9 Mar 2012 | Africa, Magazine
To celebrate Index’s 40th birthday, our publisher SAGE is opening the archive to the public for 40 days from 26 March. It’s a unique literary heritage, a roll-call of the greatest authors in the 20th century canon standing up for free expression.
In 1994, South African writer, activist and Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer witnessed the end of apartheid in South Africa when the black population voted for the first time.
Nadine Gordimer will be speaking at the Southbank Centre on 14 March in the first of a series of events celebrating Index’s anniversary. Get tickets here.
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8 Mar 2012 | Leveson Inquiry
After 21 years, the Press Complaints Commission today confirmed it will close and be replaced by transitional body until a replacement is set up after the Leveson Inquiry.
The Guardian reported this morning that “closing the existing self-regulatory body will offer the press a clean break from the past and an opportunity to regain the confidence of the public.”
In his testimony to the Leveson Inquiry last month, the PCC’s current chair Lord Hunt said there was an urgent need for a new body and that there was “wide consensus for radical reform”. He suggested a new regulator having two arms — one for handling complaints and mediation, and another for auditing and enforcing standards.
If there is one thing the first module of the Inquiry told us, it was that the PCC had failed. Today’s news is the long-awaited admission of that.
Guardian journalist Nick Davies opined that the journalism industry was not “interested in or capable of” self-regulation, citing the PCC’s failure to properly investigate the extent of phone hacking in 2009 and arguing that the body did not take into account getting remedy for victims of the press. Sheryl Gascoigne called the body a “waste of time”, JK Rowling deemed it a “wrist-slapping exercise at best”, and Daily Express editor Hugh Whittow went so far as to suggest that one of the reasons for the tabloid withdrawing from the the body was because it failed to stop the paper publishing defamatory articles about the parents of missing toddler Madeleine McCann.
But defence of the organisation was equally staunch, with former chairs arguing it had been criticised for failing to exercise powers it never had. Baroness Peta Buscombe claimed that the body did not have investigatory powers to summon editors to give evidence under oath and that the rest of the world “would kill” for the British press’s system of self-regulation.
Buscombe’s predecessor, Sir Christopher Meyer, also grew exasperated with Inquiry counsel Robert Jay QC’s criticism. “Don’t drag me down that path,” he told Jay, rejecting the counsel’s suggestion that, had the PCC taken a more proactive stance with the McCanns, the libellous coverage of Bristol landlord Chris Jefferies would not have been able to go so far.
We are now, it would seem, in self-regulation limbo. A longer-term replacement for the PCC is not expected to be up and running until after Leveson reports on his findings this autumn. While Leveson has hinted at a new regulator having statutory backing of some kind, he has reminded his followers not to take his thinking as proof of proposals.
In the meantime, a rebranding of the PCC needs to be avoided so as not to repeat past mistakes of failing to investigate effectively. As Index argued in its submission to the Leveson Inquiry in January, we need a more robust and trustworthy press, monitored by an enhanced regulator pushing improved standards and corporate governance. If we want further wrongdoing to be prevented, its investigatory powers must be strengthened. More must be done to make the media more accountable and transparent in the way ethics are applied and ensuring high professional standards are maintained.
But improved regulation should not occur at the expense of press freedom — the country’s “greatest asset”, in the words of Lord Hunt. The current atmosphere, in which the police seem to be acting in a overzealous manner, perhaps as a response to previous accusations of not having done so, is worrying. Concerns have also been raised that the internal investigation at the Sun has compromised reporters’ sources. While the press should indeed co-operate with the police where there may be evidence of illegality, journalists’ sources must be protected. Whatever powers the transitional body, and its eventual replacement, have, today’s tense atmosphere should not become the norm.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson
8 Mar 2012 | Sub-Saharan Africa
Inspired by Tupac, Public Enemy and others in the USA around 2004, a new tsunami of music crashed over hit Tanzania. Bongo Flavah: raw, real, Swahili. It spoke to people, particularly the disenfranchised 3 million who live in slums and suburbs like Temeke and Mobibo of Dar Es Salaam. Kicking out the popular Congolese Rumba, Sebene (sung mostly in Lingala, a Bantu language spoken in some areas of Africa); Bongo Flavah was R & B mixed with pop, mixed with Puff Daddy, with a dollop of gangsta speak. Young men (and a few young women) performed live. Artists such as Lady Jay Dee, Professor J, Ray C, Fid Q and Juma Nature, shook, shimmied and got down in small local beer halls. The whole business was expressive, chaotic and random, like the streets it came from. Songs were about debt, jealousy, lunacy, power failures, teen pregnancy, corruption, albino body part trafficking. Dancing was lewd, grinding, obvious, as well as highly original, eclectic and thrilling. Critics called them “tsotsi”, hooligans, vandals.
