Media key to national development

Zvamaida Murwira

Senior Reporter

The Government values a vibrant media industry but the vibrancy will only be realised if the sector adjusts to the evolving technology landscape that has changed the old ways of information dissemination, President Mnangagwa said yesterday.

He was speaking at State House at an interactive meeting with editors drawn from the public and private media.

The interactive meeting was facilitated by the Department of Presidential Communications in the Office of the President and Cabinet headed by Deputy Chief Secretary in the Office of the President and Cabinet, Mr George Charamba.

“I am acutely aware that your industry is having to survive in a very complex and challenging environment where many things have and continue to change,” he said.

“Not least among these is a seismic shift in reader, viewer, and listener interest and behaviour, much of it caused, motivated or aided by giant technological changes and possibilities.

“The old media is dead and with it, old modes, models, and ways of doing your craft. We feel the impact and repercussions of these changes of technologies even in our own sphere of Government which is supposed to be stable and traditionally change averse.”

President Mnangagwa said things are no longer the same for everyone, and never will ever be, adding that all sectors are having to adjust.

“Only a few days ago, I made new appointments to our Government which included a portfolio I never thought I would need to think about a few years back. Big nations think they now have the prerogative of planning their economies with our resources in mind.

“It is as if national boundaries have been collapsed in their favour, evidenced by emerging laws on critical minerals which foreign blocs are drafting, but with African resources in mind. This is an emerging threat we now have to contend with.”

The President said the Government was keen to share with the media industry their challenges and explore how it could assist to survive the headwinds of the global change.

“Government values a vibrant media industry, that vibrancy is underwritten by viability of the media as individual businesses.

“Above all, our national media are part of our institutional identity markers, they must be sovereign and self-determining in thought, expression and in the interests, they express and defend,” said President Mnangagwa.

He challenged the media to be well-informed as they interpret the society and developments, particularly in proffering directional insights on the political trajectory.

“Your profession is to read and understand that script, which we do not always write legibly, so you can report and comment on it. From where I sit, I am always fascinated and even amused by your attempts at reading and interpreting those politics we ourselves do.

“Some political issues you do report well, others with quite some dramatic imagination. All in all, I want to believe you do it all in good faith. Once there is purity of motive, which is to inform and serve the national interest, even lapses and failures, which are inevitable from time to time, will always have a ring of dignity and gallantry about them,” he said.

President Mnangagwa said he valued interactions with the media, as evidenced by his readiness to meet when a request was made.

“When my spokesperson, George Charamba consulted me on this edition of what I believe is going to be the first of many such to come, I readily acceded to it, more so given that this is the beginning of yet another year into my mandate,” he said.

Asked if he was happy with the performance of the economy given some turbulence that has seen some mainstream retail outlets such as OK Zimbabwe closing some branches, President Mnangagwa said:

“I would say that as a country or as an economy, we would have wanted to be better than where we are, but challenges continue to affect every economy, not only Zimbabwe but as a region and perhaps as a continent, but I am happy as Zimbabwe we are rising up to the challenge and we are doing our best to manage our economy and challenges facing it.

“Fortunately, recently we had good rains and our economy is basically agricultural and we have a good season and its huge impetus with regard to the positive trajectory to the growth of our economy.”

The President said the economy was doing better than what people would have expected given the yoke of illegal sanctions imposed by the West.