BBC Radio Journalist and Reporter Vicky Ntetema

I share Muhingo’s views !

by Vicky Ntetema

Bureau Chief BBC

Tanzania 8th Floor

PPF HouseSamora Avenue/ Morogoro RdP.O. Box 79545

Dar es SalaamTanzania

website: www.bbc.co.uk ; www.bbcswahili.com

mail: va_ntetema5@yahoo.co.uk

Like this seasoned and well respected journalist, I have seen how various forces within our communities have tried to gag the media so that the evils of the society remain out of the spotlight.

In 2005 as part of the BBC Election Media Training Project I supervised the training of three journalists in Makete District. The aim was to raise people’s issues so that parliamentary and presidential candidates could be put to task.

We recorded the interviews the reporters did with Bishop Shadrack Manyiewa (who has just now been voted out of office by his own diocese) who admitted that five staff members at the Lutheran Church employed to work for the Bulongwa Lutheran Hospital were responsible for the stolen money - more than $272,000 meant for the needy, the sick and the dying. The staff were suspended and ordered to pay back the money or else they would be taken to the court of law. Hitherto, nothing has been done and these members of staff shamelessly walk the streets of this country while more people get poor and less health services.

Bishop Manyiewa admitted that he was surprised to find that one of them, who used to be the Hospital’s doctor in charge, was employed by the same Lutheran Church - ELCT to work at another hospital – Ilembula Lutheran Hospital in Southern Tanzania.

This is what happened to the interviews:

• One print reporter wrote a few lines in a Swahili Newspaper;
  


• The second Electronic media reporter (who allegedly was offered accommodation and meals by the Bishop) phoned me to say that his house was burgled and that he has lost all the tapes with the interview and so the story could not be broadcast)
  


• The third Electronic media reporter sent his material to a famous TV / Radio Commercial station he freelances for and he was told that the story would be aired after elections. [The whole training was organized in order to raise issues from the public so that candidates would respond]. The story did not see the light of the airwaves.

The story came to public again after a local self-help group of People Living With HIV and AIDS in Bulongwa, PIUMA ("Pima Uishi kwa Matumaini - Test and Live with Hope") demanded answers about the disappearance of donors’ and government money from the hospital coffers.

The group using the media and peaceful demonstration, also demanded accountability from the local authorities for more than $170,000 donated by the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for a anti HIV/AIDS campaign which never reached the targeted people.

Local authorities, the ELCT management under the leadership of the Bishop started a campaign against the whistleblowers, human rights activists within PIUMA, the foreign medical doctor treating people living with HIV – at the BLH CTC and the media that published / broadcast the story. In the end the Church management closed the CTC and locked out the staff and the equipment with the help of the police. Well working Partec CD4 counters could not be used from that time on and children were excluded to be served according to the state of the art protocols. A FacsCount CD4 counter was brought by the MoH but the performance was never the same and children could not get their laboratory services.

To date more than 50 people have died and the health of many more has deteriorated since the lockout.

Some of the media were threatened by the so called “powers-that-be” and at least one who was about to publish the voices and grievances of PIUMA members and People Living with HIV/AIDS was remanded in police custody in Iringa and sent to court. The whole case was a sham. The police confiscated his equipment and recorded tapes and forced the courts top try him in a regional court far away from the area where the indicent took place while the case was for a district court. His case has been thrown out of court, but he still has not yet received his material. The recorded and broadcast media interview of Bishop Manyiewa is in the hands of the police.The culture of secrecy and protecting one another in order to save faces still rules the African society. And the media sometimes come under attacks and face threats. But it takes people like Muhingo who stand up to be counted despite all the threats against them and their professional ethics. When one stands for the truth and speaks for the needy, the sick and the poor and sticks to their gun, there is no power that can hide the truth. It may take time, but it will always come out.

It will be a great achievement in the history of mankind and a service to the downtrodden if the media in Tanzania and the West could work together to demand accountability from the multinational giants and faith based organization who continue to “fatten the bellies of the minority selfish and corrupt elements” with the taxpayer’s money and the contribution from the pensioners’ who want to help the destitute but whose financial assistance does not reach the intended.

Let’s start a “NO ACCOUNTABILITY NO FUNDS” campaign. We need to send this massage to all the donors, church and the public explaining why the media has reached that decision.

After all, the Bible says: “By the labor of your hand you shall eat food”. There are things that Africa cannot get, at the moment. This includes some of the HIV/AIDS laboratory machinery, better drugs and expertise in the locality.

If people are trained to use these machines and if assistance is given to them in the form of material and not cash, there will be no temptations to steal.