Tax on foreign newspapers is crippling The Zimbabwean
By Violet Gonda
15 July 2008

The ‘luxury’ tax on foreign newspapers imposed by the Mugabe regime last month is crippling the UK based Zimbabwean newspaper. Editor Wilf Mbanga said the punitive taxes are being imposed deliberately to squeeze the newspaper out, resulting in him now running at a loss. He said he is paying more than 40% of the value of the paper in tax.

Mbanga said that the June taxes cost £37,000 and he said these costs have already led to the suspension of The Zimbabwean on Sunday and a reduction in the print run of The Zimbabwean from 200,000 copies a week to 60,000.

Mbanga says this is just another way the regime is curbing freedom of expression and access to information. “We know they are jamming your station and other radio stations and this is now their way of jamming newspapers,” he said.

The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) and the World Editors Forum (WEF) wrote to the Zimbabwean government asking them to repeal this tax on foreign papers. "Restricting access to information by punitive taxation constitutes a clear breach of the right to freedom of expression, which is guaranteed by numerous international conventions, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," said the Paris-based WAN and WEF, which represent 18,000 newspapers world-wide.