By Dr Tafataona Mahoso

DIGITISATION will soon multiply the number of available channels and platforms for communication.
And there are efforts to put together specific projects for the production of local content to fill the huge space to be created.
While that is happening, current trends in both the print and electronic media are not encouraging.
The following contradictions can already be seen:
l First the claim that the media are there to educate the public is at best doubtful because under present circumstances such education can only take place by default.
Current affairs programming has been overwhelmed by sponsored religious material, sponsored commercial speech and a shocking trend to tabloidise all platforms and channels, so that the lurid and titillating stuff that used to be associated with tabloids is now being initiated and duplicated across the board.
l Second, too much radio programming is now dedicated to gossip and individual disc-jockeys and presenters just talking and giggling to themselves and by themselves with total disregard for the listener unless that listener happens to be a caller.
Often the caller is a friend or acquaintance of the presented DJ and what is discussed is not of public value.
l Third, at the policy level, there is no debate on how much of the broadcast and print space to be created by digitisation ought to be defined and defended as space for public use by the people in pursuit of the common national objectives already enshrined in the Constitution of Zimbabwe; what it would cost to ensure that such space is not contaminated or fully taken over by sponsors whose objectives are sectarian, commercial and hostile to the basic values of the people and to national objectives in Chapter Two of the Constitution.
To provide a heritage context for such a media debate, it might be necessary to ask the question: How did our ancestors define public space and public communication and the laws and ethics to govern such?
The mass media and their technologies have increased the number of occasions and vehicles for public speaking.
However, the basic theoretical and ethical principles were laid down long ago.
Africans have always been great and effective communicators because African civilisation recognises communication as the fundamental foundation on which relationships are constructed.
One’s own existence and identity is recognised in African philosophy as the moral product of relationships based on communication.
The African in word, in deed and through the environment he/she constructs always says:
“I relate therefore I am.”
“I am who I am because of who we are.”
“Umuntu, ngumuntu, ngabantu.”
For the European, the individual defines himself in terms of self-consciousness, not relationship consciousness.
This approach leads to narcissism.
Renè Descartes is the father of European consciousness who declares:
“I think, therefore I am.”
Here are some of the African proverbs underlining the ethical basis for human communication:
Critical openness
l One does not go asking for palm oil with a gourd without an opening. Munhu haangakumbire mafuta okubikisa nedende risina kuvhurwa.
The speaker and the audience must be open to one another in a critical and strategic way.
l Moto mushoma ndiwo unonyautsa muto.
The gentle fire is best for warming and readying the cold broth.
l Kurebesa muromo unodya chedemo, chebanga hauchiwane.
If you are too loud-mouthed, people will never share secrets or subtle and valuable thoughts with you.
You will know of things only after they have been broadcast loudly as well as far-and-wide.
People will never take you into their confidence.
l Kutuka chembere, ndokunge uine nhekwe yefodya.
If you want to scold or reprimand an elder, a grandmother or grandfather, you must first have some snuff to share.
This is not a call for corruption, but a call for effective approaches to senior people, effective choice of time, clothes, language, occasion and manners before chastising an elder.
l Gunde repwa rinonaka, asi hariiswe mudura.
The stick of sugarcane is very sweet and refreshing but cannot be preserved in the granary.
The granary represents a lifetime saving which belongs to the whole family or community. It is precious and strategic.
This proverb now teaches us how to handle those desires which pull or excite people.
Handle them with care because you do not want to destroy long-term relationships to satisfy a passing desire for excitement.
l If while you are bathing, and a madman comes by and snatches your clothes, you do not chase after him yourself.
This comes from the Akan of Ghana.
Speech can be used to trap the speaker.
Jesus was asked a question in public which was meant to entrap him.
He recognised the trap and answered the question wisely, when he said: “Give unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar.”
In the particular case of the Akan proverb, a good speaker does not accept to speak everywhere at all occasions.
There will be occasions when he will ask someone else to speak for him or to answer to scurrilous allegations.
The public speech has been long recognised in Africa as the device by which public statements, public claims, public allegations and replies, public pleas and responses, can be tested.
That is why historian of civilisation James Breasted in his book, The Dawn of Conscience, included Chapter 12 which he titled ‘The Earliest Crusade for Social Justice and the democratisation of Moral Responsibility’.
This means that among the Africans of Egypt, long before Moses and Mohammed, moral responsibility and moral standards ceased to be viewed as private or bilateral.
They became multi-lateral; that is, the concern of the whole society.
This means that the propaganda challenge for Zimbabwe in particular and Africa in general is how to fight systematic media lies directed against an entire people, lies that libel an entire movement and value system, in a borrowed and adversarial legal system which gives more importance to cases where it is easy to identify an individual complainant against an individual accused.
Secondary importance or attention is given to massive lies that do collective damage to an entire people.
Today, we have a world which is cursed by the imposition of a unilateral human rights doctrine which is undemocratic and against democracy because it lacks multilateral standards.
Therefore it was an important discovery many millennia ago when Africans in Egypt ruled that statements making moral claims, moral allegations and moral pleas had to be tested in the public arena.
The means to be used was public speaking.
It is still an important means today.
For instance, in the 12th chapter of the Dawn of Conscience, we find the earliest African ideas about the value and ethics of public speaking among the Africans of Egypt.
“A wise man is recognised by what he knows; his conscience is the balance for his tongue; his conscience is the balance for his lips when he speaks; and his conscience is the balance for his eyes when he sees.
His ears together hear what is profitable for his son, who does what is right and is free from lying.”
The wise man here is presented as both a good, upright public speaker and a good listener.
He is able to discern and gather from other speakers what is of value for his own son.
The son too is free from the liar’s habits.
We come to know what the wise man knows because he speaks in public, where his tongue and his lips are balanced, that is governed, by his conscience.
His son also gets to benefit from what the wise man hears when he becomes the listener in the public arena.
Lies told in the public arena are just like lies told through the media.
The resulting offence is not bilateral, as Roman Dutch Law tends to treat it in most cases.
African law and African ethics always went beyond the construction of complainant versus respondent.
The public arena belongs to all and to no one.