20 Jan 2012 | Sub-Saharan Africa
On 9 January, in a bizarre move, at least 10 radio stations, including BBC Radio, Radio France International (local relay channels), and the Italian Embassy’s security radio channel were taken off the air by the police in an on-going crackdown over the alleged illegal use of equipment and facilities belonging to state broadcaster, Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (UBC). The radio stations lease relay equipment from the state’s masts, and there is considerable murkiness about how they got access, and whether they are being paid for. It may have cost the broadcaster as much as Shs 392 million (US $163 thousand). This is all amidst the scandal and confusion of the Uganda Broadcasting Companies possibly illegal acquisition of land. Smokescreen maybe?
The police crackdown, which began last year, brings the number of stations switched off the air to 11, and occurrs amidst a general tightening up of the Museveni regime. This month another journalist, Emmanuel Opio, was allegedly beaten up, his camera confiscated and the photos from his camera deleted by a senior police officer. His case has reached the desk of the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC). Additionally, the new Public Order Bill, debated in parliament before Christmas, significantly limits the rights to protest. With Museveni’s increasingly top heavy cabinet of over 70 ministers, some of the lowest annual incomes in the continent, and increasingly tighter control of the country, it’s not looking good.
20 Jan 2012 | Sub-Saharan Africa, Uncategorized
There’s renewed attention internationally on Swaziland with King Mswati III excesses. He’s getting it from all angles: criticised for squandering the country’s sugar, turning a blind eye to the tax bill of Coca Cola, and the continued incarceration of the student leaders, teachers and journalists after the November 2011 demonstrations.
Most recently, Times of Swaziland columnist Mfomfo Nkambule publicly apologised to King Mswati III for articles that were critical of the king’s leadership style. In his apology in the paper, Nkambule wrote: “I know what the lion is capable of doing when it is angry or threatened.”
With a personal fortune of about $100m (£64m), King Mswati III presides over one of the worst-off countries in the world, with 64 per cent of the population living in absolute poverty. Political parties are banned and activists are regularly arrested, imprisoned and tortured. The kingdom’s largest opposition party, the People’s United Democratic Movement (Pudemo), was banned as a terrorist organisation in November 2008 and its president, Mario Masuku, arrested under the suppression of terrorism act. With one of the highest literacy rates on the continent at 92%, the media is hugely stifled, with debate, and progress, completely constrained.
Coca-Cola says that Mswati III does not directly receive any profits or dividends from its Swaziland operation, its biggest in Africa. The plant supplies all of the Southern and Eastern African region, (over 23 million people) and Coca Cola is often available where clean water isn’t. It’s relatively cheap regionally, at about 25p a bottle, but its production leaches valuable water tables, rots teeth, and most poignantly, say activists, the drinks firm is propping up a dictator.
Local activists estimate that Coca-Cola, the world’s biggest beverage company, contributes as much as 40 per cent of the country’s GDP. The company admits it cannot account for how the money it pays in taxes is used by the Swazi government. Swaziland has the highest HIV rates in the world, at 26 per cent of the population living with HIV and aids.
Mary Pais Da Silva, co-ordinator of the Swaziland Democracy Campaign, has called for Coca-Cola to pull out of the country immediately. “Coca-Cola must know they’re doing business with the wrong people,” she said. “At the end of the day it doesn’t benefit the economy in any way. Their profits don’t help the average Swazi, while the King is getting richer by the day.” She added: “The king is milking the country. This is entrenching him more and more, giving him economic strength to crush opposition. Nobody should do business with the regime in Swaziland. They should cut ties and take their business elsewhere.”
20 Jan 2012 | Leveson Inquiry
An application by Associated Newspapers to prevent journalists giving anonymous evidence to the Leveson Inquiry has been refused at the High Court today.
Lord Justice Toulson, Mr Justice Sweeney and Mrs Justice Sharp today rejected the application for judicial review, noting in their ruling that it was “not for the court to micromanage the conduct of the Inquiry by the Chairman.”
The ruling read: “It is of the greatest importance that the Inquiry should be, and be seen by the public to be, as thorough and balanced as is practically possible,” Were journalists to be prohibited from submitting evidence anonymously, it went on to say, there would be a “gap” in the Inquiry’s work.
Toulson continued: “I am not persuaded that there is in principle something wrong in allowing a witness to give evidence anonymously through fear of career blight, rather than fear of fear of something worse.”
He added that it was “important to recognise that the evidence in question will be part of a much wider tapestry” and that Associated and others were open to submit non-anonymous evidence.
Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday, challenged Lord Justice Leveson’s November ruling on anonymous evidence last week, arguing that “untested” testimony from journalists could tar its titles “with a broad brush”.
Mark Warby QC, counsel for Associated Newspapers, told the court last week that anonymous evidence may damage the “rights and interests” of all tabloids, and that titles were “likely to be defamed” if allegations of impropriety were made by journalists.
The Inquiry will resume on Monday, with evidence from BBC, ITN and Sky.
Read the full ruling here [pdf]
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson
20 Jan 2012 | Events
Date: 14 March
Time: 7:30pm
Venue: Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX
Tickets: £15, £12 – book here
In the first of a series of events between Index on Censorship and the Southbank Centre, South African novelist Nadine Gordimer will be speaking at the centre’s Literature and Spoken Word Festival on 14 March.
The 88-year-old writer, renowned for her activism, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. She published her first novel in 1953, and has since gone on to publish short stories, plays and criticism in over 40 books, including The Conservationist, which won the Booker Prize in 1974. Gordimer’s latest novel, published to coincide with the event, is No Time Like the Present.
The festival will run from January to March. Tickets can be booked online here.
