• Misa urges government to intervene in Zimbabwe
• Zimbabwe’s Daily News battles on - online
• Mugabe builds case against himself
• Zim paper still out of action
• UN food aid hope rests on Harare agreement
• Harare court relaxes broadcasting law
• Doubts over new land claims
• ZANU PF Youth League signs agreement with Cuban youths
• African Editors Flay Zimbabwe Over Harrassment of Journalists
• JAG PR Communique dated 29 September 2003
• JAG Open Letters Forum No. 153
• What’s the big deal?
• 'It is like losing a son'

Harare - A Zimbabwe court on Monday postponed till later this week a ruling
on an application by the country's only independent daily newspaper to have
confiscated equipment returned, a company official said.

The Daily News had made an urgent court application to have equipment
returned that was seized by police more than a week ago after the paper was
found to be operating illegally.

Gugulethu Moyo, the paper's legal director, said the judge on Monday told
Daily News lawyers that before he could make a ruling they had to first
serve court papers on the magistrate who issued police with a warrant to
seize the equipment.

The paper is seeking to have that warrant overturned.

Moyo said the matter had now been postponed until 15:00 on Wednesday.

The Daily News was shut down two weeks ago because it had not registered
with a state-appointed media commission, as required under strict press
laws.

When the paper subsequently applied to register it was turned down.

Moyo said a court in Harare was Wednesday also due to hear an application by
the Daily News to have an appeal against the media commission's refusal to
register it heard urgently.

Cape Town - Rumours that the Zimbabwean government now plans to expropriate
urban properties belonging to whites are "highly questionable" says Hermann
Hanekom of the Africa Institute.

But, he says, anything is possible as far as President Robert Mugabe is
concerned.

Other analysts also warned that reports in weekend newspapers, suggesting
that the Zimbabwean government was now turning its attention to land in
urban areas, should not be accepted as truth on face value and that rumours
like these regularly cropped up.

White farmers in Zimbabwe claim the latest expropriations of white property
is part of a government project, Project Clean Sweep, geared at getting rid
of the last white property owners in the country.

Since Mugabe launched his controversial land reform programme in 2000, the
land of more than 4 000 farmers has been appropriated.

Meanwhile, reports also surfaced that the governing Zanu-PF party and the
opposition, the MDC, have agreed that the country needs a new constitution.

The reports suggested that officials of these two parties have been meeting
regularly since March to address issues that must be in place for official
negotiations between the two parties to start.

This Day (Lagos)

September 29, 2003
Posted to the web September 29, 2003

Amarachukwu Ona
Lagos

The African Editors Forum (TAEF) has condemned the high-handed measure by
the Zimbabwean Government over the denial of a licence to publish Zimbabwe's
Daily News by a government commission.

TAEF, representing editors and senior editorial executives from more than 35
countries in the African continent, said the action is a regrettable and
unfortunate occurrence signalling a hardening of attitude by the Zimbabwean
government.

In another development, TAEF said the unprecedented step taken by nine
Algerian editors not to publish their newspapers this Monday should signal
to the Algerian government how their persistent harassment was being viewed.

The nine publications, El Khabar, Er-Rai, Akher Saa, El Fadjr, El Watan,
L'_Expression, Liberte, Le Soir d'Algerie and Le Matin, claimed that
pressure had mounted on newspapers since the publication of allegations of
corruption against President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, his relatives and a
number of cabinet ministers.

These were made known to THISDAY through an e-mail chat by the interim
chairperson of TAEF, Mathatha Tsedu.

The Zimbabwe Daily News was first closed down last week after it lost a
court battle to challenge the validity of a repressive set of laws known
euphemistically as the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act
(AIPPA).

The laws require newspapers to register anew and also provide for the annual
registration of journalists by government.

The Daily News has since lodged an application for registration, a measure
that even in terms of the draconian act, should allow it to resume
publication. A court order last Thursday granting the paper permission to
resume printing has been ignored by the police, who aborted a hand over of
confiscated equipment such as computers.

It has now emerged that the Media and Information Commission has
"unanimously agreed not to register the Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe
(ANZ), publishers of The Daily News, as a mass media service," the Herald
newspaper reported yesterday in Harare.

The Daily News has been a thorn on the sides of the Zimbabwean government
but that is no reason to stop it from publishing.

Tsedu said the ban, if made permanent, would have the effect of shutting
down the voices of dissent in a country where democratic gains of the
liberation struggle were being rolled back significantly in the past three
to four years.

What’s the big deal?

