Suppressing the African media into submission

The media in Africa had been the cornerstone of African independence and the eventual over thrower of colonialism. All over the continent, African elites, politicians and businessmen had managed to come up with newspapers in order to create awareness on the issue of nationalism and draw up a strong opposition to colonialism. The newspapers without doubt became the wheels of national protest and agitation for self-rule. As early as 1858, Charles Bannerman had established the ‘West Africa Herald’ in Ghana, while in Nigeria, ‘Iwe Ihorin’ was established in 1859 followed later on by the ‘Lagos Daily News’ and the ‘West African Pilot.’ On the Eastern part of the continent in Kenya, the ‘Nyanza Times’ became very popular with the masses.

DICTATORSHIP OF THE MEDIA

With the attainment of self rule however, the role and nature of the media changed dramatically overnight. The new regimes, most of which were one party states and authoritarian regimes, realising the potential power and influence of the media, wasted no time in ensuring that they control the media by any means necessary, repeating with purported intensity the bad lessons that they had learnt from their predecessors This led to the undermining and ultimate suppression of press freedom and the freedom of expression in general by the new regimes. The authoritarian regimes put journalists under great political pressure, a phenomenon that they had vehemently fought against under colonial rule, thus opening the floodgates of what will eventually become a consistent pattern of the violation of journalists rights by most regimes in the continent.

DARK HOURS FOR THE AFRICAN MEDIA

Today, 50 years after independence the African media is experiencing its darkest hours. It is an undisputable fact that the African media had contributed tremendously to national development and remain a consistent and towering pillar of democracy, good governance and the rule of law. However, the African media and journalists in particular, continue to face a barrage of assaults in the execution of their noble duties. The adoption of obnoxious legislations that are in variance with the national constitutions, arbitrary arrests, intimidation and unwarranted harassment, imprisonment, incommunicado detention, forced exiled, arson attacks, confiscation of equipment, torture, disappearances and murder with impunity, have become the tools of suppressive brutality employed to force the media into submission.

In addition to these oppressive mechanisms, most African journalists work in precarious conditions, receiving starvation wages with little or no social benefits which has a direct negative impact on their output. More than 65 percent of journalists in the continent work without any form of employment contracts and hence are at the mercy of their employers, who can fire them arbitrarily. A good number of journalists covering political strife and other forms of ethnic violence or civil unrest in places like South Sudan, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya Guinea Conakry and Zimbabwe have no insurance cover. Worst of all, the majority of these journalists have no training on safety and do not wear any form of protective gear when covering such forms of civil unrest.
African governments are very much aware of the power of the media. In this current milieu it has been universally accepted that information is power and those who control information control power. Bearing this in mind, most African governments continued to clinch with tight fists their grip on the state broadcasting facilities and the press despite the persistent call that state broadcasting outlet should be transformed into public broadcasting services. Currently, apart from the SABC in South Africa there are very few public broadcasting services in the continent in the real sense of the word. Even the SABC has some question marks all over its body, in term of it operations and romance with the ruling ANC.

PAYING LIPSERVICE TO INTERNATIONAL INSTRUMENTS

In terms of the international instruments that guarantees freedom of expression and of the press, almost all African governments have signed and ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), perhaps with the exception of Africa’s newest state, South Sudan, despite the fact that the Democratic Republic of Sudan (prior to the separation) had ratified the Convention on March 18, 1986. Article 19 of this convention gives the most elaborate details as regards to freedom of expression. Article 19 (2) states:

‘Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any media of his choice.’

In the same vein, most African governments had drawn inspiration from Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) as a standard of press freedom and had proudly embedded this provision in their constitutions. The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Right also made specific mention of the freedom of the Press in Article 9 (1) by indicating that every individual has the right to receive information. However, despite these brilliant proclamations that are reflected in most African constitutions, what happens in reality is an outstanding delusion and betrayal of the very intent of those lovely provisions in these constitutions and international instruments.
According to Professor Kwame Karikari of the Media foundation for West Africa, (MFWA), ‘It is very significant to observe that, there seems to be a correlation between the level of political stability and respect for human rights on one side, and on the other the extent of press freedom enjoyed by media in a country in Africa.’ What is evident in the continent however is that wherever the media is severely suppress, such countries have a stinking human rights violation record and mountainous level of corruptions. In order to hide such grave misdeeds, the governments in these states adopt very tough and vague media laws, in the name of secrecy laws, state security and anti- terrorism laws that prevent journalists from reporting on these inhumane abnormalities. Media houses and investigative journalists who dare to report on the ‘fat skeletons’ in the cupboards of these governments often pay a very heavy price.

On the other hand, countries where the freedom of the press is highly respected and guaranteed are often shining examples in relation to their democratic credentials. We might not be very much far away from the truth, if we say that Senegal, Ghana, Cape Verde, Kenya and perhaps the Republic of South Africa are touch bearers in this respect.

With the perpetual struggle to control information, media ownership in Africa had taken a novel dimension. Today the media domain is no longer for the dynamic journalists, governments and politicians alone. Prosperous businessmen, musicians and even sportsmen and women had entered into the fray. With the entrance of these new players, we had also noticed a shift in the paradigm from traditional journalism. It is now common knowledge that most newspapers serve the interest of their owners to the detriment of the public interest. Coverage is too often slanted to suit and satisfy a particular political viewpoint; media owners make the ultimate decisions in regard to the editorial content rather than their crippled editors; editorials in such publications have become very weak and bias, devoid of any form of professionalism as propaganda reigns supreme.

