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Ms Majome

Daniel Nemukuyu Senior Court Reporter
The Constitutional Court yesterday postponed to October 15 the case in which Harare West legislator Ms Jessie Majome is challenging the law compelling owners of radio and television sets to pay licence fees to the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation.
Ms Majome’s case was deferred together with three other related cases involving ZBC after the court realised that in one of the cases, the lawyers had not filed their heads of argument.

The other three cases involve Musangano Lodge, African Open Media Initiative and Mr Bernard Wekare, all against ZBC.
Lawyers who attended the postponement proceedings in the judges’ chambers said the court now wanted to hear the four cases separately as opposed to an earlier agreement by the lawyers to consolidate them.

The lawyers will be given time limits to address the court on relevant issues to ensure that the cases are all finalised in time.
By October 15, all the issues should have been ironed out to allow the hearings to kick off.

Ms Majome is seeking to invalidate provisions of the broadcasting law that compels people to pay television and radio licences to ZBC.
In her papers, Ms Majome argued that instead of being a public broadcaster, ZBC was being biased towards Zanu-PF and that it was not giving political parties equal coverage.

She feels that Sections 38 (b) (2), 38(c) and 38(d) (1-4) of the Broadcasting Service Act that compels people to pay for the licences and holds defaulters liable for prosecution should be removed from the statutes because they violate the people’s rights.

Ms Majome further argued that ZBC was not serving the national interests, but interests of zanu-pf, hence viewers and listeners were being forced to be associated with zanu-pf even if they did not like the party. The legislator, who has a pending case of failing to produce a television licence to the police, is also seeking permanent stay of her prosecution.

She argued that non-payment of the fees should not be taken as a criminal offence.
Responding to the application, Government dismissed the application as mischievous, saying the obligation to pay the fees was the same as that of paying tax.
In the heads of argument filed at the Constitutional Court by Mambosasa Legal Practitioners on behalf of the Attorney General, the Minister of Information, Media and Publicity, ZBC and the Minister of Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs, it is argued that Ms Majome’s claims of bias had not been proven and that it was only her own belief that the national broadcaster was biased.

According to the heads of argument, ZBC is a national broadcaster and licence fees were permissible at law. It is Government’s contention that Ms Majome was approaching the court with dirty hands by openly refusing to pay the listener’s licence fees for two years.

The Government lawyers urged the court to dismiss the application with costs on a higher scale, saying courts must not be abused by politicians as a platform to gain cheap publicity or to score political points.

It is also argued that if Ms Majome feels ZBC was failing to deliver on its mandate as provided by the Broadcasting Services Act, she could file a complaint with the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe. If she does not get any joy, she could then approach the court instead of pre-maturely rushing to the Constitutional Court.