If we were to take a snapshot of the media in Swaziland at the moment we would see that the majority of them are state controlled and that small part of the industry that is in private hands has been harassed by the monarchy and the government.
The media industry in Swaziland is small and the majority of it is state controlled. As far as the newspaper industry is concerned, there are two principal players. The first is the Loffler family based in Namibia which owns African Echo, the holding company of the daily Times of Swaziland, Swazi News (published Saturday) and the Times Sunday. These newspapers, the first of which, the Times, was established in 1897, are the only major news sources in the kingdom free of government control.
The second major player is the corporation Tibiyo Taka Ngwane, which is controlled by the Swazi royal family and owns the Observer Media Group, which publishes the Swazi Observer and its companion paper, the Weekend Observer. One independent monthly comment magazine, The Nation magazine, manages to continue publishing despite government opposition and a small circulation. A free government produced newssheet, Swaziland Today has very little credibility.
Newspaper circulations are generally poor. Estimates suggest that the Swazi Observer sells between 5 000 and 15 000 copies a day and the Times of Swaziland sells about 35 000 copies a day. The Times Sunday and Swazi News sell about 15 000 copies a week. The Weekly Observer has a circulation of 10 000. All newspapers are published in the English language. These newspapers serve a population of about one million people.
Newspapers lag a long way behind radio and television as the most important source of news for Swazis. A gender and media audience study found 16 percent of women and 19 percent of men cited newspapers as the most important source of news compared to 53 percent of women (63 percent men) who cited radio and 31 per cent women (17 percent men) who cited television.
The survey found that respondents with tertiary level education constituted the highest proportion of those who chose newspapers as their main source of news.
There are two free-to-air television stations in Swaziland, the Swaziland Television Authority (STA) and Channel Swazi. The STA is the state broadcaster and still dominates airwaves. Two acts of parliament have resulted in a monopoly by state owned radio and television. Broadcast licensing is the prerogative of Swaziland Posts and Telecommunications which has the sole authority to issue licenses.
The STA has one channel with multiple national repeaters. The government in 2001 allowed Channel Swazi, a pro-establishment medium, to begin operating domestically.
The South Africa-based satellite broadcaster, MultiChoice, also operates in Swaziland providing subscribers with access to television services including Cable News Network (CNN), BBC, AlJazeera and Sky News.
There are two radio broadcasters in Swaziland: the Swaziland Broadcasting and Information Services (SBIS) and Voice of the Church, a private Christian radio station which is a local franchise of TransWorld Radio. Voice of the Church is the only privately-owned radio station in Swaziland. The Swaziland Broadcasting and Information Services is a state-run national radio service. It has one siSwati language channel, one English-language channel, and one information services channel.
There are three relatively new entrants into the Swazi media market: the magazines Youth Connexion and Siyavena and the television station, Channel Swazi, but none are particularly critical of the state. The youth magazine aims mainly at addressing social issues affecting the youth such as HIV AIDS and crime. Channel Swazi is also a pro-establishment medium that offers very little in terms of progressive and dynamic points of view. Siyavena is a sports publication without much critical content. Apart from adding its name to the media landscape, it has no new voice on behalf of media freedom in the kingdom.
The media are not independent of government. There are estimated to be more than thirty pieces of legislation which could be regarded as restrictive to press freedom in Swaziland. Generally, in the state and private sector, the government has kept a tight reign on media censorship in recent years.
A Commonwealth election monitoring team criticized Swaziland’s lack of press freedom and expressed disappointment at government-owned Radio Swaziland’s reporting on the 2003 elections, saying that restricted campaign coverage reduced voters’ knowledge of the candidates and harmed their ability to hold candidates accountable.
Last year the Times group of newspapers was threatened with closure after the Times Sunday ran a report sourced from an overseas’ news agency that blamed King Mswati III for many of Swaziland’s economic woes. The newspaper group was forced to run an abject apology or face closure.
The power of the king is so great in Swaziland that news media in the kingdom enforce self-censorship when opportunities to report critically about him occur. In August 2007, the world’s media reported a survey from Forbes in New York that placed King Mswati III among one of the top 15 richest monarchs in the world. He was revealed as the richest monarch in sub-Saharan Africa and the youngest (at age 39) among the monarchs in the top 15.
The king’s wealth was estimated at 200 million US dollars (approx. 1,4 billion Rand). Foreign news reports noted that more than 70 percent of Swazis lived on less than 1 US dollar a day and that more than half the population relied on food aid donated by international agencies to survive. The Swazi media mentioned none of this.
It is difficult to be optimistic about media freedom in Swaziland. As we make our way in 2008 the government is threatening to force news media into a system of regulation that they do not want and a government sub committee wants to choose which journalists can and cannot on the Swazi Parliament.
See also
CLOSURE THREAT TO TIMES
SWAZI MEDIA TOE THE LINE
No comments:
Post a Comment