Another light goes out in Zimbabwe

If Zimbabwe were a free country - which by any standard it is not - the nation's flags would surely be flying at half mast this week. For last week the Chief Justice effectively sentenced media freedom to death. In his ruling in the case brought by the Independent Journalists' Association of Zimbabwe Chief Justice Chidyausiku (a close associate of Mugabe and former member of his cabinet) upheld the constitutionality of certain key sections of the restrictive media laws controlling local journalists and foreign correspondents. At a stroke he awarded Mugabe's chief spin doctor Jonathan Moyo (sometimes known as minister of propaganda and misinformation) the power to decide quite arbitrarily who may practise as a journalist in Zimbabwe and who may not. Surely the dream of every dictator.

The Act which confers these awesome powers on the junior minister (and his Media and Information Commission) is the infamous Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) - a misnomer if ever there were one for an Act clearly designed to obstruct and impede the free flow of information. AIPPA requires all journalists to be registered with the Commission and prohibits them from practising without accreditation, and it was these provisions which were being challenged in the Supreme Court. The challenge was brought on the basis that these provisions infringed on the general right to freedom of _expression as enshrined in the Constitution. But by a tortuous and contrived process of legal reasoning the Chief Justice managed to arrive at the conclusion that the freedom of _expression guaranteed by section 20 of the Constitution did not apply to the press. Hence journalists enjoy no such right and the state and its agents are entitled to decide just who may work as a journalist and who may not. Hence reporting by license, and effectively the end of media freedom in Zimbabwe.

All but one of the Supreme Court Judges hearing the case went along with the Chief Justice and his curious process of reasoning, but one courageous Judge did not. In a powerful dissenting judgment the country's most experienced Supreme Court Justice, Wilson Sandura, (and the only one who has so far escaped Mugabe's purge of the judiciary) ruled that the offending sections of AIPPA were indeed ultra vires the constitution and therefore should be struck down. Expressly disagreeing with Chidyausiku on the latter's restrictive interpretation of section 20 of the constitution, Sandura said: "It is pertinent to note that there is no rational basis for distinguishing the practice of journalism from the exercise of the right of freedom of _expression because the two are intertwined".

The effect of the majority judgment was as immediate as it was profound. The country's only independent daily paper, the Daily News, which had bravely resumed publishing on the strength of a number of successful cases brought in the lower courts, was immediately taken off the streets, its journalists now subject to a mandatory term of two years imprisonment for practising their profession without a license from Jonathan Moyo. Likewise other experienced writers who lack - and given their independence of thought, are most unlikely ever to be given - the necessary accreditation. At a stroke Mugabe has achieved through his junior minister and with the willing cooperation of his hand-picked team of Supreme Court Judges, the power he long coveted, to shut down the independent media and silence the voice of dissent in Zimbabwe. The nation should indeed be in a state of mourning.

Chidyausiku's politically partisan ruling has already been slammed by many who cherish the principle of press freedom. From within Zimbabwe Abel Mutsakani, the managing editor of the Daily News and president of the independent journalists' association which challenged this odious system of reporting by license, said: "This is the final nail in the coffin of the independent press. We are devastated and heartbroken".

The Southern Africa Journalists' Association commented: "surely even those judges who see their role as being to appease the regime of Robert Mugabe only, must at times be restrained by their consciences in the long-term interests of their own country in which their children live".

And the General Council of the Bar of South Africa called the judgment "a double blow to justice". Because the judgment was given by the Chief Justice it was, in the words of this august body of South African advocates, "not only a blow to freedom of _expression, but also to the independence of the judiciary … (and therefore) to be doubly deprecated".

One of the few remaining lights in Zimbabwe has been extinguished and the darkness which every dictator covets for his evil deeds, is now almost complete.