Journalism under siege in SADC

Six months ago, the Nordic-SADC Journalism Centre in Mozambique was on the brink of closure.  A few weeks later, a website announced two or three editors' courses in South Africa to be conducted by an institute shaped along the lines of the NSJ.  Little has been heard about thoroughgoing edification of journalism in Namibia after the glorious Windhoek Declaration and the meetings that led to the legal establishment of the Media Institute of Southern Africa.

The Southern African Journalist Association based in South Africa is still very much in its teething stages and is concerned more with political problems in Zimbabwe and Swaziland while paying lesser attention to the creation of journalists through independent trade unions, mechanisms of self-regulation and the upkeep of a genuine and rigorous debate about professional standards and issues of ethics in the 21st Century.