Last Updated: Saturday, 11 October 2003 ; www.herald.co.zw
Daily News doomed from start
By Lovemore Mataire
THE Daily News, it seems, was doomed right from its lauch in 1999.
Despite efforts by several internal and external forces to ensure its survival beyond the 2000 general elections, it was clear from the start that the paper was ill-omened.
It therefore came as no surprise when the paper finally closed this year because its demise was what Dambudzo Marechera would call "an accident waiting to happen".
There were so many forces that gave birth to the Daily News. While its proponents lamented the lack of media diversity and the need for an alternative voice to that of The Herald, the major reasons for its birth were largely circumstantial and fundamentally flawed.
Its birth was circumstantial and fundamentally flawed because it was deliberately created to counter mainly The Herald and create a conducive environment for the emergence of an opposition party in the mould of the MDC.
Its birth was flawed because the architects of its birth had no national leanings with Zimbabwe. Its creation was meant to counter the nationalist and revolutionary sentiments that were beginning to permeate in the country principally on the issue of land.
The Daily News came into the fold not on the basis of fundamental principles of freedom of expression and media pluralism but its architects contrived its narrow and linear perspective whose main agenda was to oust Zanu-PF and President Mugabe from power.
It came as no coincidence that at its inception, the British were the main investors in the paper, something that most journalists at the now defunct Daily News were unaware of.
That the British had a huge stake in the Daily News is clear. It is a fact substantiated by one of the founding directors Wilf Mbanga who acknowledges when he writes:
"From the moment I boarded a plane to Britain in early 1998 to seek investors for an independent daily in Zimbabwe, I knew that we had embarked on a collision course with President Mugabe's Zanu-PF government." (The Standard, 5 October 2003).
In the same article Mbanga asserts that at the time the Daily News was launched, there was so much at stake.
In Mbanga's words, the country had begun to "slide into a morass of political and economic chaos and corruption."
Really, if the country was sliding into such a deplorable state, what then where the interests of the British in investing in the newspaper industry in Zimbabwe?
Would it make any business sense for one to inject huge amounts of capital into a venture located in a corrupt country?
It is clear that the prime motive of the British in the Daily News was neither to create employment nor promote freedom of Press or any of the euphemisms one can think of.
The major reason for British interests in the Daily News was, as Mbanga says, "so much at stake."
The birth of the Daily New was fundamentally flawed and doomed because its agenda was premised on the pedestal of wanting to remove a system of government from power by agitating for the creation of a new alternative political party to challenge Zanu-PF.
Again Mbanga gives a synopsis into the immediate role of the Daily News.
"It would go on to play a key role in the emergence of the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in 1999, the national reforms in February 2000 and the general elections later that year."
Mbanga's ego is most revealing in that it makes it clear to everyone that the prime motive of the Daily News was not to inform, educate or entertain.
The problem with the Daily News was that its publisher, the Associated Newspaper of Zimbabwe group was registered as a media services provider when in fact it was a political organisation with heavy funding from the British.
The agenda was not to make money because as Mbanga asserts, the economic situation was sliding into a morass. The idea was also not to promote media plurality because again as Mbanga provides, the paper was to play a prominent role in the emergence of the MDC and the no vote in the first constitutional referendum in the history of Zimbabwe.
Sympathy should be extended to innocent people that worked and toiled under ANZ without even the slightest knowledge that the paper was not launched to make money.
Its agenda was simple � to create conditions conducive for the ouster of President Mugabe and his government.
This was an utter demonstration of the condescending attitude of the British towards African governments and in particular the Government of Zimbabwe.
From the luxury of their homes in England, the so-called British investorssaw themselves in the mould of the pioneers and the architects of President Mugabe's demise.
They were part of history making and they were certain of victory once the Daily News became operational.
But its birth was not just smooth sailing. Just before its launch the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists appealed to the Government to stop the new newspaper publishing company, Associated Newspapers Zimbabwe, from publishing until the company had restructured its majority shareholding in favour of indigenous Zimbabweans.
The argument submitted by ZUJ president Matthew Takaona and the International Federation of Journalists then represented by Kindness Paradza was that foreign media ownership had been known to be ruthlessly opposed to anyone including politicians, who in their view does not serve the interests of their corporations.
