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Cont Mhlanga
SKYZ Metro FM is engaging content providers to promote business opportunities that come with the establishment of this new radio station in Bulawayo. In simple business language, we want content suppliers for station programming, but I am not impressed with some of the lessons learned from this process. I just have to share.
On Monday, through the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe provincial office, we called for a meeting with music studio owners, recording label owners, music publishers and music producers within Bulawayo province. Guess who turned up? Fifty-five men and two women! I am not impressed with this gender composition of content production owners in the province.
Content is education. It is intellectual knowledge. It is information. It is communication and it is the backbone of empowerment. It shapes society and it develops individuals, families and countries. Those who have companies that produce content in any form are more important than all of us in the matrix of social development. Those that distribute it through various platforms come secondary.
Imagine what this means: Skyz Metro FM, a family station located in the country’s second largest city can only buy its local content from 55 men and two women in this age and time. This is national nonsense in a country that is a continental leader in people education.
I will be meeting creative writers on Thursday morning, followed by news and current affairs writers next week and I am already worried that this unfair balance will be the same. I cannot think of a situation in Bulawayo where Skyz Metro FM will buy all its local music content from men alone. I will not accept this and it must be corrected by those who work with gender and women empowerment programmes urgently.
People, get out of your luxurious high offices in Harare and fly down to Bulawayo and help fix this marginalisation curse of our women to justify your employment in gender development. What I learned at Monday’s meeting is that your organisations are not getting the required results on the ground in this sector in Bulawayo.
Culture Fund Trust of Zimbabwe as a leading donor in arts, culture and entertainment in this country, how much money with your donors have you been throwing in the sector in Bulawayo?
Does this reflect and confirm that you are putting all your development funds in Harare and only funding men in Bulawayo? Please director of Culture Fund and your chairman, together with your donors, fly to Bulawayo as soon as possible and fix these figures. It is your job.
I would be a happy person if our station management was able to buy 50/50 content from companies owned by both men and women in Bulawayo when Skyz Metro FM goes on air in September. We have no time ladies and gentlemen. You have the money, skill, knowledge and all you have to do is to do the right thing the right way.
To the ambassador of the EU, you represent countries that speak so well of promoting gender equality and women empowerment in Zimbabwe and your financial investment figures to date speaks to that. Your countries’ combined invest a lot of your citizens’ tax money in the name of promoting and empowering women in this country. It does not reflect good results for your efforts in Bulawayo; or you are spending all your women development and empowerment money in Harare as EU policy? If it is not EU policy to spend all your arts, culture, communication and entertainment money together with women empowerment money in Harare, then call your countries’ honourable ambassadors and discuss this. These figures I got from this engagement meeting make your efforts in women capacity building questionable in Bulawayo.
Dear honourable ambassadors, get all your development partners that you fund to get to Bulawayo on the next flight and fix this gender imbalance in the content production sector as mandated by your governments and citizens. You should all be embarrassed by these results in Bulawayo given your level of investment and commitment to women empowerment.
To the Minister of Arts, Sports and Culture, Andrew Langa, with your Permanent Secretary and your Director of Arts and Culture, you are the team that is mandated by Cabinet and the national constitution to lead and support those that are in the business of producing content that is true to Zimbabweans. These figures on the ground in Bulawayo call for your urgent attention and action. Please, get out of your nice luxurious offices and run to every other government department, agency and parastatal that has a mandate to promote content and women empowerment and coordinate them to fly down to Bulawayo and face this reality on the ground and find urgent intervention measures to address this national embarrassment. You are government for goodness sake! What is the problem with you people? You are serious about being elected to public offices and yet once there you fail to fix such sensitive matters within your mandate?
Zimbabwe is awash with women’s organisations, some which are more than 30 years old. They call themselves national organisations promoting women across the country. To leaders of these organisations, the situation of content producers in Bulawayo speaks to all of you as you drive your comfortable donor-donated cars in the streets of Harare. A 55 to two content supply situation in favour of men in the broadcasting media or any other media platform is something all of you should not be proud of and should work urgently in all your offices to come down to Bulawayo and fix.
No blame games, people, as these will not urgently give capacity to women in Bulawayo to profitably supply content to Skyz Metro FM by September this year. Stop this intellectual habit of worshipping proposals and get down to where the challenges are and create interventions that work for the people if you claim that to be your job.
All of us working together should avoid promoting a situation where all radio content at Skyz Metro FM comes from male-owned production companies effectively marginalising women. You can easily promote this glaring marginalisation of women by your inaction.
Skyz Metro FM is a unique family radio station focusing on 12 to 55-year-olds within a family context. A family is composed of men, women, boys and girls and all these have a right to own companies that produce content from independent environments that do not hinder self-expression to be enjoyed by the whole family.
In Ndebele culture and tradition, a family is not permitted to listen to; and or consume content produced only by men. Everyone has a right to produce content and at Skyz Metro FM we must promote positive African cultural and traditional elements while shooting down and eliminating those that are negative to some members of the family unit as one of our primary objectives is to promote happy, united and successful families in Zimbabwe.
Online Reporter