Takeover and Restructuring: From Corporation to Services

After the dissolution of the Central African Federation in 1963, broadcasting had to be reorganised. The Northern Rhodesian Broadcasting Corporation (NRBC), planned since October 1963, was established in January 1964 to accompany Northern Rho-desia/Zambia on its way to Independence. This time African representatives were in-cluded from the beginning: the chairman of the committee that had been established by government was the local Chief Mapanza. First, however, the committee had to acquire the old equipment that was released after the dissolution of the FBC. As the budget was small, the committee struggled to gain access to the equipment and mo-ney from the FBC assets: "[...] a great deal of hard bargaining took place to ensure that Northern Rhodesia received a fair share of the assets of the existing organisa-tion, since the bulk of development during its six years of life had taken place in the South."¹⁴² The settler regime did not easily let go of the assets for the benefit of a government that was already working towards the independence of the territory.

The NRBC was nominally – following the BBC model – an independent corpora-tion financed through licence fees, advertising fees and financial support from the state. Although state support was a necessity, it effectively opened up the corporation to government influence. It was directed by a Board of Governors that was assigned

142 Northern Rhodesia Broadcasting Corporation: Interim Report, 01.01.-30.06. 1964, 3. NAZ 20/134.

Fig. 3: Administrative structure of the Northern Rhodesian Broadcasting Corporation (NRBC)

the definition of guidelines for broadcasting. The Director General of the NRBC, Do-nald Lightfoot, was a member of the Board, together with another civil servant. Four members of the Board were representatives of African interests.¹⁴³ Chief Mapanza re-mained chairman. Local elites were deliberately incorporated into the broadcasting

143 This strong presence of representatives of the administration in the Board of a nominally

autonomous Corporation was excused by the minister as reflecting the financial responsibility that was largely borne by the government. Wina, Sikota: The NRBC: To Build or to Destroy?, Central African Mail, 15.05.1964. NAZ Newspaper Collection.

Governor

Min. of Information and Postal Services

Board of Governors (7 seats) decides on general

guidelines

appoints

answerable to

Director General (member of the Board)

Religious Advisory Council (7 representatives of different

Christian congregations)

Administration

News Service

Engineering

Programmes

Vernacular

Service National

Service

structure, pursuant to the plan to prepare the country for Independence.

This structure at first glance was geared to the example of the BBC, and the colo-nial government stated that it had decided for an "independent statutory corpora-tion."¹⁴⁴ But there were important differences to the archetype. The Board was not in-dependent, as it was answerable to the Minister of Information and Postal Services, and he could even prevent programmes from being broadcast, "should he consider the broadcast not in the public interest."¹⁴⁵ This was an instrument of significant go-vernment control, albeit much less than in the FBC. The management subordinate to the Director General was divided into Administration, Engineering, News and Pro-gramme Departments. A Religious Advisory Board exerted an advisory function.

Although broadcasting fees were collected, the corporation was financially backed by the state. This was a necessity, given the fact that the largest part of the popula-tion wouldn't have been able to afford a receiver set if the collected fees were too high.¹⁴⁶ But it also ensured government control over the station. The BBC and the Co-lonial Office remained in permanent contact with the station and supervised it; peri-odic reports and a close contact with the responsible persons ensured this. As with its predecessors, the NRBC was incorporated into the BBC training program for the co-lonies. Contact was facilitated by Michael Kittermaster, the former director of the CABS, who then sat in the Central Office of Information in London. Between him, the NRBC Director General Donald Lightfoot and the Chief of the BBC African Service and former liaison officer in the Colonial Office, S. Eliot Watrous, a lively correspon-dence unfolded.¹⁴⁷ Watrous again sent reports about the contact to the governor of Northern Rhodesia, Sir Evelyn Hone. Through this network, information about pro-grammes, personalities and political developments were exchanged, and the BBC exerted a significant, although indirect influence on broadcasting in Northern Rhode-sia.

The General Service of the FBC, which had broadcast from Salisbury to the set-tlers in the territories, was replaced by a National Service that broadcast in English.

The African Service was renamed "Vernacular Service" and broadcast in ChiBemba,

144 Ibid.

145 ebd.

146 fees were lowered to 1£ per year in 1964. Persons with an income of less than 300£ per year payed a "Concessionary License" of 10s. Ibid., 10.

147 cf. BBC Written Archives, E44/32/1.

