Governments that want to institute dictatorship start by dominating and directing the media and information systems.
How
the media system is structured is, therefore, a significant indicator
on whether a nation is democratising or sliding into a dictatorship.
This
desire to dominate and control information is at the centre of the
current stand-off over digital migration. That is what Kenyans must
resist. Government involvement in media matters, no matter how sugar
coated, is usually a direct invitation to tyranny.
Anyone
above the age of 40 years will remember life in Kenya in the 1980s and
1990s; the life before freedom. Today we call them “the dark days”.
There
was simply no information. There was only one State-owned television
and radio station, the only source of electronic news from local and
international sources. News was what the government wanted us to know,
not what we felt we should know. News followed a rigid government chain
of command, with the President coming first, then down the ladder all
the way to the chief.
CENSORED
Though
the print media was in private hands, it was greatly censored and heavy
penalties awaited those who had the courage to be independent. In fact,
when I was taken in for detention, I was shocked to find some reporters
and editors had also been taken in.
The only books and
newspapers available were those that the government allowed you to
read. Everything came through the airport, and the police were there to
go through every bag and confiscate any literature that was viewed as
“inappropriate”. That is how the dictatorship of that era was created
and sustained. Even the fax machine as a means of relaying and receiving
information was banned.
Then came Google. I think
that if the government had anticipated how the Internet would change the
business of information, they would have found ways to control it.
Within
a decade, this country has witnessed a revolution in access to
information. Any Kenyan with a mobile phone and a few data bundles can
read anything and everything they desire.
EMPOWERED PEOPLE
This
flow of information has empowered many people. Sites that give
information on medical conditions have helped people understand their
ailments and interact better with their doctors. Law statutes on decided
cases that even courts of law did not have in their libraries are now
available at the click of a button on Kenya Law Reports.
In
the midst of this information revolution, we have forgotten that
government has always been and remains the single most critical threat
to access to information even though the Constitution guarantees this.
All
governments are almost invariably a threat to the people’s freedom.
That threat to freedom and access to information becomes a crisis in a
nation like Kenya where democracy is struggling and effective access to
information is critical in helping people understand what the State is
up to.
Information is critical to self-government.
Information is critical to enabling citizens, especially in nations
emerging from years of rigid State control like Kenya, exercise their
freedoms responsibly.
THREATEN FREEDOM
Sometimes,
government threatens our freedoms through the human frailty of its
officers. As the coercive power of the State has to be exercised by
human beings, it ends up in the hands of an excitable officer, who sees
it as an instrument to assert himself over others. The result is abuse
of freedoms.
This proclivity of government to abuse
freedoms is what we have forgotten. We have been awash with so many
freedoms that we did not see the danger lurking.
And
the government, like a leopard, has been on the Muu tree, biding its
time, and now it has pounced. The government knows that it has already
lost the war on flow of information.
So it doesn’t
care any more about other kinds of information but the one that can
affect its hold on power and one that still reaches and influences the
poor and illiterate citizens. It is concerned about political
information. It doesn’t want corruption scandals unearthed, policies
criticised, or failings exposed.
CONTROLLING MEDIA
In
the past two years, there have been many attempts at controlling the
media. We have had laws proposed to control journalists through
licensing procedures. We have had crimes created for practice of
journalism and hefty fines imposed for these crimes. We have seen
bloggers critical of government arrested and charged while those who
support government are allowed to incite ethnic hatred.
Now
we are seeing attempts by the government to control the distribution of
television news through the excuse of migrating the country into a
digital era.
These actions by the government are
planned and purposeful. They are strategic and carefully choreographed.
They are political. We must open our eyes and see the Leopard on the Muu
tree.
If we don’t wake up and defend the freedoms
under threat, soon we shall lose even those that we are enjoying. We
must not take it for granted that we will always have access to the
Internet. In some countries, the government is controlling that too, and
there is no telling what Jubilee may try to borrow next.
FRAGILE THING
Our refuge is in eternalising the words of Ronald Reagan:
“Freedom
is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from
extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and
defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a
people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known
it again.”
For now, they have gone for the journalists. Soon they will come for everyone.
The leopard cannot eat more than one sheep. But it kills the whole flock.
Mr Odinga, a former prime minister of the Republic of Kenya, is the leader of ODM and co-principal of Cord
