Abstract
As the Botswanan president tightens his grip on power,
A protester calls for a boycott of Botswanan diamonds after Kalahari bushmen were driven from their land where diamonds were found
Credit: Rex/Shutterstock
Botswana might appear to be one of Africa’s most liberal countries in terms of media freedom, but speak to people on the ground, and things are not quite as they seem. Journalists who are critical of the president and high-profile politicians are experiencing more difficulties than a decade ago.
Tsimane, a senior reporter for the Sunday Standard, one of Botswana’s largest private newspapers, has never shied away from writing controversial pieces. One of the stories he wrote last year about President Khama’s alleged involvement in a car accident and the president’s attempts to cover up his involvement, forced him to flee the country.
“I was charged with sedition. This charge has since been reviewed, and instead a civil claim has been laid against my newspaper,” Tsimane said. He currently lives in South Africa and has been granted asylum there. Even taking his personal situation aside, Tsimane is not optimistic about the overall state of media freedom in Botswana, despite the conclusions of various reports: the country ranks 42 out of 180 in the 2015 World Press Freedom Index, released in February 2015 by Reporters Without Borders.
“Since Khama became president, a lot has changed,” Tsimane said. “During last year’s state of the nation [address], he accused my newspaper and other private media outlets of tarnishing Botswana’s image abroad. He said we are threatening foreign direct investment inflows and are making everyone suffer as a result. Not too long after this, plans were discussed in government to starve the private press of advertising revenues.”
Early in October 2014, just before the national elections, evidence of various secret cabinet decisions was leaked to a variety of media outlets. Among the material was a voice recording of Mokgweetsi Masisi, back then deputy minister of education and skills development, and currently vice president. In his speech, he suggested he would cut government advertising in so-called “anti-government” private media outlets. The recording is widely available online, including on Soundcloud.
One of the recent dubious developments revolves around the refusal of the Printing and Publishing Company Botswana to print The Patriot on Sunday. This allegedly was because the newspaper wanted to run a story about a police raid on a chicken farm owned by Satar Dada, a part owner of the PPCB. The Botswana branch of the Media Institute of Southern Africa said it was concerned about this as the PPCB was the Botswana’s only broadsheet printing press. The organisation said: “We believe that [the] duties of printing a newspaper should never interfere with the editorial independence of a media house. That an established newspaper with an expectant readership failed to appear on the streets is a denial of freedom of expression and access to information. We, therefore, condemn the actions of the printers.”
Tsimane said that these are just a few examples of how media freedom in Botswana is under siege. “Take the directorate of intelligence and security services (DIS). It answers only to the president, and not for instance to parliament,” he said. He added that Khama uses this organisation, which was created in 2007 to spy on his political opponents, private media and civil society.
Political researcher Amy Poteete agrees with Tsimane about the DIS. As a researcher at Canada’s Concordia University in Montreal, she has followed Botswana from a political, civil and media rights point of view for the past two decades. Poteete says that Khama’s government has grown more ambivalent towards private newspapers, radio stations and other privately owned outlets. “There is a growing trend to charge private media organisations and their journalists with sedition and defamation, particularly those who report critically about the president or government in general,” Poteete explained.
“I also know editors in Botswana who are being followed by DIS agents. Other journalists and media workers complain about threatening phone calls and digital messages via SMS texts or Facebook,” she said. “Journalists of private media outlets have been victims of house break-ins during which only laptops and digital equipment and media were stolen.”
One of the incidents that stood out for her was in June last year. It involved the directorate on corruption and economic crime filing an urgent court application to bar the Sunday Standard from publishing reports related to corruption allegations against DIS director Isaac Kgosi. “The court eventually prohibited the publishing of verbatim extracts from the interviews and the names of people involved in the investigation, but allowed the paper to report on the matter freely,” Poteete said.
“Not too long afterwards, a journalist involved in the story was detained and kept overnight. The explanation was that he was brought in for questioning in relation to a hit-and-run accident,” she continued. “It was not clear why his digital media including USB stick and phone were not returned immediately after his release. How would a USB key provide evidence related to a car accident?”
Tsimane said that as a result of the current climate, some journalists who are working for private media are now choosing not to publish their stories under their own by-line. He remarks that this is “particularly with regards to stories that will rub the government up the wrong way”.
Poteete believes that freedom of the press in Botswana generally speaking is under pressure because of the serious authoritarian dynamics within the government. “The current administration of Khama is characterised by a high degree of centralisation and a tighter control of information access and distribution,” she said.
One of the most crucial blows to press freedom in Botswana under Khama, Poteete said, was the decision to move the department of broadcast services, which oversees state media, from the ministry of communication, science and technology to the president’s office. This happened directly after the elections of 2008. “It means that the president has direct oversight of all public media outlets,” Poteete said, adding that public media organisations in Botswana have since become much more biased. “They also have far less autonomy than they did in the past. This is worrisome. State media for instance don’t often report on issues concerning the opposition anymore, or on contentious matters dealing with the president or ruling party.”
There is a growing trend to charge journalists with sedition and defamation, particularly those who report critically about the president
Apart from controversial issues related to the president, the ruling party, and high-profile politicians, there are other types of stories that are considered controversial, for instance coverge of the Kalahari bushmen. Since diamonds were discovered in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) in the 1980s, Botswana’s indigenous people have been driven off their ancestral land.
Despite various successful court cases in favour of the bushmen, Khama’s administration refuses to allow the hunters, apart from a select few, to return to their land. Bushmen on the reserve and living outside it have been subjected to forced deportation and government instigated human rights violations, according to a recent report by Survival International, a global organisation that fights for the rights of indigenous and tribal people worldwide.
A report They Have Killed Me: The Persecution of Botswana’s Bushmen 1992-2014 reveals some 200 cases of government instigated assault, arrests, abuse and torture. Among the victims were a man who succumbed to torture and a child who was shot in the stomach by the police. Another person was apparently buried alive for killing an antelope.
Around 200 cases of government assault, arrests, abuse and torture were revealed
While the international media has reported on bushmen matters in the past, it has been difficult to get local media interested in stories, particularly in terms of alleged human rights abuses. “Whilst the international media have written about it, the local media have not really,” said Jumanda Gakelebone, born and bred in the CKGR and a bushmen activist. “This could have to do with threats to cut advertising revenue.”
He adds that has become harder for foreign media to report on the matter too. “International journalists are no longer allowed in the CKGR,” he said.
“It has become much harder for us to get the press in Botswana, particularly state-owned outlets, to accept our press releases,” said campaigner Rachel Stenham from Survival International. “The biggest radio station in Botswana, which used to respond to our press releases and research reports, is not even picking up the phone anymore. This makes it difficult for us to raise awareness on the ground.”
The bushmen issue not only impacts on the freedom of the media. Survival International has been banned from working in Botswana, and in 2013 the bushmen’s long-standing lawyer, Gordon Bennett, was barred from entering the country before an important high court hearing and declared persona non grata by the state. As the legal representative of a group of bushmen, he has won several court cases dealing with access to land and water.
Ordinary Botswanans are worried about speaking out on this issue. “Criticising the government on this topic may lead to repercussions in the form of losing research and residency permits, or being banned,” a Botswanan tour operator from Maun said, referring to the banning of Survival International and Bennett. He refused to have his name printed, for fear of how it might impact on him. “It is a contentious issue no-one here really wants to talk openly about, particularly if the angle is anti-government policy and in favour of the bushmen.”
His fear is indicative of the atmosphere in Botswana for those who want to challenge or criticise the government, and there are no signs of improvement on the horizon.
© Miriam Mannak