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Daily News takes Jokonya to court
By
Staff Reporter
ZIMBABWE'S banned
biggest daily newspaper, The Daily News, went back to court on Tuesday
seeking an order compelling the
government to respect a High Court order for a review of its ban by
an independent panel.
The High Court determined that the media regulatory body, the Media and Information Commission (MIC), was biased.
The developments came as the international media rights campaign group, Reporters Without Boundaries urged the Zimbabwe government to "recognise their inability to maintain a ban on The Daily News...and to grant them a licence to resume publishing."
"Zimbabwe's system of repression is beginning to crumble," the press freedom organisation said.
"We have the details of an unambiguous Harare high court ruling that totally discredits the Media and Information Commission (MIC) and its biased policies. When forced against the wall, the government violated its own draconian press law. To end to an ordeal that has lasted too long, it should recognise its defeat in the battle with The Daily News' owners and allow it to reappear."
The Daily News and its sister paper, The Daily News on Sunday, are published by Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe.
A source in The Daily News' legal team said Thursday: “We filed our papers on Tuesday and they were served on the parties. The other party is the Minister of Information Minister Tichaona Jokonya."
The source added: "In the application, we want an independent panel to be set up to determine our case after a number of rulings set aside the MIC’s decision to deny us an operating license. The government contravened Aippa by failing to determine the case within a month from the date of the judgment made in early February.”
The lawyer said Justice Rita Makarau judgment concluded that there was merit in ANZ’s submissions that the MIC as presently constituted was disabled from validly considering the media organization’s application as a result of MIC chairman, Dr Tafataona Mahoso’s involvement in its decisions.
The papers were
filed on the same day ANZ Samuel Sipepa Nkomo was
summoned to the magistrate court on charges of corruption while he was
principal officer of the Mining Industry Pension Fund (MIPF). The presiding
magistrate set July 10 as the trial date.
It is the State’s case that Nkomo prejudiced the pension fund of millions of dollars between December 1997 and March 1998 by failing to disclose conflict of interest in companies he engaged to carry out work for the fund.
The drawn-out legal wrangle between the ANZ and the MIC has gone from court to court ever since The Daily News and its Sunday edition were first banned by the MIC in September 2003. In February 2004, the battle reached the supreme court, which took more than a year to issue a decision.
The supreme court finally issued its ruling on 14 March 2005, quashing the MIC's ban on the newspapers and forcing it to reconsider the ANZ's request for a licence within 60 days. Although this deadline expired on 15 May, the MIC waited until 16 June to consider the ANZ's request.
After two days of deliberations, on 16 and 17 June, MIC chairman Tafataona Mahoso refused to make any statement aside from saying the newspapers would be notified when a decision had been made. He did not explain what that meant. The MIC finally announced its refusal to give the ANZ a licence on 18 July, as a result of which the ANC immediately challenged the decision before the Harare high court.
The MIC's decision
was subsequently criticised by a member of the MIC board after he had
resigned. The former board member said the chairperson was pressured
into refusing the licence by Zimbabwe's Central Intelligence Organisation
(CIO).
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