the government of the day. What kind of life is that? It can be so stressful to be constantly thinking about how to please the government of the day. There are many Zambians who simply want to serve their country in their different stations, without feeling the weight of government power.
For example, do we really have career diplomats, who do not need to be in good books with some government minister or other? What about businesspeople, who do not have to go to bed with government in order to get those lucrative contracts? What about top civil servants, who do not have to defer to political authority in order to keep their jobs? What about judges? And all those hard-working Zambians in the supposedly “independent” regulatory agencies? All these - and there are so many of them - would like to be left alone to discharge their responsibilities as professionally as possible.
But no, the government is everywhere. The government wants to be in the media through statutory regulation; it wants to tamper with the diplomatic corps through threats; and it wants to over-regulate citizens through the NGO Act, 2009. What else will the government think of next? Consider my solutions above. It’s always the seemingly simple solutions that work best!
Labels: FACKSON BANDA, MEDIA
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Regulate the media? Wait a minute
Written by Prof Fackson Banda
Wednesday, September 02, 2009 3:53:26 PM
In an increasingly new-mediated and pluralistic media environment, the question must be asked as to who is providing public service content. It has normally been the business of so-called state broadcasters and newspapers to provide such content, but there is evidence to suggest that such a scenario is fast changing.
I want to make a few observations based on a study that saw me interview respondents associated with various media organisations in Zambia. Clearly, the role of providing “public service content” is increasingly being shouldered by other actors, not necessarily the traditional institutions.
I want to make the case that the talk or ultimatum on statutory media regulation - designed, let's face it, for the private media - disregards the fact that people are increasingly looking to the private-sector media as providers of public service content.
Let me start by demonstrating how the notion of “public service”, usually associated with state broadcasters and newspapers, is viewed across the broad spectrum of our media services. It is clear that the traditional notion of public service as a national public sphere remains an ideal, if national suggests something of a homogenous public sphere.
Clearly, the emergence of private, commercial media outlets, including cell-phone companies carrying content of one sort or the other, has resulted in the emergence of different public spheres, defined in terms of specific geographies, interests and tastes, age, gender, and the like.
For example, MUVI TV, because it is located in Lusaka, seems to have become something of a “crowd puller” in that part of the country. But this does not mean that other parts of the country are not interested in its programming; indeed, there have been calls for the broadcaster to decentralise its operations, resulting in the company setting up a news-gathering bureau on the Copperbelt. But due to licensing limitations, they cannot broadcast throughout the country.
So, while it is evident that there is a national yearning for the content churned out by MUVI TV, and while the company seems to have the technical capability to cover much of the country, policy-regulatory restrictions stand in the way. This suggests the need for the speedier establishment of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), which will make it easier to issue broadcasting licences.
This can only help develop private-sector broadcasting in the country, especially given the fact that the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has given the Communications Authority of Zambia (CAZ) a lot more digital frequencies.
The same problem applies to The Post. While there appears to be a national clamouring for its content, its plans to expand have been thwarted through some kind of unstated anti-trust policy orientation which frowns on cross-media ownership. But it is clear that such a policy is retrogressive and is likely to result in a stunted private-sector media growth. The Post, already operating as an internet service provider (ISP), has applied for both broadcasting and cellular-telephonic licences. These have yet to be issued, despite the fact that the newspaper has the technological capability - using WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) - to help reduce the cost of internet and cellular-telephone costs in the country.
Clearly, in a technologically converged media environment, there is no need for a country yearning for more media services to seek heavy regulation of the industry. Such heavy regulation amounts to stifling both technological growth and freedom of expression. The media industry needs to be left free to pursue its business-economic logic.
It is strange to find that, while the private media houses appear willing and able to expand throughout the country, their natural growth and expansion plans become a subject of government approval. Here, it is perhaps useful to mention that even Radio Phoenix has plans - and the requisite technological capability - to expand beyond its current geo-broadcasting map. From a purely economic point of view, it is clear that the more radio and television stations we have with a national outreach, the less the advertising costs companies will incur. That will go towards reducing the much-lamented high costs of production in the country. Can't we see this logic? Or, as I suspect, is stifling private media growth a well-calculated strategy to protect the economic interests of the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) and the political interests of the ruling party?
