Pretoria - Failure by journalists to show solidarity with media practitioners suffering at the hands of oppressive regimes elsewhere in the world came under the spotlight during the 12th Percy Qoboza memorial lecture at Unisa’s Muckleneuk campus yesterday.
Professor Onkgopotse JJ Tabane, who delivered the lecture, bemoaned the fact that journalists across the world were under attack by repressive governments.
The theme of the lecture was “Media freedom in light of the 2022 World Freedom Index which points to worrying signs for freedom of expression in southern Africa, with several countries recording sharp declines”.
The memorial lecture marked the 45th anniversary of Black Wednesday – a commemoration of October 19, 1977, when the apartheid government banned The World, Weekend World and other publications.
The lecture also honoured Percy Qoboza, editor of The World and later of City Press.
Tabane, who is an anchor at eNCA, shared statistics showing that journalists continued to be jailed around the world for doing their work.
He said that according to an American non-governmental organisation called the Committee to Protect Journalists, 293 journalists were imprisoned in 37 countries as at December 1, 2021. He questioned the lack of campaigns demanding that journalists be freed.
“What would possibly be the use of the next memorial lecture of this nature if we don’t use today’s lecture to launch a spirited campaign to get our colleagues freed from these world jails?” Tabane asked.
He called on the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef), the National Press Club and Unisa to create a new nucleus in the name of Percy Qoboza to make it difficult for regimes around the world to take away the hard-won freedom of the media.
Tabane hailed Qoboza as a legendary editor par excellence and a fiercely independent media practitioner.
He highlighted some of the challenges facing the media, including a toxic working environment and the interference in journalists’ work by politicians, businesspeople and owners of the newsroom.
He added that sexual harassment in media houses, the juniorisation of newsrooms and “brown envelope journalism” were among the things that gave journalism a bad name.
Zimbabwean journalist Hopewell Chin’ono, one of the panellists, echoed the call for the media fraternity to show solidarity with their colleagues working under repressive regimes.
“I have been a victim of the state in terms of how I have done my work as an investigative journalist,” he said.
He said issues affecting journalists like himself who had been arrested were “very important, especially in terms of solidarity”.
“It is very important for SA journalists to understand that the same kind of solidarity that they got when they were being persecuted by apartheid is the same kind of solidarity that we also expect from them,” he said.
Chin’ono said if there was international outrage the Zimbabwean government would think twice before it threw journalists in jail.
Botswana journalist Boinelo Hardy recounted her experience in her country where in the past “a good number of journalists were arrested”.
She said some journalists had their phones tapped and a lot of media houses lost their income as the government cut advertising.
“In Botswana you can have the freedom of speech but your economic freedom cannot be guaranteed afterwards, meaning that it’s very easy … for the government to pinch you where it hurts, and that’s the pocket.
“We have seen that happen to veteran journalists who have come back to apologise to the government so that they can be able to have their livelihood,” Hardy said.
Pretoria News