A promise is a credit, Mr. Attorney General
Tuesday this week, was another dark day for media freedom, freedom of expression, freedom of opinion and right to privacy in Malawi. The sad development came with the arrest of Gregory Gondwe, managing director for Platform for Investigative Journalism (PIJ) and confiscation of his gadgets.
Before I get to the substantive part of this entry, let me mention that since Wednesday I have not stopped laughing at the brazen contradictions by and confusion among our men in uniform at Area 30. One James Kadadzera, the spokesperson for the Malawi Police Service, had the impudence of lying to the nation in a statement on Tuesday that the South West Region Police headquarters did not arrest Gregory but only “invited” him for an interview on ongoing investigations police are conducting regarding an online news story published by PIJ and other related issues.
My word! Kadazera should have drilled his fellow cops on the ground better about what to say and what not to say during the operation to arrest Gregory. Long before Kadadzera spewed out his lies to the nation, superintendent Kamisa, in the presence of detective Maria Nyondo, had already cautioned Gregory that he was under arrest and that anything he would say would be used against him in the court of law. The crew which arrested Gregory told him they had come to confiscate his electronic gadgets such as laptops, phones and computers, and to ask him to disclose to them who his source(s) were that facilitated the publication of a story.
Now that everything has been laid bare, Kadadzera should tell the nation what Kamisa’s statement to Gregory meant other than being an official announcement to him that he had been arrested. Where is the courtesy and politeness in saying you are inviting someone to the police station but meanwhile you will confiscate all his electronic communication gadgets? Is that an invitation? It is what happens when you are blindly following instructions and mechanically parroting things supposedly dictated to you from a higher mortal. This is a case of spinning gone awry.
Whether or not it is a mere coincidence that Attorney General Thabo Chakaka-Nyirenda had earlier also asked Gregory to disclose his sources about the story, is for everyone to make their own conclusion. The bold message in all this is the double-face posturing of government, which, using archaic statutes, is touting itself as championing freedom of expression, media freedom, freedom of opinion and right to privacy while it is continuing to trample on them with wanton abandon.
The core business of the media is to inform, educate and entertain. Through informing and educating, the fourth estate provides the necessary checks and balances to the three arms of government. The media’s raw material is information which it gets from sources. These sources are sacred and must be protected at all costs. But when law enforcers use unorthodox methods to pounce on and extract information from the media through, among other things, confiscation of their gadgets, they are basically strangulating the media. In the long run, no sources will be willing to give information to the media knowing very well the police can get at them. That is how bad the archaic laws on our statute books are.
The last time we had government using such bad laws was during the Bingu administration. To silence the media Bingu stopped at nothing. He amended laws to limit freedom of expression. Bingu would ruthlessly unleash government agencies to pounce on those media houses that owed government any amount of money. The Bingu administration would cut government advertising to critical media houses so as to financially suffocate them. The Tonse Alliance government would do well to desist from treading any path that cripples the media. It already has myriad problems on its hands to deal with and alienating the media will only aggravate them.
It is against this background that I give the Attorney General the benefit of doubt regarding his promise to Misa-Malawi this week to repeal harsh laws that are in dissonance with government’s claim to promoting media freedom, freedom of expression, freedom of opinion and right to privacy. And so trust me in the not-distant future, we will be back here to remind him about what he will have done to strike off these bad laws from our statute books.
