Hou Nded African Journalists in Exile
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Hou nded African Journalists in Exile Edited by Joseph Odindo www.kas.de Hounded: African Journalists in Exile Hounded: African Journalists in Exile Edited by Joseph Odindo Published by Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Regional Media Programme Sub-Sahara Africa 60 Hume Road PO Box 55012 Dunkeld 2196 Northlands Johannesburg 2116 Republic of South Africa Telephone: + 27 (0)11 214-2900 Telefax: +27 (0)11 214-2913/4 www.kas.de/mediaafrica Twitter: @KASMedia Facebook: @KASMediaAfrica ISBN: 978-0-620-89940-6 (print) 978-0-620-89941-3 (e-book) © Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, 2021 This publication is an open source publication. Parts thereof may be reproduced or quoted provided the publication is fully acknowledged as the source thereof. Download an electronic copy of Hounded: African Journalists in Exile from www.kas.de/hounded-african-journalists-in-exile Cover photograph: Gallo Images / Getty Images Proofreader: Bruce Conradie Translator: Jean-Luc Mootoosamy (Chapters 4, 9 and 10 were translated from French) Layout and Heath White, ihwhiteDesign production: [email protected] Printing: Typo Printing Investments, Johannesburg, South Africa Table of contents Foreword ix Christoph Plate, KAS Media Africa Right to publish must be grabbed 1 Joseph Odindo, Editor 1. Guerrillas in the newsroom 5 Dapo Olorunyomi, Nigeria 2. Nightmare of news, guns and dollars 15 Kiwanuka Lawrence Nsereko, Uganda 3. A scoop and the general’s revenge 23 Keiso Mohloboli, Lesotho 4. Haunted by a political blog 31 Makaila N’Guebla, Chad 5. Nine Zones and a passion for justice 41 Soleyana Shimeles Gebremichael, Ethiopia v Hounded: African Journalists in Exile 6. Through Gambia’s halls of injustice 51 Sainey MK Marenah, The Gambia 7. Terror and death in Somalia 59 Abdalle Ahmed Mumin, Somalia 8. Giving voice to a persecuted minority 65 Mimi Mefo Takambou, Cameroon 9. Escape from Burundi’s killing fields 71 Bob Rugurika, Burundi 10. The split personality of Madagascar 79 Michèle Rakotoson, Madagascar 11. A reform struggle’s radical voice 87 Pius Nyamora, Kenya 12. Cost of fighting a political dynasty 97 Farida Nabourema, Togo 13. Behind Eritrea’s iron curtain 105 Fathi Osman, Eritrea vi 14. Three Presidents and a gadfly 113 Ansbert Ngurumo, Tanzania 15. Newspapers as an opposition force 121 Wilf Mbanga, Zimbabwe 16. Journalism and genocide denial 129 Fred Muvunyi, Rwanda About the contributors 139 Index 147 vii Foreword Why Exile is as contemporary as ever Journalists in Exile — many might think it is a thing of the past. Not so, judging by the distressing stories of writers and editors presented in this book. Countries like Germany have a long list of fine writers who were forced into exile under fascist rule between 1933 and 1945; Walter Benjamin, Thomas Mann, Berthold Brecht, Hannah Arendt, to name a few. It’s often assumed that the last exiled writers from the African continent belonged to the nationalist generation of South African Lewis Nkosi or Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong’o. That assumption is wrong. Modernisation and liberty are not necessarily companions: Just because you can easily access digital texts in libraries across Africa today does not mean its people are freer than they were in the sixties. Or that its journalists and creative writers can write as they like. The digital availability of many ideas and thoughts does not always come along with freedom of speech, or even of thought. KAS Media Africa, the Media Programme of the Konrad-Adenauer- Stiftung, had planned to hold a convention of exiled journalists to talk about their “difficult experiences”, as one writer from Madagascar puts it in this collection of reports and essays. ix Hounded: African Journalists in Exile Then Covid came and upended life everywhere. Our conference plans were not spared. So we asked ourselves: How about producing a book, instead? We looked and listened, together with our esteemed editor Joseph Odindo, working from Nairobi, and found surprisingly many African creatives living in exile because the powers that be or some greedy businessmen were after their lives. They came from different countries, Lesotho, Tanzania, Chad, Eritrea, The Gambia, Zimbabwe and Rwanda — men and women who had sought sanctuary abroad and abandoned their work as “gatekeepers” of their societies, journalists who wanted to give guidance but had been shut out. Their physical and mental agony, not to mention the economic hardships they endure, are difficult to imagine. We at KAS Media Africa, who work across the continent and encounter media practitioners on an almost daily basis, salute them for their bravery and suffering. They have made personal choices which, hopefully, will pay off when they return home to find their countries freer and more tolerant of criticism and dissent. Christoph Plate Director KAS Media Africa Johannesburg, January 2021 x Joseph Odindo, Editor Right to publish must be