Independent media groups in Zimbabwe have welcomed the lifting of a 40 percent import duty on foreign newspapers distributed in the country. Finance Minister Tendai Biti announced the removal of the tax on 16 July 2009 while presenting his Mid-term revised budget to Parliament.
The duty which was imposed in June this year had inflicted a huge import tax burden to newspapers such as The Zimbabwean and The Zimbabwean on Sunday published simultaneously in Johannesburg and London by exiled Zimbabwean publisher Wilf Mbanga.
Biti said the levy was equivalent to breaching the people’s right to information. Its removal iimediately brought some relief within the country’s independent media fraternity who see the move as a positive step towards allowing diverse sources of alternative information, particularly editor Mbanga whose publications are reported to have been levied about R2,85 million since June last year to get his newspapers into Zimbabwe.
MISA-Zimbabwe also hailed Biti, describing his gesture as a progressive move to free the flow of information, but appealed to government to go much further in freeing the media space by repealing draconian legislation such as the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) and Broadcasting Services Act (BSA) to allow the entry of private players and investors in both the private and broadcasting sectors
But controversial former Information Minister Professor Jonathan Moyo is reported to have been angered by scrapping of the duty on imported newspapers, arguing that the move exposes national security to danger through what he calls “duty-free propaganda”.
Ironically, Moyo is a former Robert Mugabe lapdog, and was the chief architect in the closure of the country’s four independent publications including the country’s largest daily newspaper The Daily News. He is known for extreme hatred of a free press and has presided over the crafting of the punitive AIPPA, the censure of the media as well as the loss of jobs to many Zimbabwean journalists who fled persecution to seek refuge in foreign countries during his tenure in office.
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