By Erick Kabendera
Towards the latter part of 2007, news stories started circulating about horrific killings of Albinos that were taking place mostly in the Northern part of Tanzania. In Arusha, a teacher was arrested for killing his own child, who was Albino. Elsewhere, a body was found exhumed with its body parts hacked off. These apparent ritual killings were reportedly inspired by a belief propagated by some witch doctors in the region that drinking portions concocted out of Albino body parts could make people rich.
My Editor decided to send me to a town in the Northwest where the killings were higher than anywhere else in the country to investigate. Now, being a Tanzanian journalist, accredited to work in the country, I do not need permission from government officials to report stories. But as soon as my presence in the town was known, local officials started doing everything they can to restrict me from reporting on the story.
An apparently irritated civil servant barked at me when an albino association leader took me to the Regional Commissioner’s Office for an introduction. It turns out that the RC office had ordered local leaders not to speak to journalists writing about the killings unless they had clearance letters from them.
The civil servant in question was adamant that I could not report the killings because the issue was “sensitive to the national security.” He then went on to insist that I get a clearance letter from the central government before I could be allowed to report the story.
Of course, as a journalist I found my own willy ways to do my job, unbeknownst to the obstructive officials, but this experience is not an isolated case in a country where journalists are often intimidated and barred from doing their work.
For example, If I want to access information on how much the government is spending on, say, a project meant to help the poor in my country, I first need to put my request in writing and then take a letter to government offices responsible for the project.
It would then, on average, take up to three months for me to get a reply. That is, if you make a close follow up. However, even then it is not unusual to be told that the letter has been misplaced or that the information you want is confidential.
Sometimes the National Security Act of 1970 is invoked. The law prohibits civil servants from releasing any information that can be considered as “classified information” to unauthorised people. Unauthorized people often tends to include journalists. The law is frequently used as an excuse to restrict information to journalists even when the information in question is not classified.
Another law, the Civil Service Act of 1989, put a stop to civil servants from disclosing information without the blessing of the permanent secretary of the responsible ministry. The bureaucracy that seeking such information requires makes it extremely difficult for reporters to do their jobs effectively.
These laws were inherited from colonial rule and slightly refined after independence to protect the then one-party regime of President Julius Nyerere. Newspapers and radio became state owned which meant that people with dissenting ideas, especially journalists, were limited to freely air theirs views in public.
These laws have been used to ban journalists from taking pictures of places termed as “prohibited” such as some bridges and police stations. They also afford the police powers to arrest and take legal action against whoever takes pictures of such places.
In 1993, President Benjamin Mkapa set up a Directorate of Communication in the President’s Office and Information Offices across government ministries to help facilitate communication with the public, mostly through the mainstream media.
Although Mr. Mkapa repeatedly proclaimed that communicating to the public was a key governmental responsibility his vision never came to fruition.
When the new government of President Kikwete came to power six years ago, he too asked civil servants to work intimately with the media. Yet things still remain the same.
In fact, the Directorate of Communication at State House, which is under the leadership of a once admired editor and publisher Mr. Salva Rweyemamu, has faced tough criticisms from some editors for allegedly trying to silence newspapers that publish stories that are perceived to reflect negatively on the administration.
Newspaper bans aren’t unheard of and in the 2010 general election campaign, the ruling party CCM banned its parliamentary candidates from taking part in television debates.
Freedom of speech is clearly enshrined in the Tanzanian constitution. However, laws such as the Newspaper Act of 1976 contradict those constitutional provisions. The Act, for example, gives authority to the Minister of Information a newspaper without power of court being available on such a measure.
None of these laws have changed despite the onset of multi-party democratic principles in 1995. The government and the media are still caught in a tug–of–war over the draft of a Media Services Bill, 2007, which journalists believe will deepen the right to freedom of expression.
The ruling government is not the only challenge facing Tanzanian journalism. Reporters struggle to make ends meet because of low pay. Most of them receive an average of Tsh 5,000 per story while it’s not unusual for some journalists to go without pay for months. Media owners claim that they don’t make enough profit to pay journalists well because of high taxes on such things as imported news prints.
In recent years, the situation has gotten even worse with some reporters and editors allegedly receiving petty bribes from politicians and top government officials to produce propagandist journalism.
At such times, when media owners too reportedly use their media outlets for their own political or business interests, the supposed media ethics prefect, the Media Council of Tanzania, continues to be toothless and mute as if nothing is happening.
As I reflect on these issues, I am reminded of these lines from the Irish Playwright, Samuel Beckett, “I can’t go on, I’ll go on.”
(Photo via TheBloggingStocks)
Erick Kabendera is a freelance journalist with The Times of London and Africa Confidential. He has written for The (British) Independent, The (Tanzania) Guardian and The Citizen. He lives and works in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
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