THE Media Alliance of Zimbabwe (MAZ), a network of nine media support and professional bodies, has elected Vivienne Marara and Loughty Dube as chairperson and vice-chairperson, respectively. BY MOSES MATENGA Marara is the national co-ordinator of the Zimbabwe Association of Community Radio Stations (Zacras), while Dube is the executive director of the Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe (VMCZ) and the two will be at the helm of MAZ for the next year. Marara took over from the Media Institute of Southern Africa (Misa-Zimbabwe) director Tabani Moyo, while Dube replaced the Gender and Media Connect (GMC) director Abigail Gamanya. “We are coming in at a time there are a number of developments within the media sector chief among these being the impact of COVID-19 on the operations of the media, impending licensing of community radios and free-to-air national commercial television stations and the ongoing law reform process,” Marara said. MAZ is a network of media support organisations including the Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe, Misa-Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe Union of Journalists, Zimbabwe National Editors’ Forum, GMC, Zacras, the VMCZ, the Media Centre and the African Community Publishing Development Trust. Marara said she would, among other things, sustain the advocacy interventions around the ongoing law reform process, including amplifying issues related to the safety of journalists. Dube, a former NewsDay staffer and ex-chairperson of Misa-Zimbabwe, said it would be prudent for journalists to have a viable co-regulatory framework that would depolarise the sector and ensure the media is united in promoting a professional and accountable sector. “The long-standing position of the alliance is that the self-regulation mechanism is in principle the ideal form of holding the media accountable,” Dube said.