Much has been made and said of the forthcoming Commonwealth Heads of
Government Meeting (Chogm) in Abuja, Nigeria. There has been that feeling in
certain quarters that Zimbabwe will be spited if not invited. These
sentiments have been emanating mostly from the white section of the
Commonwealth led by the garrulous Australian Prime Minister, John Howard,
and the now strangely silent Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister. We
think whether or not Zimbabwe is invited to Chogm is immaterial and
inconsequential. We don’t see why Zimbabwe should be bothered with Chogm. It
should get its priorities right and pay attention to only those meetings and
programmes that add value to the country, the continent and the rest of the
world. Zimbabwe should actually not attend the Commonwealth summit because
it is not worth anything anymore. Since Don McKinnon became the
secretary-general, the Commonwealth is no longer the same institution that
it was under the leadership of Sir Shridath Ramphal or Chief Ameka Anyaoku.
There isn’t much of a Commonwealth anymore. The organisation has visibly
moved away from its development agenda and been turned into an extension of
British foreign policy. We now have a Commonwealth that is not ashamed to
champion British and American imperialism through the positions it takes in
situations such as the invasion of Iraq. Howard, Blair and McKinnon have
clearly killed the spirit of consensus that marked previous Commonwealth
positions and meetings such as the one Zimbabwe had the pleasure of hosting
in 1991.

In place of consensus now we have the megaphone diplomacy of the likes of
Howard, which has not only irritated Zimbabwe but also other countries,
notably South Africa. The white Common-wealth so boldly speaks about
democracy, pointing a speck in black Africa’s eyes and yet ignoring the log
in their own. When one hears them speak about matters of democracy and
equity one would be surprised to realise that they are the same countries
that do not practise what they preach. One would only need to hear from the
Aborigines in Australia or the Maoris in New Zealand to understand the level
of hypocrisy and to understand that in the case of Zimbabwe their agenda is
to derail the land reform programme. Therefore Zimbabwe has a choice between
going to the Abuja meeting and keeping the gains of its independence as
enunciated in the land reform programme. It may as well say to hell with
Chogm and concentrate on getting the land reform programme to work
effectively. Going to Chogm would be to simply give Howard and Blair an
undeserved opportunity to exert pressure on Zimbabwe and distract it from
its programmes at a time it should be focused. The Common-wealth is too
divided to be useful and we doubt if anything will come out of the Abuja
meeting. The Commonwealth must be reminded that unless it works to achieve
unity of purpose and returns to its development agenda it will be one
organisation that is not worth losing sleep over.

'It is like losing a son'

The only dissenting daily newspaper in Zimbabwe was closed down by the
government 10 days ago. Wilf Mbanga, founder of the Daily News, describes
how it lost its fight against Mugabe's regime

From the moment I boarded a plane to Britain in early 1998 to seek investors
for an independent daily in Zimbabwe, I knew that we had embarked upon a
collision course with President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF government. But we
had to give it our best shot - there was so much at stake. The country had
begun to slide into a morass of political and economic chaos and corruption.
The government-owned mass media had lost all credibility and degenerated
into a propaganda machine. There was a desperate need for an alternative
voice, for the facts, for fair comment and fearless reporting.

The Daily News was launched in 1999 to be that voice. Bound by a code of
ethics, the paper pledged to observe the highest standards of integrity and
fairness and to produce a quality newspaper that would strive to "tell it
like it is". It would go on to play a key role in the emergence of the
opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in 1999, the
national referendum on constitutional reforms in February 2000 and the
general elections later that year. It informed the world of the vicious
government crackdown on the opposition before, during and after the election
and exposed the massive electoral fraud involved in 2000 and the
presidential election in 2002. The battle lines had been drawn in 1998 when
potential investors were threatened by government ministers and hastily
withdrew. As a result, the company faced serious financial problems early in
its life, but was rescued by an enterprising Zimbabwean, Strive Masiyiwa,
one of a new breed of uncorruptible black businessmen. He now owns 60% of
the company, while 32% is held by the original British investors and the
balance by a few Zimbabweans. Soon after the paper hit the streets in 1999,
it surpassed the circulation figures of the government-owned national daily,
The Herald. People queued to buy copies of the Daily News, whose print run
for many months was limited to 60,000 by the capacity of its press and
availability of newsprint. This later rose to 120,000. Advertising industry
statistics indicated that every copy was read by at least seven people. Its
readership encompassed the entire spectrum of Zimbabweans: young and old,
men and women, urban and rural, black and white.

The Daily News kept the Zimbabwean public accurately informed of the
activities of Zanu PF's corrupt and murderous leadership, breaking such
stories as the president and the cabinet's 1,150% salary hikes when 80% of
Zimbabweans were living below the poverty line; the first lady's
multi-million dollar shopping sprees abroad while industry ground to a halt
for lack of foreign exchange; the allocation of grabbed white farms to
political cronies and defence force officers; and desperate shortages of
fuel, bread, maize meal and bank notes. The year 2000 saw the appointment of
Jonathan Moyo as the minister of state for information and publicity. An
avowed enemy of the independent media, this man was to preside over its
destruction. He wasted no time in drafting the legislation for the banning
of the Daily News - the misnamed Access to Information and Protection of
Privacy Act (AIPPA). (In my vernacular, Shona, the language of Mugabe and
75% of Zimbabweans, this acronym means "he has gone bad"). However, the
legislation was only enacted in 2002, and in the intervening months the
government's pursuit of the paper took many turns.

