At the Crossroads Freedom of Expression in Malawi The Final Report of the 1999 ARTICLE 19 Malawi Election Media Monitoring Project March 2000 At the Crossroads Freedom of Expression in Malawi The Final Report of the 1999 ARTICLE 19 Malawi Election Media Monitoring Project ARTICLE 19 International Centre Against Censorship March 2000 © ARTICLE 19 ISBN 1-902598-18-0 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This report was written by Dr Diana Cammack, Project Coordinator of the Malawi Media Monitoring Project. The project ran between February and June 1999 and was managed by Robert Jamieson. This report was edited by Richard Carver, Senior Consultant to ARTICLE 19. The report was copy-edited and designed by Liz Schofield, with assistance from Rotimi Sankore. ARTICLE 19 is grateful to those organizations that provided financial support for the monitoring project and the publication of this report: the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, the European Commission, the Malawi / German Programme for Democracy and Decentralisation (MGPDD/GTZ) and the Inter-ministerial Committee for Human Rights and Democracy (GOM/UNDP). ii At the Crossroads: Freedom of Expression in Malawi 1 MEDIA FREEDOM IN THE NEW MALAWI “The UDF have had no censorship anywhere; it is a real friend of the press”. Sam Mpasu, Minister of Information, 1999 Until the end of the single-party era in 1994 Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda and his Malawi Congress Party (MCP) maintained control partly by imposing on the nation and its people a culture of silence.1 People were afraid to speak against the government and censored themselves in word and deed. A single government-owned radio station pumped out only what the President wanted people to hear. A monolithic newspaper publishing house was run by and for the party’s leadership. Censorship laws were used to protect the nation from subversive ideas (such as those found in George Orwell’s Animal Farm or Simon and Garfunkel’s song Cecilia). Poets and other free thinkers who dared to write and speak aloud were imprisoned or murdered. The transition to multi-party democracy in Malawi was relatively short and peaceful, pushed as it was by the larger transformation under way in South Africa, the end of the Cold War and the aid donors’ determination to implement economic reforms. The underlying and deepening impoverishment of the country, brought on by high birth rates and land pressure, lack of capital, low levels of technology, illiteracy and ill-health, ecological distress, as well as state-sanctioned resource transfers to the urban elite, certainly created disaffection that in some areas was channelled and used by others. These forces, in concert with the churches and a middle-class multi-party movement, spearheaded what Wiseman Chirwa has called “a transition without transformation”, leaving much of the reform agenda undone. For instance, although a new Constitution was written, many of its progressive human rights provisions have not even been legislated let alone enforced. Also, it is widely recognized that local government elections are essential to complete the transformation, yet for years they have been postponed. Although the paramilitary Malawi Young Pioneers (MYP) were disbanded, they were not replaced by a well-equipped or trained force that can guarantee law and order for villagers who now feel more vulnerable and insecure than before.2 But of particular interest to 1 Africa Watch, Where Silence Rules: The Suppression of Dissent in Malawi (New York: Africa Watch, Oct. 1990). 2 International Organization for Development (UK), Primary Safety, Security and Access to Justice Systems in Rural Malawi: Draft Report of Research Findings (International Organization for Development, 29 April 1999). 1 At the Crossroads: Freedom of Expression in Malawi ARTICLE 19 has been the progress, and lack of it, made in the fields of free expression and media reform since the transition to democracy.3 1.1 New Media For years the MCP government had resisted the introduction of television. The United Democratic Front (UDF) came into power promising television by early 1996, and it turned the nation’s resources to the task – initially the Malawi Post and Telecommunications Corporation (MPTC) in partnership with TV3 Malaysia and later the Malawi Development Corporation (MDC).4 The idea of Television Malawi (TVM) was born, though it did not reach fruition until April 1999, at the height of the election campaign, when it began beaming signals to Blantyre and Lilongwe. Also soon after the 1994 elections, the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) decided to establish Radio 2 – an FM service that will initially cover the main urban centres. These two projects were dependent to a large extent on donor funding, but this was slow in coming because the government dragged its feet on passing a new MBC Act. Such an Act was widely recognized as essential to freedom of expression; indeed, it had been championed by multi-party advocates, including