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Weekly Media Review 2010-43
The Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe
Monday November 1st - Sunday November 6th 2010
November 12, 2010

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Media miss new public information gag plan

MMPZ views with the gravest concern news of a fresh attempt to further restrict public access to important government information.

According to Veritas, an independent NGO reporting on the activities of Parliament and related matters, the recently gazetted General Laws Amendment Bill contains a clause to amend the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act that has serious implications for the rights of citizens to freely access and distribute legislation, notices and other material in the Government Gazette, court judgments and certain public registers. The amendment proposes to subject all such documents to copyright, Veritas reports.

What this means, says the parliamentary watchdog, is that copyright of these documents and notices will vest solely with the government, which will have complete discretion in deciding whether or not the documents should be published and disseminated after their initial publication in the Gazette. The government will also be able to dictate the terms and conditions under which the documents are published and disseminated.

So for example:

• If a private organisation wants to publicize electoral laws prior to an election it will have to get permission from the Government, in addition to any permission it may require from the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission;
• If a human rights organisation wants to disseminate a court judgment, it will have to get permission from the Minister of Justice - who may himself have been a party to the case.

Veritas states that such an amendment is unconstitutional and inimical to the ideals of good governance and respect for the rule of law, and will certainly hinder Zimbabweans' constitutionally guaranteed rights to "receive and impart information without interference" as stated in Section 20 of our Constitution. Zimbabweans' rights to access and disseminate information are already severely curtailed by provisions contained in the repressive Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

But this latest attempt to deprive the public of access to important decisions regarding news about court rulings and the making of new laws, among other issues, is a blatant attempt to condemn Zimbabweans to ignorance and the acceptance of an authoritarian culture of rule-by-decree.

Such an attempt to gag the media from reporting on important government activity that should be freely accessible to the public also offends against the best practice of most SADC nations - let alone most other democracies - and must be struck down when it is presented to Parliament for MPs' consideration.

Ironically, though, this alarming development has not been noticed by most of Zimbabwe's mainstream domestic media. According to MMPZ's research, only Changezimbabwe.com reported Veritas' warning on November 1st. We call on our local media organizations to give this news wide publicity to warn the nation about its implications.

Summary
After nearly a year of misleading their audiences the government media have eventually owned up to the goings-on in the mining of Chiadzwa's controversial diamond fields following the arrest of six top officials from the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation and Canadile Miners on allegations of fraudulently obtaining government permission to mine the diamonds.

The official media had repeatedly denied allegations of irregularities and corruption in Chiadzwa, first raised by the private media and civic groups and a subject of an investigation by Parliament, as a ploy by the country's perceived Western detractors to deny Zimbabwe the right to benefit from its resources.

The arrests came in a week in which the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) reached another deadlock over the certification of the controversial diamonds during a meeting in Israel. Reports on what appeared to be preparations for next year's proposed elections by the country's main political parties remained under the spotlight too. But there was a decline in reports on human rights violations, especially those linked to constitutional reforms, as the consultative phase of the exercise drew to a close.

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