The following letter calling for greater defamation law reform, including limiting corporations ability to use libel law to silence civil society critics, was coordinated by Index on Censorship and the International Freedom of Expression Exchange network (IFEX)
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Repressive governments deliberately hinder people’s access to information to entrench control and minimise dissent. New media technologies, and the innovative uses of old media, challenge this control. The Kubatana Trust of Zimbabwe’s primary objective is to make human rights and civic information accessible from a centralised, electronic source. We use the Internet, email, blogging, SMS, Freedom Fone, DVDs and print publications to share this information with Zimbabweans living in urban and rural locations.
Our technical director, Brenda Burrell had a vision to enable activists and NGOs to create short form audio programmes, which people could call-in to listen to using their phones. Thus Freedom Fone was conceptualised.
Information can be shared and received at anytime in any language wherever there is mobile coverage. Traditional roadblocks of licensing, regulation and literacy are bypassed, and freedom of expression is broadened. However, it is not surprising that a regime which so thoroughly seeks to suppress dissent and suffocate opportunities for free expression and debate, should be threatened by a service which broadens access to information and encourages the open exchange of opinion.
The Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe, an entity generally acknowledged to have been set up to control, rather than to expand the access to information, advised Kubatana that we were operating an “unlicensed broadcasting service” and that we were in violation of the law by making these audio dramas accessible over phones.
We have sought advice from both local and regional legal practitioners, and the opinion is that the Freedom Fone services provided by Kubatana are not in violation of any broadcasting laws. Currently Kubatana is seeking support to challenge the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe in court. Kubatana’s Freedom Fone and services like it provide new opportunities for communication, mobilisation and activism.
In repressive environments, this will be met with resistance. However, it is important not to buckle under this pressure or constrain one’s own creative use of technology. Rather, we must use innovative technologies to expand access to information and broaden discussions of censorship, repression and control of the media environment. We are honoured to receive this award and would like to take this opportunity to thank our various donors and supporters for enabling our work. Most importantly we would like to thank the people who make up the Kubatana Community in Zimbabwe.
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!”
Kubatana is an NGO based in Harare that uses a variety of new and traditional media to encourage ordinary Zimbabweans to be informed, inspired and active about civic and human rights issues. As an organisation, it continuously seeks innovative fixes to the challenges of sharing independent information in Zimbabwe’s restrictive media environment. Freedom Fone is one of Kubatana’s solutions. An open-source software, Freedom Fone helps organisations create interactive voice response (IVR) menus to enable them to share pre-recorded audio information in any language via mobile phones and landlines with their members or the general public. The software is aimed at organisations or individuals wishing to set up interactive information services for users where the free flow of information may be denied for economic, political, technological or other reasons. Freedom Fone is one of the many ways Kubatana reaches across the digital divide to inform and inspire the vast majority of Zimbabweans who do not have regular or affordable internet access.
ObscuraCam is a free smartphone application that uses facial recognition to blur individual faces automatically. Developed by WITNESS and the Guardian Project, it enables users to protect their personal security, privacy and anonymity. In 2011 and 2012, uprisings throughout the Middle East have shown the power and danger of mobile video footage. ObscuraCam helps protect activists who fear reprisals but want to safely capture evidence of state brutality. Launched in June 2011 and based in the USA, ObscuraCam is the only facial blurring or masking application that has responded to the concerns of human rights groups, citizen activists and journalists. In addition to obscuring faces, the application removes identifying data such as GPS location data and the phone make and model.
Visualizing.org was created to help make data visualisation more accessible to the general public. It calls itself “a community of creative people making sense of complex issues through data and design… and a shared space and free resource to help you achieve this goal”.Data analysts and graphic designers have set themselves the challenge of sharing a constantly proliferating body of public data in an accessible form. Raw data on its own might as well be censored; visualisation opens the door to open information that otherwise would be left languishing on hard disks or, if downloaded, unintelligible to the average citizen. The project offers a place to showcase work, discover remarkable visualisations and visually explore some of today’s most pressing global issues. Created by GE and Seed Media Group, Visualizing.org promotes information literacy. The portal has had a remarkable year.
Telecomix is the collective name for a decentralised group of internet activists operating in Europe. Their focus is to expose threats to freedom of speech online. During one operation, Telecomix activists published a huge package of data which proved that the Syrian government was carrying out mass surveillance of thousands of its citizens’ internet usage. Telecomix’s revelation that the technology used was supplied by US firm Blue Coat Systems has prompted serious investigations into the involvement of western technology firms in helping repressive regimes spy on their people. In mid-August 2011, Telecomix’s dispersed group of hackers came together to target Syria’s internet. Those attempting to access the internet though their normal browsers were confronted with a blank page bearing a warning: “This is a deliberate, temporary internet breakdown. Please read carefully and spread the following message. Your internet activity is monitored.” Following this, a page flashed up describing how to take precautions to encrypt usage.
