Powerful forces out to annihilate the media

Mmegi Editor | Friday April 29, 2016 13:18

Addressing the 35th High Level Consultative Council (HLCC) Khama derailed from the theme of the event and said government was concerned “at the growing slander now being directed against members of the executive, including senior government officials, who are subjected to personal attacks for carrying out their public duties”. Khama explained that government had decided that where members of government, including senior officials, have been the subject to such abuse by the press, government would extend to them appropriate legal support.

The pronouncement by Khama came at a time when he was subjected to questions from the media over the construction of an airstrip by the Botswana Defence Force on his private land in Mosu.

Khama was pushed to the defensive and it was clear that he was not impressed by the reports. He had never before been subjected to that type of scrutiny. And he had to do something about the ‘irresponsible’ and snoopy media.

He then came up with the idea of sponsoring unnecessary lawsuits by the powerful forces in government.

We have said before that Khama’s idea to sponsor lawsuits against the media amounted to the abuse of taxpayers’ money. He did not stop there.

 The ever-Machiavellian Khama came up with another strategy to kill the private media: His government resorted to starving the media of advertisement. The government imposed diabolic advertising ban on the private media. The government wants to see the media dead but they will never succeed. Successive governments come and go and the Khama government will one day go!

There is a tendency in Botswana to label those who are critical as unpatriotic. And this word patriotism is usually used in military terms. But those who tend to use this word with reckless abandon are the ones that are unpatriotic. Most of them are engaged in criminal and corrupt practices, hence their passionate hatred of the media. In their mission, they are supported by some High Court judges who seem to be always ready to rule against the private media.

Some High Court judgments are questionable. The damages awarded are crazy. We won’t keep quiet just because we are more often respondents in civil cases before the courts of law. We will continue to express our opinion without fear or favour.

We will also continue snooping for corruption in higher places despite the threats to annihilate us.

Today’s thought

“What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist”

 

- Salman Rushdie