Bad Governance Can`t Cow the Media into Silence in Africa
blurb:isstoday:260109media
26 January 2009: Bad Governance Can’t Cow the Media into Silence in Africa
Kenya’s government has been at loggerheads with the media and the public since the beginning of this year over the new Communications Amendment Act (2008). The government argues that there is a Media Act that protects press freedom, however, the new Amendment effectively introduces claw back clauses that would inhibit media freedom. The Act provides, amongst other things, for the appointment of commissioners whose role is to set ‘communication’/broadcasting standards. As expected, Kenyans rose en masse in defense of their democracy and made loud noises to anyone who would listen. Being cowed into silence is definitely not an option for Kenyan citizens who have experienced varying brutal regimes that did not respect freedom of expression.
Just like Kenya, Botswana too has rushed to gazette a new media law, The Media Practitioners Act that was passed last year. Lawmakers and civic groups had asked for amendments in response to the public outcry by journalists. Parliamentary committees were denied the chance to fine-tune the bill and the main outrage is over the requirement for journalists to register with Botswana’s Media Council before practicing. The Media Council’s decision-making structure has got appointees who apparently are not in any way involved in or knowledgeable about the media industry.
Press freedom has been under threat elsewhere on the continent for some time with Zimbabwe clearly setting the trend. The former Zimbabwean Minister of Information, Jonathan Moyo, spelled out what was to be aired on the local broadcast arena in what he called ‘local content’. The only problem is that in this era, everything local is also global and vice versa.
Unfortunately for Kenya, the rather fragile coalition government faced yet another acid test as the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) led by Prime Minister Raila Odinga denounced the passing of the law as an ‘act of violence on common sense and harming a free media’. This of course endeared the ODM to the Media Owners Association. The ODM has taken every opportunity it can to enforce its authority within the coalition and this seems to be paying off. By distancing itself from the new law, the legitimacy of the new Communications Amendment Act’s (2008) was undermined.
In defense of its actions in regulating the media or communication, the government stated in a costly newspaper advert:
“The reality is that the new Act is in keeping with similar provisions in developed democracies such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and others”. The government claims in the advert that the Act does not impede journalists form doing their work but actually supports the growth of the ICT sector and press freedom, and stops the spread of “pornography, hate and violence”. It further states that the new Act is only targeting broadcasting and not journalists. The question here is: is someone somewhere honestly failing to see the connection between reporters, journalists and radio and television stations? Or perhaps we need to engage in a semantic debate on the differences between ‘broadcasting’ and the ‘media’?
The government’s defense statement concludes with the words: “In a democracy, it is vital for there to be checks and balances to protect society from a Rogue Government, a Rogue Parliament, a Rogue Judiciary and a Rogue Media”. There is no other statement that sums up governance in Kenya as well as this one. The corruption scandals by politicians depict the all round rogue nature of the regime; the roguish tendencies of a parliament that does not believe it should pay tax, a judiciary that is riddled with favoritism and corruption that destroys the pivotal point of the criminal justice system and a media that has at times faced allegations of blackmailing corrupt politicians and officials into paying them so that their shenanigans are kept out of the news.
Though Africa does not have to reinvent the wheel on good governance, the continent does seem to fail in that it simply lifts practices from elsewhere and transplants them without cognizance of the particular circumstances. That provisions are effective in the developed world does not always make them relevant and applicable to the developing countries’ contexts. In any case, it is the failure to fashion out our own blueprints relevant for our contexts, history and diversity that have caused Africa to lag behind the other continents. The leadership has also largely designated itself as ‘ the guardians of public opinion’. African presidents so often refer to ‘my people’, when speaking about citizens – demonstrating that only they know what is good for their people.
Unfortunately for President Mwai Kibaki, the ripples caused by his signing of this bill into law caused him some embarrassment as he was forced to refer it back to the lawmakers for further scrutiny. The point is: he had assumed wrongly what was good for his people. Perhaps it is time for all to reread Why Men Rebel by Ted Robert Gurr.
In this case, the legislature must also take the blame for the very few members of Parliament who turned up in Parliament on the day the bill was passed. At most a third of the well over 200 MPs turned up.
That said, the media fraternity, journalists in particular, also need to be conscientious in their operations. Presidents know that only they are the news in many countries and the norm is that their activities or luxurious lifestyles provide the news. In many countries, journalists demand to be paid and to be provided with transport to cover civil society events. Furthermore, at these events the media then only arrives to cover the minister’s speech and they immediately dash off to follow another minister - as if they are the only high important people when it comes to democratization or developmental issues.
Whatever their excuse for such behavior, their failure to recognize the importance and contributions of other actors on the governance landscape on the continent has largely contributed to the mischief by the leadership. In brief, the media fails the public when it only focuses on catastrophes and politicians and excludes all other actors. It needs to do a careful balancing act in terms of covering all angles of a story. And in the absence of community newspapers and radio stations in most of Africa, only the big media houses located in the city are available to fill this space.
Dr Annie Barbara Chikwanha, Senior Research Fello, African Human Security Initiative, ISS Nairobi