ChiNyanja, ChiTonga, SiLozi, Lunda, Luvale and Kaonde (the seven biggest lan-guage groups in Zambia). But the NRBC still followed the policy of 'educating the Af-ricans' in the sense of western civilisation. The NRBC served as a transmitter for the modernisation ideology that formed the late colonial system. Nevertheless the policy of the Northern Rhodesian government was liberal to a certain extent: the NRBC, as its predecessors had, trained Africans in different professions and enabled a large part of the population to access information about the world in general, the politics of the colony and their own situation in Northern Rhodesia. It carried information about the African nationalist parties and provided them with programming slots for election campaigning. Unlike its predecessors, its purpose was, above all, to enable a smooth takeover after independence, for which the date was already set.

The change of structure from completely separate "European" or "General" and

"African Service" in the FBC to a "National" and "Vernacular Service" under one administrative roof was the most important improvement in the NRBC. It had consi-derable symbolical significance, but also far-reaching consequences for the day-to-day programming and the relation of the station to its listeners. African announcers and journalists were now also employed in the National Service – an important act, as this channel produced and broadcast the news and most actuality programmes.

The National Service catered for the election broadcasts in January 1964, and nation-alist parties were allocated slots in the run-up to the election. It also reported exten-sively from the Northern Rhodesian Constitutional Conference that was taking place in London, where Zambian nationalist politicians negotiated with the British govern-ment on the future of the territory. BBC courses for Zambian announcers and jour-nalists aimed at the mastery of perfect English. Thus, English was established as na-tional language for Zambia, British English was supposed to serve as model and per-fect pronounciation was presented as goal for every educated African. While the Na-tional Service was supposed to cater to the naNa-tional population, it effectively excluded those who did not understand English well enough – above all, the rural population.

In addition, many listeners complained about a dominance of ChiBemba and Chi-Nyanja, as these two languages (the most common in Zambia, spoken in the urban areas) dominated the Home Service and were ultimately integrated into the National Service.

Following the independence of October 1964, Zambian Radio was not

immediate-ly reorganised. The NRBC had been established as an institution that was to survive in the independent Zambia and remain an autonomous corporation – an institution the British colonial administration considered as essential prerequisite for a demo-cratic state. For this reason, it was simply renamed in Zambian Broadcasting Cor-poration. However, as shown, the corporation was open to government influence on several levels. In 1965, the Zambian government started a restructuring process that was to convert the corporation into an administrative service, and, as a result, subject it to direct government control. At the same time, the Zambianisation of administrative services and parastatals influenced the newly named Zambian Broadcasting Services (ZBS). In the process, broadcasters were again employed as civil servants, a practice the FBC had abandoned. The media scholar Kenny Makungu summarises the pro-cess as follows:

"After the country became a Republic in October 1964, the new African Government simply put it-self in the status of the colonialist Gov[ernment] and continued to see and use the mass media as a tool for the mobilisation of the people to achieve whatever goals it thought were good for it and the country.

So in Zambia, like many other African countries, the mass media has functioned as a tool of the ruling class, to help it mobilise people, purportedly for the economic and social development of the country, but in reality, to help it remain in power."¹⁴⁸

To understand this damning analysis, it must be placed in historical context. The increasing tendency to control broadcasting institutions coincided with the develop-ment of Zambia towards an authoritarian one-party state. Recent studies show that since 1964, the UNIP government steered more and more towards the authoritarian option.¹⁴⁹ UNIP Nationalists took it for granted that they should be the ones to lead the independent country. Zambia after 1964 was surrounded by hostile colonial go-vernments to the west and south and faced political, economic and military pressure.

To the south, the White minority regime in Rhodesia, after its Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in 1965 and the subsequent guerrilla war posed a major security

148 Makungu, Kenny. 2004. The State of the Media in Zambia. From the Colonial Era to 2003, Lusaka, 5.

149 cf. Phiri, Bizeck J.: A Political History of Zambia, Trenton 2006; Id.: The Impact of the Rhodesian Unilateral Declaration of Independence on Civil Military Relations in Zambia, 1965-1980, in:

Chabatama, Chewe M./Yizenge A. Chondoka and Bizeck J. Phiri (ed.): Zambia: Forty Years after Independence, 1964-2004, Lusaka 2007; Macola, Giacomo. 2008. Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula, UNIP and the Roots of Authoritarianism in Nationalist Zambia, in: Gewald, Jan-Bart/Giacomo Ma-cola and Marja Hinfelaar (ed.): One Zambia, Many, Histories. Towards a History of Post-colonial Zambia, Leiden/Boston, 17-44; DeRoche, Andrew J.2008. 'You can't Fight Guns with Knives': Na-tional Security and Zambian Responses to UDI, 1965-1973, in: Ibid., 77-97.

threat to its northern neighbour. Its economy was severely strained by Kaunda's boycott of the white settler regime, as the most important export routes lay to the South. Zambias support for the liberation movements in Angola, Mozambique, Rho-desia (Zimbabwe), South Africa and Namibia also took its political and financial toll.

