The South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) added its voice on Sunday to the chorus of condemnation regarding the closing of the Daily News, Zimbabwe’s only independent newspaper.
Sanef, which called for the decision to be immediately reversed, expressed its solidarity with the Daily News and with ”the millions of Zimbabweans who depend on the publication for independent information”.
Noting that the Daily News was closed down on Friday after a court found that it was not registered and therefore operating illegally, Sanef said it rejected the notion that citizens of any country need government permission to express themselves freely by practising as journalists.
The banning of the Daily News utterly violated an undertaking by Harare earlier this year that offensive provisions in Zimbabwe’s media laws would be amended, said Sanef.
The editors’ forum said the action demonstrated the regime’s cynical contempt for democratic public opinion and insisted that no political solution would be possible in Zimbabwe as long as free speech was repressed.
Meanwhile the Democratic Alliance said on Sunday Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe was making a fool of South African President Thabo Mbeki and other African leaders to whom he had promised he would revoke laws violating human rights.
Spokesperson Graham McIntosh said in a statement that Mugabe’s regime has applied the controversial laws with renewed vigour, instead of revoking them.
”It has closed down the independent Daily News after the latter lost its High Court challenge of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, under which President Mugabe is seeking to register newspapers,” McIntosh said.
”This legislation is iniquitous, inquisitorial and an invasion of privacy.
”To register, Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ) is required to disclose its private business operations and financial details. ANZ is also required to submit the curriculum vitae of all its managers and directors, and to disclose the political affiliations of all its directors.
”It is the kind of law that characterises fascist and communist regimes.”
McIntosh said it was high time for the African Union to step in to prevent it to become just a ”toothless talk shop for liberation struggle brothers-in-arms.”
”As the former chairperson of the AU and [Mugabe’s] most powerful neighbour, President Mbeki has a key role to play in this regard.”
Earlier the New National Party also condemned the closing of the Daily News.
NNP media director Carol Johnson said in a statement that freedom of speech was a fundamental right.
”Press freedom and freedom of speech are fundamental rights; all the more so in Zimbabwe where newspapers are supposed to be registered with the media commission, which is government-run,” she said in a statement.
She said the NNP believed that the forced closure of the newspaper was a contravention of many international instruments that guaranteed freedom of speech and of the press.
”It contravenes the AU’s founding Act, it flies in the face of Nepad [the New Partnership for African Development] and makes a mockery of the African Charter of Human Rights.”
The NNP called on the signatories of these international instruments to urge for the Daily News‘s reopening.
Meanwhile in Zimbabwe, the chief executive of the Daily News, Sam Sipepa Nkomo, was due to appear in court on Monday on charges of operating an illegal newspaper, his lawyer, Andrew Makoni, said.
”He is likely to face charges of operating an illegal newspaper,” Makoni said.
Lawyers for the Daily News will also go to court on Monday to challenge their eviction from their offices, their legal adviser and director of corporate affairs Gugulethu Moyo said, adding that the forced closure of the paper’s offices was illegal.
The offices were still sealed off on Sunday, and the Daily News has not been published since Friday.
”Our eviction was patently illegal,” Moyo said. ”We’re going to approach the courts for relief.”
The paper will now have to register with the Media and Information Commission before challenging the constitutionality of the law, which could take months.
Moyo said on Sunday that Daily News staff should be allowed into their offices even if the paper could not publish, adding that in order to register with the media commission the paper’s executives needed access to documents. — Sapa-AFP