Charamba’s memo to Shamu on ZBC rot
The following is a memo written by George Charamba, the Secretary for Media, Information and Publicity and addressed to his then boss Minister Webster Shamu. The memo is dated 01 November 2012.
To: Hon W. K. Shamu Minister of Media, Information and Publicity
From: Cde G. Charamba Secretary for Media, Information and Publicity
Date: 1 November 2012
Re: State of Affairs at ZBC Report
On 23rd October 2012, I received a report from the CEO on “State of Affairs at ZBC”. It is his first report to me since his assumption of duties as a CEO at the Corporation. The report comes in the wake of a petition from workers alleging corporate malfeasances.
Presumably the same petition may have been tendered to the Anti-Corruption Commission, triggering the second factor behind the report, namely an investigative visit by the said commission.
Again, the CEO never formally advised me about the development. I got to know about it from the press. On 19th October, I also received a letter from the CEO in which he notified me of his resumption of duties after his trip to Iran, which trip was part of the Zimbabwe-Iran Joint Commission.
This followed my attempts at getting him to brief me on media reports on affairs of the Corporation. Only then did I get to know that he had in fact left for Teheran, leaving Cde Mandizvidza in post. I deplored the arrangement and urged the Acting CEO to advise the CEO that I did not find the arrangement responsible at all. My memo relates to the two communications.
Sir, after going through the CEO’s report, I advise that the report falls far short of enlightening the Ministry on “the state of affairs at ZBC” as it claims to do.
In fact, it is a misnomer to title the CEO’s report thus. His report reflects more on the state of the executive mind in relation to ZBC affairs than it does on ZBC as a body corporate. It is also overly defensive. In sum, it reduces the adversities on ZBC to:
The larger national politics;
Adverse macroeconomic environment;
The absence of Government funding;
The alleged financial debilitating interface with Government Departments and parastatals.
In its reckoning, the ZBC management is flawless, a position stiffly contested by ZBC’s workforce as represented by the petition. The language of the report is meant to make an impression politically. Yet the report is to an Accounting Officer who, whilst more than aware of the politics of the country, has not for a very long time been favoured with basic corporate reports on ZBC, as is required by law and best practices.
I have not been receiving audit reports on ZBC; minutes and resolutions of Board of Governors’ meetings; procurement reports; status reports and some such matters of corporate concern. Honourable Minister, I am not an inch wiser about the state of affairs at ZBC after reading the CEO’s report. I will highlight the weaknesses and shortcomings in his report.
Larger National Politics and ZBC
The Ministry is more than alive to the said politics. In fact, those politics have played out directly here in the Ministry, with you dealing with them aggressively and so effectively that all our information units, ZBC included, have gone largely cushioned from them. You have been confronted by Principals on Zimpapers, ZMMT, BAZ, ZMC and ZBC itself. You have been confronted by the responsible Parliamentary Committee on the same.
Indeed, you have been confronted by the Prime Minister and his Office on these same issues. In every instance, you have stood not just steadfast, but formidably by way of warding off political interference and pressures on all agencies under you, ZBC included. Outside that, pressures of a political nature which have been faced by all our agencies, ZBC included, are average and well within management competencies.
I don’t believe ZBC faces any more serious political challenges than have been faced by Zimpapers, including its radio station launched under a huge storm of controversy. What only differs is how the respective managements have handled those challenges. The CEO cannot build a case on such patently exaggerated threats which have, in any event, been absorbed by the parent Ministry.
More fundamentally, the apparent breakdown in labour relations cannot be explained by national politics at all. Lately, the workers have not been getting their full salaries as and when these fall due. This is what has raised a storm at the Corporation, not politics.
The nature of our politics nowadays is such that you will always have one or two staffers with oppositional tendencies. An effective management should be able to deal with such issues. And one most effective way of doing so is by removing adverse factors that poison industrial relations. ZBC management does not appear to have done that.
Quite the contrary, management is being viewed with mistrust by the unpaid workforce. It is viewed as profligate. And flying out of the country leaving behind an unpaid workforce does not suggest sensitivity at all.
Hostile campaigns against Government-related information agencies have been with us from as far back as 2000. Yet Zimpapers has overcome and even triumphed, including introducing and running its new radio station whose advertising revenue baulks this overly political interpretation which the report gives.
In fact, ZBC’s programming and marketing failures have given rise to a whole new industry of electronic billboards we see all over Harare. Instead of improving on its performance, or even joining in this new era of servicing the market, ZBC builds a new cost centre by way of an office in town. I was not formally advised of this project. I have not been favoured with an impact assessment of this decision.
But from the sad financial tale of ZBC, I can reasonably surmise that its impact on ZBC finances has not been salutary at all. Sadly, the report before me shuns real issues internal to ZBC, including figures on the value of the town office, to enable me to assess the soundness of some of these executive decisions.
