Africa's leaders are quickly learning the art of the spin

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0504170476apr17,1,3598668.column?coll=chi-news-col&ctrack=1&cset=true

Published April 17, 2005


BANJUL, Gambia -- Before Gambian journalist Deyda Hydara was killed in
a yet-unsolved drive-by shooting in December in this West African
capital, many residents of Africa's tiniest country woke up eagerly to
his witty political column with the distinctive title: "Good Morning,
Mr. President."

That cheeky greeting was aimed at Gambia's President Yahya Jammeh, who
took charge after a bloodless coup in 1994 at age 29 and has
stubbornly avoided his country's news reporters ever since.

Worse, he has been quoted referring to journalists by such colorful
sobriquets as "the bastards of Africa," a view undoubtedly shared by
many world leaders, if usually not in public.

President Jammeh's thinly veiled hostility to the media might be more
laughable were it not accompanied by a series of unsolved criminal
attacks and restrictive new laws aimed at journalists over the last
five years.

They include arson attacks by masked, armed and uniformed men in 2000
against private broadcaster Radio 1 FM, a station with a pro-democracy
stance, and two against The Independent that destroyed that biweekly
newspaper's printing press last April. Employees barely escaped
injury. Some, like BBC correspondent Ebrima Sillah, whose home was
damaged in a late-night arson last August, have fled the country.

That's why I am here with two other representatives of the Committee
to Protect Journalists, of which I am a board member. With Joel Simon,
CPJ's deputy director, and Julia Crawford, the New York-based
organization's Africa coordinator, we met with a variety of government
officials and journalists, and witnesses to some of the crimes.

As an African-American who remembers the national sensation sparked by
Alex Haley's "Roots" three decades ago (the TV mini-series of Haley's
best-selling book broke records as the most-watched entertainment
program in TV history), I have come to Gambia with a mixture of
excitement and dismay. My ancestors may have come from this tiny land
(about 200 miles long and up to 50 miles wide) as surely as Haley's
did. Unlike other parts of Africa that I have visited, the savvy
street merchants here spot my "American walk" and get my attention by
shouting, "Welcome home!"

But there's a larger story here: I am dismayed to arrive for the
reason that journalists usually visit African countries: Bad news is
happening.

Mother Gambia is afflicted by yet another leader who has not resolved
Western democratic values, the key to a prosperous future, with the
traditional monolithic "big-man" rule of African tribal chiefs and
political potentates.

The result is an odd amalgam that broadcaster George Christensen,
owner of Radio 1, described ironically as "military democracy."

Tiny Gambia is indicative of a big story happening across Africa and
the rest of the Third World in the post-Cold War, post-Sept. 11 age of
globalism, the Internet and the political spin industry. To paraphrase
that eloquent philosopher Donald Rumsfeld, you deal with the African
leaders that you have, not the ones that you wish you had.

Gambia, for example, does not have Africa's worst media environment,
although that is not saying much. President Jammeh has not shut down
his independent media like Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's president, or
scattered all of his country's independent journalists in secret
dungeons like Eritrea's outrageous regime.

But Jammeh's regime has slipped backward in recent years while
countries like Senegal, Ghana, Benin, Mali and Cape Verde, to name a
few, have made great strides forward, resulting in increased commerce,
tourism and international respectability. Democracy pays. Monolithic
governments invite political and ultimately economic stagnation.

And that offers a window of hope for Gambia under Jammeh, who wants to
be a player in the African Union, which Gambia hosts next year. He
also wanted to be elected to lead the Economic Community of West
African States in January but may have lost that opportunity because
of international anxiety over the recent media attacks in his country.

He also is said to be a great admirer of President Bush, whose
administration has praised Gambia for cooperating in capturing a
couple of terror suspects. Jammeh received military police training at
Ft. McClellan, Ala., and led Bush's security detail when he visited
Gambia during his father's presidency in 1990. Small world.

U.S. officials hope their mutual appreciation will encourage Jammeh to
make further reforms in human rights and press freedoms.
Unfortunately, he also seems to have picked up the Bush
administration's worst habits of spin: Treat the news media with
benign neglect and thinly veiled contempt, as if they were
representing only their own interests, not the public's interest.
That's a line of jive, but too often it works.

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