High Court rules in favour of Daily News

High Court rules in favour of Daily News

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By Staff Reporter
09/01/04
The High Court of Zimbabwe ordered the police to leave the premises of the country's only independent newspaper, the Daily News, and to 'stop interfering with their activities as the company is lawfully licensed
to operate'.

The ruling was in response to an urgent application filed with the High Court on Thursday by lawyers for The Daily News.

"On the night of 19th December police entered the editorial and printing offices of the Daily News and since that day have prevented Daily News staff from producing a paper," Strive Masiyiwa, Chairman of Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe ANZ which publishes The Daily News, said.

This was despite a ruling by the Administrative Court of Zimbabwe on December 19 that The Daily News was licensed and therefore permitted to publish.

"Our appeal to the Zimbabwe Police Commissioner asking the police to discontinue their illegal actions was ignored," Masiyiwa said.

"I am very relieved that once again the Courts of Zimbabwe have issued a ruling to enforce our legal rights and I hope the government will respect that ruling and allow The Daily News to produce an independent newspaper for the people of Zimbabwe," he added.

Zimbabwe's media regulatory authorities are reportedly mulling plans to tighten the current registration requirements in apparent attempt to throttle the Daily News and its sister paper The Daily News On Sunday.

Impeccable government sources said the Media and Information Commission (MIC) and the Department of Information and Publicity in the Office of the President and Cabinet were formulating amendments to the law in order to tinker with the registration requirements.

The sources said an additional requirement that a majority shareholder in a media house should also be a resident of Zimbabwe could be included.

Currently the law only states that a majority shareholder should be a citizen of Zimbabwe, but the new amendments could see the majority shareholders being required to be resident in the country as well.

"There was a meeting last week to discuss possible changes to registration requirements and one change that is likely to be introduced is the requirement that the majority shareholder of a media organisation should be a permanent resident of Zimbabwe," a source told The Financial Gazette this week.

"This would be over and above the requirement that the majority shareholder should be a citizen of Zimbabwe . . . in other words, one has to be a citizen of Zimbabwe who is a permanent resident of Zimbabwe."

The ANZ, which publishes The Daily News and The Daily News on Sunday, is battling to get registered after it was forcibly closed by the government in September last year for allegedly operating without a licence after it lost its Supreme Court challenges to the requirement that it registers with the MIC.

The ANZ’s majority shareholder, Strive Masiyiwa, resides in South Africa.

The executive chairman of the MIC, Tafataona Mahoso, pleaded ignorance of any such moves, saying that if there were any, there could be taking place in the law-making process of which the MIC is not part to.

"It is ridiculous to ask me about such things because laws are made by Parliament . . . all we are there for is to implement the laws not to make them," Mahoso said. "There is no Parliament here (at the MIC)."
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