While it is understandable that media services are more socio-politically sensitive than other business services, what must not escape the attention of policy-makers is a simple fact. Media services are business services. Would it make sense to thwart the growth of a business entity that was employing large numbers of Zambians, simply because it was growing too fast? Would we not celebrate such an exponential growth?
Of course, this does not mean that the media should operate in a free-for-all environment. There is already a constitutional and legal framework which constrains much of the work of the media. If the private-media sector must come up with more rules and procedures for conducting their professional affairs, that must be left entirely up to them, including the time-table they wish to pursue in drawing up such rules and procedures. The media - both as a sector and as individual houses - know they have a social responsibility to citizens, not politicians. While we cannot stop politicians - as elected leaders - from commenting on the nature of such social responsibility, I think they need to exercise extra caution and restraint in pushing for a heavy statutory regulatory regime to govern what are internal-professional matters. Where will it end?
Another important point that policy-makers should take into account is this: with new media technologies, traditional forms of statutory regulation and control are no longer workable. Indeed, they are undesirable; they simply inflame the political passions of the people. The word “media” is no longer necessarily an institutional homogeneity; it is a cultural heterogeneity. Although Zambia is not fully connected to the internet, the truth of the matter is that the few who can access the internet have become “media” themselves. Whatever they read off the internet, whether it originates from traditional, institutionalised media or not, it gets “re-mediated”. Indeed, they have become suppliers of public service content themselves. For example, we have, in the recent past, witnessed the online distribution of unattributed and unsigned statements - explaining away some aspect of the corruption cases going in the country. How must the government view these? Must it regulate such online distribution of unsolicited communications? Are they not part of an open public sphere, with audiences using their mental faculties to determine the value or veracity of such unattributed communications?
Therefore, introducing statutory regulation of the media will not work. In fact, it is likely to make people become even more eager to dig out the dirt that the government might wish to hide. More whistle-blowers will emerge, and might use the new media technologies much more vigorously than presently. Whereas traditional media can exercise some ethical restraint in publishing such information - such as when The Post chose not to publish the pictures interpreted by some as “pornographic” or “immoral” - many whistle-blowers will have no qualms about releasing sensitive information to the public. So, “regulating” conventional media must be treated as a partnership between the government, the media and civil society. You cannot have ultimatums - it just doesn't work that way!
An equally important point: we must remember that media audiences are fragmented. What this means is that there is no such thing as an undifferentiated “public”. Nor is there such a thing as a homogenous “mass” audience. What we think of as the public - I keep pleading! - is not a homogenous whole that can believe everything that the media dishes out. So, why worry so much about media services which may be seen as “partisan”? An anecdote might do.
When I was in Boston, USA, a few weeks ago, attending a conference organised by journalism educators in that country, I kept tuning in to different radio and television stations. Because Barack Obama is something of my hero, I couldn't stomach the vitriolic - even racist - stuff being broadcast against him by some of the neo-conservative broadcasters. But I would turn to a different broadcasting station, and get something of a balance. True, some may exercise freedom insensitively, but political tolerance is needed, unless we are dealing with the kind of hate speech that can result in violence and disrupt the very democratic order we cherish. So, it was refreshing to realise that there are still radio and television stations, even in the US, that report on Obama with some even-handedness.
In most cases, the solution is not to statutorily regulate the media. Now, (media) freedom is not an American or Western thing - it is an integral part of our make-up as Zambians, and we can trace it to our anti-colonial struggles, so don't let anyone suggest to me that our “culture” dictates otherwise! Those who appeal to our “culture” for some form of journalistic restraint often do so for selfish (political) reasons. Our African cultures are pregnant with examples of social critique of some form or other.
Labels: CENSORSHIP, FACKSON BANDA, MEDIA
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Internationalising media studies - a book review
Written by Prof Fackson Banda
Wednesday, August 05, 2009 3:03:40 PM
Today I should take some time off of the Zambian hot-bed of media topics
and focus on something more academic - a review of the book edited by a colleague of mine, Prof. Daya Kishan Thussu of Westminster University in the United Kingdom (UK).
The full citation for the book is as follows: Thussu, Daya Kishan (ed.). 2009. Internationalising Media Studies. London and New York: Routledge. 320pp. ISBN: 0-415-45529-4.
