The thrill of launching a newspaper is evident in the Twitter feed of publisher Trevor Ncube. "Yippee!! Its happened. NewsDay is out on the streets of Zimbabwe. We distributing a 32 page promotional issue."
But this being Zimbabwe, it couldn't be that straightforward. "2 members of @NewsDayZimbabwe team&PR firm in detention at Mbare police station. Police demand 2 C NewsDay registration certificate," Ncube tweeted later, though the distribution staff were released after paying fines for a so-called traffic offence. "Only in Zimbabwe," Ncube muses. "They are shaken but ok."
Such was the difficult but exhilarating birth last week of NewsDay, Zimbabwe's first independent daily newspaper in seven years. It has been described as the most concrete sign yet of democratic reform under the country's inclusive government.
NewsDay goes head to head with the state-owned Herald, longtime cheerleader for president Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party. But Vincent Kahiya, NewsDay's editor, insists his paper will not favour either Zanu-PF or the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). "The media in Zimbabwe has tended to take sides," he says. "We've seen a damaging alignment: you are left or you are right. We want to avoid that. We shall be a different paper. Both Zanu-PF and the MDC should be able to read us without feeling offended. The people of Zimbabwe should enjoy reading us. We are focused on telling the story of Zimbabwe in an unbiased way."
The paper, with an initial print run of 20,000, started selling on Monday for 50 US cents or five South African rand and is available from vendors along major motorways.
Zimbabwe is not quite the thought-policed dictatorship it can appear from afar. Kahiya already oversees a weekly paper, the Independent, while viciously anti-Mugabe headlines in the Zimbabwean can often be seen on street corners. A new media licensing authority set up by the coalition government has approved two more independent dailies which will launch in the coming weeks.
But the press is far from truly free. Since the last independent daily paper was banned by Mugabe's government in 2003, scores of journalists have been arrested, harassed and assaulted. Kahiya himself has spent a total of five days in police cells, most recently last year. "You get overzealous policemen and people who don't understand why there should be media at all," he says.
Stanley Kwenda, a freelance journalist, remains sceptical. "I still exercise caution. When you arrive at a press conference, you don't know what will happen – police have been known to come to press conferences and arrest journalists. There is no confidence to say we are free."
