State of the media in Southern Africa - 2003 and aspirations of the nation.” Mbumba succeeded Nujoma as Information Minister in May 2003. Despite fears that the President might use his eight-month stint in charge of the Information and Broadcasting portfolio to interfere more widely in the media, he mainly focussed his attentions on the restructuring at the NBC. Although 2003 was a relatively low-key year in Namibian politics, it was not surprising that opposition political parties felt left out by the NBC’s assumption that news largely consists of ‘what the President and other leading Swapo figures did today’ (or even yesterday). In April the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (DTA) complained that the NBC was ignoring its rallies while covering numerous Swapo-organised events. At a public discussion organised by Misa Namibia in July, Natji Tjirera of the Congress of Democrats (COD) said that the national broadcaster had deliberately sidelined his party. Government’s relations with the independent media were blighted by the continuing advertising ban on The Namibian newspaper. The ban on Government advertising in The Namibian and the attendant ban on the purchasing of copies with State funds passed into its third year. President Sam Nujoma’s verbal attack on The Namibian’s Editor, Gwen Lister, in August (when he accused The Namibian and MISA of being “reactionary” apparently because of their stances on the Zimbabwean situation) put paid to any hope that this blemish on Namibia’s press freedom record would be removed in the near future. During the year MISA Namibia submitted recommendations for the draft Communications Bill which was issued for public consultation. The recommendations included a call for the NBC to be regulated by the Communications Authority of Namibia envisaged in the bill, rather than through the NBC Act. At present the Act gives the Minister of Information power to appoint the broadcaster’s board without any form of public consultation. A final version of the bill had not appeared by the end of the year and it was not clear if MISA Namibia’s suggestions would be accepted, although the prospects were not good. There were no major threats to Namibia’s constitutional commitment to the freedom of the press during 2003. While government kept quiet on the attacks on media freedom in other countries in SADC, such as Zimbabwe, journalists were, by and large, able to go about their work freely in Namibia. However, hopes that 2003 would pass without any physical attacks on journalists were dashed in November. Two employees of the Republikein newspaper, journalist Paulus Sackarias and driver Simon Haimbodi, were assaulted and arrested by a paramilitary unit of the police. The two men were on their way to report on a memorial service at Onaame in the far north of the country. Not far from their destination they were stopped by members of the Special Field Force, taken to a police base, detained for four hours and assaulted. They were released on the same day, but their vehicle was confiscated and only returned to the newspaper several days later. Fortunately libel cases remained few and far between on the media landscape. A case against the Allgemeine Zeitung concerning an alleged assault reported by the newspaper may open the way for changes to the way defamation cases are handled in Namibia. Lawyers for the newspaper intend to use, as a defence, the precedent set in South Africa recently, whereby a defendant can avoid liability by proving it had acted reasonably and had not been negligent by publishing the report. If successful the argument would shift the interpretation of the law away from the defendant having to prove that an allegedly defamatory was correct. The case has been postSo This Is Democracy? 2003 65 Media Institute of Southern Africa