Zimbabwe’s Media and Information Commission this week issued publishing licences for the Zimbabwe Independent and the Standard, despite recent fears that the Mugabe government’s much-criticised crackdown on media freedom would also affect these newspapers.
The two newspapers are published by Zimbabwean businessman Trevor Ncube, who is also the chief executive of the Mail & Guardian in South Africa.
”I am delighted to inform you that the commission … has issued two-year publishing licences for our two newspapers in Zimbabwe,” Ncube said on Tuesday. ”This is a huge relief.”
Group editorial director Iden Wetherell, based in Harare, told the M&G Online on Tuesday that it had been an anxious time for newspaper staff while waiting for the licences to be granted.
Although the papers follow the law in obtaining publishing licences, ”we remain wholly opposed to that law, which is designed to silence inconvenient voices, and we will seek to have it repealed”, he said, referring to the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, which requires newspapers and journalists to be licensed by the government.
He pointed out, though, that having a publishing licence had not, in the past, prevented Media and Information Commission enquiries into newspaper reports or ”general interference with freedom of expression”.
Passport battle
The Zimbabwean government ”abandoned” a court case against Ncube in January after it had prevented him at the end of last year from renewing his passport, claiming he was not a citizen of Zimbabwe.
The High Court ruled that Ncube was a citizen of Zimbabwe by birth, and that the withdrawal or cancellation of his citizenship by the respondents had been ”unlawful, null, void and of no force and effect”.
A loss of citizenship would have meant that Ncube could own only a 40% share in his newspapers, and control would have passed from him.
South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) chairperson Ferial Haffajee and Sanef media-freedom subcommittee convener Raymond Louw had said in a joint statement earlier in January that the action against Ncube was ”a serious inroad in what is left of media freedom in Zimbabwe and Ncube’s personal freedom”.
”Ncube states that he has been informed that the government’s conduct has been approved ‘at the highest level’ — which means that it has the support of President Robert Mugabe, whose abysmal governance of Zimbabwe has been vigorously criticised by Ncube’s papers, the Zimbabwe Independent and the Standard, the last independent papers in that country.
”This can only mean that Mugabe wants to close down the papers or to change their critical stance by forcing on them a new ownership structure more supportive of him,” the Sanef statement had said.
Denial
However, the Media and Information Commission stated in January that it would not close down the two newspapers even if Ncube lost his Zimbabwean citizenship, state television reported.
”The [commission] is outraged by a campaign of disinformation originating from publisher Trevor Ncube’s papers suggesting that the commission is somehow behind the case between Mr Ncube and the registrar general’s office and is about to close Mr Ncube’s two weekly newspapers,” the commission said in a statement read out on television.
”The [Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act] in fact allows any newspaper already publishing at December 31 2002 to maintain their ownership and shareholding structure even when shareholders are foreigners,” added the statement.
The Zimbabwe Independent is a business weekly, and the Standard is published on Sundays. Despite numerous arrests and threats of violence, the two newspapers have continued to expose corruption and human rights abuses.
Most recently Ncube’s newspapers were the only publications to reveal that Mugabe’s efforts to extend his rule until 2010 were rejected at the Zanu-PF party conference in mid-December.