A precarious freedom

...The charges came seven months after police searched Sparks's home, confiscating his typewriter, telex messages, and news clippings...

...The SWAPO constitution contains a clause urging "armed struggle" against the South African occupiers of Namibia...

...Uganda released four jailed journalists in late January 1985, but kept seven others in prison...

...Liberia had just become the second black African nation (after Zaire) to re-establish relations with Israel...

...Best had had the letter a month before deciding to publish it...

...The same space in the Star's "African" edition, sold in Soweto, is occupied by a photo and story about teenagers—black, of course—"hearing about the structural violence perpetrated by the System...

...In the same week as the Guardian crackdown, the military governor of Akure State ordered the jailing of Idowu Odeyemi, editor of a provincial paper, the Premier, because "certain stories irked" the governor...

...In November 1981 Best's paper published an "open letter'' from a native of Guinea, one of Liberia's neighbors, to Guinea's late tyrannical president, Sekou Toure...

...They didn't cater to the Afrikaner rulers of a sparsely populated territory twice the size of California...

...Best said he did the same things he had done at Rochester, New York, in 1967-68...

...Smith started his own weekly paper, the Windhoek Observer...

...He graduated from Liberia's Cuttington College, worked several years for his government, got a master's degree in journalism at Columbia University, worked at Gannett Newspapers' Rochester Democrat and Chronicle seven months, then returned to Monrovia to the Liberian Information Ministry until he was offered a job at the All-African Council of Churches in Nairobi...

...Lister is a blue-eyed blonde, thirty-one who's married to a computer expert and has a five-year-old son...

...But that's the exception...

...There's just crime, no politics at all," said Lister of recent editions of the weekly...

...But one day in early 1984 two South African security police served her with a summons to appear in court...

...She was charged with importing and failing to declare "seditious documents," and went on trial in a suburban Johannesburg court in May 1984 expecting to be found guilty...

...In late April 1984 Nigeria's military government issued a decree saying a military tribunal would try anyone "who publishes in any form, whether written or otherwise, any message, rumor, report, or statement...

...The trick is to publish quite different newspapers each day for their two audiences, whites and blacks...

...South Africa is also learning to live without the daily newspaper which probably covered the race story there best, the prestigious Rand Daily Mail...

...But today they are both victims of an ailment afflicting most of the African continent: the effort of governments, whether in black or white-controlled Africa, to suppress the free press...

...Doe's Justice Ministry accused him of "defaming a fellow head of state...

...The decree was retroactive, permitting journalists to be detained for articles written before the decree's promulgation...

...The South African government keeps careful watch on all newspapers...

...In mid-January 1984 Doe's People's Redemption Council — the military men who run the Liberian government — took Best to court, claiming his paper "misquoted" the Head-of-State-CIC...

...Best was arrested and taken to the post stockade for nine days...

...On that date Best, his wife, and nine staffers were carted off to Monrovia's Military Post Stockade...

...Samuel K. Doe in April 1980...

...Best, whose father was a Trinidadian, recalled with a smile that "1982 was a good year...

...A year after its debut PANA had increased its news output to 25,000 words daily going to thirty-nine countries...

...We were reporting the news," he said...

...Liberia is scheduled to return to civilian government in January 1986, and the Observer outspokenly urged a return to democracy and a multi-party system...

...This decree and a companion measure have chilled the once lively press of Nigeria...

...By mid-1984 South Africa's Directorate of Publications placed a permanent ban on the Windhoek Observer, claiming it was dangerous to public morals and state security...

...The Military rulers also "call in" editors and reporters for long questioning sessions...

...Nothing happened to me...

...The business staff resigned in protest, and Smith has been putting out the paper himself...

...But in August 1983 his paper ran a photo of a rutted up-country road and a caption below the photo that said, "BAD, BAD Road...

...I had been dreaming and planning to put out the paper since 1978...

...She was arrested in 1983 on a return trip from Paris, after covering a UN-sponsored conference on Namibia...

...In Kenya in March 1984 the ruling KANU party took over the Nairobi Times, the country's only independent, African-owned newspaper, and began publishing it as a party newspaper...

...In Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, the military Commonweal: 430 government which ousted civilian rulers at the end of 1983 has clamped down harder and harder on a hitherto free press...

...Of 6,268 miles of roads, only 366 are paved...

...To her surprise, she was acquitted...

...Lister's demotion, which amounted to her being fired, provoked a storm at the Observer...

...In the Sudan journalists were regularly arrested under the regime of Gaafar al-Nimeiri, deposed by the Sudanese military in April 1985...

...They are part of a continent-wide pattern that has only one or two bright spots...

...Opubor is a senior advisor to PAN A, having taught seven years at Michigan State before returning to his native Nigeria...

...Hasaballah was freed but rearrested again on February 15,1985 on unspecified charges...

...Best fought his charter revocation in court and finally won in late summer 1984...

...After three years of enforced silence, for example, South African journalist Joe Thloloe returned to work on the Sowetan in January 1984...

...One is PAN A, acronym for Pan African News Agency, based in Dakar...

