SWAZILAND LIES ON PRESS FREEDOM

Swaziland’s new official government spokesperson Macanjana Motsa must think we are blind.

She has hit out at a new international report from Reporters Without Borders (RWB) that places Swaziland in 147^th place in the world when it comes to freedom of the press.

In a statement Motsa rubbished the report and said, ‘press freedom is guaranteed by the constitution of the Kingdom of Swaziland. The Swazi public and the international community is well aware that local media is not repressed in this country’.

Has she been drinking? She certainly hasn’t been paying attention. Her defence of press freedom in Swaziland comes in the same week that the illegally-appointed Prime Minister Barnabas Dlamini told journalists that if they criticise King Mswati III’s recent speech to parliament they will face sedition charges.

Over the past few weeks former Swazi Government cabinet member Mfomfo Nkhambule has been hauled before police, threatened with jail and been told he will be disowned by his traditional regiment if he continues to write articles in the Times of Swaziland newspaper that criticise the King and the anti-democratic ruling elite in the kingdom.

Only last month (January 2009) trade unions and other civic organizations petitioned the Swazi Prime Minister demanding that every citizen of Swaziland should be allowed equal access to the three state media organisations: the Swaziland Broadcasting and Information Services (SBIS), Swazi TV and the Swazi Observer newspaper.

The petition called upon government to ensure that these media houses’ independence was guaranteed. It also demanded ‘equal access to public institutions such as halls, stadiums and tinkhundla centres which are currently the formal meeting place for people without any hindrances’.

Motsa joins a long list of Swazi Government denialists. Whenever there is a report critical of Swaziland, the government blames the messenger and lies about the message.

Bizarrely, Motsa attacked the credibility of RWB because it had once used the UNESCO logo without permission.

Motsa and the Swazi Government know this is a smokescreen. RWB is not alone among international media watchers in criticising Swaziland’s lack of press freedom.

The most recent annual So This Is Democracy? report from the Media Institute for Southern Africa (MISA) highlighted many cases of press repression, including the case of the Times of Swaziland publishing house that was threatened with closure by King Mswati III because he objected to a report it had written on how the International Monetary Fund (IMF) believed that the king’s lavish lifestyle was deterring overseas’ investors from supporting Swaziland.

MISA concluded that the Swazi Government continues to harass journalists. ‘This was evident when the Swazi House of Assembly set up a Select Committee to investigate Mbongeni Mbingo, the editor of the Times Sunday, following a commentary piece he wrote in his newspaper criticising the House Speaker for not allowing a debate to take place on possible amendments to the kingdom’s Constitution. The House of Assembly said the editor was in contempt of Parliament.’

The International Press Institute (IPI) in its annual World Press Freedom Review, published in May 2008 reported how Njabulo Mabuza, the then Minister for Health and Social Welfare, ‘simply banned the media from entering Swaziland’s biggest hospital, after various publications published exposés alleging that a pattern of staff negligence and drug shortages resulted in the death of a young girl. Similar accusations had been published in the past, prompting Mabuza, a week earlier, to issue a government memo to the hospital administration, instructing the same to deny media access to the hospital premises without his permission.’

I could go on ... and on (Click here to read more on press freedom in Swaziland).

This was Macanjana Motsa’s first media release since she was appointed Government Press Secretary. It is not an auspicious start and her credibility for honesty is in tatters. She needs to be careful, I am reminded of her predecessor in the job Percy Simelane; when he tried to defend a report critical of Swaziland’s poor governance, he so outraged parliamentarians they branded him a ‘herdboy’.

GVT IN CONTROL AT SWAZILAND RADIO

Believe it or not there are some people in Swaziland who believe that SBIS radio is independent and allows freedom of speech.

This is despite ample evidence to the contrary. SBIS (Swaziland Broadcasting and Information Service) is state controlled and as I once was famously quoted saying by the Swazi Observer, journalists who work at SBIS are ‘all propagandists’.

