As Zambia gears for the September 20 tripartite elections, PSAf has also been very active in providing platforms for citizens to express themselves on the elections and governance processes in general, especially through the Atwaambe project and the Governance and Transparency through Radio (GTR) initiative.
Every Wednesday morning, PSAf hosts an interactive radio programmes on Radio Phoenix in Lusaka. The programmes, titled “Our Voice”, bring together stakeholders from different backgrounds to discuss issues relating to the elections. Zambia votes on September 20 to elect President, Members of Parliament and Councillors. More programmes are currently running on Kasempa and Itezhi Tezhi Community radio stations. PSAf facilitated the establishment of the two stations and currently runs them jointly with communities.
The programmes have managed to bring out crucial issues like the participation of women, youth and the disabled in elections, both as candidates and as voters. One of the programmes on Radio Phoenix featured Faustina Phiri, the Chairperson of Chongwe District Association who wants said women could make a great impact in the development of Zambia. She encouraged women to stand for election in different political positions.
In addition to offering a platform for people to express themselves through radio, the Atwaambe project has also provided the poor with access to platforms for influencing policy dialogue. The project is funded by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) as part of the Africa-wide Mwananchi initiative.
At the end of August, the Atwaambe grantees met in Lusaka for a two day capacity development workshop on media and governance. The workshop was followed by a consultative meeting of both the grantees and other Zambian based Governance and Transparency Fund (GTF) partners. The media and governance workshop used PSAf in-house expertise from the Media and ICTs programme and explored strategies for better integrating media and civil society organisations in tackling governance issues.
The consultative meeting looked at ways of strengthening the citizen-state accountability mechanisms through social contracts. The grantees were also taken through sessions on how to strengthen the citizens-state accountability chain , especially in light of the forthcoming elections in Zambia. The partners articulated their various governance issues and linked them to the existing policy framework, highlighting the gaps and how to bridge them and also linked the issues to the economic, social and cultural rights enshrined in both the Mun’gomba and the National Constitutional Conference draft constitutions.
The Atwaambe programme has a total of 10 grantees drawn from media and civil society organisations, all of them actively implementing governance initiatives in Zambia. Based on the lessons and experiences shared, grantees came up with action plans to strengthen the involvement of media/CSOs in their governance initiatives.
In view of the forthcoming tripartite local government, parliamentary and presidential elections in Zambia, participants agreed to issue a communiqué highlighting the broad range of governance issues that they are implementing that aspiring elected representatives should commit to address including the adoption of the Mungomba draft constitution as a panacea to the issues they were dealing with. Each partner agreed to empower their target beneficiaries with skills to collectively frame social contracts with their aspiring elected representatives articulating commitments on how the aspiring candidates will address the identified governance issues.
Gillies Kasongo, the PSAf regional manager for Media Development and ICTs told the participants that broadening engagement between civil society and media people will create more room for informing public opinion and debate on key governance and development issues. Kasongo said both the media and CSOs “have well-meaning intentions in reaching out to people with useful information on governance matters”, and their collaboration would improve public awareness and lead to public participation in governance issues.
The workshop established that there are a number of success stories under the Atwaambe project that need to be shared on a wider scale, and where possible be replicated in some areas.
The participants were also in agreement that for the media that how well media effectively communicate with development and community actors at national level determines the levels of influence on local and public governance, and that there was need for constant learning and engagement in order to foster effective media relations.
With the elections just a couple of weeks away, the participants were in agreement that the media could only be taken seriously if they conducted themselves professionally.
