Fresh evidence of the way the media in Swaziland are censored by the king’s helpers emerged this week.
When King Mswati III returned from a protracted trip across Asia last week, reporters gathered to question him at a media conference.
This is standard practice in Swaziland. The king tells the media what a great trip he has had and how he has been working hard for the people of Swaziland and so on. Then he allows the journalists to ask questions.
The Times Sunday yesterday (8 June 2008), in an editorial comment, revealed that this time the journalists were barred from asking any questions that did not relate specifically to what the king had been up to while abroad.
The King’s Office Chief Officer Bheki Dlamini gave the instruction.
As the Times Sunday points out there have been a number of contentious things happening in Swaziland while the king has been away, such as the revelation that an unnamed cabinet minister has amassed E30m (more than 4 million US dollars) in his personal bank account and the call for the king to dissolve parliament.
This is not the first time that journalists have been barred from asking the king questions. Last year (2007) they were not allowed to ask him about the attempts by junior police officers in Swaziland to form a trade union.
In its editorial, the Times Sunday said that the tendency to censor journalists was not new. I suspect it goes on all the time but ordinary Swazis are not told.
I am pleased the Times Sunday has alerted its readers to this problem.
The Times Sunday in its editorial wrote,
‘So, just as a warning to people who behave like the Chief Officer: let the king speak, and where he cannot answer, allow him to tell that to the media.
‘And in the same vein, those who consider themselves journalists – and not government secretaries – should break their silence and relentlessly speak against this tendency.’
In as yet unpublished research I have been conducting among journalists in Swaziland I have discovered a tremendous amount of censorship taking place around the king. Media houses are fearful of writing things that upset the king. Their fear is real because in the past the king has had newspapers and magazines that he found too critical closed down. The most recent threat to do this happened in March 2007 when the Times Sunday itself was forced to apologise to the king or face closure over an article it wrote that the king disliked.
As I wrote yesterday (8 June 2008) the Nation magazine in Swaziland is showing the rest of the journalists in the kingdom the way forward with its robust reporting of the king and the royal family. As the Nation recognises, people have the right to know what the king is up to and what he thinks about matters of national importance.
It is the role of journalists to ask the important questions on behalf of the people. If they do not, they are no better than (in the words of the Times Sunday) government secretaries.
See also
BRAVE SWAZI ‘NATION’ TAKES ON KING
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