Confirmation that SBIS is under the thumb of government came today (9 October 2008) with the news in the Observer that Government Press Secretary Percy Simelane is to become the new director of SBIS. The present director, Stan Motsa, is to take up a post in the Ministry of Tourism, Environment and Communications. The Times of Swaziland said the first Simelane knew about the move was when the Civil Service Commission told him yesterday.

Simelane, who is a controversial ‘spin doctor’ for the government, has spent much of his time telling lies on behalf of the powerful (sorry to be so blunt, but it’s true).

We can hardly expect him to change his tune once he takes up the reins at SBIS. So expect no change at SBIS.

Simelane wasn’t always popular with MPs Those with long memories will remember that in September 2007 he was roundly abused by Swaziland MPs in the House of Assembly who branded him a ‘herdboy’ and unqualified to comment on matters of government, when he tried to defend Swaziland’s poor record of governance.

Those whose memories fail them on this can read about it here.

See also

SBIS

ABUSE HURLED AT PRESS SECRETARY

SWAZILAND IN GOVERNANCE DENIAL

Why is the Swaziland Government Press Secretary Percy Simelane in denial about the Mo Ibrahim Foundation and its recent report that Swaziland falls below Zimbabwe in an analysis of good governance in sub-Saharan Africa?

And why is the Times of Swaziland allowing him to get away with claiming that Mo Ibrahim is some kind of fly by night organisation that doesn’t do its homework.

For those new to this story, Simelane was reported in the Times yesterday (18 October 2007) saying the Mo Ibrahim Foundation ‘never conducted a study of the country’.

The Times goes on to report, ‘Simelane said their investigations had revealed that the foundation had never conducted a single study on the country but merely depended upon information supplied to it by various individuals.’

Then, in what I can only describe as a racial slur, the Times reports the Press Secretary saying, ‘We also discovered that the person behind the organisation (Mo Ibrahim) is a Sudanese national.’

These are the facts that the Times wants to ignore. Mo Ibrahim is a world respected foundation whose supporters include Nelson Mandela; Kofi Annan, former United Nations Secretary-General; President Bill Clinton, former US President and José Barroso, president, European Commission among others.

So, I’m afraid Simelane has got it horribly wrong. It would have taken the Times of Swaziland five minutes to check to see whether he was telling the truth about how Mo Ibrahim did its research (that’s how long it took me).

Mo Ibrahim breaks down its research into countries into five categories. They are Safety and Security; Rule of Law, Transparency and Corruption; Participation and Human Rights; Sustainable Economic Development and Human Development.

To give you an example of how thorough the foundation is, Mo Ibrahim then breaks down the ‘human development’ category into three sub-sections: national poverty results, health outcomes, and educational opportunity.

Let me illustrate how one part of ‘human development’, the analysis of health outcomes, is done. Eleven sources of information are used, as follows:

1. Life expectancy at birth, expressed in years, collected by the WDI, based on various sources, including census reports and data from national statistical offices and the UN Population Division’s World Population Prospects.

2. Infant mortality per 1000 live births, based on WDI estimates of data from the World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and World Bank sources.

3. Maternal mortality per 100,000 live births. Data are from the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Indicators, which draws on data from WHO and UNICEF.

4. Undernourishment (percentage of the population whose food intake is below the minimum dietary energy requirements), as determined by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and compiled in the WDI.

5. Percentage of children (aged 12-23 months) immunized against measles, according to the WHO and UNICEF, as reported in the WDI.

6. Percentage of children (aged 12-23 months) immunized against diptheria, pertussis (whooping cough), and tetanus (DPT), according to the WHO and UNICEF, as reported in the WDI.

7. Percentage of people (aged 15-49 years) living with HIV, from the MDG Indicators.

8. Estimated number of new TB cases (incidence) per 100,000 people, from the WHO’s Global Tuberculosis Control Report, as reported in the WDI.

