The licensing of private newspapers, television and radio stations may have to wait a long time after George Charamba, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Information and Publicity, revealed on Tuesday that the Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC) will only be set up when all other commissions are formed. Addressing journalists at a media workshop organised by UNICEF, the government spin doctor also threatened newspaper publications with arrest, if they circulated their papers without a licence. The main target was Newsday, a new daily newspaper proposed by the Zimbabwe Independent Group.
Newsday editor Barnabas Thondhlana told SW Radio Africa: He essentially said if we, as Newsday, would come on the market before we got a licence then he would instruct the Attorney Generals office to send the police to deal with this stranger who was on the streets of Zimbabwe.
I was in utter shock and was surprised because I had asked Mr Charamba how Zimpapers were able to launch a new newspaper recently called the H-Metro without a licence. But Charamba told the editors that the new state owned paper had been given a licence way back, by the defunct Media and Information Council led by Dr Tafataona Mahoso. Thondhlana said the editor-in-chief of the Zimpapers Group, Pikirayi Deketeke, shocked the participants when he revealed that the group had issued a number of newspaper licences, which are presently lying dormant.
According to Zimbabwean regulations a publication automatically loses its licence if it is not used within six months. Thondhlana added: And for Charamba to say H-Metro had been licensed, we questioned how, because the MIC was no longer in existence in the past six months.
How is H-Metro operating without a licence but any other newspaper which wants to operate without a licence, Charamba will send the police after them?
The editor says there are deliberate attempts by some in government who are keen on maintaining the status quo and do not want to see new players coming onto the media scene. Additionally it is highly unlikely that anyone in ZANU PF would want to see a free media in place, ahead of the next elections.
The regulatory body that is supposed to oversee the licensing of new media players is the Zimbabwe Media Commission. Government sources told us this week that the Principals to the unity government finally agreed on the nine commissioners to sit on the ZMC, but there has still been no announcement from Robert Mugabe.
Charamba said Mugabe is not going to make a piecemeal announcement of the commissioners. What he is going to do is he is going to wait for parliament to come up with a list of names for all the commissions. That is the Anti Corruption Commission, the Electoral Commission and the Human Rights Commission. After that is done then he will announce it as one holistic thing. So now we dont know when these names (ZMC) are going to be announced, said Thondhlana.
Post published in: News