The specific instance ZBC CEO gives to back up his political interpretation of events is both tenuous and self-embarrassing. Three persons are said to have invaded ZBC premises with a view to unlawfully photographing its premises and assets.
After a search, a business card of an MDC-T operative is found in the phone pouch of one of the accused.
With due respect, Sir, I find it incredible that the CEO’s report seeks to place the fate of the whole ZBC on that small card, on that small evidence. If the trespassers had not come in, would ZBC financial fortunes and industrial relations have been any different?
What is worse, it turns out that one member of the CEO’s Executive had something to do with the three “trespassers”, who by the way, ceased to be trespassers given that they had the said Executive’s authority to enter ZBC premises.
What is more, the three were being considered for a ZBC rebranding assignment, apparently without the knowledge of management. To then conclude, as does the CEO, that “this development exhibits the multidimensional political machinations at play” is, with due respect, astoundingly bald. The parent Ministry is a highly political office. It understands the politics of the country far better than does ZBC.
Generally, I am suspicious of a management that overplays the hand of politics hoping to explain away adverse corporate matters. Management is there to run the corporate affairs of ZBC, while the parent Ministry deals with the politics of their environment. The two roles should never be transposed and Cde Muchechetere needs to be made to appreciate that vital point.
The CEO’s complaints about adverse, hostile or defamatory media reports have little value, if any at all. He runs a media outfit, the best medium in fact, and yet complaints about losing the information war against weekly newspapers! But it also indicates a poor response to an image problem building under his nose.
The attempt at suing The Standard for a negative article was ill-advised, and I dissuaded ZBC from such an unthoughtful action. Incidentally, the CEO never approached this Ministry on the same matter, even though he was going to drag a Government concern into litigation.
The rules are very clear: you don’t commit a concern’s money that way, let alone go to court, without the involvement of the shareholder. He did not even attempt to clear himself and his management to the shareholder on the issues raised by The Standard.
The Anti-Corruption Commission is a constitutional board whose operations are not based on “consent” of targets of investigations. Whatever its provenance or its composition, it is now an instrument of Government and the CEO is best advised to accept that the Commission is going to be a permanent feature in the oversight affairs of this country.
He must also know that the Commission does not invite itself; rather, it is attracted by whistle-blowers, or by reports of adverse situations at State institutions. From what I get from media reports, the Commission was attracted to ZBC by the Corporation’s unpaid and complaining staff. It came in, in other words, as a result of a breakdown in labour relations.
Also by just looking at the CEO’s attachments on the Commission’s visit, one hardly finds anything political in the interface. The Commission raised issues that even this Ministry would want to raise with ZBC management and the Board. ZBC cannot have remuneration structures which fall outside the framework given by Government through the State Enterprises Ministry.
Or negotiate packages which weigh down the Corporation, packages which the organization cannot afford. Equally, ZBC cannot have internal tender processes which have not been cleared by the parent Ministry, especially if these cede disproportionate discretion to the CEO, and also appear to legitimize trade between the Corporation and its executives. Much worse, ZBC management cannot itself decide which major purchases go to SPB and which to itself (ref. attachment on the bus and BAW trucks).
Overall, in respect of the political interpretation of affairs at ZBC, one senses an unhelpful, in fact diversionary, smokescreen. We should quickly discount that in order to get to the real problem affecting ZBC. It is important that the CEO is made aware that the parent Ministry will not buy into such a ruse, and will instead ask hard questions on management and responsible deployment and use of scarce resources.
Absence of Government Funding
I am not very sure how far this issue goes in the mind of the CEO. His reference to Minister Biti’s false claims on allocation to ZBC in the 2012 Budget is of little value to the matter before us. By his own admission, ZBC has been rendered ineligible for budgetary funding by the Commercialization Act of 2001, well before he took over the reins of ZBC.
He was appointed as CEO when that was already the case. The issue of zero Government funding is thus not a new adversity, if one it is at all. Nor is the appropriate management response one of chaffing about it. It is for management to look at the whole Corporation with a view to matching the Corporation’s size to its means. Or growing those means to match its size, if the view of management is that size is sacrosanct.
He raises capitalization funding, correctly so, too. Except Government attempted to capitalize ZBC through the Iranian facility. That capitalization effort was vandalized by ZBC management, well before the current CEO’s time. To this day Government is haunted by that debt.
Presently, Government is working on recapitalization of Transmedia, itself a key factor to ZBC operations. Focus will shift to studios in the context of digitalization.
The so-called new acquisitions which the CEO is making reference to, came through a Chinese grant, again an indication of Government’s awareness of the need to capitalize ZBC.
I personally went to Iran on account of ZBC. The Iranians did an inventory of what they could do for ZBC. That communication was sent to ZBC. I have not got feedback on it.