...Three weeks later the Publications Appeal Board lifted the ban in an apparent deal...

...The Guardian's Tunde Thompson and an assistant news editor, Nduka Irabor, both served a year in prison before being freed, and at least five Nigerian journalists continue to be jailed for violations, although none has been formally charged or tried...

...The four women staffers were jailed for four days, the men ten days...

...IN SOUTH AFRICA, government pressures often tend to be more subtle than those of the black African nations...

...Typical case: John Owino, of the Ugandan News Agency, was arrested in spring 1984 on trespassing charges, though it's believed the real motive for his arrest was his critical reporting of army movements against Ugandan insurgents...

...We were shut for two weeks...

...It began transmitting a 6,000-word report, half in English, half in French, to six African countries in May 1983...

...The trend in Africa is in the opposite direction...

...Lister and Smith were both highly critical of South Africa's role in Namibia...

...In the first half of 1984 South African authorities banned — that is, barred distribution of — eight editions of Smith's weekly, though later they relented on five...

...He remains in jail, as does Otieno Mak'onyango, former president of the Kenyan Journalists Union, who was first detained in August 1982...

...Smith agreed to deposit $12,000 with the South African administration to forestall further sanctions (the deposit was exacted under South African security laws, the first time ever such a deposit was required of a Namibian paper and presumably will be lost if Smith's paper is banned again), and Gwen Lister was demoted...

...There's been a general liberalization, an easing of the social tensions that led to disorders against the (minority) Christian Copt community, and stimulated the Moslem extremists who assassinated Anwar Sadat...

...Maegene and I sometimes would work until 5 a.m...

...Those issues of the paper were immediately banned for containing material' 'prejudicial to state security.'' Her real sin, she noted last year, was that in 1978 she had left the Advertiser when that paper's editor, Hannes Smith, refused orders from the paper's new owner to support a political party favored by South Africa...

...The five refused to recant...

...Scott's reason: A story of labor unrest was "played" higher than a statement by Doe...

...I get threatening phone calls, but they have an effect the reverse of what's intended...

...In Malawi a number of journalists have been forced into exile recently and the managing editor of the Times of Malawi was fired for giving too much prominence to the defense case in a treason trial...

...Even in Senegal, relatively free by most African standards, the editor of Le Politicien, modeled on France's famed Canard Enchaine, was fined two hundred thousand Central African francs (about $500) last year for poking fun at the newly resigned head of the Senegalese National Assembly...

...They deported the BBC team...

...Allister Sparks, a South African who is correspondent for the Observer in the United Kingdom and for the Washington Post, was charged with violating his country's Internal Security Act and Police Act by quoting Winnie Mandela, the banned wife of imprisoned African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela...

...My phone was tapped under an emergency zone decree that lets the police go into any house from Windhoek north to the Angolan border...

...The letter was written by a young Guinean teacher who, like thousands of his countrymen, had taken refuge in Liberia...

...She heard nothing for eight months...

...There President Hosni Mubarak has driven hard to create a Western-style democracy, with its concomitant free and opposition press...

...treason charges against him had just been dropped in court, but under Kenya's National Security Law an editor can be held indefinitely without charge or trial...

...The editor-in-chief of the Times of Zambia was "suspended" for criticizing what he considered improper use of Japanese grants-in-aid...

...They raided my house when I was working for the BBC...

...Lister was detained two and a half hours, then allowed to proceed...

...According to Salie de Swardt, an assistant editor for Beeld, a Johannesburg-based Afrikaans daily, "We can't put a picture of a jailed person in the paper.'' He adds,'' We' re not allowed to quote banned persons," and there are laws governing articles about military matters and "strategic materials," such as oil...

...He told a South African reporter "Gwen Lister will never write another line of politics in her life.'' Lister thinks the Afrikaners william steif & TOM mechling are journalists recently returned from a trip reporting oh African politics and the press...

...But the paper's photograph of the Herzog visit and its welcoming editorial were not considered adequate news coverage by the Justice Ministry when paired against the report on teachers' wages...

...There was none...

...The Senegalese regime is more liberal than most African regimes and its capital provides better technical facilities than most, said Alfred E. Opubor, chairman of Lagos University's communications department...

...Nimeiri hanged one of them — and the other four recanted...

...One Sudanese journalist, Abdel Latif Omer Hasaballah, was sentenced to death in early January of this year but was later granted reprieve after recanting his opposition to Nimeiri's imposition of the Shan'a — Islamic law — on the nation...

...Neither can practice journalism in her or his home area today...

...In Sierra Leone the editor of the Progress was arrested and detained for writing an article which caused a diplomatic row with Liberia...

...I just speak out the way I feel...

...He said, "There comes a time when you have to stand up...

...Lister, interviewed at Windhoek last year, knew then she was in trouble...

...They first found out how tough publishing an independent daily was going to be on June 29, 1981 after printing a story that offended Doe, now known as Head-of-State-Commander-in-Chief Dr...

...BEST'S DAILY in Liberia, also called the Observer, caught on quickly in the euphoria that followed the enlisted men's coup led by Master Sgt...