the UDF, before they came to power and gained control of the relatively powerful government- controlled media. A new Act was needed to stop any Minister of Information (and through him any President) from interfering in editorial policy and programming at Malawi Broadcasting Corporation and TV Malawi. The old MBC Act gave the Minister direct access to all government media, and the donors were reluctant to give funds to either MBC or TVM without its repeal. Therefore the belated passage (gazetted on 31 December 1998) of the Communications Act, which encompassed reform of MBC, was a milestone. This act created the Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA), which will, when fully operational, oversee the regulation of the postal service, telecommunications (fixed and mobile), broadcasting, frequency allocation, internet service provision, communications policy and licensing. And although Part IX of the Act (on MBC) was changed by politicians after the draft left the Law Commissioner’s office, it still emerged from Cabinet and Parliament with sufficient provisions to ensure MBC’s and TVM’s editorial independence – balanced programming, fair and equal news coverage, access by all parties, diverse ideas and opinions, critical analysis and investigative reporting. Since 1994 the MPTC (as a regulator) has granted only two licences for private commercial radio broadcasting – one to the President’s press officer 3 For background information on media reform and communications see ARTICLE 19, Malawi: Communications Reform and Freedom of Expression (London: ARTICLE 19, Oct. 1998). 4 For financial aspects of the MPTC–TV3 partnership, see the Independent, 19 July 1996 and the Weekend Nation, 16–17 May 1998. 2 At the Crossroads: Freedom of Expression in Malawi (Alauddin Osman) and the other to Oscar Thomson, son of Minister Harry Thomson. None of the many other applicants has been granted permission to operate, except for a local women’s group, which gained UNESCO’s support to start a community radio station at Mangochi. Even so the women have had to fight turf wars (against the Ministry of Education through the local UNESCO office) to retain control of their station and its resources.5 The UDF government also decided in 1994 to start a government newspaper, the Weekly News, in order to present positive news about its activities to counter what it saw as negative stories by the opposition press, and according to the then Information Minister, Brown Mpinganjira, “to present news in a non-partisan manner”.6 The newspaper has struggled ever since, now printing about 2,000 copies per issue but selling far fewer than that. When not disseminating news about President Muluzi and various UDF politicians and functionaries, it prints local stories written by reporters based in the districts who work for MANA (the government’s news agency) and foreign stories disseminated free of charge by the Chinese news agency, Xinhua. The Weekly News’ distribution system is poor, and the paper is often unavailable even in Lilongwe, the capital city, and rarely reaches the rural areas where 85 per cent of the population lives. It is in a precarious financial state, hiring only part-time reporters and owing millions of Kwacha in back payments to its printer. Nonetheless, it is not forced to close down because, unlike the private media, it is kept afloat by taxpayers. There have been at least 50 newspapers started since the early 1990s, although most only published a few issues and closed. The reasons are not hard to find: many were poorly written and printed and did not sell, some were sued for defamation and closed when they lost their lawsuits, some could not find sufficient advertising, and many were short of capital and could not manage as the cost of wages and inputs rose.7 Currently there are two dailies (the Nation and the Daily Times), three weekend papers (Weekend Nation, Weekend Mirror, and Malawi News) and a handful of other papers that appear periodically. Most of the regular newspapers as well as those that emerged before the 1999 elections are owned by politicians or their 5 Interviews with Janet Karim and Stella Mhura, 10 and 11 March 1999. In March 1999 the regional UNESCO office assured the women that they would be able to continue running the project, and threatened to withdraw all funding if the government insisted on taking over the project, and to give it to another broadcaster in southern Africa. 6 Weekly Chronicle, 24–30 June 1994 and Independent, 23–29 Aug. 1994, in which one senior editor at MANA explained that “the government has the right to be heard”. For a discussion of the paper see ARTICLE 19, “Malawi: Freedom of Expression and the Government Newspaper”, Censorship News, Issue 46 (London: ARTICLE 19, Dec. 1996). 7 For a discussion of the financial constraints on publishing see M Hall with M Ham, “Economics of Press Freedom and Media Development in Malawi”, Media for Democracy in Malawi: Report of a conference convened by the International Federation of Journalists, Blantyre, 17–19 Aug.