Debates about the structures and processes of globalisation - along with those of localisation - have important implications for the discipline (or is it still a field?) of media studies. The first implication, framed as a counter-hegemonic resistance to what some might consider to be the totalising tradition of Western media studies scholarship, is that we can no longer continue to look only to Western ‘centres’ of academe for intellectual edification. The need for a critical deconstruction of Euro-American intellectual centrism, and the need for recognising, and thus reconstructing, a truly transcultural onto-epistemological agenda for media studies has become more urgent than ever before.
Secondly, the rise of China as an economic and cultural unit of analysis in media studies – regardless of all the complexities and uncertainties engendered by China’s rise as a ‘soft power’ – calls for a different set of analytical tools to understand the interpenetration of China with almost all parts of the developed and the developing world. China’s unfolding global economic - and political - dominance is particularly implicated in the economics, politics and cultures of the developing countries. This makes it all the more scholastically urgent to comprehend the structures and processes through which China is asserting its nationalistic and internationalist agendas - both of which are a reflection of China’s ideological engagement with the world, as my own work in this area suggests.
Understood against the background of the changing faces of globalisation, Internationalising Media Studies, a book edited by Daya Kishan Thussu, assumes both a scholarly and political resonance. Scholarly, because it brings to the fore the intellectual realignment that must necessarily take place in order for us to better and more comprehensively understand the influences of the cataclysmic changes that the world is undergoing, not least the apparent dismantling of a unipolar world in which Western knowledge sources had come to dominate our intellectual milieu. It also invites us to think critically about the very discourse of internationalising media studies as functioning, to use Tarik Sabry’s characterisation in this volume, “through a ‘double-critique’ structure … one which is mechanised through a dual intellectual exercise that is able to oscillate between de-Westernisation and de-de-Westernisation, authentication and de-authentication.” Thankfully, however, Sabry is quick to point out that “the discourse of de-Westernisation, as it stands, is still in its infancy, at a stage where more intellectual effort is channelled towards authentication than to questioning and subverting of the claims that come with such a process” (p. 201).
The political resonance of the book lies in the fact that it is published in the immediate aftermath of the global financial and economic crisis, engendering a rupture in the neo-liberal orthodoxies that have shaped the practice of economics and scholarship both in the developed and developing world. Although it is too early – and possibly too presumptuous – to agree with Yuezhi Zhao who suggests that “neo-liberalism has suffered a fatal blow” (p. 188), it is evident that the seemingly unassailable (neo)-liberal, Western shackles of much media studies scholarship have come loose. It means that we must tie them back together by using different – or at least more internationalised – theoretical moorings. In and of itself, this should engender a greater sense of intellectual pluralism and empowerment.
The book sets about its project of internationalising media studies through four parts. Part I deals with internationalising media research. The analysis is underpinned by several theoretical treatises of globalisation and their implications for media internationalisation, and therefore for internationalising media studies. The debates are by no means new – they principally focus on the enmeshing of global and local influences and how the resultant hybrid identities can inform the analytical trajectories of media studies. The authors make a strong case for the need to understand the empirical dimensions of a hybrid media studies tradition for, as Tristan Mattelart in this volume argues, “These new approaches apprehend moreover the cultural consequences of globalisation in speculative terms. The sophistication of their theoretical analyses contrasts strongly with the poverty of their empirical analyses” (p. 59).
Part II is thus appropriately about broadening the field of media studies. Given the now – I believe – trite conclusion that media is a cultural product, it makes sense to study it in relation to the totality of the extant cultural systems. As such, many of us have taken it for granted that our analyses of media are informed by something of the “circuit of culture”, as proposed by Stuart Hall and others in their book entitled “Doing Cultural Studies: the Story of the Sony Walkman.” The circuit-of-culture analytical framework highlights how the different but interconnected cultural moments of production, identity, representation, consumption and regulation articulate in the lived experiences of the people.
Therefore, it is expected that the thematic content of media studies would include, as this book does, media law and policy (Chapter 6), globalisation and terror (Chapter 7), comparative media law and policy (Chapter 8), and the labouring of international communication (Chapter 9). Here, one can refer to the work edited by Barbie Zelizer and Stuart Allan on “Journalism After September 11”. These topics do not necessarily point to a broadening of the field, as they are not really new to media studies, at least as some of us have taught it in developing-country universities. It is simply affirming that such themes are already an integral part of the subject-matter of the field of media studies. What is important, however, is the fact that this particular book seeks to look at the international dimensions of such themes, hence the emphasis on comparative studies.