First it was zealous Zanu PF functionaries who "banned" the Daily News -
confiscating, burning and tearing up copies on a daily basis. Readers were
beaten up by party faithfuls, while vendors were arrested by the police for
"blocking traffic". Then the government began arresting Daily News reporters
and denying them access to government information. Arrests of the editors,
management and local investors followed. Although I had left the newspaper a
year earlier, I was arrested, together with the editor-in-chief of the
paper, Geoff Nyarota. From the start it was obvious that the police did not
have a case against us, but we were detained overnight in a tiny, stinking
cell. The magistrate had no difficulty in dismissing the case as being
without substance. This did not deter the government from appealing to the
high court, where once again the case was dismissed. In January 2001 Moyo
went on record as saying the Daily News had become a threat to national
security and should be silenced. Within 48 hours, the printing presses of
the newspaper lay in a twisted, tangled heap, destroyed by anti-tank
explosives. Later that year, the paper's offices in central Harare were
bombed. There have been no arrests.

Then came AIPPA. It introduced a system of mandatory licensing of the mass
media and individual journalists through a media and information commission
(MIC) whose board is appointed by and reports to Moyo. Significantly, all
government mass media are exempt from registration. From the outset it was
obvious that AIPPA was unconstitutional, in that it breached the provision
of the Zimbabwe constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech. It was also
patently obvious that the law had been passed to get rid of the Daily News
and that even if we applied for registration, this would be denied. The
Independent Journalists Association (IJA) and the Daily News immediately
mounted a legal challenge on these grounds and decided not to apply for
registration - thereby buying time to continue publishing. In the first nine
months of AIPPA, 44 journalists from the private, independent media corps
(out of around 100) were arrested. Of these, only two were actually
prosecuted to completion and the government lost both cases. Six had charges
withdrawn, 22 were released without charge after spending time in police
custody, one was deported after being acquitted (the Guardian correspondent,
Andrew Meldrum) and 13 cases are still pending. Not one journalist from the
state-owned newspapers has ever been arrested or harassed in any way.

With the skill and patience of a seasoned hunter, the government has been
stalking the newspaper for a long time. It carefully manoeuvred into a
position of strength before its final attack. Having gotten away with the
land-grab, the impoverishment of most Zimbabweans through wanton destruction
of the economy, the disenfranchisement and exile of the majority of the
white population, blatantly fraudulent elections and the killing, maiming
and raping of thousands of opposition supporters - it pounced for the kill.
It finally cornered its quarry 10 days ago when the supreme court ruled that
the Daily News could not seek legal protection while breaking the law in
question. No sooner had judgment been passed than the police moved with
uncharacteristic speed to seize equipment, block staff from entering the
building and prevent the paper from appearing. Despite heroic efforts by the
staff, the paper has not been produced since then. Finally, the coup de
grace: the paper's application for registration, made as soon as high court
judgment was received, has been turned down by the MIC, as we knew all along
that it would be. It was denied on the grounds that the paper had not
followed proper procedures and had published illegally for eight months
after enactment of AIPPA without seeking registration.

Human rights are under siege in Zimbabwe. Freedom of expression is next on
the list. In the words of Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the MDC:
"Repression is sure to increase if the Daily News is silenced. Nearly every
edition of the Daily News had reports of the state abusing our citizens and
inflicting violence on innocent people. Without that regular exposure, the
state may step up its brutal campaign because all the other dailies are
owned by the government and they do not criticise the regime or expose its
violence. Without the Daily News the future is bleak indeed." This whole
saga raises this question: Why did the Mugabe regime not simply ban the
Daily News years ago, either at its inception or as soon as it became
evident that the paper would expose the government's corrupt and repressive
rule? Why the convoluted legal niceties? Why the four-year delay? The only
answer must be that Mugabe likes legal niceties. He did two law degrees
while imprisoned by the Rhodesians during 1964-1974. Throughout his rule, he
has taken great pains to ensure that new legislation is passed to facilitate
his most illegal activities. For example, he amended the Electoral Act to
load the dice in his favour by disenfranchising thousands while allowing
11,000 soldiers in the DRC to vote.

And so the Daily News is not banned - it has merely been refused
registration to operate as a newspaper because it has failed to comply with
the requirements of the newspaper registration law of Zimbabwe. Effectively
the paper I founded is over. Killed by the regime. It is like losing a son.
I loved that paper. It makes you weep.