Search This Blog

Monday 16 July 2007

A VOICE FOR THE VOICELESS

An attempt to give voices to the poor, disabled and the generally disadvantaged in Swaziland is gaining momentum. Advocates for community media have released their initial findings on the feasibility of publishing rural newspapers and found widespread support.

If community newspapers were to be launched they would challenge the present news media that is dominated by the needs of political, social and business elites in the kingdom.

At present there are two newspaper groups in Swaziland. A company that is effectively controlled by the monarchy runs one, which publishes the daily Observer and the Weekend Observer. The other, which publishes the daily Times of Swaziland and Saturday and Sunday newspapers is privately owned but supports the monarchy and broadly caters for an audience of social, business and political elites. Both groups distribute their newspapers mainly to urban areas.

In Swaziland people living in rural areas, the poor and people with disabilities, get a raw deal from the news media. A new initiative to create and regularly publish community newspapers catering mainly, but not exclusively, to the rural areas aims to change this situation.

The Media Institute of Southern Africa (Swaziland Chapter) and the South Africa-based Institute for the Advancement of Journalism jointly published a draft report in June 2007 that concluded the time was ripe to press ahead toward establishing community newspapers.

The key findings of the draft report written by Ed Moyo, a lecturer in the Journalism and Mass Communication Department at the University of Swaziland, were that all people consulted in the regions unanimously favoured the establishment of community newspapers and most believed the newspapers should be in the siSwati language (the commercial newspapers and magazines in Swaziland are all in English).

The report also found:

There is a widespread opinion that national newspapers have failed to cater for
communal needs and aspirations;


Community newspapers are seen as an empowerment of communities throughout Swaziland;


The community newspapers could help to create jobs, especially for young people;


The community newspapers are viewed as educational materials that will be used for sustaining literacy. They will provide reading materials that are not readily available in rural areas.



The draft report is optimistic that the newspapers could be commercially viable. Supermarkets, shops, hotels, banks and local branches of large companies are among those who said they would advertise in the new newspapers.

There is a pool of talent ready to work on the newspapers. Students in the Journalism and Mass Communication Department at the University of Swaziland could work on the newspapers as part of their course work and there are many former students of the department who have not been able to get work since graduating.

The draft report paints an optimistic picture for the future of community newspapers.

The Swazi cabinet’s approval of a new information technology and communication policy has encouraged advocacy groups to believe that there is a will among the ruling elite in Swaziland for diversification in the media.

That optimism may be misplaced, as there has been little evidence since the Swazi Constitution was enacted in February 2006 that the kingdom is moving toward democracy. The news media is still unable to publish material critical of the monarchy and government ministers have sought to restrict the media’s access to information. Most recently, the health minister banned workers in the country’s main hospital from speaking to anyone (media, friends, family) about matters pertaining to the hospital. This was after the news media reported that a four-year-old girl died from rabies after the hospital failed to get readily available drugs to her.

There is no such thing as a free press in Swaziland. There are at least 30 pieces of legislation that restricts the activities of the media in some way or another. Newspapers must be licensed by the government and any number of informal rules of conduct governs what can be talked about in the media and other public spaces. I can see no reason why the ruling elite in Swaziland would want to relax these laws and rules to allow more voices to be heard. The reason why they presently restrict the media is to control the flow of information and discussion. In this way members of the elite groups maintain their privileged positions.

There are also flaws in the draft report itself. The report needs to clearly distinguish between ‘local’ newspaper and ‘community’ newspaper.

The report describes newspapers that are published for the benefit of a group of people living in a particular geographical area that are supported by advertising from business. These are ‘local’ newspapers. The editorial content of these newspapers would not be so different from the content of the present Swazi national newspapers. I would not be surprised if either of the newspaper-owning companies in Swaziland saw such newspapers as an opportunity to increase their business and make more profit by publishing localised versions of their national papers.

A ‘community’ newspaper is something quite different. Newspapers like this exist across the world (and there are many more community radio stations), which offer a non-profit service that is owned and managed by the particular community the newspapers serve. They are different from the present commercial or state-controlled media in Swaziland because they allow a diversity of voices and opinions to be heard. This is because they are open to participation from all parts of the community.

Community newspapers can provide a platform for the discussion about matters that the community itself consider important. These issues might not be the same things that the monarch, the chiefs, or business houses think are important. And because community newspapers allow dissenting voices to be heard people who presently have control in Swaziland will see them as dangerous.

This raises a second major flaw in the draft report. The author asked members of parliament, NGOs and business houses whether they supported the idea of the community newspapers. The response was overwhelmingly favourable. But chiefs were not consulted. In Swaziland the non-democratic nature of the country requires people to defer to the wishes of local chiefs (who are in effect representatives of the monarch). If the chiefs do not support the community newspaper project, it will not happen. It really is as simple as that.

We have yet to see what position the chiefs take on the project but it is difficult to see that they would allow potentially subversive media into their areas. Instead, I should think, if they allowed the community newspapers into their chiefdoms at all they would want to have control over them. This would make it impossible to publish truly ‘community’ newspapers. The idea of a ‘local’ newspaper that prominently reported the chiefs’ comings and goings (as the national newspapers do with the king) would probably be very attractive to them.

Some of these issues (and more) were raised at a stakeholders’ meeting in June 2007. The draft report’s sponsors promised to think some more and come back with an updated report. The community newspaper project lives on.


(Feasibility Study on Community Newspapers in Indigenous Languages and for People with Disabilities, March 2007).


No comments: