Zimbabwe acting Information Minister Paul Mangwana says he is ready to ask Parliament to repeal parts of the government’s tough media legislation, but only if journalists submitted to him the offending sections of the law they want changed.
Zimbabwe’s Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) is among the harshest media laws in the world, providing for imprisonment of journalists for two years for practising in the country without a licence from the state Media and Information Commission.
Another law, the Criminal Codification Act, also imposes sentences of up to 20 years in jail for journalists or other citizens convicted of publishing false information or statements that are prejudicial to the state or are likely to cause, promote, or incite public disorder, or adversely affect the security or economic interests of the country.
Mangwana told ZimOnline: ”The challenge I made when I came in as minister still stands. If there are any sections of AIPPA that are bad, then the journalists should make submissions to me and I would make representation on their behalf in Parliament.
”No laws are permanent and no law is cast in stone; laws are made by society and if journalists as citizens of Zimbabwe feel the laws are bad, they should table offending sections to me then we would deal with the unjust sections.”
But the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ) immediately dismissed as dishonest and insincere claims by Mangwana that he was willing to review AIPPA.
ZUJ president Mathew Takaona said the union had made several representations about AIPPA and other issues impeding journalists in their work to Mangwana — who was appointed acting head the information ministry last June — but all to no avail.
”We have [already] made several representations to both the minister [Mangwana] and to the parliamentary portfolio committee on transport and communication and the intentions were to look at AIPPA and the contentious issues from the law,” said Takaona.
President Robert Mugabe’s government, which has in the last three years banned four newspapers, including the country’s biggest daily paper, the Daily News, is regarded by most media experts as among governments most intolerant to a free press.
Apart from banning newspapers, the Harare administration — battling to keep a lead on dissension amid a worsening economic crisis — has also banned the few private radio stations that had attempted to open up in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe has three daily papers, two of them majority owned by the government and one said to be owned by the state secret service.
The government-owned Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings operates four radio stations and one television station all tightly controlled by the Ministry of Information.
The very few privately owned newspapers in the country are all weekly publications and with a smaller circulation than government-controlled titles. — ZimOnline