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Daily News presses roll
22/01/2004 10:49 - (SA)
Harare - Zimbabwe's popular independent Daily News hit the stands on Thursday morning, a day after police left its premises for the first time since it was shut down in September.
Scores of curious readers scrambled for the few copies of an eight-page edition which led with a story on a High Court ruling on Wednesday which ordered police to vacate the paper's printing works and allow it to continue publishing.
In a statement published in the same issue, the paper's chief executive Sam Sipepa Nkomo apologised about the inside stories which were stale.
"We are publishing this issue just to let you know that we are back," he said.
"We ask you to bear with us because the stories contained in this issue were initially intended to be published on 20 December 2003, which was not possible because the police stopped us from printing," he said.
This is only the second issue of the Daily News to appear since September 12.
The last was published on October 24 after the country's administrative court ordered that the state-appointed media commission register the paper.
The Daily News - a fierce critic of President Robert Mugabe's government - was forcibly shut down by armed police in September after the Supreme Court ruled it was operating illegally because it was not registered with a state-appointed media commission.
Since then, the paper's lawyers have been shuttling between the country's courts battling to get authorisation for the paper to re-open. Zimbabwean courts have ruled five times in favour of the paper since it was shut down.
The Daily News was the country's best-selling daily, with a readership of at least 900 000.
Zimbabwe currently has three other dailies -- the state-run Herald and Chronicle, and a small private paper, the Daily Mirror.
- AFP
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