9. Access to qualified physicians: density of physicians per 1000 people, from the WHO.

10. Access to trained nurses: density of nurses per 1000 people, from the WHO.

11. Percentage of the population with access to potable water, from the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program for Water Supply and Sanitation.

Remember that these 11 sources of information make up one third of one fifth of the overall analysis of Swaziland. It is difficult to see how more thorough the foundation could be in collecting its information.

Simelane and the Times can rubbish the Mo Ibrahim Foundation all they want. But suggesting the foundation is dishonest simply won’t wash. Simelane and the Times are the dishonest ones.

Governance in Swaziland is appalling. It’s a fact and unless we all recognise this and mobilise to fight it nothing will change.

The Times reports Simelane saying that ‘the government was still going to issue a comprehensive statement in response to the “findings” attributed to the organisation.’

Let’s hope that next time this ‘comprehensive’ statement contains some truth. The statement from Simelane as published in the Times does not.

ABUSE HURLED AT PRESS SECRETARY

The Swaziland press secretary Percy Simelane got a dose of his own medicine this week when an MP branded him a ‘herdboy’.

Simelane was roasted in the House of Assembly for the way he had responded to an international survey which had said that Swaziland came behind Zimbabwe when it came to good governance.

The Times of Swaziland on Friday (28 September 2007) reported that MPs thought that Simelane was not qualified to comment on the survey.

The row erupted after Simelane was quoted in the Times the previous day (Thursday 27 September 2007). He was reacting to a survey published by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation that ranked the quality of governance in sub-Saharan African countries according to these broad areas: safety and security, rule of law, transparency and corruption, participation and human rights, sustainable economic opportunity and human development.

In Thursday’s Times Simelane was quoted saying that the analysis was done ‘by boys’ and ‘not men of honour’. The Times reported him saying that the ‘so-called experts’ were ignorant of what was happening in Swaziland.

Friday’s Times reported on a session in the House of Assembly in which MPs said Simelane was ‘not suitable’ to answer questions on the matter. One MP said Simelane’s statement was ‘irresponsible’. Another said Simelane was ‘unqualified’ to speak.

Another MP was quoted saying that it would have been more suitable if a cabinet minister had responded to the survey rather than a ‘herdboy’ [Simelane].

The prime minister said the government would issue a formal statement once it had gathered more information about the study.

The row may be seen as good knock-about fun but it exposes some very important issues about the way information is handled in Swaziland.

The first and most obvious shortcoming is the level of debate. The press secretary hurled abuse at the survey’s writers and in turn he got a mouthful of abuse from the House of Assembly. Neither side comes out smelling of roses in this. But the exchange is entirely typical of the level of political debate in the kingdom.

The Mo Ibrahim Foundation report is a serious survey that should provoke a serious response, but politicians in Swaziland (and a lot of the media too) are incapable of holding an intelligent, rational, discussion on anything.

The state of governance and the level of corruption in Swaziland should be issues of huge concern to people in Swaziland and parliament and the media should be facilitating a debate, but they are not.

Simelane’s response to the survey also highlights the sense of denial that takes place in Swaziland. By coincidence in the same week that the Mo Ibrahim survey was published, Transparency International published a report that said that governance in Swaziland had improved slightly in the past year, but that there was still a very long journey ahead before the kingdom would reach a satisfactory state of governance.

So, there clearly is a need for a continuing debate on governance to be staged in Swaziland. But the Government Press Secretary decided to deny that there was a problem and instead decided to shoot the messenger.

Another point we need to consider about the row over Simelane is more general. Surely, the whole point of having press secretaries is that they speak on behalf of government. In criticising Simelane’s qualification to speak on the issue of governance and instead demanding that a cabinet minister comments, the MPs seem to be saying either that press secretaries don’t speak on behalf of government (in which case what are they for?) or that Percy Simelane himself isn’t up to the job.

Perhaps, some MP would enlighten us.