FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION UPDATE FROM 22 DECEMBER 1999 - 7 JANUARY 2000

PRESS - Reporters sans Frontiers has reported that almost double the number of journalists - 36 - were killed in 1999 as were murdered in 1998. They were killed for doing their job or voicing their opinions. Another 446 journalists were arrested, 653 had been attacked or threatened and 357 media organisations censored. In one of the worst cases, Sierra Leone RUF rebels executed nine reporters close to the government. The number of reporters in prison was slightly less than in 1998 - 85 as compared to 93 in the previous year. Some 34 reporters were kidnapped.

On 24 December, "The Citizen" reported that the Free State MEC Ouma Tsopo for health had criticized the media for its handling of the baby Tabo Maruping story saying it was important that such cases not be sensationalised. Thabo died a day after an operation to correct an unusual brain-disorder which resulted in part of his brain developing outside his skull. Tsopo said she had to dispel "the myth perpetuated by the media" that the Department of Health had only come to know about, or show interest, in Thabo's case once it was made public by the media. She said the Department had given medical attention to Thabo's mother during the pregnancy and later Thabo himself.

On the international scene, "Business Day" reported that the Los Angles Times had prostrated itself before its readers and critics with the publication of a withering 14 page self criticism of a profit sharing deal between the newspaper and proprietors of a sports centre that featured in its weekend magazine.

The critique, entitled "Crossing the line" has helped turn a Sunday magazine editorial deal with a sports arena business into a cause celebre in the fuzzy debate in what it describes the fuzzy debate over press ethics. The author of the critique fired volleys of criticism at efforts by the management to eliminate the wall that is supposed to separate revenue collectors in the advertising department of a newspaper from the journalistic truth-seekers in editorial. The critique also served as a dignified response to the criticisms of other newspapers and media commentators which saw the conflict of interest as a blatant underhand breach of journalistic integrity.

This controversy serves to introduce what could also develop into controversy in South Africa what with SABC being given exclusive rights to the Robben Island millennium celebrations. Australian "Communications Update" dedicates it Comment in its December 1999 edition to the controversy surrounding Nine Network's battle to ensure it was the only Australian network providing the live coverage from Sydney's celebrations. It had a contract with Sydney which in turn had a contract with the company which puts on the fireworks. Nine spends a lot of money sponsoring the event, and contributes "millions of dollars" towards the cost of the fireworks. Nine and the City of Sydney claim to have a contact giving Nine exclusive Australian broadcast rights to the event. Nine, though was not impressed that ABC might cover the event. According to Comment, "This would set new heights for the kinds of entities which can be controlled by media organisations. Not just events (sporting contests, a Prime Minister's resignation) or even a newsworthy people but public places and perhaps the passage of time."

BROADCASTING - The Independent Broadcasting Authority has given Midi TV, parent of e.tv, permission to make limited changes to its share holding structure. According to Amanda Vermeulen writing in the "Sunday Times" the decision ends months of uncertainty about the future of e.tv which was thrown into disarray when several of Midi's shareholders failed to deliver their portion of the funding. Midi had asked the IBA for permission to create a new share holding vehicle, Sabido Investments, wholly owned by Hosken Consolidated Investments, into which Midi's shareholders would transfer their share holding. Although the IBA approved the deal, it is concerned that the beneficiary base might be eroded if disadvantaged groups needed up with a smaller stake. Midi said, however, it would continue to be controlled by historically disadvantaged groups through HCI, established as an investment vehicle for union members. The IBA, however, did not agree to some of the IBA's other requests such as changes to the constitution of its staff complement but did agree to minor changes to Midi's language obligations.

On the issue of a definition of "information programming" as requested by Midi, the IBA has indicated that although it considered it desirable to insert a defintion, it would do so only after a public enquiry. Such a definition would apply to all future private free-to-air broadcasters and therefore comment from other stakeholders and the public is important.

