IRIN Focus on difficult year for media//Yearender//

The southern African media was among the most challenged of any African media this year by heavy-handed governments, regional analysts and senior journalists told IRIN. "The media in this region have been challenged by local governments - many of which are struggling for legitimacy as in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Namibia - who took issue with news reports and opinions in the enduring legacy of race politics coupled with emerging problems such as HIV/AIDS and crime and generally a bleak outlook as far as the economy goes," Yves Sorokobi, Africa Programme Coordinator from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) told IRIN. Sorokobi said that "cornered" by the urgency of the challenges they faced, governments in the region at times combined "a heavy-handed realpolitik cynicism with a genuine concern for their countries' economic and political stability in suppressing journalists rights in the national interest". The independent media, in particular, over the past year have experienced first hand, attempts by government to control their voice. "There has been a growing intolerance against the independent media. In some cases we have seen governments go so far as to withdraw advertising from independent publications as was the case in Namibia earlier this year when the government withdrew state advertising from The Namibian," Kaitira Kandjii regional information coordinator at the Windhoek-based Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) told IRIN. But analysts were unanimous that the most striking example of intolerance was Zimbabwe. Over the course of a difficult year, the country's only independent daily had its printing presses blown up, journalists were arrested and beaten, and as government hostility reached new heights, six reporters working for foreign newspapers were accused of being "terrorists". The coming year may be even worse. Under a controversial Public Order and Security Bill to be tabled in parliament in early 2002, a journalist will be deemed to have committed an offence if they write a story that has already been published by another media house without its permission, conceals, falsifies or fabricates information, spreads rumours, falsehoods or causes alarm and despondency under the guise of authentic reports and collects and disseminate information on behalf of another person who is not part of the mass media service. A two year jail term could await those who fall foul of the law. The Bill bans the media from writing on "information whose disclosure will be harmful to the law enforcement process and national security, inter-governmental relations or negotiations, financial or economic interests of a public body, the government or country or information relating to personal privacy". Journalists working in Zimbabwe will have to be accredited by the Media and Information Commission, which will be established by the Bill. "Zimbabwe is clearly the most troubled in the region. Foreign reporters have effectively been hounded out of the country while local journalists are under a state of siege, mistaken by ZANU-PF (Zimbabwe's ruling party) to be the political opposition and treated accordingly by a regime facing a major identity crisis worsened by an unprecedented economic slump," Sorokobi said. Kandjii told IRIN that apart from Zimbabwe, countries like Swaziland also tried to introduce restrictive legislative measures on the media. In Swaziland the independent weekly, The Guardian, won a major victory in August when, after a four-month court battle, it had a banning order against it overturned. The Swazi government had banned the Guardian and the monthly Nation because of their criticism of the absolute monarch, King Mswati III. The King also attempted to impose restrictions when he signed Decree No 2 in June which made it a seditious offence, punishable with a 10-year jail sentence, to "impersonate, insult, ridicule or put into contempt the King, tribal chiefs and state officials". The decree, however, was withdrawn in July following an outcry from human rights groups and foreign governments. Even in South Africa, often held up as a regional bastion of democracy, the relationship between the government and the fourth estate was strained in 2001. "ANC (the ruling African National Congress) officials have repeatedly lashed out at the 'white media establishment' accusing whites of undermining a legitimate black government," Sorokobi said. Senior journalists in the region argue that restrictions placed on the media have impacted on access to information and the democratisation process. "Not allowing journalists to do their job or restricting what they write and dictating how they write impacts on the general public's access to information," a senior South African-based journalists told IRIN. "Democracy and the respect for democratic values cannot be entrenched in an environment where the public are simply not getting enough information." According to Kandjii: "Basically in the whole of southern Africa there is no enabling environment with regards to access to information. There are some constitutional guarantees, but nothing really with regards to access to information. More needs to be done." She told IRIN that another worrying trend to have emerged this year was where the printers, not just governments, have acted as censors. In a statement on 13 December, MISA noted the case of the Lilongwe-based printing company, Design Printers, which decided not to print an edition of The Chronicle newspaper on the grounds that it contained "offensive material". "MISA is alarmed at the increasing attempts at censorship by printing companies and publishers in the region. This incident in Malawi serves to highlight similar incidents in Lesotho and now South Africa where Jonathan Ball Publishers have taken a decision not to publish Robert Kirby's novel Songs of the Cockroach on the basis that defamation action may be taken against the publishers by the Democratic Alliance and other characters (or their families) mentioned in the novel," MISA said in the statement. "It is unfortunate that publishers and printing companies are, for economic and political reasons, forced to dance to the tunes of governments and, in so doing, engage themselves in activities that serve to muzzle media freedom and freedom of expression," the media watchdog added.