A Little Creative with the Broadcast History of Zimbabwe: A Metaphilosophical Approach

Abstract

A pervasive yet intriguing insight about the birth of broadcast in Zimbabwe is the story in which three engineers stumbled on broadcast through the use of a transmitter initially installed for meteorological purposes [1]. This was immediately followed in 1932, by the opening of broadcast stations in the then Salisbury (now Harare) and Bulawayo [2]. Drawing from the insights of Walter Mignolo in the article titled ‘Epistemic Disobedience,’ the current study sought to demystify the idea that broadcast in Zimbabwe as born in the 1930 as a lie that has been recycled  for far too long. The current paper seeks to prove that the claim that broadcast in the country was born in the 30s is bereft of scientific reasoning and real meaning of broadcast. It is a claim premised on the bigotry of proverbial ‘Boer mentality.’ In the article ‘epistemic disobedience,’ Mignolo exposes the analytic limits of Eurocentrism as a hegemonic structure of knowledge and beliefs [3]. Operating within the structured prisms of Mignolo’s ideas, the current paper finds the assertion that broadcast in Zimbabwe was born in the 30s, a recycled lie bereft of scientific reasoning and the real meaning of broadcast. The engineers who incidentally discovered broadcast in Zimbabwe had been attached to the Rhodesian aviation sector, particularly for periodic whether updates for the few flights that passed through or landed in the then Rhodesia now Zimbabwe [4]. The paper traces the roots of broadcast to the invention of the drum, which is quite ancient [5]. An important finding is that outdated laws and ancient technology are pretty much a feature of the present history of broadcast in Zimbabwe [6]. Technology that should have been decommissioned and relegated to the museums and archives is in use in broadcast in the country [7]. Yet despite this ugly patch to broadcast in Zimbabwe, a promising narrative has emerged [8]. The new narrative is linked to digitization. In simple, digitization relates to the use of digital signals in communication [9].

Indeed, the story of broadcast in the country would not be complete without mentioning the alluring promise of technological vibrancy, content creation and the concomitant democratic potential of the sector in the digital age. Quite notably, broadcast is geared for transformation as the country’s new Government led by Emerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa has embraced the Fourth Industrial revolution. The enthralling Fourth Industrial revolution of the digital age is underpinned by a fusion of burgeoning technologies. Notably, the technologies have led to the need for additional spectrum to cater for the increasing volumes of information being transmitted from point to point. In simple and for the purpose of this paper, spectrum is a ‘channel through which communication take place’ [10]. Quite notably, the most significant changes in information and communication occur in broadcast [11]. A pragmatic historical qualitative approach, typifies the philosophy through which the information and data to complete the study were collected. This methodological approach is underpinned by an admixture of document analysis, whose over-arching analytic theoretical framework seeks the underlying issues about broadcast. Notably, the historical study has capacity to analyze often opaque issues especially those that require memory to recreate [12]. This capability lends traction to the historical method.  Further if not for the study’s esthetic qualities, the importance of the current study lie in the widening and deepening of the scope of knowledge in broadcast in Zimbabwe. Philosophy is constituted beliefs framed in the form of theory. As a theory philosophy provides answers arising within the context of a people’s experiences -hearty on masculine-refusing to accommodate other positions in terms of truths even if it means lying through one’s teeths, hence the recycling of a lie regarding broadcast history  in Zimbabwe. Therefore, philosophy has a bearing steeped in the culture of a people their tradition and values implying the possibility of the existence of different philosophies for different communities in as much as they are many cultures. Presumably broadcast in Zimbabwe developed in the context of specific thought processes in terms of theory which in the views of the current study could suggest a distinct Zimbabwean philosophy to the understanding of this sectorin the country.