But the road to the one-party state was not only paved with external economic and political pressure. As Giacomo Macola has shown, only shortly after its foundation, UNIP had already

"embarked on a dangerous intellectual trajectory, the endpoint of which would be the vindication of intolerance not only for open political opposition, but for independent expressions of the civil society as well. [...] The ideological seeds of the one-party state and its natural corollaries, a much-heralded belief in the leader's infallibility and a totalitarian ambition to quash and/or encapsulate autonomous social movements, were already firmly embedded in the Zambian political soil well before the formal declara-tion of independence in October 1964."¹⁵⁰

The "populist" ideology of UNIP

"was based on the idea that the black person had suffered enough at the hands of white people and that the only way to redress this situation was to secure the removal of white people from the realm of political power and to replace them with black people. 'Populist' ideology particularly opposed liberal ideology with its commitment to multiracial politics as an alternative process for transferring po-litical power from the white ruling elite to a multiracial ruling elite."¹⁵¹

From its inception, UNIP assumed that it represented the majority of the African voters, and that, as it was the true representative of African interests, democratic de-cision making processes inside the party were not necessary: "Seventy Years of colo-nial rule had not demonstrated the power of political debate."¹⁵² UNIP's leaders were not set to negotiate with the more moderate ANC if not absolutely necessary. UNIP's victory in the elections in January 1964, for the party's leaders, showed a clear rejec-tion from the electorate of the British favoured "multi-racial politics" in favour of an Af-rican nationalism.

After independence it became increasingly difficult for UNIP to uphold its image as the only true representative of the interests of the Zambian majority. UNIP considered itself both the symbol and the main proponent of national unity. In the first years after independence UNIP was able to retain its dominance in Zambian national politics, but

150 Macola 2008, 23.

151 Phiri 2006.

152 Ibid., 117.

it was challenged by intra-party conflict as well as an ANC opposition that, albeit on a small scale, had a stable electorate base. Conflicts inside the party as well as with the ANC opposition were soon perceived and described in an ethnic dimension. The ANC's electorate base was especially strong in specific regions of Zambia (e.g. the South), and when too many representatives of specific regions or ethnic groups were assembled in UNIP bodies or in the parliament, political conflicts were expressed in ethnic terms.

The incorporation of the Broadcasting system in the bureaucratic structure was a consequence of these ideas, and part of the development towards the authoritarian one-party state. At the same time, the government, which in 1964 had already bought one of the two major daily newspapers of the country, stepped up repression against the private owned print media (mainly the Times of Zambia and its weekly The Sunday Times), influenced appointments of top editorial staff and in at least two in-stances even deported journalists.¹⁵³ At the height of these developments, in 1972 (one year before the official implementation of the one-party State), President Kaunda held a two-day "national mass media seminar", which "was attended by nearly all the country's journalists from print and electronic media, information officers and public relations personnel." In a "lengthy and 'brutally frank'"¹⁵⁴ address, he sharply criticised them for failing to fulfil their duty to help in building a "Humanist so-ciety". According to the President, "the mass media were to be an instrument of na-tion-building", but instead the journalists "still lived in the colonial past" and were

"caught up in the cobwebs of the so-called ethics of journalism, a lot of which were no more than colonial myths designed to mislead young Zambians in order that they could work against Zambian interests in furtherance of foreign interests."¹⁵⁵ This para-noid worldview, in which not just criticism of government, but all negative reporting was deemed counterproductive and a threat to nation-building, stood behind the go-vernment's repressive measures against the media. By 1972, the described policies had already effected the media to such an extent that the assembled journalists

"unanimously endorsed the President's remarks."¹⁵⁶ For Zambian politicians,

153 Both were citizens of other countries, but had worked for Zambian newspapers. Makungu 2004, 16; Pitch, Anthony. 1967. Inside Zambia... and out, London.

