T he year 2008 will be remembered in Namibia for numerous court cases, some victories and some losses for the media. After almost a decade of stagnation, swift progress was made during 2008 on the Communications Bill following a cabinet reshuffle in April and the subsequent appointment of Joel Kaapanda as the Minister of Information and Communication Technology. This bill, however, was cause for much of the strain between the media and the ministry. Government appears to have heeded a call by the outgoing chairperson of MISA Namibia’s National Governing Council on May 3, World Press Freedom Day, not to impose statutory regulation on the media and to support efforts to set up self-regulatory structures. Tensions, however, rose again when the Communications Bill gazetted by government indicated intentions to force mobile phone and internet service providers to make information available to the government, without any judicial oversight. Call to curb media rights Another area of contention was the call by the ruling South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) party Members of Parliament (MPs) for the rights of the media to be curbed. Deputy Chairperson of the National Council Margaret Mensah-Williams tabled a motion calling for an independent investigations to be conducted by the office of the Ombudsman to establish whether people were “breaking the law” by venting their frustrations through an SMS page in The Namibian newspaper and on the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) national radio chat show programmes. The Namibian started publishing readers’ text messages daily in 2007, much to the annoyance of some MPs, who accuse the newspaper of denigrating SWAPO leaders through the SMSes. Over the year, the ruling party leaders made similar allegations of media bias. Addressing an election rally at Eenhana in the Ohangwena Region in February 2008, SWAPO Vice President and Minister of Trade and Industry Hage Geingob said some reporters were publishing lies, “because they want to be arrested … We in SWAPO believe in freedom of the press, but you have to report the truth”. Geingob claimed, for example, that some media houses had reported untruths about the number of people who attended SWAPO rallies at the port town of Walvis Bay and Omuthiya, a town in northern Namibia. In other developments, the government introduced a levy on prepaid cellular phone airtime. Value Added Tax (VAT) of 15 per cent is thus deducted for mobile phone usage. This has negatively impacted on the poor, as access to communication is now a luxury many can no longer afford. There is still no access to information law in Namibia that enables citizens and media workers to access even the most of trivial of information from a government department. Accessing state information is a cumbersome process as senior officials are empowered to authorise or refuse the release of information. Where information is deemed sensitive, it might well never be released. Defamation cases on the rise During 2008, a high number of defamation cases against the media were recorded and journalists and media institutions spent a lot of time and money fighting legal suits. The free weekly newspaper Informanté had to fight a number of court battles as a result. Among these cases was a suit against the newspaper’s journalists and its owners, Trustco Group International, by the Mayor of Windhoek for an article that alleged his involvement in shady property deals. So This Is Democracy? 2008 -68- Media Institute of Southern Africa