The Swazi government has drafted a despotic `censorship Bill’. Newspaper editor Bheki Makhubu argues it should be abandoned Swaziland’s Cabinet recently approved a draft Media Council Bill which seeks to control how media houses in the country operate. The Bill has caused an uproar among media workers in the country.
Last week, the Swaziland National Association of Journalists led a march of close to 100 media workers to Cabinet offices to deliver a petition to the Prime Minister, Sibusiso Dlamini, calling for the unconditional withdrawal of the draft Bill.
The Minister of Broadcasting and Information, Muntu Mswane, has, however, put a “smiling face” on what has already come to be popularly called “The Media Censorship Bill of 1997”. Mswane asserts that the Bill is a harmless document that will help journalists improve their profession.
The Bill contains no mechanism or even suggestion as to how media workers will be helped, and is devoted entirely to setting out punishments for erring journalists. Fines and prison terms await media workers who run afoul of an all-powerful Media Council and its code of ethics. This “code” is never defined, and has left media workers baffled and fearful.
The president of the journalists’ association, Mbuso Matsenjwa, has said they do not need government to “help” them in improving the profession.
If the as-yet-to-be-written “code of ethics” is violated government will impose stiff penalties of up to R15 000 for individual journalists and R100000 for media houses.
Those who will sit in the Media Council and listen to complaints against journalists and media houses will be hand-picked by the broadcasting minister, an unelected official who answers to the royal powers who appointed him.
On behalf of the nation’s authorities, the minister also has the power to amend the Bill whenever he deems necessary without consulting Parliament. At the march, Matsenjwa emphasised that journalists have to fight very hard to stop the Bill from going to Parliament, where like all laws presented by royal authorities it will receive “rubber stamp” approval.
Relations between journalists, particularly those of the privately owned Times of Swaziland newspaper, and the country’s politicians have deteriorated in recent years.
The Times of Swaziland has been calling for change in the country’s politics and in the last two years, made the unprecedented move of questioning King Mswati III’s style of ruling the country.
The newspaper has made a call for the return of multi-party politics and for the king to rise above politics like the British monarchy. The other media houses, The Swazi Observer newspaper, the television station and the radio station are all state-owned and toe the official line.
It is for this reason that the media Bill is being seen as a law meant to control The Times. Early this year government pulled out all its advertising from The Times and instructed all parastatals to do the same after the publication of an investigative report revealing that the king had not paid rates on property he owns in Mbabane, the capital city.
The prime minister has said the reason government was pulling advertising from the country’s biggest circulating publication was because it was looking at whether it is still economically viable to advertise there. Government sources, however, have offered evidence that the advertising boycott is intended to punish Swaziland’s only independent media source, and make it financially vulnerable to a government take-over.
The Media Council Bill requires all journalists and media owners in the country to register and be accredited with government. To qualify, a media practitioner must have at least a diploma in journalism. The Bill also gives the media council the power to ban publications that do not meet its criteria on how the media in the country should operate.
Matsenjwa has called on all journalists not to register for accreditation when the Bill becomes law, as a form of protest. Minister Mswane has promised that journalists will have a chance to make their views known before the Bill goes to Parliament.
— Bheki Makhubu is editor of The Times of Swaziland’s Saturday edition