THINKING ALOUD: Clamping down on media will tarnish Magufuli’s legacy

What you need to know:

President John Magufuli is striving hard to keep the people of Tanzania together and genuinely alleviate poverty.

It takes a man with a vision to lead a country during its bad times. President John Magufuli is striving hard to keep the people of Tanzania together and genuinely alleviate poverty.

People from neighbouring countries are talking about exporting his leadership style across Africa (“Magufulification” of Africa). He has amply shown by deeds what he promised to do during in the run-up to the 2015 elections. He is closely following the party manifesto and people can see tangible results.

Improving peoples’ lives and reducing poverty are processes that take time. What we see are genuine efforts by his government to deal with poverty in a systematic manner. There are indeed major hurdles and challenges, but the government is taking logical and rational steps to overcome these barriers.

History is being rewritten and perhaps after his term he will leave a legacy and be remembered as one of the great leaders just like Nyerere and Mandela. But I don’t want to see his legacy tainted as being authoritarian, and Dr Magufuli should therefore reconsider his standpoint on freedom of expression.

Freedom of expression is a very sensitive issue and needs to be very carefully balanced. Media stakeholders and the government need a lot of humility and mature debate to strike a balance. With all the good and progressive things being done and worldwide praise that the President is getting, he should delicately balance this issue and not risk tarnishing his image. It would be disheartening and perhaps also unfair if the label of authoritarian governance is recorded in history.

The 2017 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reflects a world in which attacks on the media have become commonplace and strongmen are on the rise. Tanzania is ranked 83rd, down 12 places, and this is a significant fall. It is alleged in the report that this fall is due to President Magufuli’s clampdown on the media.

Two decades ago, Nelson Mandela declared that a free press was the only thing that “can temper the appetite of any government to amass power at the expense of the citizen.” Mandela’s words would be tested when his government faced criticism from the press, but he resisted the temptation to silence it. His conduct was a model for African press freedom. The same cannot be said of the current South African leadership.

Way back in 1787, Thomas Jefferson once wrote that a free press is one of the keys to a functioning democracy. As Jefferson once put it, “…free press is not primarily about freedom of expression, it is about maintaining the proper basis of a government’.

“The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

“The purpose of a ‘free press’, in other words, was not simply for the press to report whatever they felt like. The free press was only free if they reported news and events in such a way that their work guaranteed that the opinion of the people would remain the basis of our government. The media needs to work a certain way or our government cannot function, cannot work, and cannot do its job. A free press is not a privilege of the individual, but an ‘organic necessity’ of democracy itself. Without constructive criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern. For there is no adequate way in which it can keep itself informed about what the people of the country are thinking and doing and wanting.

“These freedoms of expression, of course, aren’t absolute. In other words, to state the obvious, we’re all free within limits.”

Freedom of expression has its limits and common sense has to be applied. No country in the world can have absolute freedom of expression because inadvertently absolute freedom means infringing on other peoples rights and privileges, which is not acceptable.

In the long run, it will tarnish the image of the government if it continues to ban newspapers and put restrictions on what should be reported. Instead an educative process to inculcate responsible reporting is a much better and sustainable way to resolve these issues, confrontation will just enhance the sticky tag of authoritarian, totalitarian and intolerance unnecessarily. As Napoléon put it “one hostile newspapers is more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.”