before making such appointments. While the two main principals are on record as having acknowledged the need to reconstitute BAZ, there is little public evidence of progress on the matter. While it has since emerged that the parties have agreed to reform ZBC and restore its public service mandate, doubts remain as to whether government will implement this—especially since similar promises have been made in the past with no accompanying action. In fact, despite the parties’ undertaking to restore professionalism within the public media in the GPA, nothing has been done yet. We therefore await tangible evidence of a commitment to fulfilling the agreement and instituting wholesale broadcasting reforms compatible with regional instruments such as the Banjul Declaration on the Principles of Freedom of Expression in Africa, the Windhoek Declaration and the African Charter on Broadcasting (ACB). Biased government-controlled media: The public media is still extremely politicized. The implications of this have been underlined by their partisan coverage of national events. This is despite the undertaking by the parties to “ensure that the public media provides balanced and fair coverage to all political parties for their legitimate political activities,” and to “take appropriate measures” to ensure that all media “refrain from abusive language that may incite hostility, political intolerance and ethnic hatred or that unfairly undermines political parties and other organisations”. Ever since the prolonged political dispute over the partial fulfillment of the GPA started, the government-controlled media led by The Herald and ZBC has been launching offensive and abusive attacks on other arms of government, with complete disregard for the political agreement. This has been seen by the new wave of ‘jingles’ and/or ‘songs’ that are being aired every half hour on ZBC in gleeful praise of ZANU (PF) as the dominant party in government. During the period under review, the public media has remained unrepentant. In the broadcasting spectrum, reforms have not been implemented. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS Media stakeholders met during the second All Stakeholders Media conference at the Rainbow Towers on 28 May 2010 and came up with the following resolutions which are here reproduced as the considered recommendations to ensuring media reform by practitioners: • The Zimbabwe constitution must guarantee freedom of expression, including clear and specific clauses on media freedom, access to public information, academic freedom and artistic activity. • We urge the government of Zimbabwe to immediately repeal all repressive laws affecting media practice such as AIPPA, POSA, the Interception of Communications Act, Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act and The Official Secrets Act. CIVIL SOCIETY MONITORING MECHANISM (CISOMM) SIX MONTH SHADOW REPORT ON THE PERFORMANCE OF THE INCLUSIVE OF ZIMBABWE 34