Declaration of Table Mountain Abolishing ‘Insult Laws’ in Africa and Setting a Free Press Higher on the Agenda The World Association of Newspapers and the World Editors Forum, meeting at the 60th World Newspaper Congress and 14th World Editors Forum Conference in Cape Town, South Africa, from 3 to 6 June 2007, Note that in country after country, the African press is crippled by a panoply of repressive measures, from the jailing and persecution of journalists to the widespread scourge of ‘insult laws’ and criminal defamation which are used, ruthlessly, by governments to prevent critical appraisal of their performance and to deprive the public from information about their misdemeanours, State their conviction that Africa urgently needs a strong, free and independent press to act as a watchdog over public institutions, Consider that press freedom remains a key to the establishment of good governance and durable economic, political, social and cultural development, prosperity and peace in Africa, and to the fight against corruption, famine, poverty, violent conflict, disease, and lack of education, Reaffirm our responsibility as the global representative organisations of the owners, publishers and editors of the world’s press to conduct “aggressive and persistent campaigning against press freedom violations and restrictions”, Reaffirm our commitment to freedom of the press as a basic human right as well as an indispensable constituent of democracy in every country, including those in Africa, Note that Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees freedom of expression as a fundamental right, and emphasise that freedom of expression is essential to the realization of other rights set forth in international human rights instruments, Recall that those principles have been restated and endorsed in the 2002 Declaration on Principles of Freedom of Expression in Africa, adopted by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the African Union, thus requiring member states of the African Union to uphold and maintain press freedom, Recall also the 1991 Windhoek Declaration on Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press, Observe that despite numerous opportunities for a free press to emerge from national independence, fully-fledged press freedom still does not exist in many African countries and that murder, imprisonment, torture, banning, censorship and legislative edict are the norm in many countries, Recognise that these crude forms of repression are bolstered by the deliberate exclusion of certain newspapers from state-advertising placement, the burden of high import taxes on equipment and newsprint and unfair competition from state-owned media, Note that despite the adoption of press freedom protocols and the repression of that freedom on a wide scale in Africa, the African Union in instituting its African Peer Review Mechanism under the NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa’s Development) programme has excluded So This Is Democracy? 2008 -307- Media Institute of Southern Africa