I was at the Highways Africa conference in Grahamstown, South Africa, earlier this month when I got chatting to a group of media freedom advocates.
Once we’d finished exchanging pleasantries, we got down to some serious talking: about the lack of media freedom in Swaziland.
It doesn’t matter how diplomatic you try to be with your language, the fact remains that Swaziland is not a democracy and the king, through the powers of the government, has an iron grip on the media in the kingdom. This is most obviously so with radio and television.
The government could close down the radio and television stations at a moment’s notice if it chose to, or it could dictate what programmes to broadcast, or it could ban anyone it doesn’t like from the airwaves. The government is unlikely to give up this control any time soon.
What is the chance of setting up community radio stations in Swaziland? a colleague from Europe asked. The answer is ‘not much’. The more stations there are in Swaziland, the more difficult it will be for the government to control. So, I told my colleague, it is just not going to happen.
‘I know,’ he said, ‘What about setting up a radio station just outside Swaziland’s borders and beaming programmes into Swaziland.’ We all had a good laugh at this and went to dinner and forgot about it.
I was reminded of this conversation this week when I saw the text of a presentation that Gerry Jackson, the founder and station manager, of SW Radio Africa, gave to a UNESCO conference earlier this year.
SW Radio Africa broadcasts on shortwave into Zimbabwe, a country with one of the most oppressive media environments in the world.
In 2000, Jackson challenged the government’s broadcasting monopoly in the Supreme Court and won the right to open the first independent radio station In Zimbabwe.
Jackson told the conference, ‘It was shut down at gunpoint after just six days. So this was clearly not the way to go.
‘We had to move offshore. So, we started off five years ago broadcasting on short wave into Zimbabwe. Sadly, the regional countries were not amenable to hosting us in the neighbourhood, so we had to set up in the United Kingdom. That was a little reminder that repressive governments continue to exist because they often have external support.’
He went on, ‘In 2005, we had our first problem with our short wave broadcasts, courtesy of Mugabe’s friends the Chinese. They supplied him with rather expensive jamming equipment and we believe personnel were sent to China for training. It effectively blew us completely out of the water. But the jamming is focused on the main cities. We are still clearly heard in many rural areas.’
Jackson said, ‘At first, the jammers took their week ends off, which was very useful for us. Unfortunately, just recently, they had a lesson in improving their work ethic or just hired more badly paid personnel – and now the jamming continues throughout the week ends. Last year, the jamming equipment was also upgraded and now targets us and Voice of America, which broadcast a daily Zimbabwe focused program on medium wave and three short wave frequencies.
‘We could circumvent this jamming by broadcasting on multiple frequencies – but that would require a serious amount of money that we can’t get our hands on.’
With the radio jammed, Jackson and his fellow freedom advocates got round the problem by providing a service by sending news headlines into Zimbabwe, via SMS.
Jackson said, ‘Zimbabweans truly love their mobile phones. Even in poor rural areas there are many people with mobiles.’
He added, ‘It’s an incredibly popular service, and as Zimbabwe goes into complete meltdown, it couldn’t be more important.’ But it means they have to learn how to write a news story in fewer than 160 characters, including spaces.
So people using a bit of imagination and new technologies are getting free, independent, news of sorts into Zimbabwe.
Maybe my colleague from Europe is on to something . . .
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