SWAZILAND MEDIA FREEDOM DAY

The media cannot be free in Swaziland because the kingdom itself is not free.

I was reminded forcefully of this at a meeting held in the Swazi capital Mbabane to mark World Press Freedom Day yesterday (Friday 2 May 2008).

Journalists who believe in media freedom and the need for people in Swaziland to have access to information from their rulers outlined the problems they faced working in a non-democracy. Swaziland has been ruled by a decree for 34 years and cannot be considered to be a free country, they said.

I have to agree. The recently enacted Swazi Constitution has done very little to improve freedom of expression or freedom of association in Swaziland. With an expected national election only months away, political parties remain banned in the kingdom and much of the media is under strict control.

Although some participants at the debate felt there had been some improvements recently and Swaziland was a bit more free than it used to be and some other countries are today (for example, Zimbabwe) every speaker agreed that many improvements were needed before Swaziland could be considered to have a genuinely open media.

Top of the list of concerns was the attitude of the media towards the monarchy. It is impossible to have a reasoned debate about the role of the monarchy in Swaziland, participants felt. Since 1973, Swaziland, presently headed by King Mswati III, has been an absolute monarchy and, I believe, the new constitution does nothing to change this fact.

The main ‘no-go’ area with the king was how he spent the money he was allocated in the national budget. It is estimated that the king takes five percent of the total national budget. It has also been widely reported by Forbes Magazine in New York (and carried in the international media) that King Mswati III himself has a net worth of 200 million US Dollars (about 1.4 billion emalangeni).

A documentary film called Without the King, which is being shown across North America, but not in Swaziland, stated that the Swazi royal family owns a majority of the country’s wealth, with the king owning seven royal residences, a fleet of luxury cars and a large stake in the country’s real estate, and the media and sugar industries.

But none of this can be discussed in the Swazi media.

One speaker felt that the king was isolated from ordinary people in Swaziland and did not really understand what was going on in the kingdom. The media could help inform him of the realities of life, it was said.

Some participants felt that the Swazi media were too meek when it came to reporting about the king. Media houses in Swaziland should decide for themselves what could and should be reported about the king and if they all stuck together it would be difficult for them to be attacked. There is a history in Swaziland of newspapers and magazines being forced to close down and of journalists being sacked from their jobs because they were deemed to have offended the monarchy.

Personally, I think the media should take a united stand, but it will never happen. Media houses in Swaziland have no sense of solidarity and often revel in the discomfort of their rivals. For example, on the same day of the debate, the Swazi Observer ran a news report about its rival, the Times of Swaziland, being accused by an alleged rapist of defamation.

The Observer is also in effect owned by the king and journalists (even those who work for the newspaper and its companion, the Weekend Observer) openly call it ‘The King’s Newspaper’. Even though he doesn’t take a ‘hands-on’ interest in the paper’s day-to-day running it is known that if he is unhappy about a report in the newspapers, he will let it be known.

The possibility that the Observer would join forces with other media houses to debate the role of the king is a non-starter.

Also at the debate, which was organised by the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) Swaziland Chapter, Radio Swaziland, part of the Swaziland Broadcasting and information Services (SBIS), was heavily criticised for its lack of journalistic integrity. Radio is for the government and it will not say anything that puts the government in a bad light, one speaker with enough personal knowledge to know, stated.

Some people wanted to defend the reputation of the Swazi Observer, declaring that it is not a ‘government paper’. Technically this is true, but the Observer is such a close supporter of the status quo that it doesn’t have to be ‘controlled’ by the government, the journalists on the paper exercise so much self-censorship that it doesn’t matter that it is not ‘officially’ controlled by the government. One speaker said that self-censorship was ‘killing’ the paper. Whatever the journalists themselves believe there is definitely a perception in Swaziland at large that the Observer is biased in favour of those who are in power.

As someone who comments on the media scene in Swaziland I found the meeting quite energising. If these meetings serve no other purposes, they remind participants that they are not alone. There are a sizeable number of media practitioners who genuinely want change and are not scared to say so. That is commendable in a kingdom that has an elite who believe they have a divine right (sometimes literally) to rule and that no one else should dare question them.

But, as the meeting itself recognised, it is one thing to have breakfast meetings and seminars and workshops it is quite another to enact real change.

That is the challenge for us all.