Part III of the book is a presentation of regional perspectives on internationalisation. I find these perspectives fascinating, largely because they represent what this book is really about. If we are to internationalise media studies, then we must internationalise it from the peripheries to the centres. It is a moot point that efforts at internationalisation of scholarship have tended to confirm the dominance of Western centres of scholarship across a variety of disciplines. All the regional perspectives – ranging from Asian, Arab, Russian, to Latin American – are united in lamenting the Euro-American moorings of media studies and in celebrating efforts at making intellectual inroads into the international media studies arena. I am not sure, though, why the chapter on reconceptualising media studies in Africa is placed in Part IV dealing with what appear to be more country-specific examples of how media syllabi are becoming more and more internationalised. But this does not detract from the very significant contributions this chapter makes towards elucidating how African media studies scholarship is internationalising – from one African country to another, for example. The movement of academics from several African countries to South Africa, for example, is helping to reconfigure the contours of media studies in South Africa, where the field was tainted with apartheid categories of analysis.
Part IV deals with the challenges of internationalising media syllabi. There are interesting observations here. For example, John D.H. Downing seems to throw cold water on the internationalisation project when he notes that the US exhibits a tendency towards “insularity rather than internationalism” (p. 274). There is need for cross-cultural or trans-cultural dialogue, among media studies scholars, if the project of internationalising media studies is to succeed.
In conclusion, the importance of this book lies in the fact that it has harnessed many of the old debates – and some new ones – to explicate a clear case for seeing media studies as truly international in scope and in subject. By setting out some compelling regional empirical case studies, and by buttressing these with critical, postcolonial reasoning, it is clear that the field of media studies can no longer be territorially balkanised. However, it is not clear what the exact direction and process of internationalising media studies will be, but that is beyond the scope of a 320-page book!
Labels: FACKSON BANDA, MEDIA
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Donors need a holistic strategy for aid effectiveness
Written by Prof Fackson Banda
Thursday, May 28, 2009 3:00:46 PM
Sweden and the Netherlands have suspended their aid to the Ministry of Health, a key ministry in Zambia's strategy to attain the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The reason advanced for such a move - a legitimate reason, we might add - is that both countries will not tolerate corruption.
The fact that the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has announced an investigation into the circumstances under which one Ministry of Health official accumulated his ‘wealth’ clearly gave rise to the events that led the two key donors to suspend their aid. There is one comfort in all this: The two donors have merely suspended their aid.
As soon as the Auditor-General has conducted her forensic audit, we hope that the two donors will come back to the aid of the heath sector. At the same time, we hope that the government will have put in place corruption-proof institutional measures that will array the fears of the donor community. The health sector needs donor aid. But such donor aid needs to go to the intended beneficiaries.
Donors cannot go scot-free, however. It is too easy to suspend their aid. I think that there is something that the donor community may have overlooked here. What has happened in Zambia demonstrates three things. First, there is corruption in the country, as is the case in all other countries. Second, there is limited capacity to prevent, and let alone, fight the scourge. Third, there is a vibrant civil society - spurred on by whistleblowers and a robust private media system - which continues to advocate for stronger anti-corruption strategies.
To explain: Although their capacity is limited, and although they may be politically constrained, the Anti-Corruption Commission brought to light the allegation of corruption at the Ministry of Health. The Auditor-General has moved in to establish the veracity of the allegation, while other investigations are underway. The media - especially the private press - have stepped up pressure for the government to institute a more robust anti-corruption strategy. Civil society bodies have also stepped up pressure on the government to take greater responsibility for transparency and accountability in the civil service.
We must not forget: The Auditor-General's annual reports have become a hall-mark of systematic documentation of lapses in the country's public finance management. But rarely have donors suspended their aid in reaction to the Auditor-General's annual reports, which have almost always documented systemic inadequacies in the way our public institutions manage public finance.
Donors, too, have a responsibility for the way our public institutions manage their resources. And that responsibility does not necessarily reside in suspending or withholding aid to such critical sectors of Zambian society as the Ministry of Health.
Such responsibility is acknowledged even by the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, adopted in 2005 at a High Level Forum in Paris, France. The Declaration is based on “core principles” which both donor and partner countries “believe will increase the impact aid has in reducing poverty and inequality, increasing growth, building capacity and accelerating achievement of the MDGs.”
