Zim Media Laws Spread To SADC???
Reporting by AND Network
South Africa
Media laws crafted by Zimbabwe's former minister of information, Professor Jonathan Moyo, have reportedly set a bad precedent for the SADC region as governments scramble to come up with equally stringent media laws.
South Africa is currently working on new media laws that media analysts are criticising as laws that have exactly the same parallel with those of Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe.At the behest of the then information minister, parliament hastily crafted media legislation and regulation bills that were fast tracked into Acts to thwart activities of the emerging vibrant privately-owned media.The government's worst adversary was The Daily News that was under the helm and the editorship of Geoff Nyarota who fell out of favour with the government pundits and heavyweights following his startling revelations of senior government officials in theWilllovale Scandal.The Broadcasting Services Act was enacted in 2000 with serious repercussions on who were the acceptable media players in the Zimbabwe media landscape.This was subsequently followed by the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (2002), which Eddison Zvobgo described as one of the calculated acts there designed to thwart personal liberties.The government of Zimbabwe justified these draconian pieces of legislation by saying that even world developed countries have media legislations in place.In similiar fashion the government of South Africa has tabled before its parliament an allegedly equally repulsive media bill that threatens to put a lot of restraints on the operations of media houses.Media analysts said what the South Africans fail to comprehend is that media laws in Zimbabwe were imposed as an attempt by the paranoic Mugabe to ward off any criticism that was likely to stem from the privately-owned media- hence decide to come up with media laws that would make it difficult for the private media to operate in the country.The agenda to kill a 'disseminating voice' was aided by the publicly-owned media which became part of the conspiracy and gave vast amounts of space to George Charamba to expound on government policy and defend legally invalid media laws.Questions were also raised as to the true authorship of the Nathaniel Manheru column which seemed to justify that anything was pro-government, with speculation that Jonathan Moyo was responsible for personally penning the column - a move that enabled him togain undeserved space to justify the hastily crafted media laws.