The University of Swaziland, Swaziland’s only university, is at the centre of an attempt to improve the standards of journalism and media in the kingdom.
After nine years delivering a diploma programme in Journalism and Mass Communication the university is updating its curriculum in an attempt to replace the diploma with a four-year BA degree programme.
Practitioners within Swaziland’s media industry are low skilled and its own senior journalists consider the media to be partisan, inaccurate and generally unprofessional.
In an article I have written for the academic journal Ecquid Novi (African Journalism Studies) I look at the context within which journalism education must take place in Swaziland. This highlights the small size of the media industry and the control the state exercises over it. Central here is the understanding of the role the king plays in the life of the kingdom (Swaziland has the last autocratic monarch in sub-Saharan Africa). There are more than 30 pieces of legislation that restrict the operations of the media.
It is within the context of a small, undemocratic, poorly capacitated industry, that the Journalism and Mass Communication (JMC) Department at the university has devised a new degree curriculum.
The new degree programme involves a shift in emphasis from the previous diploma, significantly to include the role of media in society and how they can contribute to the changing of that society.
A journalism curriculum that operates in a kingdom that is not yet a democracy must advocate that journalism is a practice that is necessary to foster democracy. Today, there is a worldwide consensus that people have the right to influence their governments and what they do and that the media reinforce or foster this kind of democracy.
Communities within Swaziland would be placed at the centre of the new journalism curriculum. This would be especially so within the practical classes, which would include for the first time at the university, a newspaper produced in the classroom by students.
The JMC Department would like to create a community radio station to serve both as a training facility and also as a place for local people (the university community and those outside) to broadcast programmes that they see as relevant to their own needs. This is unlikely to happen as the government of Swaziland has consistently refused to grant licences for community broadcasters and there is no indication that it is willing to release its powerful grip on the airways anytime soon.
If the curriculum is to encourage change it needs to concentrate more on rural journalism. Most of the important stories taking place are outside of the urban areas and are missed by Swazi journalists because they have a narrow definition of interest. Journalism should reflect the concerns and activities of the society it serves and mirror society as a whole and not just that part of the society that has gained political office or come to the attention of the police.
About 77 per cent of the people of Swaziland live in rural areas where the trends and events that will have a major impact on cities later are likely to be found. This is most obviously the case with in Swaziland with the spread of HIV. The concentration on communities could act as a powerful force or empowerment, especially if the treatment of information is information led and not source driven, thereby taking as a starting point where the audience is and not what the source or the practitioner knows.
Within the journalism degree programme specific courses have been designed in journalism and advocacy, community broadcasting, journalism in the community, community relations and development communications.
Those who are keen to know more about the new curriculum can download the full article here. The journal also looks at journalism education in other parts of Africa.
See also
SELF-CRITICAL SWAZI JOURNALIST
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