Censorship re-examined
By Dr. Wachanga
A twelfth century Chinese proverb reiterates the vitality of truth telling, for the tongue is ever at the bottom of a calamity. Reflective wisdom contained in this aphorism, unfortunately, did not dissuade Shih Huang Ti, the 250 B.C. Chinese Emperor, from burning books containing the teachings of Confucius. With his goal of obliterating the traditional Chinese culture, Huang Ti went so far as to bury alive the disciples of philosophers.

Centuries later, the written word was still under attack. Around 640 A.D. close to a million manuscripts were burned after numerous attacks on the Alexandria library by the Romans, Christians and Arabs. In one of these ferocious attacks, Emperor Omar, an Arabian leader, warmed his bath water with the burning books. In so doing, Emperor Omar, believing Koran to be self-sufficient, possessed a reason beyond belief: “These books are either in accordance with the teachings of the Koran or they are opposed to it. If in accord, then they are useless since Koran itself is sufficient, and if in opposition, they are pernicious and must be destroyed.”

Holding feelings rather like Omar’s was Cyril, a Christian Bishop who loathed the “pagan” knowledge contained in the books in the Alexandria library. Cyril was especially incensed by the unorthodox teachings and scientific experiments of Hypatia, a philosopher, mathematician and astronomer. Cyril is accused of inciting a group of fanatical Christian monks who dragged Hypatia from her chariot, like hounds, mauled her flesh from her bones, before littering the streets with her body parts. What remained was burned in the library of Caesareum, an improvident progression of incineration, from the written word to human body parts. As Hypatia descended into the forgotten annals of history, Cyril ascended into the glamour of sainthood!

When John Wycliffe, an English cleric, translated the Bible in 1384, he so irritated the authorities that his 200 publications went up in flames in the courtyard of a Prague palace. Upon his death, Wycliffe’s bones were dug out and burned to “punish him for the heresy of translating the Bible, and for denying transubstantiation.”

But there have been dauntless counter-efforts to refine and shape human thought, which have become monumental landmarks in the history of free expression. Major among them are Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the movable metal types to print documents, decline in power of the Roman Catholic Church, and challenge of the Roman power and thought by Lutherans and Calvinists.

Emergence of science and empirical enquiry invariably challenged the church’s monopoly as the sole guardian of knowledge and power. This, arguably, is the dawn of enlightenment, the explosion of edifying thoughts. With a looming power vacuum after the decline in supremacy of the church, came the rise of secular and critical society. Information flow and technological developments allowed the public to have unprecedented interpretation of ideas. Even those previously brutally disenfranchised and consigned to provincialities, participated as the society wrestled with ideas.

That freedom is most eloquently advocated in John Milton’s Areopagitica. Milton, the English libertarian philosopher and wordsmith, robustly spoke against censorship arguing that restraint of any viewpoint, no matter how contemptible and detestable, attends to the detriment of humankind. What Milton called the market place of ideas fittingly resonates with the African notion of the palaver tree.

With this background in mind, one must resist an inevitable feeling of debasement at the thought of recent depressingly profligate acts of censorship in Kenya. What comes to mind is the unconsidered effort to raid the Standard Group in March last year. And one disturbing question still abounds: why was this unmitigated dastardly act perpetrated in the twenty-first century?

Did the Standard Group undergo an overnight transformation to become the Sophocles’ “bringers of bad news?” Was the Standard Group getting ready to expose what Waruru Kanja, then minister of Information and Broadcasting, called “linen which has become so soiled that it simply cannot be washed in public?”

There are those who have been courageous enough to expose this linen. When Peter Kareithi did it in 1988, he was arrested and detained. He left the country upon his release. Then there was Bedan Mbugua and his stint in detention. Then came Gitobu Imanyara, who without any charge was condemned to the psychiatric wing of Kamiti prison for three weeks. And a long list of dishonors goes on.

African media critics submit that the problem with press freedom in Africa is not the absence of a body of laws and constitutional provisions that guarantee press freedom. The problem is that capricious actions, extra-legal procedures and instruments of violence and intimidation are utilized by the state in an attempt to curtail the right to free expression.

When the government attitude towards the press becomes unpermissive, fecund ground for clandestine media emerges. Why else, one may ask, did Mwakenya and Pambana underground newspapers emerged in the 1980s? Such restrictive information environment is currently suffocating Zimbabwe.

During the first food riots in the streets of Harare in 1997, Gerry Jackson, a presenter with the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, which is government-controlled, opened phone calls to listeners who expressed their views on the collapsing economy. Gerry was removed from the studio and fired. In 2000, she contested government monopoly of electronic media in the Supreme Court. She won the rights to operate the first privately owned radio station. Her triumph was short-lived, however. On the sixth day, and at gunpoint, her station was closed. Comrade Mugabe made it illegal to own a transmitter.

Gerry went into exile in London and started SW Radio Africa. The Mugabe government has constantly jammed SW Radio short-wave transmission allegedly with the assistance of the Chinese government.
In her acceptance speech as the 2005 International Press Institute Award recipient, Gerry grieved because “there is no end to the repression of the people of Zimbabwe;” warning that despotic “regimes only win if you allow them to.”

Could this have been Mugabe’s source of drive when he operated an underground radio station, Voice of Zimbabwe (VOZ), to fight the oppressive colonial hegemony of Ian Smith? Ian Smith criminalized VOZ, which was first granted airtime in 1958 by the Egyptian government under Gamal Abdel Nasser. The station was later moved to Tanzania in 1963 before shifting its base to Zambia in 1967, and finally relocated to Mozambique in 1978.

Although governments are often accused of censorship, are there threatening circumstances that can justify censorship? Does the celebrated U.S First Amendment cover individuals who advocate toppling governments duly elected by the people, for example?

Before declaring war on the Germans in 1917, the U.S government passed the Espionage Act. Under this Act, anyone who obstructed military recruitment was at risk of a jail term of up to 20 years. When Charles Schenck and Elizabeth Baer mailed circulars to military draftees, they were accused of interfering with conscription. While acknowledging the U.S right of free expression, the Supreme Court articulated the “clear and present danger” the country was facing at that time. With this judgment as a precedent, Eugene Debs was convicted for his socialist anti war speech, which was adopted at St. Louis in 1917.

With the rising propaganda wars and anti-terrorism campaigns and strategies, we may witness increased information suppression in the name of national security.

National security must be defended but “knights of the pen” must remember that they owe everything to the people, their nations, not to the rulers. If the leaders become “Ogre Humbugs,” they can only deserve the pens we use as our swords. Yet in our use of “swords” we must be guided by the irreplaceable need to tell the truth. After all, as Albert Camus advises, the press is not true because it is revolutionary; it is revolutionary only if it is true, and never otherwise.