Whose freedom of whose press?

A storm inside eyes of the assembled media practitioners were Ruto – because Kenya’s parliament has just passed a draconian anti-press bill passed -and Makonnen: because Ethiopia’s jails are holding journalists for critical opinions and reports considered hostile by the country’s rulers. Ruto went for winning hearts and minds by picking on the many European […]

A storm inside eyes of the assembled media practitioners were Ruto – because Kenya’s parliament has just passed a draconian anti-press bill passed -and Makonnen: because Ethiopia’s jails are holding journalists for critical opinions and reports considered hostile by the country’s rulers. Ruto went for winning hearts and minds by picking on the many European and white American faces in the audience. He attacked Western governments and media for a press ‘’freedom’’ which ‘’calls Africans incom-petent, corrupt, tribal, geno-cidal fiends, will never learn, will never develop; and then murder them’’. That freedom was used to murder Gaddafi’s and turn Libya into a land of blood-soaked anarchy. It is a freedom for ‘’the new media assassins’’.
 He succeeded in deflecting questions away from the impunity of Kenya tradition of politicians inciting mass murders and arson. He won hearts with proclamations like: “the power and the right to tell our own narrative is the Uhuru (freedom) of our time’’; and ‘’imprisoning people because they express opinions is backward and primitive’’. He was loudly applauded.
 Makonnen came with his guns smoking.  Reports had reached him that Ethiopia was being battered with accusations of repressing media practitioners.  A participant had claimed that Ethiopian journalists were so intimidated that they had been silent while others kicked up dust into eyes of their own governments. A female journalist fired salvos at him to a thunderous applause. His line of response was blunt. His government, he said, values freedom of thought; while also having primary responsibility for protecting lives against terrorist activities. If terrorists disguise themselves as journalists, government has the duty to protect people’s lives against their murderous plans. He won no applause. Unlike Ruto, he was not out to win a popularity contest.
Dr Dlamini-Zuma hit out at African journalists who lack confidence in the ability of Africans to farm history, and what Kaberuka called ‘’wanting to aim high’’. She claimed, that reportage on Angola by foreign media ‘’only talk about corruption; how oil money is going into people’s pockets’’. Those who witnessed the destruction of Luanda during Angola’s civil war would marvel at the depth and extent of its re-construction. A new city has been built outside Luanda. That malevolent media also ignores the frontline role played by Africa’s women in economic development, notably: in agriculture and cross-border trade within and beyond member states of the African Union. She defended keeping journalists out of “closed sessions’’ by presidents.
 Mo Ibrahim’s brutal portrait of the poverty of the African Union’s Commission was vigorously combated by Elsie Kanza of the World Economic Forum. She celebrated AU’s vital role in evolving common policies for member states to implement and be held accountable for by their own citizens. John Ping, former boss of the AU Commission, challenged Mo Ibrahim to establish the African version of Aljazeera and CNN so that African journalists can have the capacity to do investigative reports across a vast continent. Journalists in small economies like Liberia, Niger, Eritrea and Lesotho are too financially malnourished to dash out and report on events and conditions in far corners of their own countries, region , the Continent; or Brazil and Russia.
Africa 2.0, an NGO, proposed that there be a paradigm change in funding the African Union, from a reliance on governments to the continent’s citizens. As a practical example, a charge on each cell phone text or call made by 40,000 persons in each African country would yield billions of dollars annually for the AU Commission to manage. It would take the drive for African unity to the people; grabbing it away from a secretive club of leavers who never discuss foreign policy with their peoples and keep silent about decision they take at Addis Ababa.
Such a people-based integration should come from cancelling visa requirements which hinder mobility across Africa’s borders. An Africa without visas and Customs officers, it was argued, would facilitate the flow of trade between African countries. As Lamy, a former boss of World Trade Organisation noted, while Africa’s delegates at Geneva ‘’speak with one voice’’, African leaders are ‘’not good at integrating trade within Africa’’. One panellist recommended the adoption of a slogan that had worked in another drive, namely, let each country: “Just do it!’’. Rwanda abolished visa requirements and benefited from attracting talented engineers and creative IT business owners to the country. Paradoxically, Kenya will not give visas to citizens from Senegal, Mali and Cameroun arriving at its airports.
A moment made Yohan-nes Kifle beckon to us to inherit a table at Sheraton’s restaurant. He had finished his own meal. As protocol officer for Salim Ahmed Salim as Secretary General of the Organisation of African Unity, OAU,a call once came for medical aid for  Nelson Mandela at  2 a.m. Because a curfew barred movement after midnight, chiefs of police and the army had to clear gun-cocking roadblocks for him. At dawn the best doctors repaired Mandela’s ailing body. From that moment onwards, each time Madiba visited the OAU secretariat, he would break protocol and rush out to hug him most warmly. He also values photographs showing Mwalimu Nyerere sharing hearty laughs with him. When I asked about one Enoch Kifle – my pal at Stanford University in Palo Alto – he sat back with dilated eyes. Enoch was his junior brother!