Twenty-five years after the Windhoek declaration, Namibia’s much-praised media freedom continues to be undercut by the reluctance of government to part with information.
For many media experts, this issue has led to a press that is at times forced to rely on “sources that might turn out to be unreliable,” media ombudsman Clement Daniels said recently.
In addition, the critical role the media plays in ensuring public officials are held accountable by their voters through transparent information sharing, is continuously undermined through an atmosphere of reluctance, inefficiency, ignorance, fear and secrecy by office bearers to share the information they hold.
Natasha Tibinyane, director of the Namibia chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (Misa), says often it is not a case of straightforward denial for information.
The information highway stalls when requests by journalists, researchers or citizens are “ignored, or they are sent from one government official to the next, or they write endless letters of requests. Sometimes you can wait for months for information that is not even sensitive,” she said.
She said the “rude” reaction by some officials is underlined by “not understanding that the public and the media actually have the right to that information.” Although Namibia’s high ranking on the annual press freedom index is reflected in a working atmosphere marked in general by “freedom and safety” journalist Gwen Lister said the “atmosphere of secrecy that is pervasive among many officials” stops journalists from “doing their jobs to the best of their ability”.
This has an impact on Namibian citizens who are “kept in the dark and denied the knowledge they need to make informed decisions.”
According to Max Weylandt, Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) research associate, “the default stance of official bodies is not to release information, until they are convinced they have to”. Weylandt argues that for a government committed to “openness” it should be the other way around.
“Government bodies should have to show why they should be allowed not to release information, rather than citizens and journalists having to prove why they should get it.”
Fear plays a role in that many people, including government officials, fear “retribution when they speak out”, a relevant factor in a country with a small, close-knit community, Ombudsman Daniels said.
He added that lack of transparency is also linked to the Public Service Act and the 1982 Protection of Information Act, which limits the number of people allowed to talk to the press and creates fear among others for “fear of losing their jobs” if they talk to the press without explicit authorisation.
But, all these elements combine to create a divide between government, the gatekeepers of tremendous amounts of information, and the public they serve.
“Access to information is a fundamental human right and no country can truly call itself democratic, unless citizens have the right to access and request information that is held by public and certain private bodies,” Daniels explained.
Lister, a member of the team that authored the 1991 Windhoek declaration, added that the right to free speech and information is about more than the media.
“They are also key to unlocking the potential of a vibrant and informed civil society able to hold governments to account” adding that citizens should be “active participants rather than submissive recipients” and access to information is key to this.
Talk about an Access to Information law, to entrench a formal information sharing structure between government and it’s citizens, has not yet led to any results.
However, Tibinyane says it appears government has begun working on a draft law again but added there is an inherent reluctance to create such a law. “The challenge is that our government would rather not have an Access to Information law, but are keeping up appearances, because they know it has become a major development indicator.”
Nevertheless, many warn that a law will not automatically solve all the problems and should be tackled carefully.
“For one, even an excellent law is useless if it is not implemented and having a law does not automatically mean that officials will actually provide the information,” Weylandt cautioned.
“Laws can grant access to information, but also restrict it – a law is only useful if it clearly commits the government to openness, not if it creates a long list of areas that are off-limits to requests,” he concluded.
In addition, while 19 African countries have enacted freedom to information laws “some of them are imperfect and laws, of course, don’t necessary guarantee access,” Lister added.
She explained access to information ultimately depends on the conditions set by the actors involved.
“It is more a question of political will to ensure an access to information regime, with or without laws, and many governments on the continent are reluctant to make this an absolute.”
Daniels says that ultimately, keeping information close to the chest is first option for any government that prefers to “operate in secrecy because of perceived fears of losing control if government information is in the public domain”. Tibinyane said knowledge is a powerful asset and the role of information is key to understanding why an information law has not yet been created. “I think government will always try to ‘control’ the media in order to report in their favour.
I think the need to control is inherent in the type of governance structure we have.” Ultimately, without media freedom, guaranteeing free access to information in the public domain, a democracy cannot function properly.
Weylandt explained that the “connection between access to information and democracy is very clear.
Democracy means that the people rule the country by holding politicians accountable, and to do that, we have to know what’s going on. It’s that simple.”
JANA-MARI SMITH