WeekendAnalysis Unpacking state

a coup had succeeded Eswatini hardly a week after the unrest had begun.

When some of us tried to point out that this was not true, the blowback was vicious from those driving this disinformation campaign together with their followers. There were many more stories to come that were just not factually correct told by those who were pushing the change agenda.

What this tells us is that the attacks on the media have come from all fronts in this country. I dare to even say that equal to the government, so are those who seek political change Eswatini just as hostile towards the media and journalists.

During that period when the uprising was gaining momentum, in my capacity as a journalist, I was invited to a radio talk show in South Africa to give my views on the political unrest here. During that interview, where I was part of a panel that included representatives from some of this country’s political groups, I made what I honestly thought was an innocuous, but very obvious comment. I said PUDEMO had hijacked this struggle for change and had made it theirs.

The response from those supporting the violence and calls for change were furious, after the Times picked up on the interview and published what I had said in their Sunday edition. I was lynched on social media, particularly Facebook. So much so that, one day, I received a call from a very senior police officer at police headquarters who told me that they had become aware that my life was in danger. He told me that they had actually dispatched a team to watch me for protection. It was a very scary time.

When the storm blew over, my comments began to die down, I approached Thulani, who was a PUDEMO man, to ask him what the farce was all about? He laughed at me and said: “Badzinwa kutsi uyasimaka”. A loose translation of this would be that I was tripping the mass democratic movement in their quest for change with my comments. I never could make sense of Thulani’s comments because that was never my intention, but had said what I considered an obvious truth to an audience outside Eswatini.

Is it, therefore, for government to take action and curtail freedom of expression when political agendas are pushed with distorted information and downright lies?

My answer is simple; No!

One of the lessons that have come out of the Eswatini experience is that freedom of expression underscores one of the most important rights mankind has in its quest towards realising the values of self-determination.

To curtail it, to punish those who use this basic human right, defeats the very purpose of mankind’s existence.

The lesson that comes out of our experience is that freedom of expression, in its full spectrum, has this incredible ability to self-correct society, so that the untruths told by those who seek to deceive the masses, be it government or those fighting for freedom will eventually be called out by the very people they seek to capture when the facts are brought to bear.

That is why I strongly disagree with the use of other means, whether through legislation or brute force to curtail freedom of expression.

Societies grow because, as has been said before, in the free market of exchange of ideas and information, people are empowered with the necessary tools to make their own choices and come to the right conclusions about their circumstances.

Nobody should have a monopoly on information; not government and not those who seek to bring about political change in society. The people are entitled to make their own choices, empowered with the full information available out there.

There is a whole lot of legislation that seeks to regulate the media environment Eswatini. However, since the advent of the Constitution in 2005, there has been an incredible increase in common law defamation lawsuits against the print media that has almost paralysed newspapers and other print publications.

Last year, in 2022, we even saw the introduction of SLAPP lawsuits phenomenon into this country’s jurisprudence in an attempted lawsuit against the publication I work for. SLAPP, for the sake of clarity, stands for Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation.

It is a relatively new worldwide form of assault on the media used by huge organisations engaged in nefarious deeds to shut down any scrutiny on their activities by the media on matters of public interest.

The challenges faced by the media Eswatini, when one looks at the cases that have gone to the High Court on defamation claims, is that the courts will most invariably rule against any publication which faces a claim by a disgruntled public official aggrieved by what has been written about him or her.

In one case, where the current Government Spokesperson, Alpheous Nxumalo, sued the Eswatini Observer for defamation, the Supreme Court made a finding that, in fact, Nxumalo had not been defamed, per se, but said he must be paid compensation anyway, simply because he had asked for it. It was a ridiculous judgment, but one that tells you a lot about the state of the media in Eswatini.

The media in Eswatini remains under siege, not just from the government, but also from the Judiciary whose attitude towards freedom of expression is frighteningly hostile.

To make this point much clearer, let me go back to Judge Mpendulo’s comments, where he found Thulani and I guilty of contempt of court to demonstrate the levels of this hostility towards the media.

Even though this was common knowledge, he stated: “I was in attendance when the said Bhantshana was remanded. It is an uncontroverted fact.

I was there in my capacity as the then Registrar of the High Court hence I was part of the coram.

This, I say without getting into the merits of that matter.”

So, what we have here is a judge, who was a witness in the subject of the articles Thulani and I wrote and were arrested for writing, without any irony, admitting in a judgment that he was a witness to the case he was presiding over and, therefore, knew more about what happened than we did.

It gets worse. The minister of Labour and Social Security at the time also did not find this judgment strange. She took a copy with her to Geneva, Switzerland to hand it to ILO officials who were questioning our imprisonment.

Clearly, neither the executive nor Judiciary saw anything wrong with a judge presiding over a case he was a witness to. Or, perhaps, because it was a trial against the media, it was just fine to relax the rules of impartiality to judicial process.