A Zimbabwean court has turned down a request to allow two sister newspapers, which were shut down by the government four years ago, to resume publishing, media reports said on Thursday.
High Court Judge Anne-Mary Gowora on Wednesday dismissed an application by the Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ) for its newspapers to be deemed registered, saying the court had no authority to do so.
”The court in such a situation cannot be in as good a position as the authority and make a decision,” the state-run Herald quoted Gowora as saying.
”The applicant [ANZ] has not made out a case for the court to assume the discretion to deem the ANZ is duly registered or is deemed registered.”
ANZ is the publisher of the Daily News, a popular anti-government newspaper and its sister weekly, the Daily News on Sunday.
The newspapers were shut down in September 2003 for breaching the country’s tough media laws by operating without obtaining a licence from a state-appointed commission.
The Media and Information Commission (MIC) has twice refused to grant ANZ a licence despite a court ruling in March 2005 that threw out the ban.
Gowora questioned a government delay in appointing an impartial body to deal with ANZ’s application after the Supreme Court declared the MIC biased.
”It is obvious in this case that further delay in dealing with the registration of the applicant will cause prejudice to the applicant and, in an abstract sense, to its readership,” the privately owned Financial Gazette, quoted the judge as saying.
”The applicant made its application in 2003 and, four years on, it has not been registered.”
In its heyday, the Daily News had a circulation of 150 000 and offered an alternative voice to the state media.
The Zimbabwean government passed the tough Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act in 2002.
The law has been invoked to bar foreign correspondents from Zimbabwe, arrest and detain journalists from the privately owned press and compel all journalists to be accredited by the MIC to work in the country. — Sapa-AFP