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The Daily News saga continues
Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition
October 05, 2006

Today, in the morning, the High Court opened the case of The Daily News vs the State where The Daily News is seeking a publishing license. The case was presided by Justice Goora in Court K. The Daily News was challenging the chain of nefarious appeals made by the quasi government media regulatory arm, the Media and Information Commission (MIC). The Newspaper made an application to be granted permission to resume its operations as it awaits the outcomes of the appeals that have been launched by MIC to counter the court victories made by the paper since September 2003. Mr. Eric Matinenga is handling the newspaper's case.

Justice Goora postponed the trial to Monday the 9th of October 2006, after the defendant requested to be granted adequate time to go through the plaintiff's application.

On the 11th of September 2003 the Supreme Court rule that The Daily News' operations were in violation of provisions of the notorious Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) that require media houses to register with MIC in order to operate in Zimbabwe. In a peculiar turn of legal reasoning, the court said that because ANZ, publishers of (The Daily News and The Daily News on Sunday) had not registered with the commission, it was "operating outside the law," and that the court would only hear the company's constitutional challenge once it had registered. Since then the Daily News has won more than nine court victories stipulating that they could resume their business but MIC continued to defer their operations, by lodging endless appeals.

The Daily News' life has been that of a candle in the wind as noted by the bombing of the offices and printing press in the year 2000, 2001 and 2003. The state till this end has not come up with a suspect, which is rather dubious on their part as their prime job is to investigate any form of lawlessness and to bring to book offenders, if they don't have any skeletons in their cupboards.

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