The basic philosophy underpinning the Paris Declaration is one of mutuality or co-responsibility. In other words, both donors and partner countries are responsible for the effective management of aid. To suspend aid to the Ministry of Health, as Sweden and the Netherlands have done, amounts to a near dereliction of responsibility on the part of the two countries.
While the Paris Declaration recognises that “partner countries” - a euphemism for aid-dependent or poor countries - must exercise their sovereignty in managing aid, it places responsibility for the management of such aid on both donors and partner countries. In this regard, it mentions two things. First, donors are called upon to reform and simplify their “policies and procedures to encourage collaborative behaviour and progressive alignment with partner countries' priorities, systems and procedures.” Second, it calls upon both parties to define “measures and standards of performance and accountability of partner country systems in public financial management, procurement, fiduciary safeguards and environmental assessments, in line with broadly accepted good practices and their quick and widespread application.”
It is clear that “collaborative behaviour” is encouraged. It is also clear that donor countries are encouraged to participate in instituting the kinds of institutional arrangements that can ensure that their money is transparently and accountably used. To put it differently: Donor countries must help build the institutional capacity of partner countries needed for proper public finance management.
There are, of course, donors who attempt to assume such a holistic strategy towards supporting partner countries. Such a holistic strategy includes supporting specific “projects” as well as the totality of the institutional-implementation architecture of government. The reason is simple: project-specific funding cannot be dislocated from the context of institutional capability. This should call into question donors whose insistence is on “project” support.
It is perhaps because of such piece-meal, “projectified” approaches to supporting partner countries that Dr. Dambisa Moyo, in her controversial book, Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa, describes as a myth the notion that billions of dollars in aid sent from wealthy countries to developing African nations has helped to reduce poverty and increase growth. While one can question her radical solutions, one cannot but agree with her - and many other development scholars and activists before her - that donor aid has not been wholly effective.
The principle of co-responsibility - binding donor and partner countries in a pact of mutual support - needs to go beyond just providing the money. It must involve devising, along with that money, systems in which both donor and partner countries can invest confidence. What this does is that it places an equal obligation on donors to ensure that their support is successful. Indeed, such aid must be holistically linked to other institutions that enhance transparency and accountability in society - civil society, the media, political parties, and the like.
The Paris Declaration clearly acknowledges that “corruption and lack of transparency, which erode public support, impede effective resource mobilisation and allocation and divert resources away from activities that are vital for poverty reduction and sustainable economic development. Where corruption exists, it inhibits donors from relying on partner country systems.”
The underlying assumption here is that, when donor countries provide support, they are convinced that partner countries' public management systems are sufficient to guarantee the effectiveness of their aid. However, in situations where problems emerge, such as is the case with the Ministry of Health, there is need to look, not just at the allegation of corruption, but also at the fact that the system has been able to locate that corruption. This is important because it shows that the system is capable of locating and localising the corruption.
In other words, the alleged corruption at the Ministry of Health must send three signals. First, corruption is still endemic in the government system. Second, the system is capable of locating and localising such corruption. Third, there is potential for the system to cleanse itself of corruption. Of course, the third point is related to the amount of political will that can be mounted to support the systemic attempts at ejecting corrupt elements from the system. It is here, perhaps, that we can better appreciate the action by Sweden and the Netherlands to suspend funding to the Ministry of Health.
The action seems to be a political message to our ruling political elite to encourage the system to function more robustly. However, we cannot ignore the fact that the exposure of corruption is, in itself, a celebratory act. Let me put it differently: While donors should lament the fact of corruption, they should also celebrate the fact of exposure. Woe unto those countries whose corruption is so deeply buried within the system that it cannot be located, let alone exposed!
For aid to be effective, then, it must be configured so holistically as to addresses its short-term, project-specific objectives and the institutional context within which such objectives are realised. It is such aid, I would argue, from which it is easy for a partner country to subsequently wean itself.
Labels: DAMBISA MOYO, DONORS, FACKSON BANDA, MINISTRY OF HEALTH
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Prof Banda urges media to develop principles of development journalism
Written by Kabanda Chulu
Thursday, April 09, 2009 8:54:23 PM
OPEN Society Initiative in Southern Africa (OSISA) programme manager Deprose Muchena has challenged journalists to create debate and demand for policy change to shift away from the fundamentals of the IMF and the World Bank.
