By IPS Correspondents
JOHANNESBURG, Nov 12 1996 (IPS)

From a prison cell in Douala, Cameroon, Pius Njawe attended a media freedom conference held here recently only in spirit.

Imprisoned 10 days ago for six months by the government of President Paul Biya for an article which alledgedly “insulted” the president, Njawe sent word to the conference that he could not make the trip to Johannesburg.

“Cell number 18 is where I suppose I will spend the next six months of my life,” said a statement read on behalf of Njawe, editor-in-chief of ‘Le Messager’, an independent weekly that has constantly fallen foul of the Cameroonian government.

Njawe’s case is only one in a chain of oppressive actions taken by African governments to keep the press under their thumbs.

Fred M’membe, editor-in-chief of ‘The Post’ in Zambia managed to attend the meeting, but is on bail awaiting the untangling of a legal wrangle with the government of President Frederick Chiluba.

The reality of a journalist’s working life in Africa involves harassment from governments, poor salaries, out-dated or non- existent equipment, raging wars and persecution.

“Despite the fact that African countries have fewer journalists killed, governments still wage attacks against a free press with physical harassment, lawsuits, intimidation or harassment,” said Chris Wells of the U.S.-based Freedom Forum which organised ‘Journalists Under Fire. Media Under Siege’, an international conference held over two days in Cape Town and Johannesburg.

Out of a total 456 journalists killed worldwide between 1985 to 1995, 53 were from Africa, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Independent figures for the continent are higher.

Caught in the crossfire, Reuters photographer Judah Ngwenya watched two colleagues shot dead in the apartheid wars that blazed in South African townships before the all-white regime fell in the early 1990s.

Although there was much talk internationally about a new wave of democracy sweeping through Africa during the last five years, not much has changed for African journalists.

In Nigeria, journalists live under constant government surveillance, and in South Africa, while the pressures are less overt, President Nelson Mandela now and again chides black journalists for unconstructive criticism.

And under a 1995 Media Law in Uganda, a journalist has to be registered by a government agency. Journalists must also hold a degree to be allowed to operate despite the fact that a journalism degree programme has only been in place for six years in that country.

A series of defamation, sedition and libel laws in most African countries mean journalists can go to prison for making a mistake in good faith.

As a result, the readers suffer. In Africa, more than 80 percent of the population does not have access to even partly free domestic media, the Freedom Forum pointed out.

Despite the dire circumstances of many journalists, Jeanette Minnie of South Africa’s Freedom of Expression Institute is convinced that: “The oppression has not killed people’s spirits”. If anything, the region is “seeing a whole burgeoning movement of journalists.”

There is a flurry of private newspapers taking off, and even Zimbabwe’s government which is renowned for being hard on the independent media, has said it will allow private broadcasting soon.

Ngwenya vows not to quit his job despite the hazards while M’membe argues, jailing journalists or people lobbying for their rights has never worked anywhere in the world: “It only hardens them.”

But sometimes the journalists themselves are obstacles to the free flow of accurate information, or to the maintenance of peace on a continent plagued by conflicts.

When up to one million ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slain by Hutu extremists in 1994, among them were 49 journalists according to Peter Mweusi, director of Radio Rwanda. Mweusi implicates journalists in perpetuating ethnic divisions by fanning hatred.

“And the foreign media comes in to Rwanda and addresses our president as ‘the Hutu president’; they never put such a tag on the Irish president,” Mweusi said.

The conference examined press-government relations in several African countries and was attended by representatives from media organisations on the continent.

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