Takaona said then: "As it is, ANZ is controlled from Europe and South Africa and the interests of the people of this country will not the accommodated fully by this organisation. There is no job security for the local journalists who can be abandoned when the ship start sinking."
It should be known that at the time of the birth of the Daily News, there was no Access to Information and Privacy Act.
It was this absence of any regulatory media laws that the British took advantage of when they decided to pour millions of dollars into a venture that was political.
So despite ZUJ's clamouring for indigenous people to have a large stake at ANZ, the company nevertheless was launched with Geoff Nyarota as its editor in chief while Mbanga was one of its founding members.
The paper started with wish-washy articles that in most cases were written in a decontextualised manner but its true identity began to manifest when it started to write libelous articles against the President, Cabinet ministers and Zanu-PF officials.
This was done in such a systematic way as to discredit the Government. It was therefore not a coincidence that the MDC was born barely a year after the launch of the Daily News.
After the MDC was formed, the British thought they had laid most of the groundwork needed for the removal of President Mugabe and under pressure from internal forces over its wholesale ownership of the paper decided to sell some of the shares to South African based Zimbabwean Strive Masiyiwa.
It was at that time that problems began to unfold at the Daily News.
At one time in 1999 workers at ANZ went for two months without pay because the company could no longer sustain itself.
The workers only got their salaries after several days of striking.
Despite these teething problems the British investors were almost certain that the MDC was the government in waiting. However, when the MDC failed to garner a majority in the 2000 parliamentary elections, their eyes became focused on the presidential election with their trump card being Morgan Tsvangirai.
It was to be a blow to the British when President Mugabe trounced Tsvangirai in last year's presidential elections and then the situation became apparent that the end of the Daily News was imminent.
The British went on a rampage demonising President Mugabe and the Government saying that the elections were not free.
The result of that campaign was that the European Union imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe while the United States came up with the Zimbabwe Democracy Bill, which in essence imposed travel sanctions on President Mugabe, senior cabinet ministers and Zanu-PF officials.
The Daily News celebrated all these maneuvers. All these attempts by the British and Americans were an indication of their exasperation over the failure of their scheme through the Daily News to oust President Mugabe.
In their eyes, the Daily News and MDC's Tsvangirai had let them down and new schemes had to be plotted.
It was against such a background that Nyarota found himself without a job when he was fired for alleged incompetence and siding with workers who were on strike.
However, the real reason for Nyarota's sacking was that his leadership style had failed to bear the intended results.
Nyarota had to leave with a number of lawsuits hanging over his head from both the Government and individuals who felt that in his vain attempt to please his British masters, he had aggrieved them by his articles published in the paper.
But before he left, Nyarota had advised the ANZ management and reporters to register with the Media and Information Commission as required by the law, which had just been enacted.
What Nyarota did not know was that the proprietors of ANZ were no longer concerned about its life and were waiting for a catalyst to trigger its demise and attribute the blame to someone, who in this case was the Government.
Nyarota was replaced by Mdlongwa, who in a rush recruited all his former juniors at the Financial Gazette.
Mdlongwa came to the Daily News and wantonly fired and hired reporters.
His mistake was that he too, never challenged the morality behind ANZ's not registering with MIC.
When the deadline for registration of the paper and its reporters expired, Mdlongwa continued to head the paper, publishing for at eight months, until it became clear that he had been dining in a fool's paradise.
So when the Supreme Court declared on 11 September that the Daily News was operating outside the law, the ANZ chief executive Mr Sipepa Nkomo failed to say anything of substance to justify his company's refusal to register. with MIC.
If as a matter of principle, ANZ did not want to register with MIC why did they make so much noise and made frantic efforts to register the paper at the last hour.
What it means is that the paper's proprietors had already made their mind to shut down the paper.
The issue of AIPPA is neither here nor there. ANZ should have been concerned more with the plight of its workers instead of taking a unilateral position not to register.
The move to recruit some journalists to work for the on-line edition from South Africa is just a smokescreen. What happens to those workers that were not in the newsrooms? What is the fate of those advertising representatives, accountants and all the other complementary staff?
The truth of the matter is that the Daily News was a victim of the law, it chose to be a victim but its demise had since been sealed when the scheme to remove President Mugabe from power failed.
Mitayo Potosi
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