Tanzanian Press: not yet free, though there is certain degree of freedom [opinion]

The one democratic essential that can be described as “successful” in this country since the advent of multi-party politics is press freedom. Today, there are numerous newspapers, tabloids and magazines; and some of them publish what would have landed editors, writers and publishers in trouble during the one-party system.

There is a certain degree of press freedom that can’t be found in most African countries, even among our neighbours in the East African region. Compared with countries like Eritrea, Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Swaziland and Zimbabwe, for example, where the regimes hardly tolerate any criticism, we are far better off.

The government has been striving to evolve a culture of respecting the freedom of the press as it attempted to put into practice the ideals of democracy and good governance.
However, the picture is not all that impressive. As editors continue to seek more freedom to publish, they find a lot of obstacles in their way.

They find that their efforts are curtailed by certain repressive legislations in the statute books, such as the Newspapers Act (of 1976), the National Security Act, the Official Secrets Act, and the Preventive Detention Act.

These are among the 40 bad laws, which the late Judge Nyalali recommended that they should be scrapped.But they are still being deliberately maintained in order to intimidate journalists and the citizenry at large, and to restrict the media’s access to the news and information, which the government, for obvious reasons, does not want the public to know.

It is essentially because of such draconian laws that editors, both in the state and private media houses are often forced into self-censorship.
The practice of self-censorship negates press freedom and tends to erode the confidence of even the most conscientious editor. Under the said restrictive laws, editors, especially those in the independent media, operate at their own risk.

Sometimes, deciding on whether or not certain material is “publishable” or not is not easy! For, if, in their decision, they couldn’t get it “right”, they might find themselves in trouble!

Currently, there is a case in court involving the editor of a certain newspaper, a columnist and a publisher, which is about an article that was alleged to be “seditious’.

I can’t comment on the ongoing case, but it is important to mention that it is a pointer to the precarious situation which journalists will continue to face as long as the archaic anti-freedom legislations (and especially the Newspapers Act) exist.

The scribes can extricate themselves from this predicament by uniting and intensifying the struggle against the said laws. And this requires the kind of solidarity and cohesion shown a couple of years ago by the editors of free and independent media houses in the country when they stood together to oppose and condemn the government’s unwarranted banning of the weekly Kiswahili newspaper, MwanaHalisi.

Such laudable stand was also exhibited sometime back when the whole media fraternity fought tooth and nail to reject a flawed Information Bill that had been proposed by the government, and forced the authorities to withdraw and revise it so that it would reflect, in a balanced way, the rights and responsibilities of unfettered media. That is the kind of spirit that, I think, is critical to the Fourth Estate’s endeavours toward self-liberation.

The late Robert Rweyemamu used to say that the campaign for clear guarantee of freedom of expression would be secured if, and only if, the journalists “rode together, sailed together, pulled together, spoke together and, if necessary, died together”!

In that sense, our newsmen and women must stop lamenting the repressive laws and the entrenched news-gagging practices in the corridors of power, which constitute a great barrier to press freedom.

They should, instead, unite and form themselves into a formidable pressure group to agitate conscientiously for the scrapping of those laws. History teaches us that all freedoms are fought for and won through hard, relentless struggles (with sacrifices), and not on a silver platter. Freedom of the press is not an exception.

January 8, 2012 by Evarist Kagaruki

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Source: www.thecitizen.co.tz/sunday-citizen/43-sunday-citizen-opinion-editorial/18624-tanzanian-press-not-yet-free-though-there-is-certain-degree-of-freedom.html (Accessed: 10.01.2012)