On June 14, 2020, an alleged member of an Eswatini opposition group sent threatening text messages to Welcome Dlamini, an assistant weekend editor of the privately owned newspaper The Times of Eswatini, over a column he had published in support of the country’s government, according to the journalist, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app,…
In the early morning of February 25, 2020, police in the Manzini region of Swaziland raided the home of Zweli Martin Dlamini, the editor of the privately owned news website Swaziland News, and arrested him, according to media reports and the journalist, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.
New York, April 30, 2020 — Swaziland police should stop intimidating and harassing local journalists for reporting critically about King Mswati III and should allow them to write freely without the threat of treason charges, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
CPJ writes to the executive secretary and heads of state of the Southern African Development Community ahead of the 39th Ordinary Summit, urging them to prioritize press freedom and the safety of journalists in SADC.
Security staff detained two Times of Swaziland journalists for more than an hour at the Qatar Embassy in Swaziland’s capital, Mbabane, on October 5, 2018, according to a statement by the local chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA). The journalists were detained after a senior diplomat tried to make them sign a…
New York, June 30, 2015–The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes today’s decision by the Swaziland Supreme Court to release from prison Bheki Makhubu, the editor of The Nation, who has been in jail since March 2014 along with human rights lawyer Thulani Maseko, after the crown prosecution said it would not defend an appeal against…
Nelson Mandela regularly harangued the media once he’d been freed after 27 years of imprisonment by South Africa’s apartheid government. He would call individual journalists when he liked or disliked something they had written or when he wanted to advance a political lobby.
More than 200 journalists are imprisoned for their work for the third consecutive year, reflecting a global surge in authoritarianism. China is the world’s worst jailer of journalists in 2014. A CPJ special report by Shazdeh Omari
Top African and U.S. leaders are meeting next week in Washington in a first-of-its-kind summit focused on African development. But critics argue the summit is flawed in design, overlooking human rights such as freedom of expression and barring civil society actors from bilateral discussions.
Cape Town, July 25, 2014–CPJ is appalled by the two-year prison sentence, without the option of a fine, imposed today on editor of The Nation Bheki Makhubu and human rights lawyer Thulani Maseko by the Swaziland High Court in Mbabane. The pair was convicted on contempt of court charges on July 17, in connection with…