And Rhodes University Media Studies and Journalism Professor Fackson Banda has urged media institutions in Southern Africa to embrace principles of development journalism in order to bridge the gap between official sources of news and ordinary people.
During a sub-regional media workshop themed “Reporting Economic Partnership Agreements: prospects, promises, pitfalls” in Johannesburg, South Africa on Tuesday, Muchena said the global economic crisis had exposed the inertia and laziness of African leaders.
He accused African leaders of being agents of imperialism by not expressing their voices over the world economic crisis.
“When the issues started, they told us that we are insulated and we will not be affected and but now we are affected and they just met in November 2008 and formed a committee to carry out some findings but up to now this committee has presented their findings and yet people are suffering, actually this is not strange because Africa is used to deal with consequences all the time and these leaders are busy defending capitalism and its misguided tenets,” said Muchena.
“But since the African leadershipsí voice is missing, we challenge the media to create debate and demand for policy change to move away from the Washington Consensus because its institutions like the IMF and World Bank have no solutions to our problems, in fact the global crisis is a result of their ‘economic prescriptions’ which they impose on others.”
And Prof Banda said embracing development journalism would ensure the empowerment of all voices in society through participatory dialogue.
“It is difficult to move away from the usual ‘official sources’ of news but it is possible to embrace development journalism and bridge the gap so that the voices of ordinary people can be heard as well,” said Prof Banda.
The media workshop was organised by the Economic Justice Network (EJN) of the Fellowship of Christian Councils in Southern Africa (FOCCISA) and drew journalists from across Southern Africa and civil society organisations involved in trade activism and development matters.
Labels: DEVELOPMENT, FACKSON BANDA, OSISA
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Obama, media and politics
Written by Prof Fackson Banda
Wednesday, November 12, 2008 8:56:28 AM
The world has experienced an electrifying American electoral verdict.
Obama has won! A black man in the White House! What an irony! I have never been as proud of the American electoral process as I am now, regardless of its imperfections. And I have never been as interested in politics as I am now.
I speak for many of my generation when I say Obama’s victory has sparked a political fire in each one of us that is likely to burn for a long time to come. We might become even keener on participating in the political future of our country. While the conditions in Zambia are significantly different from those in the USA, there is every possibility of a more civically and politically engaged generation. We might even begin to see the old generation truly paving way for the young. But there is certainly more to be done, not least the resolve by young people to demonstrate leadership in their various stations in life.
Now, I must bring myself back to my topic. How, on earth, did Obama do it? Clearly, there were so many factors at play, some of which were extraneous to the Obama campaign. For example, the near collapse of the US financial architecture played into his hands. The falling approval ratings of the George W. Bush administration, attributable to the Republican multilateral political agenda which resulted in the two unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, contributed towards such negative approval ratings.
The rather disorganised and lacklustre electoral campaign run by Obama’s opponent, John McCain, added to Obama’s electoral success. But we mustn’t forget that there was a deliberate electoral strategy behind Obama’s success. I contend that his strategy was less mediated and more direct. In other words, Obama assumed, as his wife Michelle Obama always suggested, that there were ‘two conversations’ in the electoral campaign. There was the mediated conversation, characterised largely by media punditry. The media houses, through their different experts and pundits, made their own conclusions. These secondary voices were supplemented by opinion polling about the candidates’ chances of winning.
Then there was the more ethnographic conversation that the Obama campaign seemed to have been tuned in to. This was made up by the primary voices of the people that the Obama campaign came into contact with. The campaign team’s strategy was to activate such people into a powerful following that would redraw the US voting map. It was for this reason that Obama’s campaign was tailored to reflect the spirit of bipartisanship that his message held out before a deeply divided nation.
His message needed to be targeted directly at all Americans, especially the so-called Generation X. Partly based upon his bitter primary against Hillary Clinton, he realised that the so-called Baby Boomers would be hard to persuade to accept his message of an America that transcended the traditional bifurcation between the so-called ‘Red States’ and ‘Blue States’. Partly by strategically using the mainstream media to project his transformational politics, he reoriented his campaign to appeal to both liberals and conservatives.
Because Obama was a new kid on the block, having announced his intentions to run for president of the US in his first term of office as Illinois Senator, he knew he would have an uphill battle to outdo the better known and more experienced John McCain. So, he chose to bypass the media and engage directly with the voters. How did he do this?
