RADIO has replaced the talking drum, the village herald, town-crier and the mushambadzi.
The Shona word ‘kushambadzira’ has been adopted to denote ‘deliver public broadcasts on the radio’.
Radios have become part of our everyday life for entertainment.
Apart from entertainment, radio was traditionally a resource for public edification.
Does radio in reality replace the teacher and/or family when it comes to education?
Although an invisible and disembodied medium for an invisible public, radio is still an important vehicle for public instruction; from general knowledge to etiquette; from cooking, economic debates, history, geography, literature, agriculture, industry, scientific discoveries, religious and moral education, socio-political discourse, art and culture, heritage, sports, health and nutrition to news broadcasts.
In fact, the entire welfare of a human being as well as the nuts and bolts of nation building are topics for radio.
Radio listening still maintains some elements of ‘blindness’, but the way in which we experience this medium now is no longer totally disembodied and immaterial.
While the public is still not visible, listeners have become audible with the telephone; making their opinions and emotions increasingly public as they participate on radio programmes.
Radio producers and announcers ought to bear in mind that language is the dynamic bearer and register of all we know, have produced and still produce, and all we share as a people.
Through language we transfer both written and oral knowledge to succeeding generations.
Language also enables a society to produce and reproduce knowledge in both quantitative and qualitative terms.
Radio being a means for the dissemination of knowledge also serves as a vital tool for education.
The casualness in tone, the complacence and affected idiosyncrasies, bad diction, broken language (in both English and indigenous languages), acronyms and shortening of names and titles and the general conduct of some of our ill-informed garrulous radio presenters, have become the order of the day and a wound in our culture and our sense of ‘hunhuism’.
Inevitably, the current lackadaisical approach to empty broadcasting creates a serious socio-cultural disconnect in the audiences.
Overally, in Zimbabwe, radio journalists are poorly trained, if trained at all, and the need for investment in continuous training is as vital as ever.
Our broadcasters and presenters need to be instructed with greater orientation in presentation, use of language, diction and civility – hunhu/ubuntu.
The Western assault and annihilation of traditional customary principles, hunhu/ubuntu and knowledge has not left out the radio.
The 75 percent local content introduced by the then Minister of Information, Jonathan Moyo, in 2000, which sought to rekindle African heritage further and bring back hunhu/ubuntu, has gone to rack and ruin by the wayside.
In Zimbabwe today, the personalisation of radio spaces by presenters inverting the focus of the presentation to themselves has become a public manifestation of the presenters’ life, opinions and/or emotions, rather than the opinions and interests of the people, who after all pay them through radio licenses.
The psychology of broadcasting should be continually taught, analysed and disseminated in the presenter’s training stages, prior to the delivery of poor presentations.
While radio should be informative, educational and entertaining, announcers should lead the Nation as exemplary paragons of ethical and moral standards.
Standards and etiquette on radio have fallen.
At times, in their condescending retorted speech, announcers have become purveyors for propagating slang and broken language in English and both indigenous languages, often disseminating bad telephone and conversational manners.
Colloquial pronouncements and street language are disfranchising formal African etiquette, hunhu/ubuntu and education.
How often do we hear on Zimbabwe’s radio stations the brusque: ‘hallo paradio’ or ‘radio hallo’ or simply just ‘radio’, without mentioning the phrase ‘good morning’, ‘good day’, ‘mangwanani’, ‘masikati’ or ‘manheru’?
Listeners are fed on a daily diet of set trite formulas, day-in and day-out.
Radio is aural and its communication, or lack of it, needs new thoughts, ideas and articulation in Zimbabwe, be it in Shona, English or Ndebele.
Being the voice of the Nation, radio presenters should provoke new ideas to stimulate and develop new insights for national and personal development for which they ideally require excellent presentation and performance skills.
Is this possible when they limit themselves to trite repetitive clichés and limited programme content, mostly football, religion and interviews with mediocre gospel artistes and other sub-standard new amateur artistes in need of training and guidance themselves?
Some of us older listeners may remember the distinct, well-articulated and mannered broadcast voices of some of our previous announcers.
The late Ishmael Kadungure, Dominic Mandizha, Patrick Bajila, Jonathan Mutsinze, Peter Johns, Hilton Mambo, Godfrey Majonga, Josh Makawa, Tsitsi Vera, Alice Chavunduka and Hosea Singende, come to mind.
The voices of yesteryear still ring true in the mind.
Who can forget the clear diction and articulation of Godfrey Madhimba and Shingirayi Virimayi (Tungwarara), among others?
Most commentators would agree that radio is a very impressionable instrument of communication.
Hence, radio etiquette influences the manner in which our children will eventually speak, think and write.
The broadcasters’ speech, tone and elocution when addressing people during call-in programmes should have intonations of hunhu/ubuntu.
While African etiquette, (Zimbabwean in particular), is ingrained in our culture, etiquette in technology is a fairly recent concept.
The rules of etiquette that apply when communicating over public audio systems (such as radio) should reflect the values ingrained in our culture on national radio.
Etiquette in broadcasting technology governs our socially acceptable conduct in a given situation.
The absence of good verbal communication and hunhu/ubuntu is also reflected in the deficiency of content and context of programme whereby listeners are subjected to football, religion, moral pontificating, the doctrines of Euro-centric motivational speakers and self-advertising, as the order of the day, no doubt as time ‘fillers’, whenever presenters run out of ideas.
Although differing widely in background, language, custom and ideology, radio listeners need to know what is happening to them and around them.
Here again, education and the use of good and proper language become the major drawbacks.
With no guiding principle and overriding national ethos of what Nation we would like to build; the airways have become a free for all and a bad reflection of what our society should be.
Therefore, the influence of public educators in mass-media, such as radio, in shaping ideals of hunhu/ubuntu, and the destinies of the people cannot be left to chance.
Dr Tony Monda holds a PhD in Art Theory and Philosophy and a DBA (Doctorate in Business Administration) and Post-Colonial Heritage Studies. He is a writer, lecturer, musician, art critic, practising artist and corporate image consultant. He is also a specialist art consultant, post-colonial scholar, Zimbabwean socio-economic analyst and researcher.
For views and comments, email: tonym.MONDA@gmail.com