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ZINASU welcomes the granting of licenses to new private papers
Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU) (Mugwadi)
May 28 2010

Alive to the critical role the media has played and continue to play in the struggle for academic freedoms and the fight for a democratic Zimbabwe, ZINASU welcomes the advent of three new private newspapers as well as the coming back of the hitherto banned Daily News. The publications are The Daily News owned by Associated Newspaper of Zimbabwe, The Mail owned by Footlink Ventures, Newsday owned by Alpha Media, The Daily Gazette owned by Modus Media, and The Worker which will be a weekly publication run by the ZCTU.

This is an epoch making event whose fruits the people of Zimbabwe have long desired and cherished. ZINASU takes this developments as a victory against media repression perpetuated and staged by a cartel of self centred politicians who sought solace in draconian laws such as the despicable AIPPA and POSA.

As we celebrate this victory we must remember the fallen media heroes who fell prey to such vile and barbaric pieces of legislation. Our memoirs must be glued to the past sad realities of persecution, the brutal arrests, untimed detention, banning of newspapers and torture of journalist under the previous political establishment of ZANU-PF.

The registering of the ZCTU's newspaper, The Worker has provided the workers of Zimbabwe with a workers' forum. Before the whole of Zimbabwe the workers should raise here, one after another, the various questions of workers' life in general and of wagged-class democracy in particular. It is to their energy that the working person of Zimbabwe owes the workers' only newspaper after the grim years of economic, social and economic stagnation.

ZINASU believes that more media space should be opened and it must dawn to ZANU-PF that public media institutions must not be used to perpetuate selfish party manifestations. The installation of satellite dishes across the country must never be taken as a luxury but a protest against the politicized moribund ZBC.It is a passive protest and a quest for multiplicity of views that can only be resolved by freeing the air waves and living true to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights dictate that everyone has the to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Congratulations to the Daily News, The Worker, The Newsday and the Mail.

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