The Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC), a creation of the year-old power-sharing government between autocrat president Robert Mugabe and pro-democracy leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who is now the prime minister, said it held its first meeting Thursday, after its appointments were approved by Mugabe.
Commission chairman Godfrey Majonga, a former journalist, said in a statement Friday that the watchdog body had resolved to carry out its mandate on behalf of the coalition government, which has recognized the right of freedom of expression and the vital role of the media in a multiparty democracy.
Under Mugabe, Zimbabwe passed press gag laws in 2002 that closed seven newspapers, provided legal sanction for the arrest and assault of scores of journalists and left Zimbabweans with only state-controlled radio, television and press. Only three weekly independent newspapers survived the dragnet.
The 2002 laws criminalized journalists who practised without a licence from a panel controlled by Mugabe's propaganda bosses.
Visiting foreign journalists were effectively banned from entering Zimbabwe.
Creation of the nine-member free press watchdog marked the first independent body appointed under a series of democratic reforms agreed to by Mugabe and Tsvangirai. Mugabe delayed the appointments for four months, and it took another three months for the body to begin working.
The commission met Friday with Tsvangirai. Information Minister Webster Shamu, a Mugabe appointee, said at the meeting that there would be no problem with the launch of two new daily newspapers that have been waiting for over a year to publish.
The last independent daily newspaper, The Daily News, was violently shut by police in 2003. Its circulation had soared when it first appeared in 1999, the first newspaper that dared to criticize Mugabe's 20-year hold on power.
The media panel's first meeting came as South African President Jacob Zuma appeared to have wrung concessions out of Mugabe in talks to break the deadlock with Tsvangirai over implementation of power- sharing democratic reforms.
Mugabe has yet to finalize appointments to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, meant to be the country's first independent electoral body since independence in 1980, and to the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission.
Previous electoral bodies have been controlled by friends of Mugabe's ZANU(PF) party and have been accused of complicity in massive fraud and vote-rigging.
