The owners and management of Zimbabwe’s only independent daily newspaper, The Daily News, vowed on Tuesday to fight through that country’s courts for the right to publish.
The paper, owned by the Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ), was systematically driven off the streets through court process and police action for failing to seek a licence to operate from the state-appointed Media and Information Commission (MIC) set up under the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
”Every effort they have made to scatter and destroy this newspaper to date have failed and will continue to fail, ANZ chairperson Strive Masiyiwa told journalists in Johannesburg.
”That they have chosen to shoot the messenger won’t make the message go away.”
He said that ANZ would challenge the constitutionality of that law in the Zimbabwe Supreme Court as it had been specifically designed to shut down The Daily News and its sister paper, The Daily News on Sunday.
They were also to oppose a government appeal of an order by the Administrative Court that ruled the MIC was improperly constituted, and ordered a reconstituted body to issue the two ANZ papers — and their journalists — licences to operate by November 30.
Masiyiwa said ANZ would also approach the Administrative Court for an order allowing its papers to publish until there was an outcome in the Supreme Court regarding government’s appeal.
The ANZ would further sue MIC members jointly and severally for shutting down the company’s business.
As the MIC was improperly constituted at the time it refused the ANZ titles a licence, Masiyiwa believed its members were liable for the papers’ loss of income.
Also at the press conference was ANZ legal director and lawyer Gugulethu Moyo, Daily News publisher Samuel Nkomo and Daily News on Sunday editor William Saidi.
The three would leave on Wednesday for London and then West Africa to raise awareness of ANZ’s plight.
Asked whether they would be speaking to the South African government regarding the papers’ closure, Nkomo, Moyo and Saidi said they were addressing the government through the media in the hope they would hear.
Asked what they thought of Pretoria’s approach to Zimbabwe, Nkomo said: ”We understand they have a policy, which is quiet. We have raised this with (the South African High Commissioner in Harare) who said the term (”quiet diplomacy”) had been coined by the press.”
The newspapers, meanwhile, remained at ”full readiness” to resume publishing. – Sapa