The rhetoric of press freedom in Africa 

By Levi Obijiofor 

Friday, 8 June 2007 

The struggle for freedom of the press in Africa is looking increasingly like a guerrilla war between press freedom advocates and autocratic African leaders who claim they support press freedom but whose actions contradict their assertions. Perhaps there is credibility in the statement that freedom is not offered willingly by political leaders but it must be contested and wrested from the grip of despotic African leaders. In Kenya, President Mwai Kibaki announced last week that his government had no intention of restraining press freedom in his country. But look at his proposals to enhance press freedom in Kenya and you wonder whether he was talking while he was sleepwalking. At the Madaraka Day celebrations in Nairobi to commemorate Kenya’s 44th anniversary of “freedom for internal self-governance”, Kibaki said: “Press freedom is important for our democracy. We will work with the media on ways of further entrenching democracy and development. We have no intention of controlling the media.”  

What is Kibaki’s idea of enhancing a free press? Kibaki’s government recently introduced a bill that seeks to establish a media watchdog with the responsibility for “licensing journalists, keeping a register of all journalists but with express mandate to de-register anyone found to be in breach of the non-defined set of regulations”. How can such a bill entrench democracy and development in Kenya? Quite simply, the bill, if passed into law, will undermine the growth of democracy in Kenya. The bill introduced by Kibaki’s government is a clever instrument designed to emasculate Kenyan journalists and all journalists who report from Kenya. Expectedly, press freedom advocates and human rights groups, including media owners in Kenya, are incensed and have called for the bill to be discarded. It is an unhelpful bill. It is not designed to advance press freedom. It is intended to limit further the existing freedom that Kenyan journalists and media owners have.    

To be clear, Kibaki is not the only African leader who suffers from this socio-political ailment. Traditionally, African leaders say they support press freedom but they take action to muffle press freedom. Here is a related example from Nigeria. One month to his exit from office, Olusegun Obasanjo insisted he would not sign into law the freedom of information bill passed by the National Assembly. The reasons were petty and technical, a crafty way for Obasanjo to suspend action on the bill through presidential grandstanding. First, Obasanjo’s disagreement with the bill was based on the title. The bill was entitled “Freedom of Information” but Obasanjo, as an emperor, wanted to impose his preferred title – “Right to Information Bill”. The second ground on which Obasanjo declined to sign the bill was equally clumsy. He said the bill excluded public access to records which could be harmful to the “defence” of Nigeria and overlooked those records which could be “injurious to the security” of Nigeria. In a semantic argument, Obasanjo said the word “defence” of Nigeria was distinctively different from the words “injurious to the security” of Nigeria. Of course the words may not mean the same thing but Obasanjo cannot be more informed and knowledgeable than all members of the National Assembly who voted for the passage of the bill. 

It is fashionable for African political leaders to talk about the great role of the media in the promotion of democracy and socio-economic development. But the same leaders always lack the courage to grant journalists the freedom to perform their job unencumbered by official and unofficial rules. Here, I am referring specifically to freedom from state constraints. There is no question that a positive relationship exists between media freedom and the growth of democracy in society. In his book -- Africa’s Media, Democracy and the Politics of Belonging -- Francis B. Nyamnjoh underlines the categorical relationship between media freedom, advancement of democracy and socio-economic development in Africa and indeed in other parts of the world. Nyamnjoh argues systematically and logically that democratisation and socio-economic development of Africa cannot take place in a vacuum. In his views, the news media are central to the emergence of a culture of democracy in Africa. The kernel of his argument is that African journalists are like their counterparts in other parts of the world – they are, in many ways, a reflection of the society within which they operate. In other words, the news media are not abstract entities.  

In the early days of the struggle for political independence across much of Africa, the news media were burdened with the task of assisting in creating a climate for development by supporting government policies and programmes of development. Under this philosophy of press performance and socio-economic development, journalists were expected to serve as the unifier of the different ethnic and religious groups in the country. Consequently, journalists were required to be in the front line of mass mobilization of the population. This was the philosophy that informed the vanguard role of the press during and after the fight for political independence. The role carved out for the press also implied that, in the interest of socio-economic development and national unity, the press could not question authority, regardless of the level of official corruption and abuse of office by political leaders.  

More than four decades after many African countries attained political freedom, there is still a continuing struggle in Africa between advocates of a free and independent press and political leaders who want to govern for ever. African political leaders want to govern with minimum dissent. We saw this in Togo during the 38-year reign of Gnassingbe Eyadema, in Kenya during the 24-year rule of Daniel Arap Moi, in Zambia during the 27-year reign of Kenneth Kaunda, in Zaire during the long and almost interminable 32-year reign of Mobutu Sese Seko, in Uganda during Idi Amin’s short but eventful authoritarian rule (1971-1979), and currently in Zimbabwe under the tight grip of “life-president” Robert Mugabe, to highlight a few of Africa’s dictators. 

For African journalists to perform the noble and thankless job assigned to them by society, they would have to operate in an environment in which they are free to tell the truth, to report daily events without hindrance, political intimidation, harassment and threats to their lives. These are just some of the constraints that confront African journalists in the 21^st century. Ironically, as the world celebrates the spread of democratic governments in many African countries, African “democrats” are deliberately chipping off the basic freedoms of their people through policies and laws designed to promote authoritarianism rather than democracy. It is not surprising to observe that, many years after the attainment of political and economic independence, tensions have persisted between African journalists and some new breed African leaders. The basis for disagreement has always been the desire of African leaders to remain in power, to be responsible and accountable to no one but themselves, and to cultivate a press that is free to observe but gagged from reporting what it sees.  

This point needs to be underlined: how journalists function and the extent to which they are able to carry out their role in society can be determined from the amount of freedom they enjoy. A press constrained by government laws is not a free press. It is quite simply a lapdog of the government. A press without the basic freedom to operate responsibly in society makes no meaningful contribution to the growth of democracy and, above all, denies the people their right to know. In every society, the news media function through the agency of human beings – the journalists. If journalists are restricted from performing their official roles, through vexatious laws passed by parliament and implemented by government, our society would be the loser. This is why the struggle for press freedom in Africa should not be confined to journalists and media owners. The battle for press freedom in Africa must be fought in collaboration with civil society groups, lawyers, student organisations, trade unions, religious leaders, opposition political groups, and indeed all members of society that are served by the press.