From Dar-es-salaam with glove: Battle for press freedom in Tanzania

It took US President Barrack Obama’s visit to Dar-es-salaam last July, for the outside world to get a glimpse of what is ailing the fourth estate in Tanzania, this insight was courtesy of the New York Times.

And while the local media was ‘busy’ singing the usual fan-fare praising the giant’s visit to the otherwise little known country, the international audience elsewhere got awed by some scary stuff that foreign media outlets were uncovering in the so-called ‘Haven of Peace,’ which is what the term ‘Dar-es-salaam’ means in Arabic.

Apparently journalists operating from where Obama hailed from, distanced themselves from ‘songs of praise,’ and were more interested in addressing real biting issues, including the highly threatened ‘press freedom’ in Tanzania.

The kidnapping and torturing of journalists, closure of some publications as well as threats frequently sent to media professionals was vividly touched in the New York Times analysis of Obama’s one-day tour of Tanzania’s capital city. It was until after the US front man left that the local media finally awoke from their stupor and realized that the party being over, the reality will soon bite … them.

For instance local papers came to learn that even as they were undertaking the cheerleader tasks during the US President’s visit, their reporters were being harassed by state organs, who pushed them around unceremoniously during various events.

Come October and the state, through its Tanzania Information Service (Maelezo) slammed a two-weeks’ ban to the popular Kiswahili daily ‘Mwananchi’ owned by the Nation Media Group, also sentencing a three-months hiatus to ‘Mtanzania,’ another daily run by Habari Corporation Limited both alleged to have at one time or another, printed seditious articles.

Mwananchi has completed its banning period but Habari Corporation fearing that they will be out of the media game by the time ‘Mtanzania’ resumes print next December, it pulled its weekly tabloid ‘Rai’ from shelves converting the publication into a daily, a move which initially attracted protest from Maelezo before the state organ eventually gave up.

The country which boasts the oldest newspaper in East Africa (the state-owned Daily News was established in 1932 then running as ‘Tanganyika Standard), Tanzania does not seem to have learned much from its nearly 80 years of being in the media industry.

But for the entire three decades of the country’s 52 years of independence, essentially more than half the period, Tanzania used to rely on the state-owned media outlets namely the Government Newspaper, Daily News, the ruling party controlled Kiswahili tabloid ‘Uhuru,’ and the public ‘Radio Tanzania.’

Ushering into Multi-party democracy in 1992 meant Tanzania was expected to allow private media outlets and having started with a number of on-and-off tabloids, the private publications took onto serious note circa 1994 when even the mainland’s first TV station went on air.

Private media apparently caught the country and its government unawares and when papers like ‘Mwanahalisi’ which got permanent ban early this year, started scooping things out, outspoken reporters, journalists and their respective outlets found themselves on the cross, bleeding with others, like the former Channel Ten’s TV reporter of Iringa, Daudi Mwangosi, bombed to shreds.

Since the state also used to control the once, ‘one-and-only’ journalism training outfit, the ‘Tanzania School of Journalism,’ whose outputs previously shaped to simply serve the government owned outlets, rationality or deep analysis reporting never got encouraged.

Old writers who happen to be products of yester-year’s media platform in Tanzania still form the basis of most newspapers, radio and television stations in the country and their ‘modus operandi’ includes operating in a sense of denial, discouraging creativity and clinging to political leaders or business people for favors.

Speaking of ‘business people’ these are usually the owners of a number of private media houses and many would rather use them as ‘ego nurturing’ set ups, business promoting ventures and occasionally using them to hit out at their opponents.

Fearing responsibilities, media owners have been using stringers to feed their outlets with news, most of the times these contributors earn peanuts but majority are paid nothing.

Still a number of paid and unpaid writers result to soliciting cash, car rides and other favors from sources, thus compromising the profession even further. The fact that the government has been pulling a number of journalists from their desks, giving them plum jobs like District and Regional leadership hasn’t been helping the profession either.

A number of senior journalists and even young upcoming ones have been jostling each other to get the attention of leaders, hoping to be remembered in future posts. These struggles for power has kicked the media industry in Tanzania back to the stone-age era of just 'surviving!'