Some laws deprives the right of freedom of expression in Tanzania

In Tanzania freedom of opinion and expression is a constitutional right and it is guarantees that everybody has a right to give opinion and receives information on article 18 of the United Republic of Tanzania constitution. However the Newspaper Act 1976 gives power to authorities to prohibit publication that are not to be on the public interests and recently Tanzania have the Cybercrime Act 2015 which contradicts with the constitution.

This constitutional right of informing people to large extent is performed by media and it is a day to day responsibilities of Tanzania’s Journalists. To perform these responsibilities, Tanzania’s journalists need to have a conducive working environment such as salary and laws which enables them to perform their work effectively.

Journalists and other stakeholders of the media in Tanzania agree that press freedom in Tanzania still has some challenges which need to be tackled with all stakeholders including government. Most of the challenges which brought the discussions among journalists are Laws, threats and attacks against journalists, however threats and attacks decreased up to 2014.

The Laws which have been complained by most of the media practitioners are the Newspaper Act 1976 which give power to minister for news and information to burn any newspaper for unknown period for example; under this law more than three newspapers were burned since 2013, whereby Mwananchi and Mtanzania newspapers burned in 2013 for 14 days and ninety days respectively and on 15^th January 2016 Mawio were burned.

Another law is Broadcasting Services Act 1993 which allows government to regulate electronic media. Recently two radio station were burned which are Radio Five and Magic FM due to seditious reasons. “The stations had broadcast seditious material that could incite the public and disturb the peace” said Nape Nnauye minister for information.

The recently one is the Cybercrime Act 2015 which also captivated the freedom of expression which is the constitutional right. The act on part II article 4 (i) says; a person shall not intentionally and unlawfully access or cause a computer system to be accessed. This closes the door for investigative journalism as you know nowadays most of the information stored through the computer system.

However the challenges which faces press freedom in Tanzania are many but the contradictory one is laws of news, information and communication against article 18 of the Tanzania constitution. Some of these laws depriving the constitutional right of freedom of expression which provides for freedom of speech where by press freedom are among of its practice. Other challenges which put journalists of Tanzania in dilema could be media low salaries. Most of the journalists in Tanzania paid insufficient salary, this made some of them to be bribed easily.