Media reform, advocacy, what is at stake in Botswana
Thomas Nkhoma | Tuesday January 27, 2026 08:28
I would like to begin by thanking Spencer Mogapi for raising concerns about the state of the media in Botswana. His intervention, published in Mmegi of 16 January 2025 under the headline ‘The Media should demonstrate it knows what is at stake’, speaks to anxieties many journalists quietly share. He argues that Botswana is undergoing a tumultuous transformation, one marked by uncertainty, and that the media’s response to this moment has lacked clarity. That is a fair concern, and it deserves engagement rather than dismissal.
Where I part ways with Mogapi, however, is not on whether the media faces an existential moment. It certainly does, but we part on his reading of how media institutions, particularly MISA Botswana and Botswana Editors Forum (BEF), have responded to it. His argument suggests detachment, acquiescence, and missed opportunities. The record, when examined closely, tells a different story.
Mogapi contends that amid uncertainty, the media appears to be operating under an informal pact to placate those in power. If such a pact existed, he argues, it would amount to naivety. Yet this framing collapses complexity into suspicion. Engagement with power, especially in democratic societies, is not the same as submission. Advocacy does not always announce itself through confrontation. Often it unfolds through persistence, strategy, and institutional memory.
To appreciate this, context matters. Media freedom advocacy in Botswana did not begin in response to President Duma Boko’s recent remarks, nor does it rise or fall on a single rebuttal. It is part of a long struggle that stretches back to 1992, when the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) was formed following the Windhoek Declaration on Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press. That declaration, now globally recognised and commemorated annually as World Press Freedom Day, laid the normative foundation for media freedom across the continent. Botswana was not a spectator in that moment. Media practitioners such as Methaetsile Leepile and Modise Maphanyane were instrumental in shaping and anchoring those ideals locally and regionally.
Since then, MISA Botswana, working closely with BEF and other stakeholders, has consistently advocated for a freer, more professional, and more sustainable media environment. The struggle has never been linear. It has involved resistance, reversals, and incremental gains, often achieved through quiet negotiation rather than dramatic standoffs.
When the previous Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) government introduced the Media Practitioners Act of 2008, it was MISA Botswana and its partners that publicly opposed the law, describing it, correctly, as draconian and an albatross around the neck of journalists. That opposition was sustained and principled. For years, MISA Botswana argued that the Act undermined self-regulation and placed excessive control of the profession in the hands of the State.
When the current MISA Botswana committee assumed office in January 2023, one of its explicit commitments was to continue advocating for the repeal or reform of laws that impeded press freedom.
The first steps were not rhetorical. They involved engagement with the executive, including a meeting with the then Minister for State President, Mr Kabo Morwaeng, who publicly committed, on BTV, to repealing or law reforms. That commitment was not accidental. It was the product of long-term advocacy.
On May 3, 2024, MISA Botswana, in collaboration with the MISA Regional Office and UNESCO, hosted a regional World Press Freedom Day in Gaborone. This was not a ceremonial gathering. It brought together MISA chapters from across the region and government representatives from SADC member states. Botswana was represented by the then Deputy Permanent Secretary of Information and Broadcasting, Oshinka Tsiang. Discussions focused on law reform, media sustainability, and the broader operating environment for journalism.
As part of a deliberate advocacy strategy, then President Mokgweetsi Masisi was invited as guest speaker. The objective was clear: to secure political commitment at the highest level. President Masisi publicly reiterated the government’s commitment to repealing the 2008 Media Practitioners Act and operationalising the 2022 Media Practitioners Association Act, even as MISA Botswana maintained that the latter remained inadequate.
At the same event, another commitment was extracted, the introduction of the Access to Information Bill. That promise materialised when the Bill was passed and signed into law in 2024 (Act No. 16 of 2024). What is outstanding is that the Act has yet to commence. These are matters of public record, reflected in speeches by former President Masisi, former Vice President Slumber Tsogwane, and late Assistant Minister for State President, Dumezweni Mthimkulu.
When the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) formed government later in 2024, it inherited not inertia but groundwork. That foundation enabled the new Minister for State President, Moeti Mohwasa, to convene a meeting with MISA Botswana and BEF, resulting in a national media consultative forum held on December 19, 2024. Media law reform and media sustainability topped the agenda.
That process led to the formation of a Media Law Reform Task Team, which examined not only sector-specific legislation but also provisions of the Penal Code, including criminal defamation. The Task Team produced a comprehensive report and a draft Media Bill, handed to Minister Mohwasa on August 10, 2025. To suggest that MISA Botswana and BEF failed to push for the decriminalisation of defamation is, therefore, to ignore documented reality.
Again, the assertion that the media should have used President Duma Boko’s remarks to force commitments on reform also misreads the moment. Defending journalism against delegitimisation is not a distraction from reform. It is a prerequisite for it. One cannot negotiate policy from a position where the profession itself is portrayed as incompetent or malicious.
Yet there is a deeper irony in this critique. While it frames law reform as the central battleground, the media’s most pressing threat today lies elsewhere. The global debate has shifted. What is now at stake is not only freedom from restrictive laws but the survival of journalism itself.
Newsrooms in Botswana operate on shoestring budgets. Many can barely afford to pay reporters.
Experienced journalists are leaving for the corporate sector, where conditions are better. Newsrooms are increasingly staffed by junior reporters with limited mentorship, a phenomenon now widely described as the juniorisation of newsrooms. Some outlets operate with a single reporter covering all beats. In such an environment, professionalism, depth, and investigative capacity inevitably suffer.
Digital disruption has compounded these challenges. Advertising revenues have migrated to global platforms. Audiences consume news differently. Sustainability, not censorship, is now the existential question. Such raises uncomfortable but necessary debates: should journalism be treated as a public good, funded in part by the state, just as schools and hospitals are? How can such support be structured without compromising editorial independence?
These are not abstract questions. MISA Botswana has raised them repeatedly through articles, public fora, and within the Media Law Reform Task Team consultations. What the organisation is pushing for now is the release of the Task Team report, precisely because it addresses both legal reform and sustainability.
Criticism of MISA Botswana and BEF is legitimate. No institution is infallible. However, criticism must be anchored on fact, not selective memory. To suggest acquiescence where there has been sustained advocacy is to mistake strategy for surrender.
The media in Botswana know what is at stake. What is at stake is not only law reform, important as that remains, but the viability of journalism in a disrupted, underfunded, and rapidly changing environment. Reducing this moment to a single missed rhetorical opportunity does not do justice to the scale of the challenge or to the work already underway.
The struggle for press freedom in Botswana has always required solidarity, patience, and institutional memory. We weaken it when we trade complexity for accusation. The facts remain. The record is clear. And the work continues.
*Thomas Thos Nkhoma is MISA-Botswana chairperson