CENSORSHIP - Thai censors have banned "Anna and the King" saying its portrayal of 19th century King Mongkut was inaccurate and insulting to the Thai royal family. Thailand's censorship board spent four hours reviewing the film before deciding to ban it. Police Lieutenant-General Prakerd Sataman of the Special Branch said, "The film from the beginning to the end distorts history which could create unrest in our society." Importers who show the film could face up to six months in jail and a 2 000 baht (R325) fine. Despite this and the fact that if vendors of any pirated copies of the film could face being charged with treason which can carry the death penalty, reports also predict that given the interest in the film in Thailand, the ban is likely to spawn a major black market in video versions. The story derives from Anna Leonowens two books, "The English Governess at the Court of Siam" published in 1870 and "Romance of the Harem" published three years later.

Meanwhile a private Iranian group is to launch an appeal on the Internet for money to implement the religious death sentence on British writer Salman Rushdie. The fatwa condemning Rushdie to death for novel The Satanic Verses was made in 1989. It poisoned relations between Teheran and London which gave Rushdie round the clock protection for many years. But relations improved markedly after Iran's decison last year to stop encouraging the implementation of the decree. The web appeal will enable supporters to trasnfer money over the internet. British foreign Secretary Robin Cook has said that Britain will contineu to protect Rusdie's despite Teheran's pledge. Iran's Muslim Shi'ite clergy were initially hostile to the Internet fearing it would enable Westerns cultural influence to infiltrate Iran but later it realised the Web's potential.

Back in South Africa, Bryan Rostron, writing in "The Star" of 6 January, draws attention to the censorship being practised in the compilation of history textbooks. Reporting on a conference at the University of the Western Cape, he says it appears that truth is being sacrificed to promote "social harmony" sometimes at the "expense of "not telling" or down-right fibs; national building comes before truth. Also disconcerting is the allegation that many schools, particularly the poorer black ones, still rely on old apartheid-era textbooks. Rostron says in conclusion, "The viciousness of apartheid is being played down in favour of a story about "the triumph of the human spirit". This gloss allows South African whites, even those who supported apartheid, to bask in that glow of triumph. ACCESS TO INFORMATION - A letter from the Safe Food Coalition in "The Star" responds to both Woolworths decision to ban genetically modified foods and Pick'Pay's reaction which was to accuse Woolworths of "scare tactics". The letter questions why Pick n' Pay who helped sponsor a tour by GE opponent Professor John Fagan to South Africa, should be reacting in this way. It draws attention to a brochure introduced by the food chain entitled "Healthy Eating Guide, Genetically Modification and Food Safety" and claims that the guide has been designed to leave the reader with the impression that GE foods are safe.

INTERNET - "The Mail and Guardian" reported that the Herstigte Nationale Party (HNP) is just one of a handful of local white nationalists factions serenading the online neo-Nazi movement. The name of HNP foreign secretary Leon Strydom crops up several times during online reports on activities of several white racists organisations. A prominent white racist website, called the National Alliance, reports on a meeting between Strydom and Dr William Pearce. Pearce is a former assistant to American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell author of the infamous Turner Diaries - a fictitious account of a right-wing takeover of the world. In his monthly speech entitled "Lessons to be learnt from white South Africa", Pierce describes Strydom as being part of "the most important white nationalist group in South Africa". A M&G query e-mailed to the National Alliance resulted in an offer to be put in touch with the head of the "local unit". According to the M&G, the principle of free speech means that there is technically no way to prevent the growth of hate speech on the Internet.

On a more positive note, both "The Citizen" and "The Star" reported that the Internet has provided the lifeline for thousands of Africans seeking to join the information age by providing distance learning facilitates, remote health centres and an international market for craftsmen. Africa, however, remains the region with the least number of Internet hosts and users. Technology experts agree that a radical new approach is needed if the continent is to attain its goal of a sustainable information society by the year 2010.

Experts monitoring the development of the World Wide Web say what is missing on the majority of African-based web sites is the relevant, easily accessible, interactive and home-grown content. It also is clear that content on African sites is relatively poor, with the exception of public information sites. Education, science and community development sites have the lowest content according to a study done Internet group Wo Yaa.

