IFEX - News from the international freedom of expression community
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PRESS RELEASE - SOUTHERN AFRICA

2 May 2005

MISA releases annual state of media freedom and freedom of expression report

SOURCE: Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), Windhoek

(MISA/IFEX) - The following is a 27 April 2005 MISA press release:

Release of MISA's annual publication, "So This Is Democracy?: State of
media freedom in Southern Africa"

The Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) will again this year be
releasing its annual publication, "So This Is Democracy?: State of media
freedom in Southern Africa" in commemoration of World Press Freedom Day on
May 3. This is the eleventh consecutive year in which MISA has issued this
publication which records incidents of media freedom violations monitored
by MISA in the previous year. The current edition therefore details media
freedom violations in 2004.

MISA issued 169 alerts in 2004 about media freedom and freedom of
expression violations in 11 countries in the Southern African Development
Community (SADC) region. This is a decrease of 10% over the 188 alerts
recorded the previous year in 2003, and a 100% increase over the 84 alerts
issued in 1994, when MISA first began monitoring media freedom and freedom
violations in the sub-continent.

The countries monitored include Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi,
Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and
Zimbabwe.

In 2002 Zimbabwe accounted for 120 (58%) of the 208 alerts recorded in
that year. The following year, in 2003, Zimbabwe accounted for 102 (54%)
of the 188 alerts recorded. Although Zimbabwe continues to lead in terms
of the number of individual violations recorded, MISA documented a 54%
decrease in the number of violations from the previous year (from 102 in
2003, to 47 in 2004) in Zimbabwe.

MISA's Regional Programme Specialist for Media Freedom Monitoring, Ms. Zoé
Titus, attributes this vast difference to the fact that the independent
media in Zimbabwe has been effectively silenced with the vigorous
application of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act
(AIPPA) and the Public Order and Security Act (POSA).

"The closure of the Daily News and Daily News on Sunday in September 2003
and that of the Tribune in 2004, have impacted decisively on critical and
independent reporting", she says.

In addition, she adds that AIPPA's brutal 'licencing and accreditation'
provisions . . . "so diligently imposed by the Media and Information
Commission (MIC) in Zimbabwe" have disqualified from the work place a
multitude of journalists.

"Who then is left to harass? Those few independent voices left in the
country have certainly experienced their share of harassment in the year
under review," she says.

Whilst Zimbabwe recorded a decrease, Swaziland on the other hand, showed a
significant increase in the number of violations recorded in 2004, in fact
a total of 29 individual incidences, as opposed to the official 3 recorded
in the previous year.

"In an environment where citizens have been stripped of their right to
political participation, where all judicial, executive and legislative
powers are concentrated in the person of the king and where the entire
Bill of Rights has been expunged (which enumerated the protections and
entitlement of citizens), how can the media possibly report freely?" she
questions.

She cautions, however, that in those countries where the media freedom
situation has not overtly deteriorated, there remains a need for media law
reform as the environment is still littered with legal hurdles that stifle
media freedom. The media in Lesotho and Swaziland especially are
economically crippled as a result of an increase of civil defamation cases
which result in high financial penalties being awarded to successful
litigants.

But good laws in themselves do not ensure an improved environment for
media freedom. In Zambia, the benefits of the enactment of the Independent
Broadcasting Authority (IBA) and Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation
(ZNBC) acts have not yet filtered down to the populace. A coalition of
media bodies therefore are challenging the legality of the government's
decision not to take all the recommended names appointed to sit on the IBA
and ZNBC boards to parliament for ratification.

A Gender Perspective

A new feature of the publication is a regional gender and media overview
of the SADC region. MISA's Programme Specialist for Media Support, Ms.
Jennifer Mufune, points out that gender in the media is all about
professional standards, ethics and about giving a fair voice.

In her opinion the media in SADC has failed dismally to live up to its
public-responsive and social role that is meant to keep a watchful eye on
all infringements of rights against both women and men. Instead the media
in SADC have become mouth pieces for men in the ruling elite, she says.

For the second time this year MISA is including a gender component in
terms of which media violations are broken down to show how many men and
women were affected by violations of their media rights. In 2004, 6 female
and 104 male practitioners were affected.

How to obtain a copy

Hard copies of the publication may be ordered from MISA's Regional
Secretariat. Contact Eric Libongani at [email protected] [2] or
[email protected] [3] for details. The publication may also be downloaded
from MISA's website at http://www.misa.org/sothisisdemocracy.html [4]

For further information, contact Luckson Chipare, Regional Director of
MISA, or Zoé Titus, Programme Manager, Media Freedom Monitoring, MISA,
Private Bag 13386 Windhoek, Namibia, tel: +264 61 232 975, fax: +264 61
248 016, e-mail: [email protected] [5], [email protected] [6], Internet:
http://www.misa.org [7]

The information contained in this press release is the sole responsibility
of MISA. In citing this material for broadcast or publication, please
credit MISA.
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