Shooting the messenger

Militarism threatens press freedom, democracy

EARLY THIS year in Zimbabwe, the proprietor of independent newspaper The Standard Clive Wilson, spent a weekend in jail as Zimbabwean police blocked a demonstration by human rights lawyers pressing for his release. The protest was one of many directed at Robert Mugabe's government, locally and internationally, after Wilson's paper reported the alleged detention of 23 soldiers over a foiled coup plot. A day before his arrest, Wilson witnessed the release of his editor Mark Chavunduka from 10 days of illegal military incarceration. Chavunduka and author of the story Ray Choto, himself detained for three days, had suffered physical body torture by the military.

All three men were denied access to lawyers and family. About the same time two Namibian television journalists Andreas Frai and Vincent Spiegel were in a Botswana jail for attempting to cover a trial of fugitive leaders of an armed rebellion in North Eastern Namibia. The 'rebels' fled to Botswana after their alleged plot to secede the Kapirivi from the rest of Namibia was exposed. The events in both countries, especially Zimbabwe, sparked widespread protests. The Media Institute of Southern Africa led public demonstrations targeted at Zimbabwean diplomatic missions in the region. While this happened, two Angolan media workers Jose Alberto and Jose Cabral Sunde were in detention in Luanda for re-broadcasting a news bulletin from a Portuguese radio station, RTP. The news alleged that Cuban soldiers were fighting with government troops in the ongoing civil war and the DRC.

A military court martial in Lesotho had meantime summoned journalist Candi Ramainoane for exposing non-judicial practices in a 'kangaoroo' treason trial of mutinous soldiers. He is now banned from covering the proceedings. Namibia, the third country after Angola and Zimbabwe, fighting alongside embattled Congolese President Laurent Kabila banned media from covering the country's involvement in the unpopular war. The Namibian government blamed the media for the growing negative publicity on their DRC involvement. The ban was lifted after a public outcry.

SADC soldiers in Lesotho : Security laws invoked to muzzle press.

All the recent incidents of attack on the media have been induced by the military or armed rebellions. The issue is whether these clampdowns herald the return of dictatorships and the rule of silence in Southern Africa. People are angry. Their relations are dying in wars they can not justify. Taxes are up; governments' are spending excessively, while poverty, unemployment and crime hit the ordinary people.

As the region's war-engaged regimes face increasing pressure in their home countries, they compromise on good governance and resort to non-civilian measures to protect their peeling reputations. The Angolan government has recently announced impending stiffer measures against the media. Zimbabwe's defence minister Moven Mahachi used similar words to endorse military detentions of civilian offenders. The emerging shift of power from democratic institutions to the military is introducing democracy's most serious threat: military dictatorships and the rule by decrees.

In Zimbabwe, courts must bow to the army because "the military is above the law," says defence secretary Job Whabira. As insecure governments entrench military rule it is the pillar of transparency and accountability - freedom of expression - that will naturally be attacked first. If other Southern African states will sit by and watch what is happening, the region will become ungovernable, unfit for investment, and settlement. Even the more stable states like South Africa will have to deal with the fallout from politically unstable neighbours. What the region has witnessed in recent months may be the beginning of untold military retribution, which may drive the region several decades back.

Bright Mwape
MISA