grabbed When he stepped forward to receive a bravery award at a global conference of news publishers in 1994, Cameroonian newspaper editor Pius Njawe had a word of regret about the persecution he had to endure back home. Whenever he found himself behind bars for his controversial journalism, he said, the ensuing chorus of protest seldom included the voice of fellow Africans. A hulking figure, Njawe — God bless his soul — had been detained more than 120 times for the sins of his newspaper, Le Messager, but his crusading spirit remained undimmed. Each arrest, the delegates heard, drew messages of support from Western diplomats based in Yaoundé and European civil rights groups, but none ever came from his brethren across the borders. When Njawe spoke, he had only recently been freed from police custody. So why did the travails of a fellow hack fail to strike any cord in the hearts of African editors — who would unfailingly fulminate at the slightest human rights abuse by their own governments? Is injustice any less tolerable when it happens in a far-off land — inflicted on men and women of a different language and culture? That question was as valid three decades ago, in Njawe’s time, as it is today. And it is only partially answered in this compilation of 16 stories from victims of political intolerance and media repression. 1 Hounded: African Journalists in Exile Inside Hounded: African Journalists in Exile are illuminating accounts of writers and editors who, at one time or another, have found themselves fleeing their homeland because of some unsavoury news or comment published under their name. Stripped of the names of journalist victims and the countries they come from, the stories are depressingly similar. Whether it’s the midnight phone threats to a newspaper editor in Sani Abacha’s Nigeria or the volley of bullets fired at a news correspondent’s car in Somalia, the willingness to lock up journalists or kill them because of divergent opinion makes Africa a numbingly dangerous place for independent reporting. Power hates scrutiny. Many of those who rule us will pay any price to be rid of critical voices and the news platforms that amplify them. It’s surely tragic — as illustrated in Chapter eight — that some 27 years after Njawe’s death, a young broadcast journalist, Mimi Mefo Takambou, should find herself escaping from the same Cameroon, shaken by the death in prison of a widely admired older colleague, Samuel Wazizi. Mefo and Njawe are generations apart, but both journalists, incredibly, found themselves confronting the same object of fear: President Paul Biya. The man has been in power so long that Cameroonians aged thirty and below have known no other leader. Not even the cyclical change of occupants at State House guarantees African journalists safety and freedom in their work. Dimunitive and crusty, Tanzania’s John Magufuli could soon win the distinction of forcing into exile more news people and politicians than any of his predecessors since Julius Nyerere. He is the reason a former editor of Tanzania Daima, Ansbert Ngurumo, now lives in Europe, having escaped the country’s thought police by a whisker. Under Magufuli, news platforms have been punished for simply recording a fluctuation in the country’s currency. Because democracy dies in darkness, the fate of journalists is inextricably intertwined with that of politicians. Granted, sloppiness and 2 Right to publish must be grabbed irresponsibility on the part of media sometimes invites reprisal from government. But the fact remains that brave editors and writers present as much a threat to political rulers as opposition gadflies.Wilf Mbanga of Zimbabwe tells us why he was declared an enemy of the state for helping to set up an independent newspaper just when Robert Mugabe thought he had the former British colony in a choke-hold. Similarly, Pius Nyamora’s strident Society magazine — indifferent to libel laws and political sensitivities — cast off the equivocation of Kenya’s mainstream media under Daniel arap Moi’s one-party dictatorship and gave the nascent opposition movement a voice. Throughout Africa, the right to publish — like political power — has to be grabbed; it cannot be exercised solely on politicians’ goodwill or the strength of a Constitution. Thus, good journalism demands more than an ability to cultivate news sources and generate content. It requires courage. In this lies one of the continent’s gravest tragedies — the growing army of talented men and women driven from their homelands for thinking critically and daring to speak out. Their absence may give politicians synthetic comfort, but in reality it leaves their nations intellectually the poorer. Hounded is both a tribute and a record of history. It’s an acknowledgement of the commitment to truth and justice in little- known corners of the continent — the clattered desk of a lone blogger in Ethiopia, bustling newsroom in Burundi and the dimly-lit studio of a Lagos pirate radio — which has kept the flame of hope burning under the most stifling of political rules.