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'So This Is Democracy?: State of Media Freedom in Southern Africa'
MISA (Windhoek)
April 28, 2004

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The Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) will again this year be releasing its annual publication, "So This Is Democracy?: State of media freedom in Southern Africa" in commemoration of World Press Freedom Day on May 3. This is the tenth consecutive year in which MISA has issued this publication which records incidents of media freedom violations monitored by MISA in the previous year. The current edition therefore details media freedom violations in 2003.

MISA issued 188 alerts in 2003 about media freedom and freedom of expression violations in SADC countries. This is an decrease of 9,7 per cent over the 208 alerts recorded in the previous year. The countries monitored include Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. MISA is in the process of resuscitating its media freedom monitoring activities in Angola.

MISA's Regional Programme Manager: Media Freedom Monitoring, Zoé Titus, says in the publication that "although this figure (188) marks a decrease of 9,7 percent from the previous year, the nature of alerts and their bearing on the psyche of journalists have culminated into an environment in which journalists practice self-censorship, where media organisations are either closed down by governments through the application of repressive legislation or as a result of degenerating economic conditions and where the pursuit of independent journalism is often labelled as unpatriotic"'.

"In Zimbabwe the forced state closure of the Daily News on September 12 2003, on charges that it was publishing illegally without a state license, was undoubtedly the worst media freedom violation recorded in 2003"', she says, adding that the application of the repressive Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act in that country has translated into Zimbabwe accounting for 54 percent of all media freedom and freedom of expression violations MISA recorded in 2003".

She warns, however, that it must be noted that those countries where the media freedom situation has not overtly deteriorated, there remains a need for media law reform as the environment is still littered with legal hurdles that stifle media freedom.

BREAKDOWN OF THE 2003 ALERTS
A breakdown of the 188 alerts issued in 2003 reveals among others, that 33 journalists were attacked, 53 detained, 37 censored whilst 8 victories - either through the adoption of positive legislation or where charges were dropped against a journalist - were recorded. No journalists were killed as a result of their work in 2003.

TRENDS DETECTED DURING 2003
The alerts for 2003 reveal the emergence of new themes of professional importance to journalists and to MISA. These include the increase of civil defamation cases against the media and concerns about the high financial penalties being awarded to successful litigants, the emergence of more independent media councils (voluntary media complaints bodies) or attempts to do so, the establishment of national editors forums, increasing concerns about the wages and working conditions of journalists, the struggle for the appointment of statutory but independent broadcasting authorities, developments around the introduction of Access to Information legislation, and the rise of media civil society coalitions (including associations of journalists in the state owned media) for media freedom advocacy and legal reform purposes. All of these issues have a direct bearing on media freedom and the quality of journalism in the SADC region.

NEW FEATURE
A new feature of the alerts is a gender component in terms of which media violations are broken down to show how many men and women were affected by violations of their media rights. In 2003, 24 female and 115 male practitioners were affected.

HOW TO OBTAIN A COPY
Hard copies of the publication may be ordered from MISA's Regional Secretariat. Contact Eric Libongani at resource@misa.org for details. The publication may also be downloaded from MISA's website at http://www.misa.org

Visit the MISA -Zimbabwe fact sheet

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