Truthtelling banned as opposition, police slouch towards a catastrophic encounter

Very often have I wondered why our governments still have someone called minister for/of information. Why do we need such a minister, complete with staff, buildings, vehicles, salaries, allowances and other paraphernalia?

I have also been trying to find out whether these characters exist in developed democracies. I have found out that they disappeared a long time ago. So why do we still keep these dinosaurs in our governance systems?

I remember there used to be countries where the minister for information was also given the added style of minister for national guidance – under Gamal Abdel Nasser’s government in Egypt, for instance, plus a couple of others.

The style “national guidance” would seem to explain this oddity. It would appear as if our citizens need to be guided in what they should read, listen to or watch.

Without such guidance, the argument would go on to say, the citizens would not know what to believe and how to behave. Whence the importance of having a full-fledged minister to inform and guide the whole nation.

In essence, there is an underlying assumption that our citizens are minors who are likely to bring harm onto themselves (and onto others too) unless they are kept on a short leash by someone who knows better than themselves and who can make the right choices for them.

Which is, of course, a lot of hogwash. Many a time the person chosen to perform that strange function looks and sounds like they could do with a little guidance themselves, if you see what I mean. In which case it is the height of absurdity that they should be the ones to presume to be guiding anyone at all.

Lest we get the idea that whatever scribes do is sacrosanct, I agree that there is much left to be desired in the way our media outlets present their news, features and commentaries. We are too often forced to deal with misrepresentations, falsehoods, conjecture and, sometimes, honestly, dangerous levels of a willingness to cause trouble. You may also add the unacceptable levels of illiteracy displayed by some of us in the trade.

But that hardly justifies the idea that some bureaucrat, ensconced in his office with another bureaucrat or two, should have the ability to be arbiter of what is right and what is wrong.
As it is, we already have draconian laws on our statute books designed to rein in what is thought of as errant journalism. These laws continue to even criminalise libel, which should belong in the realm of civil litigation.

A quarter of a century ago, a wise chief justice cited 40 pieces of legislation he called “repressive” and called for their repeal. Despite oft-repeated reminders of the sagacity of that proposal by that eminent jurist, now sadly deceased, the government has given only short shrift to the quest.

Only this past week, another newspaper was banned for three years for publishing “falsehoods.” Three years without any court case, without any transparent process, and the sole arbiter is again our beloved bureaucrat.

This at a time when the government is locked in grim combat with the main opposition parties over the right to hold political rallies, which the government wants to curtail severely, saying the time for politicking is over and people should go back to work while rallies should only be held in local areas by people who were elected there. President John Pombe Magufuli has himself publicly supported this stance.

A firebrand lawyer for the opposition has vowed they will continue to defy the diktat of the president, whom he has dubbed a “petty dictator,” attracting police-cell time and court cases for his trouble, but he continues unbending.

The opposition has set November 1 for the launch of what they call Ukuta, a Kiswahili acronym for “Alliance for Combating Dictatorship in Tanzania.” The police have been saying, “Over our dead bodies.” The two sides seem to be hurtling towards a catastrophic encounter unless some wise counsel prevails at some stage between now and then.

For the time being people are talking at each other, against each other, past each other, over each other… everything except to each other.

Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: [email protected]