The people of Zimbabwe are set to introduce a new, privately owned TV station. They hope that the station will provide an independent voice ahead of the forth coming elections.
The company spokesman of the new station, Temba Hove, said that the station would broadcast, unprejudiced and truthfully news to the Zimbabwean people and will also bring programmes like comedies and soap operas which are quite popular to the residents.
Most of the media in the country is controlled by the state which is automatically in favor of the president Robert Mugabe. Hove said that the channel would serve as a platform for all people to express their views.
“Thirty-three years after independence it is high time that the people get what they demand and deserve in respect to their right to information,” said Hove.
Temba Hove, a former producer –presenter at the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC), will be running the new station alongside Andrew Chadwick who has a history of working for Mugabe’s rival Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.
The country currently has one television station, Zimbabwe Broadcasting Station (ZBC), which is state-owed. ZBC also runs four radio stations.
In the mid-1990s two stations were launched but had to be shut down due to funding problems. Following the loss of signal from South Africa’s SABC, Zimbabweans have relied on the Wiztech free-to-air platform to access alternative television stations.
Many times political rivals in Zimbabwe have been protesting for such a long time that the local media only covered most of Mugabe’s campaigns and defame his opponents
Opening up the airwaves was among the reforms agreed to in the pact which gave birth to the power-sharing government between Mugabe and Tsvangirai.