STRAIGHT TALK : Tanzania newspapers on trial once again

Once again Tanzania is shocked and the word has been spreading like a wild fire not only in Tanzania but also across the world over what it is happening in this peaceful East African nation.

The word is that government is once again putting the media to test--thus threatening its freedom and existence. International media and rights organisations have picked on this. Our own Legal and Human Rights Centre has questioned the intention by the government. Many local critics too have raised their voices over why the government should call for fresh registration of all newspapers.

The question is: are there malicious intentions behind the move? Firstly, there is no particular law that gives the government powers to order all newspapers at once to re-register, meaning that they have collectively been de-registered. Secondly, for this move to be lawful, it must be supported by legal reasons, but these cannot be uniform and hence asking all newspapers to register again is clearly not in the interest of the law nor that of democracy.

Thirdly, it is a very bad timing. And this is for many reasons. Some of them are to do with the government itself which has been on the neck of the media in the last two years having instituted two unpopular laws which attracted hatred from not only within but also international condemnation as much as causing American based Millennium Challenge Corporation to stop supporting development activities.

Fourthly, it sounds dictatorial that the government can have such sweeping powers to flex its a muscles and stop the democratic arm of the people by just a stroke of a pen. But well it can happen in Tanzania, like one could just issue an order that all private schools have to re-register without looking at the consequences, interference of service provision and also disturbance of employment security.

And you will find, as we have seen in other orders of the same calibre, that the government is not prepared nor does it have the capacity to implement the same smoothly and professionally. Furthermore, some of us believe this was only a wide net casting as the government is targeting particular media houses to pounce on them as it increasingly appear the current government is less tolerant to criticism.

The media has been the only live section that allows the steaming out of grudges and discontents of our people of which is a helpful and useful exercise for the government to know the thinking of its populace. And as they say in a democracy the media is the heartbeat of a country. For a long time, media practitioners have hoped Tanzania to have passed away and far from lowly and intriguing moves like this one because times have changed when newspapers were not the only sources of information after the advent of social media.

The government has to realise that social media would in any case take up the work of the newspapers should there be a vacuum by selectively banning some through the exercise. For sure unstoppable citizen journalism will rise in its place.

Though we know the Cyber Law which has caused over 4,000 cases opened against Tanzanians for airing their opinions, in the end, at any rate, the mass shall win, and no amount of pressure to stop their thinking, communicating and speaking out, shall be buried.

Graves are for the dead and not for those alive whose minds crave information wherever it comes from, and trend shows, this has never been stopped anywhere, and Tanzania shall not be the first place.

God forbid that to happen.

Mr Saleh is a lawyer, journalist, author, political commentator, media consultant and poet. He is also the Member of Parliament for Malindi in Zanzibar