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Authorities fail to comply with High Court ruling on ANZ
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Weekly Media Update 2006-10
Monday March 6^th – Sunday March 12^th 2006

ONLY The Financial Gazette (9/3) exposed how the failure by the authorities to comply with a ruling by High Court judge, Justice Rita Makarau, ordering them to reconsider an application for an operating licence by the Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe is further delaying the re-launching of the banned The Daily News and its Sunday sister paper.

The Gazette reported that despite Makarau’s ruling on February 8^th ‘disabling’ the "presently constituted" Media and Information Commission (MIC) "from validly considering (ANZ’s) application", no panel had yet been constituted to deal with the matter.

In fact, the paper revealed that MIC chairman Tafataona Mahoso, whom the High Court barred from presiding over any hearing on the publisher’s application after finding him to be biased against ANZ, had even tried to convene an illegal meeting to deal with the matter.

Reportedly, Mahoso "invited a selection (of) three commissioners and, in flagrant defiance of the court, tried to decide the fate of the application, with him presiding". Three other commissioners allegedly either boycotted the meeting or were "simply not invited".

However, the meeting, which was seemingly called to beat the stipulated 30-day deadline under which the MIC was supposed to have made a determination on the matter, broke up "in disarray with charges that it was illegally constituted". The deadline lapsed on Friday March 10^th.

And as this report was being completed, the following issue of The Gazette (16/3) revealed that Mahoso had finally conceded that his commission was "disabled from handling the same application", leaving sole responsibility to Information Minister Tichaona Jokonya who could either "appoint a special board or instruct the MIC secretariat to issue a certificate of registration".

According to the paper, the ANZ management has already written twice to the minister in the space of 19 days appealing for his intervention without any response.

While the authorities continue to dither and suffocate ANZ’s publications in their bureaucracy, Zimbabweans – who are subjected to relentless propaganda from the dominant government-controlled media – remain deprived of credible alternative sources of information, which, in turn, severely limits the capacity to be adequately informed.

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