Zimbabwe Allows Independent Dailies for 1st Time in 7 years

27 May 2010
The Zimbabwe Media Commission granted a publishing licenses to the Daily News, the long-banned independent newspaper, and a handful of other publications. Commission Chairman Godfrey Majonga announced on 27 May 2010 that the licenses would be issued immediately, marking the first time in nearly seven years that an independent daily will be allowed to print domestically.

The Daily News, the nation’s most popular paper before it was banned by the government in September 2003, will resume publishing under its one-time editor, Geoffrey Nyarota.

A new independent daily, NewsDay, was also approved for domestic publication.

The Media Commission approved three other licenses as well. They went to The Daily Gazette, to be published by the company that now produces The Financial Gazette, a weekly that has some reported ties to the ruling ZANU-PF; The Mail, a new publication owned by a company linked to the ruling party; and The Worker, a monthly run by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions that now will become a weekly.

The Media Commission was established in December 2009 as part of the media reform efforts that were included in the power-sharing deal between the ruling ZANU-PF and opposition parties.

The independent print press was once an active force in Zimbabwean society. But in 2002, facing stiffening political opposition, President Robert Mugabe introduced draconian media laws requiring journalists and newspapers to register with the government. In practice, the government used these rules to shut down independent publications, most notably the Daily News.

A small handful of independent weeklies have continued to publish in Zimbabwe over the past seven years. They include the Zimbabwe Independent and The Standard, both of which are owned by the same company that plans to publish NewsDay. Other independent publications, such as The Zimbabwean, led by the exiled editor Wilf Mbanga, are printed outside the country and then shipped into Zimbabwe.