Khama legacy: Part IV
Siki Motshwari Johannes | Friday April 21, 2017 18:00
By design or accident, President Ian Khama’s ascendance to power coincided with the promulgation of the ill-fated Media Practitioners Act, No. 29 0f 2008.
The official position was that the law was intended, among other things, to enforce a code of conduct for media practitioners and enhance self-regulation.
Khama’s critics did not buy this official version and saw the law as a clear statement of intent by the new administration to assault democracy and curtail media freedom. The media practitioners were subsequently to wage a spirited fight to frustrate implementation of the law.
Their efforts were not in vain. And as fate would have it, the law did not see the light of day.
Minus the Media Practitioners law, Khama and his government have had several skirmishes with the private media. This has created a serious state of mutual mistrust between the Executive and the Fourth Estate. His loathing for the private media is well documented.
There is no doubt that in a set-up like Botswana, democracy becomes a casualty if the private press is denied the requisite free space to practice what they know best.
It may have not yet reached a stage where the Government has taken over the newsrooms, but there are serious encroachments that have sent chills down the spines of scribes, which have been reported.
There is fear that if the media space can incessantly be polluted and interfered with the watchdog role of making its leaders account, then the nation can simply go to the dogs.
Any sign of pollution to our democracy can reduce this nation to nothing especially that Botswana shares borders with some of its neighbours where the media space is badly polluted.
Khama’s abhorrence for the private media can be traceable to his military days and lately, his reluctance to hold press conferences to articulate his Government’s agenda for development.
Khama blames his alleged ‘inaccessibility’ to the way the media deals with officers at the Office of the President (OP). He however, gathers solace from the fact that he has had interactions with the media in Mahalapye and Tlokweng on BDP business previously.
This is not enough for a man who has spent 10 years at the OP as the Vice President and now working for another decade up to April 1, 2018 at the helm of both party and Government.
In a democratic dispensation like Botswana, the private media in particular plays a crucial role of making leaders account for their actions.
A passive media that dances to the tune of the leaders can only help mould dictators and breed chaos and lawlessness. In most cases, the Botswana media seems to continue living to its expectations, albeit with challenges. The independent media is private, robust and critical of the sitting government.
A plot to sabotage the private media by starving it of advertising mainly because it was critical of Government and the ruling party was leaked and given wider coverage across the pluralistic media.
Worriedly, Mokgweetsi Masisi who was a state Minister before he ascended to the Vice Presidency, led the onslaught.
True to this threat, the private media continues to cry foul that the government has drastically cut on its advertising expenditure as a strategy to whip the media to order. Advertising is the backbone of the media industry.
There is criticism from some quarters that instead of simply playing its role efficiently and effectively, in most cases the private media has deliberately chosen to play the man - Khama.
Instead of playing the critical role of information dissemination, the media is accused of targeting Khama with its microphones, pens and cameras, victimising him in the process.
There is a hue and cry from the OP and some sections of the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) that the private media has chosen to play an adversarial role against Khama instead of its traditional role of informing the nation.
“The very negative attitude towards Khama as a person and administrator is destructive and divisive. Khama views himself as a nation builder and does not want to dwell on negativity,” an officer at the OP had said in defence of Khama in a previous interview. He preferred to remain anonymous.
He holds a strong view that his principal does not hate the media but abhors its negativity.
From his military days, Khama holds a reputation of being always surrounded by positive people and shuns persons that thrive on negativity.
The President has always doubted the private media’s commitment to upholding its ethics and respecting fair and transparent coverage.
In Khama’s view, there seems to be a very thin line between accountability and personal hatred. He seems to read malice from the media to the extent that he classifies simple calls for accountability as personal hatred.
Khama leaves a worrying legacy across the country’s newsrooms, especially in the private media. He will always be remembered as a President who abhorred the local private media apparently, for its biasness and harshness on him, his party and Government.
During the elections year of 2014, a Sunday Standard senior reporter fled to neighbouring South Africa in fear of being arrested.
He is wanted by the security agents on sedition charges following a story he authored claiming that Khama was involved in a car accident that was personally driven by him.
Sunday Standard, editor and publisher, Outsa Mokone was arrested and charged with sedition. Freelance journalist, Sonny Serite was also arrested and charged by the seemingly paranoid Government for allegedly stealing a file from the OP and would later be set free in the absence of incriminating evidence.
The latest incident relates to a Mosu arrest where three investigative journalists, Joel Konopo, Ntibinyane Ntibinyane and Kaombona Kanani were arrested by the Directorate of Intelligence Services (DIS) sleuths in line of duty. The trio was investigating damaging allegations about President Khama’s rural residence in Mosu otherwise dubbed ‘Nkandla’. They were reportedly blocked by security agents and warned that they will be shot if they came the same way again.
Political commentators believe that Khama does not want accountability and as such any institution that calls him to account will certainly rub him the wrong way.
Perhaps, because of his military background, Khama has a penchant for not taking accounting bodies seriously.
Khama’s attitude towards the media is generally entrenched in his thinking and socialisation, as he does not want to be held accountable, especially publicly.
It is worrying that as Khama prepares to exit the highest office in the land, in his deputy, Masisi, he has simply ‘replicated’ himself in so far as dealing with the private media is concerned. The duo is like-minded and bears striking similarities and characters.
Masisi is set to maintain the status quo or worse, unless his handlers can remove his fingers from the private media.