Abstract
Tackling the big issues as a journalist in Tanzania can involve putting your life on the line, as recent attacks have shown.
Tanzania can be a scary place for a journalist. Physical attacks on members of the press have escalated over the last few years, and combined with government shutdowns of publications that run critical stories, and lack of resources, getting an investigative story published is no mean feat. Freedom House considers that Tanzania has a “partly free” press. But, as the experiences of Tanzanian journalists reveal, the difference between “partly free” and “entirely free” can be large.
“The attacks on journalists make me feel scared to write controversial stories. I know some stories could easily get you killed,” says Mbwaduke. “And you can’t be a brave journalist if you are dead.”
While conducting desktop research one morning in March last year, Mbwaduke discovered discrepancies in how two districts in southern Tanzania – Kilwa and Mtwara rural districts – were spending levies paid to them by a firm extracting natural gas.
“The Kilwa district council’s financial reports indicated that a large part of the money had been used to build the council director’s house, given to a women’s credit cooperative and to repair a gravel driveway at an exorbitant price, while nothing was allocated to repair a health centre’s broken building and buy medicine for patients. I felt it was important to find out whether the money had reached the projects mentioned in the financial reports,” says Mbwaduke.
Mbwaduke works as a reporter at Nipashe, one of the biggest national Swahili daily newspapers. Although his editors wanted key stories investigated and published, funds remained a constraint. A research trip to the countryside can cost £300, and low circulation figures meant very little cash for investigative stories. A quality daily newspaper in Tanzania might have a circulation of about 25,000, compared to about 250,000 in Kenya (even though both countries have similar-sized populations).
This is where the Tanzania Media Fund (TMF) comes into play. TMF was founded in 2008, with money from the Swiss and British governments. Kenny Ferguson, a spokesperson for the Department for International Development (Dfid), explains: “It is a programme that seeks to support quality journalism that better informs the public, contributes to debate and increases public demand for greater accountability across Tanzania. It focuses on investigative journalism and public interest journalism.” Dfid has invested £842m in the fund, with a commitment to invest an additional £2m by 2016, one of a handful of the little-publicised UK government projects funding journalism in other countries.
ABOVE: Controversial stories don’t often make it into Tanzania’s newspapers
Credit: Thomas Cockrem/Alamy
Dfid did not respond to requests for substantive comment about the impetus behind such schemes. But the Swiss government, another TMF donor, was more forthcoming.
Apart from individual grants provided to journalists, TMF also offers institutional transformation grants. Online media platform Jamii Forums/Fikra Pevu attracts close to one million visitors daily, more than all daily newspapers combined. Recently they received funds to hire professional journalists and move operations from a garage to an office.
“The chance for the media to contribute to positive change depends on objective and quality reporting,” says Geraldine Zeuner, a director for development cooperation from the Swiss Development Corporation.
In fact, most of the stories funded by TMF appear to steer cautiously clear of hot topics, such as government corruption.
Christoph Spurk, a Swiss consultant, carried out a qualitative analysis of stories written by the journalists supported by TMF, and found that only 8 per cent of stories uncovered wrongdoing by public officials. For context, Dfid has committed to donating £633m to Tanzania between 2011 and 2016, much in direct bilateral aid to the government.
Yet the outcome for journalists working in a financially precarious and potentially dangerous climate has been the opportunity to write robust stories, rather than propaganda.
Mbwaduke, knowing that his newspaper was unable to facilitate his investigation, decided to take the idea to the TMF who offered to him £560 to cover his expenses to travel to the countryside and write the story. TMF also assigned him one of 15 mentors – experienced Tanzanian journalists – to guide him throughout the process.
Mbwaduke says he was able to investigate the story for three months. “The guidance I received from the mentor was priceless; he helped me stay focused on the main issues of the story. Because the mentor is a very experienced journalist, his previous work also motivated me to follow in his footsteps,” he says.
As a result, he was able to break out of the practice of conducting interviews by phone from the country’s biggest city, Dar es Salaam, where almost all major national newspapers are based.
