Harare — GOING by the programmes and news bulletins currently served up by the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings (ZBH), the new short-wave radio and television station recently launched by our only broadcasting station must clearly carry a government health warning: It could drive you crazy and nuts -- with deadly boredom!

My question to the Minister of Information and Publicity, Sikhanyiso Ndlovu and ZBH chief executive officer Henry Muradzikwa is: Why subject Zimbabweans at home and in the Diaspora to yet more torture and cruelty?

There are too many things that Zimbabweans in the Diaspora would rather do than listening to the new Voice of Zimbabwe broadcasting station.

There is a pressing need to transform the fortunes of Pockets Hill here in Harare and stations elsewhere in the country without adding another station that a few or none will listen to or watch. Who does not know that ZBH has been in terminal decline and is in need of urgent fixing?

Audience figures have waned. Viewers have switched off or switched over to Zimbabwean radio stations based outside the country and other international broadcast networks such as SABC, BBC, CNN, and SkyNews.

Our local news on television and radio here in Zimbabwe does not reflect reality on the ground because of lack of editorial independence on the part of ZBH among other reasons.

What is this "true Zimbabwean story" that Sikhanyiso Ndlovu and Henry Muradzikwa keep on telling us day in and day out? For me, the true Zimbabwean story is that things are broken in this country and need urgent fixing. This is the real story of Zimbabwe.

It is naive and rather bizarre on the part of ZBH to think that they can project a true Zimbabwean story about such an unhappy country -- a country, which, to all intents and purposes, is in a state of economic collapse.

According to the general manager of the new station, Voice of Zimbabwe, Happison Muchechetere, broadcasts will be intended to reach target audiences in South Africa, Australia, the UK and the United States.

The question that immediately comes to mind is: Why did those Zimbabweans flee their homeland in the first place? Why is there a feeling in government and ZBH circles that history is in the making by launching such a damp squib of a radio station? Are the protagonists of such a project living in cuckoo land or what?

What is most important at this stage is to get ZBH back on its feet. It has been down in the dumps for many years now. ZBH needs to face this truth. ZBH needs to become a truly public service broadcaster and not a government mouthpiece as it is at the present moment. It is crucial that it tries to cater for the interests and tastes of the great variety of audiences if it wants to be taken seriously by Zimbabweans both at home and abroad. There is really nothing special about SABC, BBC, CNN or other outside broadcasting stations such as SW Radio and VOA Studio 7. It is not as if they have some special interest in our problems here. No. It is just that they report news that is not allowed to be broadcast by ZBH.

In other words, by denying ZBH editorial independence, fairness and impartiality, the government of Zimbabwe has made Zimbabweans easier targets of domination by the Western mass media.

Western journalists can become seemingly authoritative interpreters of our events here in a week's sojourn in Harare when in fact they are far from authorities by any stretch of imagination.

By suppressing ZBH and Zimpapers, the government must never think that they can suppress news. It only makes western reporters become false authorities on our situation and enables them to report on our news to our own people with much greater impact.

In any event, the Internet has opened up a whole new world anyway. We are living in an information age in which information flows instantaneously, in which rumours and leaks are the order of the day and they go on the Internet, online publications and websites with no concern for the accuracy and fairness of it all.

By trying to project a so-called "true Zimbabwean story," ZBH would have shamelessly joined this bandwagon.

The job of ZBH is to give Zimbabweans both at home and in the Diaspora real news. Non-stop propaganda campaigns of showing Zimbabwe in a positive light and broadcasting sunshine stories when the reality on the ground is very different will get us nowhere.

This nation is in need of healing, as the governor of the central bank, Gideon Gono, never tires of saying and as the recent pastoral statement by the Roman Catholics Bishops in Zimbabwe made it very clear.

This may all seem self-evident to many people but it needs to be said all the time until our current national crisis is over. We need to address the root causes of our crisis, not just dealing with the symptoms.

So to Happison and Henry, I would say that it should not be a question of propaganda for government and ZANU PF. It should simply be a matter of the new Voice of Zimbabwe radio station keeping the Zimbabwean public as fully and accurately informed as possible about what is happening in our country and the world, of analysing our crisis and of providing a genuine platform for a genuine public debate and finding a way out of this quagmire that we find ourselves in.

If the station can do that, I will be the first to tune in to it -- never mind those in the Diaspora -- and shout "Hallelua", and sing the song "Courage brother, do not stumble."