The State of Investigative Journalism in Cameroon: Challenges and Opportunities
By Hans Ngala
This essay was first submitted by the author at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg on 12 June 2020.
What is Journalism and What is Investigative Journalism?
Journalism is a difficult profession especially in autocratic states like Cameroon for example. Even tougher is undertaking investigative journalism projects in such an environment.
Kovach and Rosenstiel (2014) in their book The Elements of Journalism state that the role of journalism is to “provide citizens with the information they need to make the best possible decisions about their lives, their communities, their societies, and their governments.” In fact, journalism is considered one of the key pillars of any democratic state, or as Wasserman (2013) puts it:
“A common sense understanding of media are that they are a central pillar of democracy. They are trusted to provide the information that citizens need to make informed electoral choices; provide a space for public debate and keep those in power accountable. For these reasons, journalism is frequently perceived not only as central to democracy but as ‘synonymous with democracy’ or even, according to media theorist James Carey, as ‘another name for democracy’ ”.
It is worth distinguishing between the two forms of journalism as this will help in better understanding why the former is mediocre in its practice and the latter is almost non-existent in the context of Cameroon.
The Investigative Journalism Manual (n.d.) distinguishes between the two types of journalisms thus:
“Unlike conventional reporting, where reporters rely on materials supplied by the government, NGOs, and other agencies, investigative reporting depends on material gathered through the reporter’s own initiative. The practice aims at exposing public matters that are otherwise concealed, either deliberately or accidentally.”
Why Journalism is a Dangerous Profession in Cameroon
According to Nyamnjoh, Wete, and Fonchingong (1996) from Cameroon’s independence in 1960, up to 1990, Cameroonian authorities were more interested in strengthening their grip on all aspects of national life, than they were in giving civil society a chance to impact government and policy.
They go on to argue that in having this all-encompassing grip on the country, Paul Biya’s government “has succeeded in dominating virtually all spheres of national life — public and private, often using the media as willing or reluctant allies in the asphyxiation of civil society” (Nyamnjoh, Wete and Fonchingong, 1996).
However, 1990 was a landmark year in Cameroon’s media history. It saw the change from a one-party state to a forceful introduction of multi-party politics championed by the Social Democratic Front (SDF) of John Fru Ndi as well as the passing of a law that allowed the diversification of the media space, including the freedom to private publishing of newspapers and broadcasting which had previously been the sole preserve of the state (Fombad, 2003).
While this sounds like a laudable gesture, it really isn’t, because there are still a lot of impediments to practicing journalism in Cameroon. Among the litany of issues plaguing the profession in the West African country are; the lack of access to information law, harsh penalties on journalists meted out by authorities through the government-funded National Communications Council (NCC), different approaches to journalism by French-speaking journalists and English-speaking journalists and the widespread habit of taking bribes from sources in order to report stories.
To understand harsh penalties against journalists, it is worth establishing that Cameroon is currently inundated with problems ranging from the ongoing separatist conflict that was brought on by poor governance which led the country’s English-speaking minority to feel marginalized; to the Boko Haram terrorist insurgency in the north and a migration crisis to its eastern borders brought on by refugees fleeing unrest in the Central African Republic (CAR). Cameroonian authorities have often dictated to journalists how they are supposed to report on some of these issues.
For example, in August 2019, authorities arrested a journalist by the name Samuel Wazizi, claiming that he was supporting separatists in the Anglophone part of the country. Journalists protested the arrest, but the country’s Minister of Territorial Administration and Decentralization (South Africa’s equivalent of Home Affairs), said that Wazizi and those protesting his arrest were “unpatriotic”. He was irate and appeared to be telling journalists how he wanted them to do their job, stating that:
“They have one main objective, just to sabotage government action, to promote secessionist tendencies. I urge them to be responsible. Those who do not want to respect the laws will be booked as being recalcitrant and will be treated as such” (Moki, 2019).
