OPPOSITION LEADERS CONTINUED TO CHALLENGE THE JUNE 1999 ELECTION results, which saw President Bakili Muluzi elected to a second five-year term. The opposition’s claims of election fraud were bolstered in March, when the British anticensorship group ARTICLE 19 released a report claiming that the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) had set up two disinformation teams…
ALTHOUGH MOZAMBIQUE IS NOT KNOWN FOR VICIOUS ATTACKS on press freedom, the cold-blooded execution of editor Carlos Cardoso on November 22 came as no surprise to his colleagues and friends. Cardoso was known for his open criticism of political leaders. Shortly before his death, Cardoso’s fax newsletter, Metical, aggressively covered financial scandals, anti-government demonstrations, and…
NAMIBIA, REGARDED AS A MODEL OF DEMOCRACY, peace, and stability in southern Africa over the past decade, celebrated its 10th anniversary of independence last year, along with the inauguration of President Sam Nujoma to an unprecedented third term in office. The celebrations were marred, however, by the country’s involvement in several armed conflicts and by…
NIGER JOURNALISTS WORKED IN RELATIVE CALM during President Mamadou Tandja’s first year in office. After Tandja’s electoral victory in December 1999, a semblance of democratic government returned and flows of much-needed foreign aid resumed. Meanwhile, prospects for independent journalism seemed bright in May, when the country’s media ombudsman praised “the good health” of the press…
PRESIDENT OLUSEGUN OBASANJO HAS REPEATEDLY PRAISED NIGERIAN JOURNALISTS for their role in bringing down successive military dictators, but Nigeria’s return to democracy has not relieved journalists of legal restrictions or of the hostility they face from the political class. Like much of the country, the press was caught up in an often-turbulent national debate last…
IN LATE 1999, THE MAIN PARTIES TO THE INTERMITTENT ETHNIC CIVIL WAR in this oil-rich country signed peace agreements that seemed reasonably durable at the end of 2000. Yet President Denis Sassou-Nguesso’s government, which is largely controlled by the northern Mbochi tribe, continued to repress political dissent. The Fundamental Act of 1997, which replaced a…
WHEN FORMER VICE PRESIDENT PAUL KAGAME WAS ELECTED PRESIDENT in April, he berated local reporters for exaggerating Rwanda’s problems. Nevertheless, there were plenty of genuine problems for the country’s media to report. In neighboring Tanzania, meanwhile, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was coming to grips with the 1994 slaughter of nearly a million…
SIERRA LEONE REMAINS THE MOST DANGEROUS COUNTRY IN AFRICA for journalists. In 2000, Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels killed three reporters, bringing to 15 the total number of journalists killed in the war-plagued West African nation since 1997. The RUF alone is responsible for 13 of those deaths. On May 3, World Press Freedom Day,…
WITH NO FUNCTIONING CENTRAL GOVERNMENT IN RECENT YEARS, Somalia remains fractured into rival fiefdoms controlled by warlords. Threats to local journalists have been correspondingly decentralized. In the last months of 2000, however, newly-elected president Abdiqasim Salad Hassan and a new transitional legislature tried with some success to assert central authority. (Both Hassan and the legislature…
A LONG-AWAITED REPORT ON MEDIA AND RACISM IN POST-APARTHEID South Africa was issued in August, to the relief of many who had feared it might erode constitutional protections for press freedom. Titled Faultlines, the report of the quasi-independent South African Human Rights Commission (HRC) was the end result of an investigation announced in late 1998,…