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For the past seven years in Zimbabwe there has only been one national daily newspaper - the state-owned Zimbabwe Herald, widely seen as a propaganda sheet for President Mugabe.

However now the Herald is to face some competition, as a new media commission, set up under Zimbabwe's power-sharing agreement, has just licensed a handful of private newspapers.

One of these is the Daily News - a paper which was once fiercely critical of Mugabe's authoritarian regime.

The paper survived bombings and arrests of its journalists before police eventually closed it down in 2003.

Amongst the other independent papers to hit the streets in a few days time will be the publication Newsday.

The paper is published by Zimbabwean entrepreneur Trevor Ncube, who divides his life between South Africa and his native country of Zimbabwe.

When Lucy Ash called him at his newspaper offices in Harare, she asked him why he had felt the need to make a new home across the border in Johannesburg in 2002.