First, he met the people at their points of regular informational need, namely new media platforms. He developed an interactive Web site, in which he introduced himself and his family in a very personal manner. His strategy was to connect organically with his potential voters. His use of the internet social networking sites, such as YouTube, MySpace and Facebook, was phenomenal. He made cyber friends, not only within the US, but also throughout the world. This created a buzz around his name that resounded throughout his electoral campaign, catapulting him from a nonentity to a house-hold name.
He locked into Web-based citizen journalists, firing them up with enthusiasm to face up to the potential of new media in activating citizen participation in national politics. His constant refrain to transform the Washington-based politics of democratic elitism into a new national politics of transformation resonated with the ethos of citizen journalism. It is not surprising that many ordinary Americans, especially the young, felt politically empowered, for once agreeing ‘yes we can’. Obama literally penetrated into the inner recesses of popular culture, engaging the politically inactive and firing up their imaginations.
But, more importantly, Obama went beyond this cybernetic connection; he sought to supplement it with a personal touch of communication. His campaign team kept in constant touch with Obama’s supporters through online, mobile and traditional communications. This multimedia communication complex created the impression of an interconnected movement, with multiple centres of communicative control. Any attempts at tactical disinformation by the opponent were, for example, immediately repulsed through this nexus of communication.
Second, Obama linked his campaign message of change to his fundraising strategy. Arguably, he opted for private electoral financing for two main reasons. It would firstly enable him to raise more funds than his opponent. In turn, this would enable him to take his campaign right into the Republican strong-holds and put McCain on the defensive. Secondly, by asking ordinary Americans and other well-wishers for their financial contributions, he was enlisting his contributors in a national movement that would transform the electoral landscape. You don’t financially support someone unless you believe in their cause. By soliciting private funding, Obama was recruiting members into his movement. This was one way of engaging directly with his potential voters.
Third, Obama recruited volunteers, especially from the hitherto politically and civically disengaged segments of the American population. Such volunteers would not only be voters in their own right but also recruiters of other people like them. This would have a snowballing effect that would result in a change in the voting pattern, tipping the electoral-college vote toward Obama. He cast his net wide enough
There are lessons for Zambian politicians here. First, we need a new type of political leadership that will ignite more civic engagement and participation among Zambians. It is clear, based upon the voting patterns, that Zambians are largely polarised across ethnicity and regionalism. The nationalism of our politics of independence has given way to the ethnic-regionalism of post-independence politics. We need to think of Zambia more in terms of the nation than of the province.
Second, younger members of the voting population can make an important contribution towards re-energising Zambian politics. But such a change can only come about when the political order is realigned. A new leader, capable of exploiting new technologies and appealing to the national spirit in each one of us, can bring about the desired change. It is clear that our current crop of leaders has largely failed to energise and mobilise the country towards the politics of national unity. With new media technologies, it might become possible to reconnect the different regions and provinces of the country to the original nationalist agenda that is so important for national development. This is not to suggest that we must not highlight our geographical and ethno-cultural differences and their implications for the politics of nationalism.
Third, we need to innovate new ways of campaigning. With the unprecedented penetration of mobile communications, even in the rural areas of our country, it should, in theory, be easier to mobilise support for a national political cause. This can amount to a form of ‘direct’ political marketing. But this requires more time of the politician who would bring about change. Obama’s actual campaign took about two years. Innovative politicians need not wait for the announcement of the election date. Campaigning is an everyday affair.
Fourth, political organising and mobilising is not necessarily a mediated affair. The more direct it is, the more powerful it is likely to be. Mainstream media should be used strategically for maximum impact, such as the way Obama bought prime time on most of the major networks to broadcast his campaign infomercial. It is often difficult for politicians to extricate themselves from the idea that mass media are not necessarily the most effective way of campaigning. They are usually effective for mass distribution of the campaign message.
A political revolution is likely to come to Zambia when more grassroots-based organising and mobilising takes centre-stage, exploiting the power unleashed by new media technology. But this requires some extraneous policy improvements, such as regular voter registration, universal access to new technologies, stronger guarantees on freedom of expression, and the like.
We must push for these as a total package for transforming our politics.
Labels: BARACK OBAMA, CAMPAIGNING, FACKSON BANDA, POLITICS
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