Bongo Flavah. Bongo is the Kiswahili slang word for “brain” street smart, savvy, nous — what you need to hustle a living in the sprawling capital Dar es Salaam. Bongo music is edgy, swaggering, improvised to a CD backing track, spontaneous, aspirational and above all Swahili. It is Tanzania’s wild track, it is everywhere: daladalas (cramped rickety public minivans) shops, homes, cafes and bars.
Then came Mchiriku, it’s even more rowdy sister. Its roots are in Uswahilini, the less prestigious parts of Dar-es salaam, where residents are generally considered loud and uncultured, the music cacophonous. Read poor and voiceless. When it’s recorded, it gets massive airplay, and thousands of listeners.
But there’s a less savoury side to this very male, undoubtedly anarchic and truly democratic medium: blatant misogyny, and sexual favours for access. “It’s a kind of open secret in the music business” says Ayesha*, 19, a trainee journalist at a private radio station on Zanzibar “you have to sleep with radio producers, or station owners if you want to get airplay, basically sexual favours for airtime.”
Part of the reason for this is that women — dressed in tiny tops and lycra leggings — in Bongo Flavah and Mchiriku make much of their pelvic flexibility and suppleness: there’s not much doubt what they’re showing off. The versions of female sexuality are fairly standard rap stuff.
Maya Van Lekow, an established Kenyan blues and jazz singer has been in the music business for seven years: “Yes, absolutely, the music business for women is dreadful. It’s not even challenged, it’s blatant: of course you sleep with the whomever, for a record deal, for radio play, to get an interview. It’s unquestioned. A younger singer approached me recently, she said for two years she’d not been able to get airplay, at local stations for over two years, and was forced to sleep with older station managers. She was tearful and desperate.”
Male rapper and record promoter Mzungu K’Chaa concurs: “Bongo flavah started as hip hop; it’s definitely for men only, the music industry generally is very discriminatory to women, and yes, women do have to sleep with the music producers and radio station owners to get airplay. It does need to change.”
Khadija Othman, a sexual health worker on Zanzibar works with young people. “There are two issues here, the first is that women are kept in complete ignorance about their bodies, and their rights. Even to mention a condom a woman will get beaten. The second is that men here think it’s normal for young DJ’s and radio producers to expect sex. And for women to provide sex if the man wants it. Sex is extremely secretive in our society, and until we open up, confront it, we’re going to see more problems. We really really need to talk about these things.”
Her views are shared by young journalists, Salouma* and Carla* who work in the capital, Dar. For women music journalists, or aspirant journalists, the music industry is considered a den of vice. “Our parents literally think we are whores because we work in journalism. Things are very backward here. We don’t tell them about the music bit, it would literally terrify them, and yes, we do see young women coming in off the street, with their tapes, and maybe they get a ‘boyfriend’ for a night. We just try and ignore it. We’re not senior here, we’re female, there’s nothing we can do. It’s shameful really.”
Things are slowly changing. Music creation and production was once dominated by men in Tanzania, Kenya and Zanzibar, and women rarely got actively promoted or showcased. Research is probing into the hidden, and unspoken culture of teen pregnancy and gender based violence against women and girls in Tanzania and Zanzibar. The idea that “you need to sleep with your boss” to get anywhere if you are female is being questioned. Recent figures from local NGO Tanzania Media Women’s Association (TAMWA) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) indicates that more that 39 per cent of women aged 15-49 have experienced physical violence in the last 12 months, One in five women have ever experienced sexual violence, and 10 per cent of women had their first sexual intercourse forced against their will.
The last year has seen a marked change in discussion and debate. These issues are finally in the public sphere. Yusuf Mahmoud, Festival Director for the Busara Festival, and President of the Indian Oceans Festival Association: “When we started in 2004, it was difficult to programme women musicians as there were so few in the region. However, looking back, it’s the women who have provided many of the highlights. We have showcased some of the best from the continent including Thandiswa (South Africa), Chiwoniso (Zimbabwe), Nyota Ndogo and Muthoni the Drummer Queen(Kenya) and Tausi Taarab (Zanzibar) — the first all-women orchestra ever in East Africa made their debut at Sauti za Busara.”
Maya Von Lekow says: “I do see myself first as a musician, an artist, but I can also be an advocate, whether for women’s rights generally: in society, in refugee camps, and in the music industry, the two are not incompatible. I can sing, and I also can talk! We’re moving on, talking about our pasts, things are changing, we’re speaking freely, it’s inspiring really!”
To celebrate Index’s 40th birthday, our publisher SAGE is opening the archive to the public for 40 days from 26 March. It’s a unique literary heritage, a roll-call of the greatest authors in the 20th century canon standing up for free expression. 