APARTHEID HISTORY- "The Star" reported on 24 December that at least 250 opponents of apartheid may have been murdered during the 1980s by agents of the South African regime who laced their clothing with poison. This is according to the most detailed account yet given of the of the attempt to assassinate the Rev Frank Chikane. According to the British medical journal, "The Lancet", the authors have been forced to wait a decade to publish their account to avoid prejudicing an investigation into the attempt to assassinate Chikane. The report said organophosphate, a nerve agent, was used.

ENTERTAINMENT - Music virtuoso Professor Khabi Mngoma, who produced a fine line of proteges over 50 years, died in December 1999. Writing in "The Star" Professor E'skia Mphahele said Khabi's passing was a national loss. According to Mphalele, he and Khabi formed the Syndicate of African Artists in Orlando. The Syndicate promoted theatre and music with the small amount of funds they could collect. "As a cultural activist, and a doer not in the least enchanted by polemics, he set up the Ionian Choir, and tutored and trained singers and classical instrumentalists. He also taught choral and orchestral conducting, " said Mphalele.

YOUTH COMMISSION - Opposition parties have accused the National Youth Commission of being the "mouthpiece of the African National Congress". "The Sowetan" reported on 24 December 1999 that opposition parties had described the NYC as an elitist organisation removed from the general population of the young people of South Africa. The NYC, however, dismissed the attacks saying that there had been extensive consultation with different bodies including political parties when the policy of the commission was drafted. A NYC Commissioner said the commission had achieved its objectives one of which was finalising the National Youth Service Programme. The Programme integrates the youth in development by targeting the unemployed, students and those who have had problems with the law.

TOPS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY - The atomic bombing of Japan by the United States was picked as the top news story of the 20th Century by Associated Press International, says Matt Kohlman reporting in "The Citizen" on 24 December 1999. War was the top newsmaker of the century but so was science. The 1994 election of Nelson Mandela as the first black leader of post-apartheid South Africa finished one point shy of the top 20.

Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech to 210 000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington in 1963 was selected as the best political speech of the 20th Century because of his mastery of the spoken word and the impact it had on the American consciousness. Researchers form the University of Wisconsin-Madision and Texas A&M University compiled a list of the 100 best American speeches and ten best British orations over the past 100 years.

Meanwhile Alfred Hitchcock has been chosen as the most influential film director of the century in a French opinion poll.

CORRUPTION - Five men, believed to be police officers, raided the police forensic laboratory in Faure where sensitive ballistic evidence in recent urban terror cases in the Cape Peninsula was being kept. "The Star" says, the arrested men are a police officer and his nephew who is a reservist, and a worker attached to the laboratory.

Two Benoni East Rand police officers are alleged to have accepted a bribe of R4 000 to destroy a case docket against a drunken driver. Bail was granted to Inspector Rajesh Chimthambi and Sergeant Mogambrey Pillay who it is alleged destroyed document containing the fingerprints of the suspect and later also destroyed the suspect's blood sample. The anti-corruption unit, which was closely monitoring their actions, said "The Sowetan", arrested them on Monday.

In addition a trainee sangoma who was allegedly raped by her mentor is angry after the investigating officer "advised" her to drop the charges. The police officer is also believed to be behind the disappearance of the case docket. The officer apparently told the complainant that the prosecutor would not take her case because she was 34 years-old and had been sexually active for a long period.

"The Star" reported on 30 December that a net was slowly closing in on corrupt KwaZulu Natal civil servants who have defrauded the provincial government of more than R50-million in the past four years alone. About 100 illegal transactions are under the scrutiny of the Investigative Directorate of Serious Economic Offences. Meanwhile the Durban Regional Court has denied bail to Durban North business man Obed Masalla who is facing at least 21 charges involving fraud, alternatively theft, and tax evasion.

A 28 year-old Mpumalanga businessman was convicted of defrauding the SA Revenue Services of about R4-million. Jan Brits was sentenced to an effective ten years in jail. Brits pleaded guilty to and was convicted of five counts of fraud. SARS State Attorney Frik Pretorius said that Brits had deceived SARS offices by giving them false invoices to claim input VAT while he was director of three companies.

