‘I was in the offices of The African Daily News. It was situated in the twilight zone between white and black Salisbury. Hardly anyone outside Rhodesia had heard of it then. Eight months later it was one of the most discussed news- papers in the world. In July the circulation manager, George Lamberis, would come into my office most days waving his arms and shouting: ‘Mr Watson, we are sold out.’ You bloody fool, I thought, no paper should ever sell out.
”In the last week of July the circulation touched 20 000. We were elated, and worried; elated because unexpected success tastes good; worried because terrorism in African townships was getting out of control.
”On August 26 The African Daily News was banned by the Rhodesian Front government.”
The back cover of the book from which I extracted this quotation has a picture of protestors with the following caption: ”Judy Todd protesting with others against the banning of The Daily News.”
That was then.
Sixteen years later the repressive Rhodesian Front regime had been removed from power through a violent uprising of the majority.
Nathan Shamuyarira, founding editor of The African Daily News, now secretary for information of the party that led the armed struggle, which led to the removal of that repressive regime had this to say about the state of affairs:
”Even the limited freedom of expression accorded to the media during the colonial period in Zimbabwe came to an end with the advent of a Rhodesian Front regime … Thus was the situation inherited by the new Zimbabwean government in April 1980. Obviously, this kind of orientation could not be accommodated in a free and independent Zimbabwe.”
How soon we forget.
I was seven years old when Shamuyarira penned these words, so I might be forgiven for not knowing what this bloody struggle was all about. And so it was with a great sense of irony that I found myself in the agonizing position last week of having to give ”Judy” Todd, now shareholder of The Daily News, an account of why The Daily News can no longer be published in a ”free” and independent Zimbabwe today.
As I understand it, there is now a law — the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, Chapter 10:27 — that decrees that no Zimbabwean shall publish a newspaper without seeking the approval of the Media and Information Commission. To obtain approval, the aspiring publisher must submit details of his or her political affiliations, the source of financial resources, other business interests, his address, educational qualifications, his previous experience with the newspaper business and his cellphone number (if he is a journalist), among other things. The commission can then decide whether or not the submitted details qualify the aspirant to publish. In the case of aspirant Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ), the commission found that even though we had three years experience of producing the nation’s best-selling newspaper, we did not qualify to continue to serve the people of Zimbabwe.
This decision now awaits the hearing of our appeal. Till then we have no right to publish The Daily News.
How did we get here?
I was advised by colleagues that there was another law — The Constitution of Zimbabwe which in Section 18 (1) reads as follows: ”Except with his own consent or by way of parental discipline, no person shall be hindered in the enjoyment of his freedom of expression, that is to say, freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart ideas and information without interference, and freedom from interference with his correspondence.”
This same law also reads in Section 3 that: ”This Constitution is the supreme law of Zimbabwe and if any other law is inconsistent with this Constitution that other law shall, to the extent of the inconsistency, be void.”
This same law also reads in another part: ”If any person alleges that the Declaration of Rights has been, is being or is likely to be contravened in relation to him (or, in the case of a person who is detained, if any other person alleges such a contravention in relation to the detained person), then, without prejudice to any other action with respect to the same matter which is lawfully available, that person (or that other person) may … apply to the Supreme Court for redress.”
This seemed simple enough to me. And so, after extensive discussions with lawyer colleagues, it was agreed that the ANZ would approach the Supreme Court to seek redress, on the basis that the Access to Information and Protection of Act hindered the exercise of our right to freedom of expression.
Those who have followed the story of The Daily News since then will know by now that The Daily News still awaits redress from the Supreme Court on this matter, but in the meantime the supremacy of the Act prevails. As of September 19 The Daily News no longer enjoys its freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution. And more than that, 942 323 readers of The Daily News no longer enjoy the right to receive or impart information through The Daily News.
I have spent hours searching for a justification for this draconian law. In his opposing affidavit in the constitutional challenge to the Act launched by The Daily News in January, Minister of Information, Jonathan Moyo shed some light on the intention underlying the Act.
”This publication, among others, presents clear testimony to the threat Zimbabwe’s sovereignty faces. The government is obliged to defend this sovereignty. Necessarily there is an obligation on the part of government to weed out subversion whenever it masquerades as ‘free press’,” he says.
My understanding of constitutional law from my days at the University of Zimbabwe was that not all law enacted by Parliament is good law. It was with this insight that those freedom fighters who represented Zimbabweans’ interests at the Lancaster House talks extracted a guarantee that all laws of Zimbabwe from that day on (1980) would not infringe the fundamental rights they had fought for.
I surmise that the reason they might have sought this guarantee is that these freedom fighters had wasted much of their youth in the struggle to overturn a regime that had used the law to suppress their freedoms. A regime that had used the now obsolete version of our own Public Order and Security Act, the Emergency Powers and the Law and Order Maintenance Act to stifle all political dissent.
But history tells that such laws will be resisted by the people. History tells that such laws are bad laws that hold no legitimacy in a democratic society. The historical account of the Rhodesian Front’s violations of rights of the majority of the Rhodesian populace to freedoms of expression are well documented in a book by Elaine Windrich, The Mass Media in the Struggle for Zimbabwe. The parallels between this and that regime are uncanny.
In my view, this law is unjust. It has no place in a democratic society. And I believe that in time a higher law that protects the fundamental rights of Zimbabweans will reign supreme and The Daily News will be returned to the people of Zimbabwe.
Gugulethu Moyo is the legal adviser to the Daily News
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