Rampholo Molefhe
18 July 2008
opinion
The press fraternity will be well warned to read between the lines. The page in black and white announces a firm commitment on the part of the post Mogae administration to a generous broadcasting of gifts, footballs and opportunities for the performing and graphic artists, vendors, hawkers and medical aid for pensioners.
That is a relatively cheap price to pay for a victory at the next general election. It is also an ingenious way of disguising the dictatorial tendencies of the new regime now manifesting themselves in the form of retrieval of the old laws that sought to silence the little that remains of the private press.
As early as 1985, Ponatshego Kedikilwe brought to parliament the National Security Act on the back of the sentiment that it would assist the state to arrest subversion by Batswana and agents of the South African intelligence services.
Apparently, it was not enough that the minister of Home Affairs and the President already had more than enough power to, without a guarantee of the right of the accused to contest, declare any person 'disaffected' and on that account, to declare the person 'persona non grata'. Simply, a prohibited immigrant or 'PI'.
Following the 1985 South African Defence Force raid on Gaborone to banish Mxolisi Mxgashe who had asked 10 questions about the whereabouts of the Botswana Defence Force when the SADF arrived. His was a presidential order.
At least seven journalists were banished similarly, most significantly Gwen Ansell, presumably for her association with South African exiles, and the Zambian, John Mukela, who carried an article in the Botswana Guardian about the Lesotho Highlands Water Project. It is difficult to tell what Charles Mogale and Sam Zulu could have done.
Prof Malema was also reigned in for interrogation for his investigations into negotiations between the manual Workers Union and government, revealing that in fact that it was agreed that the employees would be awarded a wage increase close to what they had requested.
Malema, government argued, had gained access to 'secret' official documents. He could have been arrested under the 'official secrets act,' but the government preferred the National Security Act, which, the public was told, was aimed at 'foreign' saboteurs of the state.
Research at the time showed that of the 30 or so people who had been arrested under the National Security Act, by far the greatest majority were citizens.
The law placed the burden of proof on the accused to prove his or her innocence. Detention without charge was extended from the previous maximum of 36 hours to 72. Police officers were empowered to enter publishing houses and impound news materials if they suspected that they might undermine the security of the country.
The events of the mid 80s were only an expression of an established practice of hostility to an 'independent press', particularly one that exhibited an inclination to go against official policy.
Government had previously banned Sechaba, the African Communist and other publications of the anti-apartheid liberation movement. It had forestalled establishment of a private press by deception, then practiced by Ministers of Works and communication, Jimmy Haskins, and Collin Blackbeard, that the ministry was not legally empowered to issue broadcasting licenses. That was until the 'Gunda case' revealed, only after a High Court decision, that in fact the Ministry of Works was properly empowered to do precisely that.
Government quickly spawned a Botswana Telecommunications Authority under the trusted civil servant, Moses Lekaukau, who worked out of the Ministry of Works.
Applicants for radio and television licenses were compelled to pay thousands of Pula for forms to apply.
Former British soldier turned businessman, William Jones, and Kgosinkwe Moesi, took advantage of governments lapse in vigilance to register the Botswana Guardian when the Botswana Posts and Telecommunications Act required that an applicant for a newspaper publishing license should only pay P40 to the post office. As soon as the Guardian registered the amount climbed to P200 and then to P400.
The rationale for a registration fee was originally based on the pursuit of the citizens right to freedom of expression and formulation and expression of his or her opinions, not to subvert that right as the Ministers of Works and Communication under Seretse Khama and Ketumile Masire had done.
So, the post office gave publications privileged status in the process of distribution because newspapers were regarded as educational materials that would assist the practice of democracy.
Newspapers are exposed at the ends of the cover so that the post office should establish that they are reading materials, and therefore eligible for privileged treatment. Sometimes, the envelope that carries the newspaper will be cut at the corner so that the post office workers should see the contents, establishing that this is educational material.
The Daily News and other government publications engage in commercial enterprise even though they are not registered in law under the Post and Telecommunications Act or any other, clearly because they serve the new function, since the establishment of the private press, of stifling it.
The government relies on the taxpayer to facilitate nationwide distribution and to attract advertisement that should rightly be distributed among the private sector publishers and broadcasters.
Needless to say, the establishment of community based newspapers, to which the government is obsessively opposed, would undercut the effect of government propaganda in the rural areas.
Passing the NSA and the Corruption and Economic Crimes Act, which silences the press once a case has been reported to the directorate did not ameliorate government's obsessive phobia against the private press.
Soon thereafter, Ghanaian professor Ansah was engaged in the still of night to write that infamous 'Communications' law after consulting the senior spin doctors at Information and Broadcasting with Ted Makgekgenene and Samuel Moribame at the helm.