According to "The Star" 24 December 1999 businessman David Alexander was granted R500 000 bail by the Pretoria Regional Court after he was arrested in what might be the one of the biggest white-collar crimes in South Africa. Soon after his arrest the Assets Forfeiture Unit was granted an order to seize Alexander's assets worth R56-million. It is alleged that Alexander is involved in international fraud scam. An agreement reached between members of the Scorpions, the AFU, the curator and lawyers led to the seizure been undertaken as "humanely" as possible. Alexander is the managing director of KNA Insurance and Investment Brokers. The seizure of assets from his home was followed by the seizure of a R10-million game farm in Naboomspruit, a further one in the Eastern Cape and three holiday homes.

According to "The Citizen" of 24 December 1999, a ruling by the Pretoria High court ordered all documents, photographs, recordings, and other material removed from head of Wheels of Africa group Billy Rautenbach's premises on 18 November, to be returned. The judge also ruled that certain sections of the National Prosecuting Act dealing with search and seizure were inconsistent with the Constitution and therefore invalid. The National Directorate of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) was interdicted from disclosing any information concerning Rautenbach's or the companies, while Commissioner of Inland Revenue investigating tax evasion charges was interdicted from allowing people not involved in the investigation access to any information in their possession. These bodes were also interdicted from publishing any information pertaining to alleged offences committed by Rautenbach, including defamatory statements to the media which implied or stated that he had or was alleged to have been involved in crimes such as inter alia the theft of R15-million from Hyandui Motor Distributors and any criminal conduct. Court papers had alleged that Rautenbach was involved in the murder of Daewoo's boss Yong Koo Kwon.

Days later "Business Day" reported that Bill Rautenbach was taking legal advice on what action to take against people who made claims connecting him to criminal activities. The same report said that an application by Rautenbach for the liquidation of Swedish Truck Distributors had been approved.

On 2 January "Sunday Times" reported that Rautenbach was fighting for the return of the documents confiscated on 18 November 1999 by the Investigative Directorate of Serious Economic Offences.

More generally "The Sowetan" reported 4 January that Parliament's watchdog, the public accounts committee, is to step up its work this year to ensure government department accounting offices keep specified performance standards with regard to finances entrusted to them by government's Public Accounts Committee chairperson IFP's Gavin Woods warned that directors-general and other government officials entrusted with public money should expect a tough year from his committee which planned to increase its work load to ensure that thorough checks and balances are carried out.

Regarding government spending, the DP, according to reports in "The Citizen" and "The Sowetan", criticized the government's millennium celebrations, calling them a waste of money and a missed opportunity to promote tourism. The DP labelled the celebrations on Robben Island "symbolic gestures" and said they feared that South Africa's ailing parastatals had picked up the tab for the Robben Island Party. "The Sowetan" also reported that DP leader Tony Leon had said in his millennium message that South Africans had to guard gainst reduced standards, corruption and bad governance which were enemies of progress and especially of the poorest of the poor.

DEMONSTRATIONS - PAGAD supporters chanted loudly in the Cape Town Magistrate's court on 4 January during the brief appearance of the organisation's national co-ordinator Abdus Salaam Ebrahim.

COMMUNICATIONS - As a result of the bombing triggered by a cellphone and in which seven police officers were injured, cellphone companies have promised not to sell simcards without Identity Documents. Both MTN and Vodacom said that after being approached by the Scorpions investigation unit, that from midnight on 25 December 1999, no simcard would be issued or sold without the seller recording the buyer's ID number. However, it appears that it will take about three months to put these controls in place. Problems associated with logistics involving some 10 000 outlets and the issue of control have been identified. Vodacom would also have to rethink its strategy of using vending machines to market starter packs including simcards.

PARTY YEAR-ENDS ANC - President Thabo Mbeki accused the West of failing to do enough to tackle Africa's economic and political problems. "Not enough is being done about that. There needs to be a taken a decision really without equivocation," he said.

