A n air of unreality surrounds media freedom in Swaziland. On the one hand the new Swazi Constitution, that came into force in February 2006, enshrines freedom of expression and freedom of the press, while on the other hand independent news media continue to be hounded by the kingdom’s authorities whenever they publish material that the ruling elites do not like. Swaziland is not a democracy and King Mswati III rules the kingdom. The new Constitution underpins the position of the monarch, and on paper allows freedom of expression and freedom of the press (but leaves political parties banned). But there is no evidence that the Constitution has made any appreciable change to ‘freedom’ in the kingdom. Media-Government relations The Government continues to harass journalists. This was evident when the Swazi House of Assembly set up a Select Committee to investigate Mbongeni Mbingo, the editor of the Times Sunday, following a commentary article that he wrote in his newspaper criticising the House Speaker for not allowing a debate on possible amendments to the kingdom’s Constitution. The House of Assembly said the editor was in contempt of Parliament. In October 2007, the Select Committee cleared the editor, citing his rights under the constitution to freedom of expression. However, at the same time the Committee showed it had no real commitment to freedom of expression when it recommended two measures that would further restrict press freedom in Swaziland. The first was a recommendation that all journalists who cover Parliament should be accredited; effectively meaning that the Government would choose which journalists should be allowed and which should not. It also means the Government could withdraw accreditation from journalists whose reporting upsets it. The second was the recommendation to reintroduce the hated Media Council Bill in Parliament. The Media Council Bill is designed to force statutory regulation on the media. This move ignores the fact that the media houses themselves have made an effort to form a Media Complaints Commission (MCC) to monitor standards. The Swaziland National Association of Journalists, with the support of MISA Swaziland, launched the MCC in March but it was only in November 2007 that the media owners agreed to fund the commission’s operations and setting it up as a Trust. The attack on the Times Sunday editor should not be seen in isolation. Earlier in the year the Swazi Parliament had turned up the heat on dissenting journalists by increasing fines on journalists and media houses who publish articles deemed to be critical of or offending against Parliament or MPs. MISA Swaziland called these measures blatant discrimination “likely to scare the already docile Swazi press which cannot freely report on issues due to a litany of restrictions, laws and constant intimidation from authorities.” In June 2007, the Minister for Health and Social Welfare, Njabulo Mabuza, banned health workers from talking to the media in response to a number of stories that had been published highlighting the impact in the kingdom of a critical drug shortage. On June 23, the Times of Swaziland experienced the effects of the minister’s censorship order when its photographer, Albert Masango, was denied access to the hospital. Hospital security harassed and pulled Masango out of the premises and carried him out to the gate. The new Swazi constitution has left King Mswati III in overall control of the kingdom and the media are harassed if they try to publish anything critical of him. So This Is Democracy? 2007 -88- Media Institute of Southern Africa