Life At ZBH Under Henry Muradzikwa

ZimJournalists Arise, circulated an article that Henry Muradzikwa has been appointed C.E.O of ZBH. We then put a question out to you guys on what you think, if you thought Muradzikwa would truly turn around fortunes at Pockets Hill. An anonymous letter to us, said to keep his Merc in the garage Muradzikwa is likely not to do anything to upset the apple cart. On Tuesday, the UK based New Zimbabwe.Com published this piece written by a former ZBH employee writing under the name of Takarehwe Ngulube, who SAYS

I RECENTLY called up former colleagues at Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings sounding out their views on the appointment of veteran journalist Henry Muradzikwa as Chief Executive Officer and their expectations for the future under his leadership.
A large number of staffers, most of them young greenhorns have little if any knowledge of the man and understandably no recollection of his time as a practicing journalist.
Yet the frustration and collective despair was evident among most of them; there was no hope for any change for the better. Indeed I could read a conviction that the authorities were not keen to rock the boat in the manner of the 2001 restructuring under former information minister Jonathan Moyo.
The latest wave of restructuring at ZBH has taken more than five months now and in that time yielded an incomplete board of governors and a chief executive officer.
Members of staff await the announcement of the person to head the critical ZBH-TV unit over which the numerous former chief executive officers and joint Newsnet editors-in-chief fight viciously.
Yet employees know there will not be any changes of policy or service conditions at ZBH and viewers should also be warned not to expect any improvement in programming.
There are three fundamental issues that have and will continue to determine affairs at ZBH in the post 2000 era -- that is Zanu PF, the current Permanent Secretary for Information and Publicity, George Charamba, and the economy as well as (the lack of) competition.
I have left out the board of directors/governors, the chief executive officer and management and even general staff because these will not figure much in the scheme of things unless the fundamental issues change significantly.
Many correctly described Executive Chairman, Dr Rino Zhuwarara, as just an unhappy shadow in the ZBH corridors and his predictably ephemeral era at the institution is a mere historical anecdote.
In my time at ZBH -- which was longer than his, the former University of Zimbabwe lecturer did not address a single meeting with members of staff despite the many problems the institution had to grapple with.
Dr Zhuwarara only talked to staff on the day he was introduced as Executive Chairman by Munyaradzi Hwengwere who left the institution in a cumulonimbus cloud.
Today, the learned Dr's departure from ZBH is equally cloudy and he leaves as ignorant of what happens at the institution as any outsider, having never visited the ‘shop-floor’ as it were -- that is the newsrooms and studios.
I doubt if there was any meaningful material reward for the job -- the man used a dilapidated single-cab Toyota truck as his official vehicle. Howeve,r he had a driver. I am not sure if that made things any better.
We always had a good laugh as he struggled to affect the look and posture of an Executive Chairman, while waiting in the foyer for the driver to come and pick him up. Many suggested he might as well use the sisonke staff buses, some of which were in a much better condition.
Muradzikwa’s risks suffering the same fate.
This is not to suggest that Dr Zhuwarara and management at ZBH was completely incompetent and never had any meaningful plans for turning around the institution.
Some of the managers may have been young and inexperienced -- indeed several are known more for their juvenile weaknesses for female staff members who they reward with undeserved promotions to the obvious detriment of programming.
It was clear however that some managers certainly wanted to ‘do something’ about the state of affairs although they may not have known what.
One remembers Dr Zhuwarara being reported as threatening ‘sweeping changes to bring sanity and professionalism’ to the place.
One also remembers their experiences with the likes of Newsnet senior (since there is two) Editor In Chief Chris Chivinge -- an intelligent young man who will unfortunately be remembered as a very bad manager because he lacked the experience and was never given the opportunity to gain it.
How could he concentrate on the job when he had to fight over who does what with Tarzan Mandizvidza, who justifiably felt robbed of his job and the latest model Isuzu twin cab truck?
The simple fact is that Management at ZBH is not allowed any initiative and freedom to perform their duties as they should and know how.
They are but robots, which only function at the whimsical instruction and direction of their principal at Munhumutapa Building -- George Charamba.
I said above that Zanu PF and Charamba are at the core of the problems at ZBH. Unfortunately the ruling party is torn in two over the succession question and the powerful permanent secretary is clearly involved and has taken sides.
