Press laws in Africa
By Pricel Seleman Posted Jul 1 2005
AP photo
British journalists Toby Harnden (left) and Julian Simmonds spent 10 days in a Zimbabwean prison. They made bail on the condition that they leave and never return.
They are journalists on the run — across the borders, far away from their home country. Angus Shaw, a Zimbabwe AP correspondent and Ray Choto, a former reporter for The Standard in Zimbabwe, have a lot in common. They are both Zimbabwean and seasoned journalists who have been criminalized under their country’s draconian press laws.
Shaw fled his country in February after the government threatened him with imprisonment on charges of espionage and slandering the state.
“I was accused of the crime of practicing objective journalism,” says Shaw, now in exile in England.
His departure followed accusations by the Zimbabwe Central Intelligence Organization that he along with other international journalists — Jan Rath of Time and Brian Latham of Bloomberg News – were spies.
According to Shaw, the intelligence claimed that the three journalists’ offices contained ‘bombs and spying equipment’ and searched their offices. Shaw fled to neighboring Zambia, where he secured a visa to South Africa and thereafter ended up in England.
Choto’s ordeal has a similar tune and dates back to 1999 when militiamen tortured him and his editor, the late Mark Chavunduka, for refusing to reveal sources for a story about the arrest of 23 military officials on charges of a coup attempt. Their torture included suffocation in water-filled plastic bags, electric shocks to their genitals and being forced to roll on a rain-wet tarmac road for three days. “It was a barbaric torture, yet we survived without revealing our sources,” Choto says.
Choto arrived in the U.S. after the ordeal on a Knight Journalism Fellowship that ended in 2002, and he is currently working in Washington, D.C. as a senior studio editor for Studio 7, a Voice of America radio program, which covers the Zimbabwe situation.
The introduction of legislations such as the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act and the Public Order and Security Act in Zimbabwe has effectively closed the media space.
The preamble of AIPPA states that it exists to enhance public access to information. But with a section on registration and licensing systems, some journalists have already been unlawfully criminalized and denied their chance to earn their living. According to AIPPA, journalists working in Zimbabwe need to register and acquire a license from the government body Media Information Commission.
“We wouldn’t have opposed the law if the commission was independent rather than government appointed,” says Zoe Titus, Research Manager, Media Institute for Southern Africa, a Namibian-based non-government organization.
Under AIPPA, media organizations need to register every two years in order to remain in operation. But re-registration is not guaranteed as the commission has the discretion to deny the media houses.
Journalists have to be accredited every year, pay a fee and can be summoned to answer charges before the commission. The accreditation fees are high, especially for foreign journalists covering events in the country.
More than 200 journalists, according to MISA, have already been arrested under the repressive law, though none of them have been found guilty.
Since the promulgation of AIPPA on March 15, 2002, there have been more than 200 media practitioners in the country. This law led to the closure of the two only independent newspapers, The Daily News and The Tribune, two years ago.
“The monster law allows the government to unlawfully arrest independent journalists,” says Basildon Peta, a Zimbabwean journalist living in exile in South Africa.
Peta was once a leader of the Journalists Union in Zimbabwe and fled his country in 2002 after death threats, which included envelopes filled with gun ammunition left at his doorstep. He is currently working with Independent Group of Newspapers in Johannesburg, South Africa.
On April 14, the Zimbabwean magistrate court released two British journalists, Toby Harnden and Julian Simmonds, on bail after holding them for 10 days in prison on charges of illegal news coverage under AIPPA.
These journalists from the London Sunday Telegraph were arrested March 31 while on vacation in Zimbabwe during the parliamentary election campaign there.
Recounting his 10-day ordeal, Harnden says that the prison sanitation was worse than he could describe. “We survived; unfortunately there are people who have survived the horrible condition in there longer than we did,” he says.
According to Harnden, they were acquitted and deported back to UK on the condition that they never return.
MISA releases its annual publication every year on May 3, which since 1994 has been celebrated as World Press Freedom Day. This year it released So this is Democracy?: The State of Media in Southern Africa. The publication heavily focuses on media freedom violations monitored alerts from its member states.
Zimbabwe has led in media violations since 2002. However, this year’s publication revealed a drastic drop in violations from Zimbabwe compared to previous years due to the silenced private media under AIPPA.
Last year MISA recorded 208 media freedom violations from its 10 member states, and Zimbabwe accounted for the largest — 54 percent. But this year, MISA recorded a total of 169 from all its member states, with 47 counts from Zimbabwe.
In Gambia, there is very little press freedom despite a provision in the constitution. The current president, Yahya Jammeh, continues to act contrary to the country’s constitution.
According to Gambia Press Union President Madi Ceesay, Jammeh has occasionally threatened to put “journalists six feet deep” on state owned television.
On Dec. 16, 2004, the worst befell the media in Gambia when the editor of the newspaper The Point, Deyda Hydara, was shot dead in a drive-by shooting.
Hydara, a PEN award winner, was shot around 10 p.m. on his way to drop off two of his paper’s secretaries, Ida Jagne Joof and Nyang Sarang Jobe, after celebrating his paper’s 13th anniversary.
In Malawi a repressive law bars journalists from writing any story about the president, even if they are based on facts. The latest and current victims of the law are Reuters correspondent Mabvuto Banda and BBC correspondent Raphael Kentenge, who were arrested earlier this year after reporting that the president shunned the state house on superstitions that it was haunted.
Swaziland has some elements of press freedom, though media houses operate under constant threats from the government. “Yes, journalist are able to report freely, but the environment leaves a lot to desire,” says Comfort Mabuza, the MISA-Swaziland National Director
According to Mabuza, journalists feel uneasy in the era of HIV/AIDS to heavily criticize the traditional and constitutional law that allows the king and men to have as many wives as they want.
In Tanzania, according to MISA-Tanzania National Director Rose Haji Mwalimu, the media freedom environment is not all that bad, though its current president, Benjamin Mkapa, has never been supportive of the establishment of media freedom. The president declared at the Southern African development press conference in Botswana last year that there would never be a press law in Tanzania as long as he was the president. Ironically, Mkapa is a former journalist.
Compared to other countries in the continent, though, Zimbabwe is one of the most effected. Zimbabwean journalists Angus Shaw and Ray Choto are now far away from their country and are still optimistic about the situation. They believe they will return home some someday.
“I see things changing one good day,” Choto says, adding that he would love to return to his home country then.