PREJUDICE AGAINST MUSLIMS RIFE

The news that a group of Muslims in Mbabane were mistaken for cannibals has once again raised the issue of how Swaziland’s news media reports on ‘outsiders’.

A report in the Swazi News (16 June 2007) said the newspaper had been ‘clogged with calls of panicking members of the public.’ People had also ‘flooded’ the police with fearful calls after they saw strangers in the city. The report says that the fears were sparked by an ‘invasion’ of the Mbabne, Nkhaba and Nkomazi areas by Muslims.

The newspaper went on to report that the city (Mbabane) and the nation ‘remains worried and specifically scared.’

The following week (23 June 2007) the Swazi News reported that the ‘cannibals’ were in fact a Muslim prayer group from Pakistan. It then printed this extraordinary paragraph, ‘Obviously confused by a group of at least 15 men with heavy beards and of foreign origin it was easy for everyone to refer to this group as cannibals.’

It is not clear how anyone can make a rational connection between men with beards and men who eat human flesh.

Part of the answer may be with the Swazi media themselves. Swazi journalists have a history of perpetuating a range of negative stereotypes about Muslims seeing them as terrorists, and generally violent and untrustworthy.

The Swazi media does not often write about Muslims but when it does it does so with a great deal of prejudice. A fine example of this was in June 2005 when it was announced that Christianity would be dropped from the new constitution that was about to be signed and the country would thereafter have no ‘official’ religion.

The coverage began in The Times of Swaziland with a front page headline and picture covering 70 per cent of the tabloid sized page: MUSLIMS ARE TO BLAME – PASTOR JUSTICE DLAMINI (Times 13 July 2005). The Pastor, a leader of an evangelical Christian church, blamed the Islamic community as responsible for Christianity being excluded from the kingdom’s Constitution. He said that if the clause were removed disaster would befall the kingdom, as Muslims would get an official platform for the Islamic religion into Swaziland. He said, ‘It is clear that the invasion of the Islamic religion would mark the beginning of violence and terrorism in the country’. He also predicated political and economic disaster.

‘It is obvious even to a small child that the Islam community have a strong hand in the removal of this clause. It is therefore clear that the removal of the clause is the means of paving an official platform for the Islamic religion into Swaziland,’ he said.

Pastor Justice Dlamini also claimed that God had personally chosen Christianity to be the religion of Swaziland.

There was no reference in the news report as to where the remarks were made, nor was any evidence given to support the assertion that Muslims were plotting against Swaziland, suggesting that there may have been collusion between the pastor and the newspaper to start the controversy over Islam.

Pastor Justice Dlamini had set an agenda that other journalists were quick to follow.

Not everyone agreed with the pastor’s interpretation of the Islam threat but his theme of ‘violence’ and ‘terrorism’ was taken up the next day by Times' columnist Vusi Sibisi where he described the pastor’s comments as an ‘overt declaration of war against the Islamic faith’.

The ‘holy war’ theme is continued in the Observer the next day by columnist William Mamba who asserted that the Christian community has drawn first blood in a holy war.

The Islam theme continued in the weekend newspapers and by this time it was clear that all newspapers assume that their readers were Christian (or at least not Muslims). The Times Sunday (17 July 2005) even assumed that this would be the first time in their lives that its readers had encountered Muslims and so provided a brief overview of Muslim lives (concentrating on their holidays) and an interview with a prominent Muslim cleric talking about what it means to be a Muslim.

The king intervened in the debate and stated that Christianity needed no special protection because it originated with God. Unsurprisingly, considering the power of the monarchy in the country, the newspapers supported this view. Typical was a comment column in the Times (27 July 2005), ‘the king hit the nail on the head’. Nimrod Mabuza wrote, ‘His point was that Christianity is capable of not only surviving on its own but also capable of swallowing other religions that do not originate with God. Sadly, the king stopped as I was still craving for more.’

Many writers make reference to how central Christianity is to Swazi life and to the belief that God has in some way ‘chosen’ Swaziland as a special place. Pastor Justice Dlamini takes this further. He believes that he personally has been chosen by God and is directly speaking God’s words: in effect saying that if you disagree with me you are going against God’s will.

‘I am an ambassador of Christ, an Ambassador of heaven. I represent the Kingdom of my God and its interests on the planet. All my actions are representative of the Kingdom of my God.’ (Weekend Observer 15-16 August 2005).

Reading the newspapers you get the clear message that Christianity has a supreme place in Swazi life as exemplified by Pastor Justice Dlamini’s assertion that ‘even a primary school child knows’ that Christianity is superior to other religions. Swaziland has a special place in God’s heart and He has chosen Pastor Justice Dlamini to be His spokesman on Earth.

With this background it is not surprising that newspapers have some difficulty when reporting and commenting on non-Christian religions. Generally speaking Islam is under reported and I have been unable to find any news reports or comment pieces that originated with positive news about the Islamic community. There is an assumption – correctly since only 1 per cent of the Swazi population follow the faith – that the newspapers’ readers are not Muslim and they probably do not personally know anyone who is Muslim.

Reading the news reports and comment pieces we can identify the following traits of the Muslim as seen by the Swazi press: all of them are negative.

The Muslim

… is warlike. The newspapers leave an overwhelming impression that the Muslim is violent, war-like and engaged (or about to engage) in terrorism.

… has an inferior religion. No amount of information to the contrary will contradict the media’s belief that Christianity is the only true religion and that therefore Islam is fake.

… is plotting against the country. A clear accusation that they plotted to have the Christianity clause removed from the constitution to undermine the kingdom, which is built on solid foundations of Christianity.

One of the consequences resulting from the shortcomings in Swazi journalism is that the Swazi press is perpetuating a range of negative stereotypes about Muslims (terrorist, violent, untrustworthy) and a consensus is assumed that the readers (Us) are not like the Muslims (Others).

The press helps to create a consensus among Swazis that the place of Christianity is central to their lives. It is assumed as a matter of fact that the interests of the whole Swazi population are undivided, held in common, and that the whole population acknowledges this ‘fact’ by subscribing to a certain set of Christian beliefs.

My comments here have centred on the Swazi press and the reporting of the Muslim threat, but the press is not alone in misunderstanding and misreporting Islam; Swazi television and radio does no better. Nearly all broadcasting in the kingdom is state controlled and the only ‘independent’ broadcasting media is a Christian radio station. Nowhere is non-Christian religion afforded status. It was difficult to find much coverage of Islam in Swaziand in the kingdom’s news media, but it was impossible to find anything about other religions, such as Hindi or Buddhism.