This presents a classic dilemma for management at ZBH. Who do they take instructions from between the two Zanu PF factions, one of which is supported by the permanent secretary who is also the effective employer at ZBH?
Lack of clear and viewer-sensitive policy direction has badly affected programming at ZBH, a problem worsened by the fact that the institution has little production capacity of its own and virtually no resources to support independent producers.
In addition, while the ZBH claims to be a national broadcaster, its programming and news coverage is hardly national both in terms of reach and content – with the lack of resources and poor packaging complicating the problems.
And, if he has visited the place yet, the new Chief Executive Officer must be familiar with the chaos at Newsnet where close to 20 reporters must share less than five cameras at pockets hill and the same number of vehicles.
You can imagine the News Editor’s frustration when both the President and Vice President are out of the country on foreign trips and he has two or so cameras for his many and lazy reporters.
Newsnet has a dysfunctional input system where reporters do at best one story per week, bureaus send in one story per month and management doesn’t do anything.
News coverage is event-driven, never issues-based. The events have of course to do with ruling party and government officials and if it’s the province, the stories are always about the provincial governors.
The so-called Top Story is almost always ridiculous and terribly packaged and presented. More often than not, it comes from the lead story in The Herald of the same day -- a case of getting different voices to say the same thing.
With managers involved in power and survival struggles there is no supervision of the largely incompetent and inexperienced hands running the desks and viewers get what one journalism lecturer called a dog’s breakfast- even when its dinner time!
Even the producers cannot bear to watch their own products. Transmission engineers watch DSTV while on duty and workers go to Pockets Hill to watch English soccer and the Champions League matches even when they are on duty. They are not paid well enough to go the sports bars!
Among the many former ZBH companies, Newsnet claims to have been viable but that was only due to the largesse from central bank governor Gideon Gono’s for the live broadcast of his monetary policy presentations.
I remember the collective agony management felt when the central bank said monetary policy reviews would now be done half yearly. Luckily, the geniuses at the company’s marketing department dealt with the problem by heavily inflating invoices for whatever work was done for the central bank to cover the loss.
And being a former ZBH chairman, the central bank governor has an intimate understanding of the ‘challenges’ the institution faces, so I suppose he just paid without asking questions.
All this has turned advertisers who have also been pushed to the wall by the collapse of the economy to the wall. And with fed-up viewers unable and unwilling to pay licence fees, there is therefore no revenue at ZBH.
These are some of the challenges Muradzikwa and the rest of his new management, if eventually appointed, will have to deal with but as I said above there is little hope for improvement.
With the ruling party, the economy and Charamba variables unlikely to change any time soon, ZBH’s salvation may ironically lie in competition.
If there was a competitor and management had to live with the nightmare of losing experienced and competent staff and what little advertising is available programming could possibly improve and workers conditions get better.
However, with the ruling party petrified at the prospect of ‘Chematama’ (MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, if you are Zanu PF) appearing on TV and radio regularly perhaps more frequently than Gushungo, there is little chance of new independent players being allowed to operate.
In addition, as long as the current Permanent Secretary for Information and Publicity remains in office the situation should remain as it is because it was his creation and changing it would be an admission of failure.
There was confusion recently when the new Board Chairman, perhaps overexcited at his appointment ordered reporters to stop signing off by saying so and so Newsnet, Harare. No sooner had Judith Makwanya signed off by saying ZBC news, Harare, than the directive was immediately reversed because someone at the ministry (no prizes for guessing who) had been consulted.
Many want to blame Jonathan Moyo for the chaos in the state media. I hold no brief for that master of chameleon politics. I remember him declaring that the MDC was dead and ordering us to write the party’s obituaries ahead of the 2005 parliamentary elections, which he eventually contested as an independent.
I remember him screaming mad at any reference to the very poor salaries at one of the numerous meetings state media editors had to regularly attend.
A poor chap from New Ziana nearly got fired for raising the issue. Professor Moyo said people had to work hard even if they were hungry, adding that although he was one of the worst paid ministers in the SADC region, he was among the most hard working.
However, if Jonathan Moyo was responsible for what has become of the ZBH why is it that, years after his dismissal from the party and government, there has been little if any tinkering with the establishment and its decaying structures?
Either the Professor was not the main architect of what has happened or those he worked with agreed with him and still do!