154 Kasoma 1986, 104.

155 Kenneth Kaunda, cit. in: Ibid.

156 Ibid., 105.

Fig. 4: Structure of the Zambian Broadcasting Services (ZBS)

"[t]he press was to foster national unity in all that it published. Any article that could possibly cause disunity in the nation was anathema to the party."¹⁵⁷ This view, in which every piece that criticised the party was seen as a direct attack on national unity, informed Zambian politicians' relation to the media. In the state-controlled monopoly broadcaster, it dominated the journalists' work from the establishment of ZBS in 1966.

157 Ibid., 134.

Minister of Information, Broadcasting and Tourism

Deputy Director administrative Head

of the station

appoints

answers to

Administration Television

(Zambia TV) Sound Broadc.

(Radio Zambia) Engineering

Head of Programmes Controller: Sound

Programme Manager:

Educational Subjects

Programme Manager:

Homes Service

Programme Manager:

General Service

Senior Announcer

Regional Manager

Faced with the external threat of UDI Rhodesia, with the ANC challenging the leading role of UNIP in defining the characteristics of the Zambian nation and UNIP cadres' growing paranoia toward any possible power centres outside of the govern-ment, the nationalisation process was an opportunity to ensure the party's hold over this defining role by taking control of the "ideological state apparatus". The decision to bureaucratise the electronic media and subject it to direct government control needs to be viewed against this background.

The Zambian Broadcasting Services

In 1966, the restructuring process was completed. The Board of Governors was abolished; the Zambian Broadcasting Services were subjected directly to the Ministry of Information, Broadcasting and Tourism; they were to be an "agency department for all Government Ministries and Departments", and their function was described as fol-lows: "In this sense the Services are a mirror of Government to people and, by the use of public participation in their national programmes, of people to Government."¹⁵⁸

The new Deputy Director was now directly answerable to the Minister. He super-vised four departments: Administration, Engineering, Sound Broadcasting (Radio Zambia) and Television (Zambia TV). In 1969, a report criticised the structure as too top-heavy, as some posts were redundant, especially the posts of Controller: Sound and Head of Programmes, which shared many duties.¹⁵⁹ The development towards bureaucratisation culminated in the employment of broadcasters as civil servants, thus falling even behind the FBC practice – the last time broadcasters had been em-ployed as civil servants was during the time of CABS, when the colonial government had used the station as its mouthpiece.

The Zambian Broadcasting Corporation had taken over the programming struc-ture of the NRBC; after the restructuring process, the Vernacular Service was trans-formed into a "Home Service" that specialised in features on local and regional cul-ture(s) in the different vernaculars. The National Service was renamed in General Service and mainly broadcast news and current affairs programmes, covering events of national and international importance. It retained, however, the

ChiBemba/Chi-158 "Zambia Broadcasting Services", (brochure, no author or date given), BBC Written Archives, E 44/32/1, S. 2.

159 Ministry of Information, Broadcasting and Tourism, Section 2: Zambia Broadcasting Services.

1969. Report of a Review by the Staff Inspection Unit, 2. ICS 115/3/1 (Mytton Papers): Papers concerning ZBS, c. 1960-1973.

Nyanja slot from 8 to 10 a.m.¹⁶⁰ The General Service in particular served as a mouthpiece of the government and attached greatest importance to the figure of President Kenneth Kaunda, who increasingly was pictured as living symbol of Zambias national unity.

The production of news was centralised in a special department that was contain-ed in the General Service; news programmes were then translatcontain-ed into the respective languages. The advantage of this was that news production was more effectively or-ganised and cheaper, as well as easily controlled; however, it produced unintended side effects: broadcasters in and listeners to the Vernacular Service channels got the impression that more importance was placed on the General Service than to the ver-nacular channels, because translated news was not up to date by the time it reached the Home Service. An inquiry into the structure of ZBS in 1968 concluded: "By play-ing down the importance of the Home Service, Government is unwittplay-ingly defeatplay-ing

The production of news was centralised in a special department that was contain-ed in the General Service; news programmes were then translatcontain-ed into the respective languages. The advantage of this was that news production was more effectively or-ganised and cheaper, as well as easily controlled; however, it produced unintended side effects: broadcasters in and listeners to the Vernacular Service channels got the impression that more importance was placed on the General Service than to the ver-nacular channels, because translated news was not up to date by the time it reached the Home Service. An inquiry into the structure of ZBS in 1968 concluded: "By play-ing down the importance of the Home Service, Government is unwittplay-ingly defeatplay-ing

Im Dokument Promoting National Unity : The Role of Radio Broadcasting in the Process of Decolonisation in Namibia and Zambia (Seite 53-76)