On Friday May 3rd, journalists and supporters of freedom of expression across the world celebrated International Press Freedom Day.
In France, the NGO Reporters without Borders celebrated the event with a risque campaign of billboards featuring the world’s worst offenders of press freedom. In New York, the famous author Salman Rushdie and many others rallied in support of writers who had been exiled from their home countries for the ideas they expressed. The Committee to Protect Journalists even called on the African Union (AU) to provide greater protections for journalists facing threats because of their work.
In Zambia of all places, there was also a carefully stage-managed government-sponsored event “celebrating” press freedom. The brainchild of government spokesman Kennedy Sakeni, yesterday the entire staff of The Post, the Times of Zambia, the Zambia Daily Mail, and many members of government-compromised organisations participated in a “march” of sorts along an avenue in Lusaka to proclaim the wonderful, flawless environment for journalists in the country.
However, instead of actually debating and exploring the issues and principles that World Press Freedom Day stands for, the Patriotic Front (PF) government instead turned it into a Propagandists’ Ball.
Everyone participating in this march draws a salary from the state, and, with regard to the members of the Post, they live in constant fear of ever publishing one negative word about the PF’s performance.
The fact is that Zambia does not currently enjoy press freedom. A full year and half into the PF government, and they still haven’t passed the Freedom of Information Act as promised in the campaign. Self-censorship is rife, and the state media is regularly used as an unsubtle and constant slander machine against the opposition. Radio hosts who criticise the state are promptly taken off the air. Abuse of libel laws makes real investigative reporting akin to economic suicide. Threats are not uncommon, while on no fewer than three separate occasions the PF regime has threatened to shut down websites that published real news.
If we were really going to celebrate World Press Freedom Day in Zambia, we would have to address at the very least three issues:
- Why is Chanda Chimba III, a documentary filmmaker whose Stand Up for Zambia video series criticised President Michael Sata, being put on a ridiculous trial on trumped up charges? Why has Mr. Chimba’s life been threatened and why has he been blacklisted from gaining any employment?
- Why has the government filed so many crippling lawsuits against the only independent newspaper, The Daily Nation, for having published factual news about the PF’s memorandum of understanding with the ruling party of Sudan?
- Why did the Times of Zambia fire six journalists because of their alleged political affiliation?
And yet still, the government-dominated press continues to croon about how wonderful and free Zambia is – and maybe they are correct, so long as if the only thing you write about is how terrible people like Rupiah Banda, Hakainde Hichilema, and Nevers Mumba are, and only praise over and over the performance of President Sata.
Last night the state-owned broadcaster ZNBC aired a tedious half-hour long segment covering Sakeni’s Propagandists’ Ball, and there among the various speakers was Amos Malupenga, the PF’s Permanent Secretary for Information and Broadcasting, wearing a black polo shirt embossed with the logo of The Post along with the rest of Fred M’membe’s corrupted propagandists.
How are the people of Zambia meant to interpret this? That government ministers go around wearing shirts advertising the logo of newspapers? Is there really any separation between the state and The Post, or The Post and the state?
As has been pointed out on Zambia Reports in the past, dozens of former employees of The Post now hold well-paying government jobs. It was their reward for publishing such harsh attack articles against the MMD and former President Banda. Amos Malupenga himself used to be a hack at the Post, and his by-line can still be found in numerous articles attacking the former government.
So what do you suppose happens now when an enterprising young journalist at The Post (yes, there are a few still left) breaks an interesting story regarding acts of corruption under the PF? His former employer or colleague in the government is then in charge of shutting it down. How many breakthrough corruption stories has the Post published in the past year? Zero.
The values symbolized by World Press Freedom Day are certainly important. Safety for journalists, freedom of expression, and access to information play a crucial role in any healthy democracy. It is the job of the press to afflict the comfortable, and comfort the afflicted. But now that we have a group of sinister propagandists in control of the media environment like Fred M’membe, Kennedy Sakeni, Amos Malupenga, and George Chellah, there can be illusion that Zambia enjoys real press freedom.
We should not put up with the government’s attempt to celebrate freedom when their main task has been the suffocation of our basic rights to criticise, to disagree, and to share ideas that may or may not coincide with the preferences of those in power.
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