The Sunday News
Raisedon Baya
Bulawayo is a city with many colourful narratives, colourful and yet sobering. In honest truth many of Bulawayo’s stories are not good ones.
The common conspiracy story is that Bulawayo and the Matabeleland region at large are underdeveloped by design. The silent cry is that many of its voices are muffled and go unnoticed. In Sports, Arts and Culture sectors the best narrative is, of course, the Highlanders Football Club story. This is a story of pride, heritage, endurance and surviving against all odds. Nothing is better than the Highlanders story.
In arts and culture nothing beats the Amakhosi story. Cont Mhlanga and Amakhosi opened doors and created a clear path for others to follow. Their reputation is big. It goes far and wide.
So when Skyz FM, an Amakhosi project, was granted a licence to operate in 2015 the whole of Bulawayo and beyond celebrated. At last a platform to grow and amplify a distinctively regional voice had been established, many of us thought.
We all believed the new radio station would come and change our narrative. We believed we had finally been granted the voice we so much yearned for.
Here is the interesting part. As soon as the radio licence was issued we were told the station would launch soon. That soon was meant to be September 2015. Then it became January 2016, then June.
Now the excitement is fading as we all wait to see what happens in September. We know that as soon as the licence was awarded to Skyz FM renovations started at Amakhosi Cultural Centre where we have been told the station will be housed.
Security officers were even deployed temporarily at the centre. At one point we were event told equipment was on its way from China. Programme producers were even identified and announced to the public. So what really went wrong?
Theorists, and these always come from the wood, say the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe deliberately gave Skyz FM the licence knowing they will fail to launch. The theorists claim it is a long term agenda to keep Bulawayo and this region without a radio station and consequently without a voice.
However, word from inside Skyz FM says their failure to launch is because of the current economic meltdown and their major funders shifting goal posts.
I am not a politician so I will not try and politicise this failure to launch. I will not even try give thought to any theories racing in my head. I am not a businessman, so the missed business opportunity might have escaped me.
However, I am an artiste and I know what we will miss if the station fails to launch. When the licence was issued the arts fraternity rejoiced the most as they saw opportunities finally coming their way.
Most of us could see our stories being told the way we always visualise them being told. Musicians could see and even hear their songs on radio 24/7. Actors were already talking about radio dramas coming back. Opportunities for youth employment were in the air. We believed. We started dreaming.
But now the dreams are fading. With each passing month our dream of a regional voice, our dreams of many opportunities brought about by the presence of a radio station in one’s community are vanishing by the day.
It is our sincere hope that come September 2016 Bulawayo will have a radio station. It is no secret that a city as big as Bulawayo needs a commercial radio station. Failure to have one speaks volumes.
