UPDATE: Director Media Affairs in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Wilma Deetlefs expressed her deepest apologies to all media, stating that the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting regretted the frustrations that the media were subjected to with the Angolan State visit. She acknowldeged that the country’s information policy calls for all media to be treated equally. In addition to that she says that the Namibian constitution, as a fundamental human right, calls for everyone, without specific reference to the media, to be treated equally. • ALERT Date: August 17, 2007 Persons/Institutions: NSHR, Media in Namibia, especially The Observer and The Namibian newspapers Violation: Threatened (threatening legislation) Ruling Swapo Chief Whip Jhonny Hakaye tabled a motion in which the National Council was asked to examine and review the status of the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) as well as media institutions that gave the organisation coverage. Hakaye said The Observer was using the freedom of speech granted to it to tarnish the names and characters of political leaders while The Namibian “seems to have provided for their own parliament with this SMS line they have created”. “This only provides for hooliganism. Any person, regardless of their age, can just say what they want. And they conveniently forget that the same Government who they are insulting is the one who provided the platform for them to do this,” Hakaye claimed. • ALERT Date: August 22, 2007 Persons: Citizens of Namibia, especially Prof John Makumbe Violation: Other (academic freedom, freedom of expression, censored) On August 22 2007, the University of Namibia (Unam) pulled the plug at the eleventh hour on a public lecture by a well-known Zimbabwean academic critical of that country’s President Robert Mugabe. Unam announced shortly before lunchtime on August 22 that outspoken University of Zimbabwe lecturer Professor John Makumbe’s public lecture was cancelled. The public lecture - titled ‘Landscapes of Poverty - Daily Life and Social Crisis in Zimbabwe’ - was jointly organised by Unam’s sociology department and the Namibia Institute for Democracy (NID) as part of a series of six lectures for August and September. NID said in a statement that it had acted in good faith in organising the lecture with Unam and, at no stage did the university express any problem with Makumbe or the topic. It said it was concerned about the implications of the cancellation “for academic freedom and freedom of expression at the university and in Namibia in general”. Professor Makumbe is a highly respected political scientist who has lectured previously in Namibia, while the NID has a strong track record of organising public debates and discussions which create platforms for a wide variety of views and contribute to strengthening Namibia’s democracy as a whole. • ALERT Date: April 30, 2007 Persons: One Africa Television Violation: Censored On April 30 2007, One Africa Television News team, comprising of Rene Lötter, Margarat Kalo Namakasa and Francois Lottering, were asked by representatives of the Westport Resources Mining Group (Falling under Forsys Metals) to leave their “information sharing public participation “ meeting. The reason they gave was that they had their own film crew filming and that One Africa could have their production any time. They said the team could sit in but they So This Is Democracy? 2007 -70- Media Institute of Southern Africa