MOST PERSECUTED

Journalists are the most persecuted professionals in the continent. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) had recorded that at least about 200 journalists had been killed with impunity in Africa in the last two decades. Somalia alone accounts for about 30 percent of these deaths, while the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria and Zimbabwe had also registered significant percentages. Journalists have also been killed in Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Madagascar, The Gambia, South Sudan, Uganda, Ivory Coast and Tanzania. Hardly a year passes with at least the murder of ten journalists in the continent. Already, at least journalists had been murdered in Somalia in 2013. These callous killings are nothing but cowardly and distasteful acts of intimidation that are meant to cripple the media.

Eritrea in Eastern Africa is the continent’s biggest jailer of journalists. At least up to 18 journalists including Dawit Isaak had been held incommunicado by the Eritrean authorities since 2001. A recent report on exiled journalists by the Doha Media Foundation revealed that there are more journalists in exile in Eastern Africa than anywhere else in the continent. The majority of these exiled journalists are mainly from Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea and the Democratic Republic of Congo. They mainly live in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya.
A cursory glance at the newspapers is the continent today, reveals a striking absence of investigative reports even if they do appear sparingly. Most journalists now prefer to ‘report it safe’ rather than having brushes with their governments. An analysis of journalists killed in their own countries in relation to their work in peace time, had concluded that the majority of these journalists are often investigative journalists who had written stories exposing corruption or human rights abuses or both, or have in their possession information that rattles the very heart of government. Investigative journalists are rare species in the continent; they are hounded and hunted by governments and non state actors, forced into exile, tortured and maimed and in the worst scenario killed with impunity. The common denominator behind such cowardly murders is that the perpetrators of these heinous crimes are never brought to justice. The killing of journalists with impunity thus continues unabated in the continent and had without doubt become the cheapest and most effective way of silencing the elite journalists of the continent. Africa governments must make necessary commitment to ensure the safety and security of journalists. The states have an obligation under international law to protect the lives of its citizens.

These brutal repressive measures had no doubt transmitted chilling messages to the spines of journalists in the continent. It is evident, that a large number of journalists who work in their own countries practice self- censorship because of the fear of government reprisals, thus, failing to report some of the some sensitive events at the home front. This partly explains the rapidly development of the online media, which are mostly operated by journalists who are out of their countries. What the national newspapers cannot report at home for fear of reprisals, the online media reports with reckless abandon devoid of any form of self- censorship. The new media had thus deflated the restrictions employed by some of these governments to hide the truth from the citizenry. With the advent of the new media, African governments can no longer stave their citizens of the truth.

THE NEED TO EMPOWER THE MEDIA IN AFRICA

If Africa therefore must take its place at the world stage, (apart from the fact that it must be able to utilise its natural resources for the benefits of its citizens,) it must be able to reposition and empower the media with absolute guarantees of the freedom of expression, based on internationally recognized standards. The African media must be able to project the continent’s image in the most positive form possible, while at the same time be able to expose corruption at the state and private levels as well as all form of human rights abuses. This however can only be done on two fronts. First, all states in the continent must decriminalize libel and secondly African countries must be able to pass legislation on access to information.
By all indications criminal defamation has no place in an established democracy. According to Kevein Goldberg in his paper on ‘The Media and the Law:’

‘Statutes which criminally punish defamatory speech exist for only reason: To address the harm to the reputation of the subject of the defamatory statement. Criminal defamation statutes do not address this harm. Instead, they only protect the interests of the state at the expense of private citizens, allow government officials to engage in a scheme of selective prosecution of their enemies.’

He further stated that the widespread use of criminal defamation statutes in repressive countries simply allows public officials to use the power of the state to intimidate and harass those they consider as opponents. It is there long overdue for African governments to eradicate these archaic laws from the statutes books, some of which dates back to the 19th Century.

Secondly, African governments must enact legislations on the right to access to information. One of the most efficient ways for journalists and the media to expose corruption and human rights abuses is for the media and the general citizens to have unlimited access to information held by governments and the private sector. Accountability and probity will continue to be a fleeting illusion unless the right to information is guaranteed in all African states. It is still disheartening to note that after more than 12 years of continental campaign only about 9 countries out of 54 had access to information legislation, the latest being Liberia.

Africa governments therefore must guarantee the right to freedom of expression without any form of reservation. There can be no democracy or meaningful development anywhere in the continent, where that media continues to be strangulated and the freedom of expression totally disregarded. ‘The media has been the cornerstone, is the cornerstone and will continue to be the cornerstone for the promotion and consolidation of democracy, good governance and the rule of law.’

*Pa Louis Thomasi is a Graduate of Mass Communication from the University of Nigeria Nsukka, (UNN) and currently works with the International Federation of Journalists as Senior Programme Officer for Africa.

* THE VIEWS OF THE ABOVE ARTICLE ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR/S AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE PAMBAZUKA NEWS EDITORIAL TEAM

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