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AIPPA - an attempt to crush all dissenting media voices in the country
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2003-39
September 29th - October 5th 2003

Following the gagging of The Daily News and its sister Sunday paper, The Standard and The Zimbabwe Independent have now clearly become the next targets of the Department of Information’s campaign to muzzle all alternative views under the pretext of "enforcing the law".

According to The Standard (5/10) Information Minister Jonathan Moyo and Media and Information Commission chairperson, Tafataona Mahoso, threatened to take action against the two papers, which Moyo described as the "running dogs of imperialism".

The threats highlight the real intention behind the enactment of AIPPA - to crush all dissenting media voices in the country.

AIPPA is a plainly unconstitutional law, which government has used to silence alternative sources of information while the legality of the MIC, the statutory body tasked with licensing media institutions and accrediting journalists, is also questionable. Section 40(2) of AIPPA says the MIC Board shall consist of no fewer than five members and not more than seven members "at least three of whom shall be nominated by an association of journalists and an association of media houses". The appointment of these associations’ nominees remains a mystery and has certainly never been made public.

Secondly, as the Administrative Court’s ruling (The Zimbabwe Independent & The Herald 3/10) on the matter of the ANZ’s efforts to re-apply for registration shows, the MIC appears to be beyond the reach of the law. The commission’s decisions cannot be set aside by the country’s courts, bestowing on the statutory body what clearly appear to be a quasi-judicial authority outside the jurisdiction of the country’s judicial process. This issue formed the essence of Eddison Zvobgo’s assertion that some sections of AIPPA represent the "most calculated and determined assault" on the people’s civil liberties when he presented the views of the Parliamentary Legal Committee at the time the original AIPPA media Bill was first brought to Parliament for approval.

This extra-judicial authority is aggravated by the fact that a decision made by a single commissioner is still binding. Section 10 of the Fourth Schedule in AIPPA says that no decision or act of the Board or act done under the authority of the Board shall be invalid on the ground that the Board consisted of fewer than the minimum number of persons prescribed in subsection (1) of section 40.

It is indeed sad to note that besides being premised on an unconstitutional law, MIC has found an ally in curtailing basic freedoms in the form of the judiciary. This was aptly demonstrated by the September 11 Supreme Court ruling declaring The Daily News illegal.

As Zimbabwean lawyer, Alex Tawanda Magaisa, has observed, the decision by the Supreme Court relegated the fundamental constitutional right to freedom of expression to parliamentary legislation that reflects and protects the interests of the ruling party with a parliamentary majority. This undermines the authority of the Constitution, the supreme law of the land, and subjects citizens to the whims of those in power who can force through unconstitutional legislation. The Supreme Court’s argument that it could not hear ANZ’s constitutional challenge to AIPPA because they had come to court with "dirty hands" by not complying with its registration requirements, nullifies constitutional guarantees to protect human rights.

"Ideally the court must ensure that the rights of citizens are adequately protected by promoting their uninterrupted enjoyment… If there is a chance to stop the erosion of rights, the court must actively curtail such erosion", argues Magaisa.

The same line of argument was incisively presented in the Zimbabwe Independent’s issue of the previous week (26/9) by another Zimbabwean lawyer, Tawanda Hondoro and destroys the myth that the ANZ should have first complied with a law it believed to be unconstitutional before challenging it. But of course, such clear-sightedness never saw the light of day in the government-controlled media. And without the mass circulation of The Daily News to explain this position, a terrible injustice has been perpetrated against the people of Zimbabwe. We can only be thankful that the Zimbabwe Independent has brought it into the public domain.

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