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Registration is repugnant
Guy Berger, in The Mail & Guardian (SA)
March 03, 2004

First was Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. "But what's wrong with registering journalists?" was the bottom line of her message. Then came Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Penuell Maduna. The gist of his theme: "Why assume that registration of the media is necessarily bad?" Their mantra has been making many media people angry, because it whitewashes Zimbabwe's repression of the press via registration. It's easy to counter the ministers' flighting of supposedly innocent, almost academic, posers. The facts are straightforward. Through registration, the regime of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has raped its country's media and robbed its people of their right to information. Harare's Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (Aippa) decrees that both media and journalists have to be approved. It bans anyone from practising without a licence. Accordingly, a government agency, the Media and Information Commission (MIC), operates to force media companies and individual journalists to apply for registration. And not only these entities, but also advertising agencies and even media-related NGOs. The MIC has refused to register the Daily News newspaper. It followed this up by refusing to license the newspaper's staff. Result: the Daily News is dead.

A simple sequence of events, and yet Dlamini-Zuma and Maduna purport to be pondering the abstract principle of registration. Meanwhile, Zimbabweans feel the practical pain. Their independent newspaper had survived two bombings to become the most popular publication in the country. People voted for it through their voluntary daily purchase, happily forsaking Mugabe's miserable Herald and Chronicle - "newspapers" that are effectively edited by his henchman, Jonathan Moyo. Zimbabwean media freedom activists put things plainly. They say that the Aippa has served to convert the constitutional right to receive and disseminate information into a privilege dependent on the remit of the regime. Hear the Zimbabwe Media Alliance: the Aippa "sets down strict conditions for those wishing to practise this so-called 'journalistic privilege' and criminalises anybody who fails to comply with them". According to the group, 76 journalists have so far been charged under the Aippa.

The evidence why registration in Zimbabwe is so repugnant is blatantly there for all to see. But, like their president, the two South African ministers lack the political will to admit the obvious. Instead, this particular pair is now proffering rhetorical games to try to legitimise the shameful abuses next door. Writing in the Sunday Independent last week, Maduna speciously confined his discussion to the registration of media while keeping conspicuously quiet about the even greater controversy of licensing individual journalists. The man further cooked up his case by conflating registration with regulation, and he abused quotations from the International Federation of Journalists to imply that this body would support media registration. What neither minister tells us is that no democratic Southern African country licenses journalists. And that worldwide - as regards media institutions, generally only broadcasters are licensed, and that is for technical reasons of limited frequencies. In the few cases where newspapers are required to register, this is a purely administrative matter such that no publication can be turned down for political reasons.

The ministers also fail to reflect on our own history. They should know that the investigative paper Vrye Weekblad nearly never saw the light of day thanks to a politically inspired punitive registration fee. But thanks in part to the valiant efforts of that paper, today anyone can publish in South Africa without government permission. Instead, our ministers fudge the whole issue by asking why, in principle - as distinct from Mugabe-style application - registration as such is problematic. Maduna goes even further to claim that registration is necessary because of global media monopolies. He and Dlamini-Zuma are probably sympathetic to other arguments in favour of licensing media and media makers. These hold that freedom goes hand in hand with responsibilities. Accordingly, controls are needed as to who can exercise freedom of the media, and how this can be done. Journalists cannot have their cake and eat it. Thus, the press cannot claim exemption from testifying in judicial proceedings, and then seek to avoid registration to identify who counts as media.

Against these arguments, it can be pointed out that there are many means of securing accountability of a free media and journalists within a democracy - such as a panoply of complaints systems and laws that protect individuals from defamation. Where there is media pluralism, audiences have consumer power to boycott any media they think use freedom irresponsibly. Identifying journalists for exemption from testifying does not have to entail statutory registration. These factors mean simply that there is no necessary case for registering journalists. And it does not follow from any constitutional or legislated rights of the media that there should also be specifically legislated responsibilities and licensing for this institution and its members. At heart, the freedom to engage in journalism is a manifestation of each individual's freedom of expression - which in turn is a fundamental right of all humans. By definition, a democracy cannot restrict free speech to a registered class of communicators, and certainly not by creating an exclusive club along political - or even professional - lines.

In some respects, this understanding is shared by an important component of the African Union, and which is expressed in the Declaration of Principles of Freedom of Expression in Africa. Adopted in October 2002 by the AU's Commission on Human and People's Rights, the document affirms "the fundamental importance of freedom of expression as an individual human right, as a cornerstone of democracy and as a means of ensuring respect for all human rights and freedoms". This acknowledgement is somewhat watered down when the declaration adds that "the right to express oneself through the media by practising journalists shall not be subject to undue legal restrictions". Even with this dilution, however, the declaration still serves to de-legitimise both the Aippa and its application. The patently "undue" killing of the Daily News is certainly something that our government - an advocate of democratic governance on the continent - should be shouting about. However, Pretoria nowadays no longer claims to practise "quiet diplomacy" and withhold public criticism. On the contrary, its ministers are now actively defending Zimbabwe's violations of basic rights. "We accept the Aippa," says Dlamini-Zuma.

Against this depressing background, three questions arise. For how long must Harare continue to trash AU protocols before Pretoria takes a public stand in favour of free expression in Zimbabwe? For how long will our government prattle on about political solutions being found by Zimbabweans when the basic precondition of free expression and free media is non-existent? How long - if ever - will it take for Dlamini-Zuma and Maduna to take a lead in strengthening the AU commission document so that it expressly says that freedom of expression precludes the political registration of media and licensing of journalists? The answer to these questions is equally depressing: a long, long time, if ever. And besides the questions above, there is an additional one that now has to be to asked. Is the ministers' pontificating about the "merits" of media registration simply a way of apologising for Zimbabwe - or does it also tell us something about what they would like to see back home? There is no denying that for democrats, the registration of newspapers is utterly objectionable; that of journalists is wholly obnoxious. Do Dlamini-Zuma and Maduna really want to run with their registration hogwash?

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