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ANZ to re-submit Daily News application
Sebastian Nyamhangambiri, Zimbabwejournalists.com
January 17, 2008

http://www.zimbabwejournalists.com/story.php?art_id=3425&cat=1

Harare - Lawyers representing Zimbabwe's banned Daily News newspaper have expressed dismay at the newly reconstituted Media and Information Commission (MIC)'s decision to ask the media house to re-submit their application for an operating licence.

In an interview yesterday, Mordecai Mahlangu, the lawyer for the Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ), publishers of the Daily News, confirmed that MIC had met earlier this week and asked ANZ to make a fresh application for licence.

"It took the commission almost 70 days just to tell us to make a fresh application, that is very unfair," said Mahlangu. "The aim is just to make us frustrated and preserve the regime's grip on to power.

"The government has never shown commitment to create a scenario for free speech and media diversity. It is a real long struggle."

Mahlangu said he had informed the ANZ yesterday of the MIC ruling and was expecting them to start working on the application with a view to submit it 'in few days time.'

John Gambanga, the ANZ acting chief executive could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Last November, Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu reconstituted the MIC and said saying the commission would "start in earnest" a review of the ban imposed on the Daily News in September 2003.

Ndlovu yesterday said he had no comment on the ruling. "The commission is run independent of the ministry or government," said Ndlovu. "We only come in when the law or courts require us to, as when we appointed the commission to hear the ANZ case."

MIC chairman for the ANZ case Chinondidyachii Mararike could not be reached for comment yesterday. While the MIC executive chairman refused to comment. "I am not part of the team that is handling the ANZ case so there is nothing to comment on it," said Mahoso.

Mahoso was removed from hearing the ANZ after the courts ruled that he was biased against The Daily News. The Daily News was Zimbabwe's biggest circulating daily newspaper when it was shut down by the government in 2003 for allegedly violating the tough Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

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