Zimbabwe’s Daily News, a fierce critic of President Robert Mugabe, is due to challenge the Southern African country’s tough media laws before the Constitutional Court, a lawyer for the paper said on Tuesday.
Mordecai Mahlangu said the Daily News, which was shut down by armed police in September and has been struggling ever since to get back on to the newsstands, would on Wednesday ”ask for leave to be heard on the constitutional challenge”.
The challenge comes six months after the Supreme Court accused the Daily News of operating illegally by not being registered with a state-appointed media commission as required under press laws.
The paper, the country’s most popular daily, had gone to the Supreme Court last year to argue that the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, passed by Mugabe shortly after his controversial re-election in March 2002, was unconstitutional.
But the court accused the paper of approaching it with ”dirty hands” and on September 12 police forcibly shut down the paper.
When the Daily News tried to register with the Media and Information Commission, its application was turned down.
That marked the beginning of a marathon legal battle between the paper and the media commission.
The Daily News successfully challenged the media commission’s refusal to register it in the administrative court, but the commission immediately appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court is on Wednesday due to hear the media commission’s appeals against the court rulings made in favour of the Daily News.
Meanwhile, the Daily News has now done ”everything to comply with the law” and expects to have its constitutional challenge heard on Wednesday, Mahlangu said.
He said the Daily News intended to challenge the legal requirement for media houses to be registered with the commission.
The Daily News is the only independent alternative to the two state-run daily newspapers — The Herald and The Chronicle.
Its million or so readers have only seen the paper for short periods since its forced closure in September after various courts ordered that the paper be allowed to publish again. The last edition came out on February 5.
The Daily News stopped publishing in February after the Supreme Court upheld a section of the press law requiring journalists to register with the media commission. None of the Daily News journalists are registered.
Last week the paper’s chief executive officer, Samuel Sipepa Nkomo, announced that he was forced to lay off 250 employees. Just 50 workers would be kept on until the paper’s fortunes improved, he said. — Sapa-AFP