MY PERSONAL TAKE ON THE ZNBC LIVE PROGRAMME ISSUE
By Amb. Chibamba Kanyama
At a reception last night in Minnesota where I served as guest, there was an offer for thousands of new books to schools in Zambia. There was a further offer that one set of books would be printed in a local language.
I needed to explain this offer with utmost care to this group of philanthropists. It was either they printed all books in English or included all seven Zambian languages. I told them ethnicity and language diversity was Zambia’s heritage and pride. I gave a broader context to the issue and further demonstrated to them how the national broadcaster, ZNBC, had clear guidelines on the treatment of the local languages on both radio and television. As a country, we have been proud of this diversity.
In addition, we have for many years leveraged the ZNBC platform to demonstrate unity in diversity. This is reflected in an article on One Zambia, One Nation written by Lutz Marten and Nancy C. Kula,
‘Questions of language and identity have played an important role throughout modern Zambian history, particularly after independence, when the question of the national identity of the new state took centre stage. Language in Zambia is important for national, political, and ethnic identities, for communication, education, and popular culture.’
I have followed the social media debate involving a caller and TV anchor Margaret Chisulo, a young woman with a very pleasant personality. Writing in my personal capacity, I am not surprised with the nature of public reaction because ZNBC has for years managed local language diversity very well. My take is that the incident is very isolated and does not reflect ZNBC policy or practice on use of local languages. The caller who spoke Lozi was merely testing the ZNBC policy on languages after having listened to callers use Bemba and Nyanja liberally. She decided to call and use Lozi. She was immediately stopped. That’s where the issue is. In any case, that was not the first time such has happened except that in previous incidences, callers were allowed to continue to make their contributions in their language of comfort.
Incidentally, It’s now I realize that as one who served as ZNBC Director General at one point, we never did enough during my time to orient young broadcasters about this practice that has been in place since independence. I took it for granted it was a straight forward matter.
It is my hope that ZNBC Management will learn from what happened as articulated by the Board Chairpwrson Bishop Joseph Kazhila. I propose the Corporation embarks on a process of inducting new broadcasters on how to position local languages on ZNBC. Perhaps, there could even be an opportunity to have a special mixed-bag TV broadcast that allows callers to express themselves in any language of comfort and this can work very well if there is immediate interpretation. This can enhance the level of national unity we need because people will start learning other languages via a programme that is primarily anchored in English.
For now, we can rest assured that the ZNBC Board and Management are competent enough to handle the issue. All is well!