He said, "Ways and means must be found to wipe out this debt as quickly as possible. You can't disengage the poor countries from the richer countries and you can't guarantee continued growth and expansion of the economies of the developed world if you don't address the matter of the further enrichment of these other billions of people who have no access to what is being produced because they are poor."

In his New Year message, Mbeki urged Africans to aim for the stars in the new millennium in line with his vision of an African Renaissance.

SACP- South African society is still characterised by deep inequality the SACP said in its millennium message. SACP General Secretary Blade Nzimande said "The racial bastions of power, privilege and wealth have been breached but the deep inequality of our society remains and new inequalities are developing". He said the SACP believed that the three most important challenges facing humanity this coming century were to eradicate poverty and exploitation, to create democracies and fight the AIDS pandemic. Nzimande said that capitalism was incapable of addressing even the most basic needs of millions of ordinary people throughout the world: "Instead all indications point to worsening poverty and disease as capitalist globalization deepens."

PAC, AZAPO AND SOPA - Jimmpy Seepe writing in the Sowetan on 5 January suggests that the landscape of extra-parliamentary opposition will take on a different characteristic soon if initiatives by several members of the Pan African Congress, the Azanian People's Organisations and Socialist Party of Azania succeed. The three parties are reportedly engaged in exploratory talks aimed at forming a broad movement that will forge the elusive unity that has bedevilled organisations within the Black Consciousness Movement.

REGIONAL UPDATES MOZAMBICAN ELECTIONS - The South African Communist Party hailed the Mozambican the Frelimo victory as an important development with significant implications for the consolidation of people's democracy not only for Mozambique but in southern Africa as a whole. On Renamo, the SACP said: "We believe that it is time now that Renamo should stop throwing tantrums and realise that acceptance of the democratic process is in the interest of the people of Mozambique and Southern Africa," said Gen. Secretary Blade Nzimande.

South Africa has also welcomed the ruling by Mozambique's Supreme Court that the recent presidential elections were free and fair. On January 6 the dept of Foreign Affairs called on all parties to honour the court ruling and to respect the integrity of the electoral process.

Renamo, main opposition party and former rebel group had earlier rejected the Supreme Court ruling and called for a recount of votes. South Africa therefore also said, "The government further urges the leadership of Renamo in particular to abide by the court's ruling by cooperating in the process of governance in order to entrench and consolidate democracy in a country with one of the fastest growing economies in South Africa."

Meanwhile Article 19, the International Centre Against Censorship which has developed a programme of monitoring the publicly-owned media in countries during election periods, has said that although there was bias towards the Frelimo party in the 1994 elections, there has been a positive trend away from this bias. However, the monitoring project also says that there are areas of continuing concern which need to be addressed if there is to be a further movement towards a genuinely "level electoral playing field" by the time of elections in 2004. A tendency to focus in greater quantity and less critically on government and Frelimo activities and statements as opposed to opposition parties was noted in the publicly-owned media.

ZIMBABWE - The trial of the "Sunday Standard" journalists has been deferred to July 2000. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, the magistrate remanded the two until July 7 at a hearing in Harare on January 6, pending their constitutional challenge to legislation under which they were charged,

GABON - Reporters sans Frontiers have requested the release of journalist Germain Leondoye. Leondoye was sentenced to two months imprisonment in July 1999 for publishing an article entitled "The irremovable Duke of Mounana".

THE GAMBIA - The World Press Freedom Committee has written to President Jammeh urging him to immediately withdraw libel charges against journalists of "The Independent". The Committee says that there is a pattern of harassment of journalists in that country. This dates back to the President's election in 1996. "The Independent's" managing editor Alagi Yorro Jallow, editor-in-chief Baba Galleh Jallow and reporters N.B. Daffeh and Jalai Walli were arrested and charged with `libel against the president' for publishing a story rleating reports that the President had married. The editors and reporters stand by the accuracy of the story.

ETHIOPIA - IFJ has issued an alert concerning the situation of journalists in Ethiopia. Some eight journalists are imprisoned and 31 have been released on bail with cases still pending against them. IFJ also records the names of 27 journalists who have fled the country and are living in exile.

ENDS