Delivered at Kamuzu Palace in Lilongwe on Wednesday, May 3, 2023

Your Excellency, we would like to thank you for extending to us yet another invitation to a World Press Freedom Day Breakfast here at Kamuzu Palace. We are happy that you remember the media sector and consider sparing time for an engagement like this one.

We know you are a busy person and we don’t take your consideration forgranted. This is a sign of your commitment to celebrate and uphold media freedom and freedom of expression in the country. The breakfast engagement provides an opportunity for us to share with you the developments in our sector.

This year we are celebrating World Press Freedom Day under the theme ‘Shaping a Future of Rights: Freedom of expression as a driver for all other human rights’. The theme is in line with section 35 of the Republican Constitution which expressly says “every person shall have the right to freedom of expression.” The right to freedom of expression is a fundamental human right outlined in international law including Article 19 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

On freedom expression in Malawi, let me start by thanking you and your government for the legislative milestones seen in the past 12 months. When we met during a similar meeting last year, your excellency, you promised Freedom of expression law reform. Last November your government championed the repeal of sedition laws and the amendment of the Protected Flag, Emblems and Names Act by removing the name ‘President’ as one of the protected names under the Act. That was a very big victory on our side and a very bold stance on your side.

Successive governments in Malawi have used sedition charges and Protected Names Act to restrict freedoms of expression and opinion; and silence critical voices. Since 1997 when we started our operations in the country, MISA Malawi has been campaigning for the repeal of the archaic and undemocratic sedition laws to facilitate the enjoyment of media freedom and freedom of expression. We are happy that your government through the office of the Attorney General listened to our plea for repeal of such retrogressive and undemocratic provisions. The amendments are a significant step towards protection and realization of fundamental rights provided for in our Constitution.

Your excellency, let me remind you that we still have criminal defamation laws that need to be repealed and we need to do so with urgency. As you said during the 2022 breakfast:

“There are still a number of pieces of legislation, including the penal code, that criminalize and punish the exercise of freedoms that the Constitution guarantees. It is the task of our generation to see these contradictions cured by amendments through Parliament.”

MISA Malawi has been advocating for civil remedies in issues of defamation as opposed to criminal defamation remedies that the country is following.

Your Excellency, let me try to bring the point home by a concrete example and this is not to resurrect old matter. When the ACB Director Martha Chizuma was arrested for allegedly defaming the then Director of Public Prosecutions, there was uproar. Should a defamation crime deserve allocation of hordes of police officers, cars, handcuffing the suspect and all? This is exactly what MISA Malawi has been against all this while. Criminal defamation is benefiting the powerful, those in advantaged positions at the expense of the country’s scarce resources. Our laws already provide for an alternative, civil suit. The injured can file for defamation and get their remedy without all the drama associated with criminal defamation. We therefore would like to appeal to your administration to consider repealing criminal defamation.

We also ask your government to review of the Electronic Transactions and Cyber Security Act of 2016 as some provisions in that Act are broad and vague and the police is frequently using it to restrict freedom of expression online. As an organization, MISA Malawi does not condone misinformation or publication of false news by criminalizing online communication has a chilling effect and weaponises the law against freedom of expression.

Your Excellency, as we approach 2025 elections, the independence of the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) remains work in progress. While the Communications Act of 2016 empowers MBC to function without any political bias and independently of any person or entity and provide balanced coverage of any elections, the behaviour at MBC has been one that gives confidence today and the one that scares the following day. We just hope that your leadership will give the Corporation the space to operate freely without any political interference. MBC has highly qualified staff with the capacity and the spirit to promote democracy and follow the law to the letter before, during and after those elections.

Your Excellency, the past 12 months have also seen some socio-political challenges rocking the media sector.

The economic challenges that the country is experiencing have hit our sector hard. The advertising levels have drastically gone down thereby crippling the operations of Newspapers, TVs, radio stations and online platforms. Some media outlets could not hire new staff and are operating with lean staff. Some resorted to using volunteers or interns that are usually less paid or not at all.

A media broadcasting taskforce met with government officials including the Ministry of Information highlighting the challenges and put on record concerns that with the prevailing conditions, it was difficult for them to maintain payment of annual license fees, which they also complained of being high and pegged in a foreign currency.

It therefore came as a surprise, Your Excellency, that the regulator, MACRA went ahead and pounced on some of broadcasting houses over non-payment of these same fees, disregarding the concerns that had been formally raised with the government.

In 2022, MACRA revoked licences for six radio and four television stations. More than 20 other stations were also threatened with revocations. While some of these stations managed to pay off the arrears, many of them resorted to unsustainable means to settle the fees. Some opted for bank loans, sacrificed employee salaries for months while religious affiliated media raised the license fees through church offerings.

As MISA Malawi, we are not saying broadcasters should evade their statutory obligations by not paying license fees, but we believe at a time you are championing creation of jobs, media freedom and freedom of expression, an honest and constant engagement between MACRA and players in the broadcasting sector is key. MACRA pegs licence fees to US dollars, yet we transact in Kwacha. Broadcasters are feeling the pinch of the same as the Kwacha continues to lose its strength against dollar.

Your Excellency, MISA regional office wrote your office seeking intervention. Allow me your Excellency, to rather express my disappointment that we never received a response nor an intervention. As we speak, 250 journalists lost their jobs. And when we talk about loss of media jobs, we are talking about the limitations that this presents to the enjoyment of other rights such as freedom of expression and access to information.

Kingsley Jassi is one brilliant economics journalist who used to work with Rainbow Television. The closure of Rainbow television saw him lose his job, but the biggest loss was to the viewers who used to rely on his expertise to explain complex economics and business issues in the vernacular and in very simple terms. It is this loss that should have been motivation to the government to slow down on the drastic moves of closures, media is not just a business, it facilitates the enjoyment of rights.

Your excellency, not all laws are good. That is why, with good justification, moratoriums are put in place. This country has a moratorium on arrest of people who are in same sex relationships. The death penalty is legal in this country and yet Your Excellency has not sanctioned any such punishment on those on the death row in our prisons. It is for a good cause. It should not have been difficult to place a moratorium on closures of media houses because there was good justification.

Your excellency, attacks on journalists also continued in 2022/23 with the recent attack being the detention of Dorica Mtenje by Malawi Police Service over a story that an online platform Maravi Post published.   In the past year, some cabinet ministers, police officers, Members of Parliament, councillors and party supporters were hostile to journalists.

For two consecutive years, Your Excellency, government has not allocated resources to the Malawi Human Rights Commission for the implementation of Access to Information law. The campaign promise was fulfilled by your administration in operationalizing the law, but we are obviously stuck on the implementation side. Your Excellency, I am at a loss on whether we should continue to applaud your administration on the gains registered on ATI.

Your Excellency, it is due to these reasons that Malawi has registered a decline in World Press Freedom rankings. It has dropped from position 62 in 2021 to 80 in 2023. We definitely need to get back on track.

Your Excellency, this is the last time I am speaking to you as chairperson of MISA Malawi. I will be leaving office this weekend. I would like to sincerely thank you for the cordial working relationship we have enjoyed and despite the disagreements at times, you never tired to engage us. You have been one of the presidents who has been open with the media and I pray that you continue this path.

Let me finish by quoting what you said here last year:

 “Freedom of the press and freedom of expression means that from time to time someone will write or say things that offend or embarrass us, but that does not give any of us the license to “deal with them”. 

This Your Excellency is also my message to us all as we celebrate the 2023 World Press Freedom Day.

I thank you for your attention.