Ansah, perhaps inadvertently, revealed his unholy mission to this writer, then chairperson of the Botswana Journalists Association on a plane flight from Johannesburg to Gaborone. It was a revelation. But Mesh Moeti sitting on BOJA as treasurer had already got wind of these evil machinations. Government already had its General Orders, which regulate the behaviour of civil servants, and they had constructed a code of conduct to go with it.
Clearly then, the contemplated Communications Bill was designed to quiet down the private press by virtually handing the cabinet minister control of who could work there. The minister would also have a say in the composition of the planned press council and other arbitration bodies running parallel with the labour laws that excluded government employees, the largest population of press workers, to form and join trade unions.
BOJA believed that: -
* In all probability the employers in the private press, seeking access to the largest advertisers at government, would be quiet willing to accede to its demands for greater controls under the guise of the protecting the public from the excesses of the independent media houses.
* The organisation could not rely on the elite of the press employees at the government who enjoyed economic privileges far superior to those at the private press, to rally against the proposed communications law,
* Because BOJA was an association, it permitted infiltration of its ideological positions by management and unprincipled employees who would rather run with the management positions rather than risk reprimand and loss of privilege.
* Generally speaking, BOJA could not rely on workers' consciousness within its ranks to guide its resistance to the threat of government interference. Neither could it rely on the older detachments of the trade union movement at the BFTU and others because, essentially, they understood nothing about the centrality of information and the media to the future sustenance of the working class in Botswana and internationally.
The dices were heavily loaded against the more radical and committed sections of the journalists' movement. But, their weakness was their very strength. These journalists could cause such a stink as to invite the attention of the international community and uninformed sections of the local communities to demonstrate that Botswana was indeed contemplating final annihilation of the citizens right to information and freedom of expression. Government retreated and strategised. 'Media consultative' organisations mushroomed all over, volunteering to be co-opted into the fora that BOJA had cultivated and corrupting them to suit the interests of the employers at government and the private press.
BOJA had much earlier invited President Masire to a consultative forum to which he acceded by listening to complaints that the private press practitioners wanted redesign of the government press card so that it should not treat then as 'foreigners'.
Even if Masire failed to attend any of its later meetings, the Office of the President, with Phillip Matsetse at the head, manipulated the "Media Consultative Council" to give effect to Ansah's bill, whilst averting the prospect of failure f their original intentions, also appearing to have engaged practitioners in their endeavours to silence them.
BOJA attended the meetings only for the purposes of keeping up with progress there, fully aware that renegades of the journalists' movement and spies of the government had hijacked this process.
Attention shifted away from BOJA to the surrogate organisations of the establishment who then acceded to a Press Council, a media complaints body, and other cumbersome and duplicitous structures, which might have been useful under the guidance of the journalists union and its press allies, rather than the state gendarmerie and its gullible victims who claim some obscure status as 'civil society'.
The BOJA position was that resistance should be expressed by unwillingness to cooperate, perhaps not even to speak. The journalists would refuse to be tried at the government's press council and its judiciary at the complaints committee, respecting only the courts as adjudicators in the event of conflicts with the 'public interest'.
After all, the newspapers, in obedience to the Principles of Professional Practice, or Code of Conduct in military circles, would carry letters to the editor, opinion and other columns to placate injured members of the community, especially the poor who cannot afford court. BOJA had already opened communication with the Ombudsman, inviting the office to serve on an autonomous para-juridical committee of the journalists union that would judge complaints against the press.
The Bureau of Standards would also be invited to help the journalists union to establish, with the help of the International Federation of Journalists and the Law Society of Botswana, a guiding framework that would, among other things determine criteria for judging 'good press'.
Such a gathering would define the roles of the state press, the public media, private press and community media also setting standards to which they should conform with the practitioners at the head, followed by a genuine civil society that would be humble enough to defer to the professionals in the setting of their own standards and 'self-regulatory' organisations.
The global swing to conservatism led by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, culminating in the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990's at the head of western imperialism, also prompted a shift in the same direction in the region and in the country, so that even the press constituency followed the ever so pervasive trend.
The new administration now finds that the public has been adequately prepared psychologically, to be blinded by the treacherous generosity of the government, which continues to spray the country with toys and festivals, whilst at another level, pursuing the campaign to sabotage the private press as envisaged in the 1980's programme to suffocate it.
Whereas Seretse, Masire and more visibly Mogae, did envisage something of a 'national heritage day' which has toured the country in the last few years, the new administration has wanted to dramatise the one day event, sandwiched together with other acts of philanthropy and benevolence into a period of three months!
And as the government acts the part of the 'Good Samaritan', it also continues to entrench the army in all aspects of governance, seeking to facilitate that agenda by killing the private press.
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