Botswana

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is troubled by your government's recent expulsion of Rodrick Mukumbira, a Zimbabwean national who had been working as a journalist in Botswana since 2002. Local press freedom groups have expressed concern that the expulsion may be linked to his work.

Although the Kenya-based East African Standard, one of Africa's oldest continuously published newspapers, marked its 100th anniversary in November, journalism remains a difficult profession on the continent, with adverse government policies and multifaceted economic woes still undermining the full development of African media....

Though journalists and human rights observers generally consider the independent press in Botswana free, the government proved in 2002 that it is unwilling to tolerate negative coverage from state media....

Hopes were high in July that Ivory Coast's political crisis would end after a judge in the capital, Abidjan, confirmed that former prime minister Alassane Dramane Ouattara, the leader of the opposition Rally for Republicans (RDR), is an Ivory Coast citizen....

Silence reigned supreme in Eritrea, where the entire independent press was under a government ban and 11 journalists languished in jail at year's end. Clamorous, deadly power struggles raged in Zimbabwe over land and access to information, and in Burundi over ethnicity and control of state resources. South Africa, Senegal,...

Botswana is generally considered a model of peace and stability in southern Africa, and its press, though relatively small, is vibrant and outspoken. Relations between the government and the press were strained this past year, however, as officials tried to influence editorial policy and cooperated less with independent journalists....