...We were out of business for a month," said Best...

...She filed detailed reports for the paper...

...There is only one political party in Liberia now, Doe's...

...He immediately began publishing the Observer again — its 8,000 to 10,000 circulation made it Liberia's largest daily — until Jan...

...The effort has succeeded in the cases of both Lister and Best...

...It ceased publication at the end of April 1985 because it was losing money...

...Yet both English-language and Afrikaans-language papers have learned to live with their government's strictures...

...PANA's director-general is Cheick Ousmane Diallo of Niger, and Opubor, who set up and ran the Nigerian News Agency from 1978 to 1982, is optimistic that PANA will improve Africa's journalistic tone...

...Nor were threats confined to large, influential dailies...

...getting the paper out, go home for a couple of hours of sleep and come back to work...

...THE STORIES of Gwen Lister and Ken Best are not isolated instances...

...The two May issues with Lister's reports from Lusaka remained banned...

...The front page also ran a photo of Israeli President Chaim Herzog and his wife visiting Monrovia...

...Best is a greying black man, forty-seven, who lives with his wife Maegene, four children, and three nieces and ne'phews in a house on Monrovia's outskirts...

...On a typical day, for instance, the Johannesburg Star's white edition will carry a front-page story and photo of three former South African beauty queens—white, of course—"all wearing their years beautifully" at a gala ball...

...Samuel K. Doe (South Korea, which sold Liberia military supplies paid f or by the U. S., gave Doe an honorary doctorate from the University of Seoul, though Doe reportedly does not have a high school diploma...

...The Justice Ministry ordered Best's paper closed and filed suit to revoke the paper's articles of incorporation on grounds of "defamation of the government's character...

...She is a South African who grew up in Cape Town, attended university there, and went to work as a reporter at Windhoek's main daily newspaper, the Advertiser, eleven years ago...

...which is false in any material particular or which brings or is calculated to bring the Federal Military Government or the government of a state or a public officer to ridicule or disrepute.'' Radio and TV stations were also covered...

...Held without charge or trial until December 1984, he was released and then rearrested with four other persons for distributing an anti-Shari'a pamphlet...

...Hasaballah, former editor of a Sudanese daily, Sahafa, was first arrested in June 1983...

...Best is out of business...

...Together, the two and a part-time sports reporter put out Namibia's liveliest paper, whose circulation soon grew to 9,000, Namibia's largest...

...9 August 1985: 429 finally have buffaloed Smith...

...The Guardian, privately owned and probably Lagos's best daily, reported in April 1984 that two of its editors and a senior diplomatic correspondent had been arrested and held in prison because the Guardian had the temerity to publish a true story: the reshuffling of Nigeria's ambassadors...

...The government took exception and out of a clear blue sky the Justice Ministry sent a bus load of policemen and ordered us to close," says Best...

...He wants to keep it that way...

...She promptly flew to Lusaka, Zambia, to cover a conference on Namibia for the Windhoek Observer, the weekly she'd worked for since 1978...

...Lister's and Best's paths have never crossed...

...He had served more than a year for possessing a banned pamphlet...

...The irony is that a week later the Public Works Ministry apologized for Liberia's bad public roads...

...16, 1985, when Justice Minister Jenkins Scott ordered the paper closed indefinitely...

...Best was fined $1,500...

...A Western analyst in Cairo said: "Mubarak has made very impressive efforts on the path to democracy...

...She was detained at the Johannesburg airport for carrying ' 'seditious documents,'' the most offensive being the constitution of the South West African People's Organization (SWAPO...

...The Egyptian press has never known greater freedom...

...Under the decree, Nigerian authorities could jail journalists for up to two years, as well as close news outlets for twelve months or levy fines of at least $13,000 for so-called inaccurate reporting...

...Opubor said PANA was funded by UNESCO and various African nations...

...He remained in Kenya nine years, but he returned to Monrovia in May 1980 to publish and edit his own daily newspaper...

...In a related move, BBC correspondent Willis D. Knuckles was arrested and jailed five weeks for reporting the closing of Best's paper...

...It called on Toure to permit free enterprise in Guinea...

...Ten days later a front-page headline of Best's paper reported that Liberian teachers had not been paid for months...

...For one thing, they live 2,500 miles apart — Lister in Windhoek, Namibia...

...In all, about seventy stories daily are sent out, two-thirds in French, the rest in English...

...Whether Nimeiri's successors will be any more willing to tolerate dissent than the deposed dictator remains to be seen...

...Liberians had been ready for a long time for an independent paper...

...Four Moslem fundamentalist publications have been permitted to resume "publication, and opposition politicians such as Fouad Serag El-Din, chairman of the New Wafd Party, commend Mubarak's approach...

...Yet they produce the same kinds of repression...

...Soon afterward the assistant editor of Nairobi's Sunday Standard was taken into custody...

...9 August 1985: 431...

...A second bright spot is Egypt, Africa's second most populous nation...

...Owino remains in jail...

...Lister reports that "the police worked on us in other ways...

...Best in Monrovia, the steamy capital of Liberia...