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Can Africa Sustain a Free Press?
| Article
# : |
10572 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1986 |
3,831 Words |
| Author
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David Yeats-Thomas
David Yeats-Thomas has covered Africa extensively in his
career as a journalist and editor for publications in South
Africa and Europe. |
There is a malaise on the African continent that has infected virtually every nation regardless of race, creed, or ideology: a chronic intolerance of an independent and critical press.
The rationale for this universal contempt for free expression is shrouded in a variety of obscure rhetoric. Whatever it is called, a ruthless control of the press has become as African as coups, military dictatorships, drought, and famine.
Thus, the international uproar kicked up by South Africa's latest restrictions on reporters' movements was surprising. Like it or not, South Africa, despite the hue of its government, is part of the African continent.
In any case, it would be a contradiction for a police/fascist state, as South Africa is reputed to be, to have a free press, however limited. The South African government should be excused if it is bewildered by all the fuss and contraction.
'Catalyst to Violence'
This is not to say that the subcontinent's white rulers are not themselves past masters of obfuscation. The angry reaction of the western press to the November crackdown on reporting in South African's violence-torn areas was further aggravated by Pretoria's usual evasions. The government's main concern was with, in the words of Law and Order Minister Louis le Grange, "the presence of television and other camera crews in unrest situations which proved to be a catalyst to further
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