Establishing a National Employment Council (NEC) for Zimbabwe’s journalism and media sector is the only viable solution to decades of disorganisation, exploitation and weak professional standards in the industry, a renowned media scholar, Dr Alexander Rusero, has said.
Presenting a discussion paper on the need for an NEC for journalists at the Media Alliance of Zimbabwe (MAZ) annual stakeholders’ conference recently in Harare, Dr Rusero said Zimbabwe’s media environment has deteriorated into a state of “chaos” that no other profession would tolerate.
He argued that the pervasive chaos, from pauper burials for journalists to rampant ethical compromises, is a direct symptom of the industry’s lack of a coherent industrial framework.
“We are coming from a background of a media environment and a media industry in Zimbabwe that is punctuated with chaos, punctuated with anarchy, punctuated with disorder,” Dr Rusero stated.
“The disarray is so scary to the extent that you don’t find that kind of disorder for a normal profession in any other sector.”
He used a pointed analogy to underscore his point, joking that even commuter operators had more organised affiliations.
“I hear there is a new one, the Topsoup. It’s an affiliation which demonstrates some seriousness which the journalists do not have,” he said, framing NEC as the sole “genuine broker” between employers and employees.
“This chaos can only be addressed by the establishment of a NEC.”
Dr Rusero connected a litany of the industry’s ills to the absence of an NEC and explained the perennial debates over poor salaries are not the root problem but merely a symptom.
“The basic salary that a journalist earns should not be like some form of voodoo as it is currently in place. This can only happen because we do not have a NEC,” he said.
This chaotic environment, he contended, has profound consequences for the country’s media integrity.
“The media in Zimbabwe has successively divided the people more than the devil himself has divided the people,” Dr Rusero remarked, linking issues of polarity, misinformation and lies directly to the precarious conditions journalists endure.
He detailed the current “highly precarious and fragmented” reality, where journalists are often lumped into other sectors.
“We are still confined in some scattered National Employment Councils. In some jurisdictions you find our respective media houses subscribing to some councils in the printing and publishing industry, even confined in the same category with the tissue makers and manufacturers.”
This lack of a dedicated NEC, Dr Rusero argued, has led to a crisis of professionalism where “every Tom, Dick, Jane can wake up being a journalist,” making it an “oxymoron” that in 2025, the industry is still debating who qualifies as a journalist.
The human cost of this institutional vacuum was a central theme of Dr. Rusero’s paper, as he painted a grim picture of journalists working without formal contracts, medical aid, or pension schemes, where the acronym for JOB has become “journey of borrowing.”
“The situation becomes dire when a journalist is involved in an accident or dies,” he said.
“Lots of journalists have settled in pauperised funerals, pauper burials which are not correlated with the normal profession of this industry. Something must give in and it has to give in by way of the establishment of a national employment council.”
This financial desperation, he argued, inevitably leads to ethical decay.
“The wages are often inconsistent and below subsistence levels leading to ethical compromises and professional burnout,” Dr Rusero stated, adding that the industry is losing its best talent to more lucrative fields like public relations and marketing.
“If you look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself whether your son or your daughter aspire to be you, they don’t aspire to be you,” he said.
“They would rather be in some spaces where people are given raptors … because this is becoming more profitable than some of these things.”
Dr Rusero urged stakeholders to rethink the future of journalism, highlighting that the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ) has been vocal but unfortunately lacks the statutory leverage to enforce fair labour practices or negotiate conditions of service.
“People can get away with murder so to speak. Newsrooms are not accountable to anyone, the industry is not accountable to anyone. So if you are to look at the issue of sustainability it becomes even trickier because journalists are living for other spaces such as public relations, marketing, advertising etc because it is more lucrative,” he said.
“As much as it is developing its progress, the fact that we are losing talent that has been invested in for a long time to other things, it means we must reflect the nature of our industry. Probably those we have stapled have nowhere to go. If there is somewhere to go they will wake up all day at that place.
Dr Rusero also situated his argument within the context of the government’s recently promulgated Zimbabwe Media Policy.
While acknowledging the policy has “a lot of flaws,” he called it a “genuine starting point.” However, he insisted its goals would remain abstract without an NEC to operationalise it.
“The Zimbabwe media policy can only make sense in terms of its operationalisation if we have a full-fledged NEC in place,” he argued.
“Right now the media policy is just hanging, it’s floating.”
He outlined the NEC’s critical functions, which would include standardising employment conditions, protecting journalists from exploitation and political manipulation and providing fair dismissal procedures.
“There must be a criteria of recruitment of journalists, not as a matter of charity as is currently the case. Journalists are actually a charity case,” he said.
This institutional backing, he believes, is the foundation of a free press.
“We need to rethink so that we have an institutionalised press freedom which gives journalists industrial backing to operate independently.”
While noting the journalism chaos is not unique to Zimbabwe, Dr Rusero dismissed the notion such should provide comfort.
“Ours is now on the insanity side of things,” he said.
After reviewing models in South Africa, Zambia and Nigeria, he identified Kenya’s Media Council as a compelling “de facto NEC” that could serve as a benchmark for Zimbabwe.
Dr Rusero stated the NEC is the essential mechanism to transform the industry from within.
“The criticality and success of the media industry rests on trainers before we talk of any other particular space,” he said, framing the council as the cornerstone for building a professional, ethical and sustainable media sector that serves both its workers and the Zimbabwean public.”
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