Without press freedom, we can hand over the title deeds of our countries to the thugs

[BAK]

By Jenerali Ulimwengu

Posted Saturday, May 7 2016 at 19:18

We just celebrated World Press Freedom Day this past week, a time when we examine the status of nations as far as the respect for freedom of speech and expression is concerned.

It is a day that speaks to the extent to which countries have taken strides in ensuring that news organisations and their personnel work freely and safely without too much meddling by the powers that be.

Every year, the organisation Reporters without Borders publishes an index ranking all the world’s countries according to the way they performed over the past year. It is therefore an index that notes frequent changes as countries change their behaviour depending on the political and security circumstances obtaining there.

A year of political upheaval will pull a country a few notches down the index whereas the return of calm and normalcy after a period of turbulence will raise another country a few rungs.

It follows, therefore, that a few countries that have enjoyed tranquillity over a long period have stayed top of the list while others seem to be trapped somewhere near the bottom of the heap.

The northern European countries such as Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands have always ruled the roost while countries such as North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Eritrea have always scored poorly.

In these ratings, African countries have shown themselves to be perennial laggards, albeit with a couple of exceptions such as Ghana, Cape Verde and Namibia.

Like so many in our occupation, I have made a habit of reading these reports to see what surprises they may contain, and surprises there have been aplenty.

According to this year’s index, it would seem like Ghana trumps Australia, Namibia beats Belgium, Poland is ahead of the United Kingdom, Romania bests the United States, Zimbabwe shines over India, Haiti trashes Italy and Burkina Faso trounces South Korea. So go figure!

Of course, ratings such as these do produce their unexpected rankings, like the one that recently put Cape Verde on top of FIFA’s best soccer teams in Africa.

Is someone out there pulling my leg, or are there attributes that we are missing? It is the same thing I was saying a few weeks ago about the happiness index where some pretty gloomy countries were found to be very happy.

What is clear, though, is that the less press freedom there is, the more the country is likely to be corrupt. It is a truism that press freedom fosters transparency, and transparency leads to improved accountability; the reverse is also true.

Too many African countries are run by cliques of very corrupt politicians who seem to think that they own their countries and peoples and are entitled to whatever they may desire.

There is so much plunder by people in government that one has to wonder whether being a thief is an attribute one has to have for one to be in government.

Amid so much thieving, a free press would not be tolerated, and there is always tension between our governments and the media.

Many governments across the continent have arrogated to themselves the right to shut down media houses that are deemed to be too troublesome. Some of the ministers who have used these powers to clamp down on the press would not be fit to be lowly clerks in a junior office.

Now we have a situation in Africa whereby all our governments have been busy trying to reverse even the very modest achievements in the area of press freedom as they seek to shroud everything in secrecy.

In some countries, “nosy” journalists have been jailed, sometimes killed, because they dared reveal what our rulers wanted to keep under wraps.

It is the duty of all democrats, both in the media and in broader society, to oppose most vigorously all attempts to muzzle press freedom, because the very survival of our countries as places where free people run their affairs in ways most appropriate to them depend on it.

Otherwise we may as well hand over the title deeds to our countries to the politicians, who in most cases turn out to be little more than thugs.

Every society will have a press that is as free as the people want it to be, so it’s upon us all to strive for the maximum freedom possible.

Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: ulimwengu@jenerali.com