Most of the 11-part series that resulted from his investigation, exposing how the council’s administration abused the funds, appeared on the front page of Nipashe newspaper. Mbwaduke says the impact was felt immediately after the stories came out.
Publishing such a story was a risk. But, in this case, it paid off. First, Mdwaduke received a surprise call from the council’s director who was the main culprit of the scandal, thanking him for exposing the wrongdoing.
The chance for the media to contribute to positive change depends on objective and quality reporting
Shortly afterwards, ordinary people who had read the stories called to inform him that a health centre had now been refurbished and medicine was being provided to the patients. The country’s corruption watchdog had also started investigating the matter. The director, together with other senior officials implicated in the scandal, was moved to another area.
“I didn’t know how to use multiple sources of information while investigating a story. I would ordinarily speak to two people and write a story. But I interviewed 50 people for the story and the interviews helped me understand the subject I was writing about. I also felt professional satisfaction for exposing how civil servants were abusing public funds and action was taken against them,” he says.
In numbers
UK government funding of journalists worldwide. Source: DFID tracker
Democratic Republic of the Congo: £12.8m
Iraq: £10.1m
Tanzania: £2.8m
Angola: £995,000
Because of the impact the story had, Mbwaduke says his newspaper decided to replicate TMF’s technique whereby each reporter is encouraged to submit a unique news idea to editors. Each journalist whose idea gets approved is assigned to an editor to guide him or her through the process of researching and writing the story. The newspaper also gives money to reporters to travel to different parts of the country to investigate their story ideas.
The scale of this change may seem small – giving journalists expenses so they can travel and report on their stories. Additional resources being ploughed into newsrooms does not in itself provide extra protections against censorship or the suppression of journalists. But it is a small and practical step towards reporting important stories that uncover corruption, inform the public and incite change.
Life as a journalist in Tanzania
When a former colleague called me at 5am in early March last year, I sensed something was wrong.
He broke the sad news that a friend, mentor and senior journalist Absalom Kibanda, was in hospital fighting for his life after unidentified people attacked him outside of his house.
Luckily, he was flown to South Africa for advanced medical attention and survived, but many other journalists don’t.
A few weeks before the attack, my elderly parents had been arrested by authorities and asked to tell me to “be careful with stories”. My house was broken into three times and I was questioned about my citizenship.
Around that time, a TV journalist, Daudi Mwangosi, who was covering a banned opposition party rally, was shot dead by riot police. Shortly afterwards a radio journalist, covering a controversial story, was found hanged in the bush. Many more were harassed and threatened.
In the last three years, three influential Swahili-language national newspapers have been banned. Two of them, which were shut down for reporting about new salaries for civil servants, have since been allowed to publish again, but another one, which revealed the identify of an undercover agent who allegedly killed the leader of a doctors’ strike, remains out of business.
Things haven’t improved but there is a crop of young journalists who are committed to the profession, but lack role models and are poorly paid.
A writer I am mentoring at the Tanzania Media Fund (TMF) was about to quit journalism before he joined a three-month programme that gives young journalists the opportunities to investigate stories of their choice.
He worked for a small radio station in the north of the country and felt his career wasn’t growing. He wanted to do something else, but I persuaded him to carry on, telling him the profession needed young people like him.
A story he had previously worked on won a national award, and a national radio station noticed his talent and employed him. His recent story – about the killing of elderly people suspected of being witches – broke new ground.
When I am mentoring young journalists, I see a lot of energy and determination, yet also fear to do stories that would not make the government happy. Most of them lack role models to encourage them to become independent in their thinking. Sometimes government officials deny them information for stories if they feel the stories don’t suit their political interests.
Those who are brave, lack exposure and the essential skills to communicate effectively. Newsrooms rarely invest in training and career development of reporters.
Over the years, most good journalists have left the profession to work in public relations. Media outlets have resorted to using poorly educated journalists who are underpaid. Most of these indulge in extortion activities from news sources to make a living.
TMF has done good work to show it is possible to have a vibrant and independent media. But media outlets have to take the initiative into their hands to make such efforts sustainable even when the fund is gone. Media owners need to invest more in their outlets and efforts to force the government to protect newspapers and their journalists.
© Erick Kabendera