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Communiqué on the MIC refusal's and delay to register the Tribune and The Daily News
MISA-Zimbabwe
July 13, 2005

The refusal by the Media and Information Commission to grant the Tribune an operating licence comes against the background of its failure, till now, to decide on the application for a licence by the Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ), publishers of the banned Daily News and Daily News on Sunday.

ANZ Chief Executive Office, Samuel Sipepa Nkomo told MISA-Zimbabwe that they are still waiting for a response from the MIC and they have supplied the Commission with all the information it requested for.

The ANZ application has been stalled for over three months. While the ANZ was the first to apply for a license, the MIC has, however, chosen to deal with the Tribune application first.

MISA-Zimbabwe notes with concern that the reasons given by the MIC to refuse the Tribune a license are not only frivolous, but an infringement on the rights to freedom of expression of the publishers of the Tribune. The right to freedom of expression is not dependant on the ability to own offices.

MIC chairman told the state-controlled national daily The Herald that The Tribune had not shown any proof that it had enough capital to sustain the business.

The Tribune's operating licence was suspended for a year in June last year after Africa Tribune Newspapers (ATN) the publishing company failed to notify the MIC if the change of ownership from Ukubambana Kubatana Investments.

Ukubambana Kubatana Investments sold its shares to a management team led by journalist Kindness Paradza, the publisher of ATN.

On 13 July, Paradza told MISA-Zimbabwe said as far as he was concerned the publishing company had met all the requirements to be re-registered in terms of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA).

Paradza denied that he had informed the MIC, as alleged by Mahoso that they planned to operate from his home upon being granted a licence. The Commission chairman said the proposal to operate from home could be in contravention of Harare's city by-laws.

"All I told the commission was that our assets were being kept at my home. I never alluded to the fact that I wanted to operate the business from my home. Our submissions are clearly recorded in black and white.

"The issue of whether we had enough capital base to resume operations does not arise as there are banks that were willing to loan us funds for the re-capitalisation project."

MISA -Zimbabwe is of the strong view that the MIC should have taken into consideration that it closed a newspaper in June 2004 and was no longer in position to generate revenue for overhead costs, rentals, rates and salaries and wages for its workers including other responsibilities to its stakeholders.
That The Tribune has no permanent offices at the moment is the making of the MIC and the same body cannot therefore refuse to grant a licence on such flimsy grounds.

The operations of the MIC over the past three years indicate that it has failed to develop the media or demonstrate its impartiality where it concerns the need for media diversity in Zimbabwe.

This bolsters growing number of voices branding the MIC as a partisan and unnecessary body whose sole existence is merely to cause suffering and plight of Zimbabwe's media workers and owners at the expense of the reading public which is dying for alternative sources of information.

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