By “laws”, the minister was referring to praising the government and perhaps also to a 2014 law against Boko Haram that has been used to silence the media. Under the law, journalists can spend up to 10 years in jail and even face the death penalty if found to be complicit in acts of terrorism according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Defamation is also criminalized in Cameroon’s penal code and often things are stated very vaguely or broadly, making it easy for the powers that be to use sweeping generalizations to imprison journalists whose reporting they are not comfortable with.
Macmillan Ambe, president of the Cameroon Association of English Speaking Journalists, CAMASEJ castigated the minister’s comments and argued that “When you have the minister of territorial administration giving lessons to journalists on how to report, it just adds to some of the difficulties we are already facing. We are subjected to torture, be it physical or psychological. We have also had cases of several journalists who are being called up for questioning, so it becomes very difficult for us to operate” (Moki, 2019).
Shortly before the 2011 presidential election, Reporters Without Borders visited Cameroon and noted that the influential state-run media gave more room to Biya’s campaign than they did the other presidential candidates and said that “much needs to be done to improve the media, protect journalists and enable them to work effectively. We stand ready to help the Cameroonian authorities carry out these reforms” (Reporters Without Borders, 2011).
Also, over the years, several Cameroonian journalists have lost their lives while in prison in connection with their work. This was the fate of Germain Ngota Ngota, a newspaper editor who died at the Kondengui Prison in the capital in 2010. As recently as 5th June 2020, Cameroonian authorities admitted that Samuel Wazizi who was arrested in August 2019 had died shortly after his arrest (some 10 months ago) and this acceptance only came after journalists’ unions staged protests calling for his release. Also, Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV), the state-run radio and TV broadcaster, locked up its general manager Amadou Vamoulké on charges of corruption, though this only came after Vamoulké announced he was going to run for president, against incumbent Paul Biya.
A joint statement signed by press freedom defenders, including Reporters Without Borders, CPJ, and human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch called on the presidents of several countries where journalists were imprisoned – to release them. The list included Cameroon where according to the letter dated 6 April 2020, seven journalists were in jail in connection with their work (Reporters Without Borders, 2020).
No Protection for Journalists, No Access to Information
Cameroon has a track record of human rights abuses and has scored very low points on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index. The country emerged as the world’s most corrupt country consecutively in 1998 and 1999 (Transparency International, 1998; Transparency International 1999). Normally it would be expected that such an environment would have a lot of untold stories being told, but this is not necessarily the case. The 2020 Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders ranks Cameroon at 134 out of 180 countries, meaning it has one of the least free media spaces in the world. In contrast, South Africa’s press ranks among some of the freest in the world, with the country placing 31 out of 180 and this is visible in its journalism where a lot of investigative stories have been done, journalists have the leverage of using the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) to request information from corporate and government institutions and the existence of organizations dedicated to investigative journalism – something that is near impossible in Cameroon with all the administrative and legal bottlenecks the media there face.
It is worth noting that while South Africa was still in the throes of apartheid in the 1950s, magazines such as Drum were already immersed in investigative journalism and exposing a lot of vices in South African society. At this time, Cameroon was still negotiating internal politics and how to proceed with independence and who was likely to be prime minister (for the part of the country under French rule) and this was not the likeliest environment in which investigative journalism could take place.
The struggles of the Union du Peuple Camerounais (UPC) which translates to Union of the Peoples of Cameroon which advocated that French and British Cameroons be merged into one country were banned. A lot of political activists including Reuben Um Nyobe, lost their lives in the uprising that followed. These were tumultuous times for Cameroon and a fertile period for investigative journalism but as it was, very few newspapers (as this was the main medium) existed at that time and the few that there were, were operated by colonial authorities or the Catholic Church.
Stories that Should Have Been Investigated by Cameroonian Reporters
In spite of all the aforementioned factors, there are a lot of salacious investigative stories that one would have expected Cameroonian journalists to be the first to break, but instead, foreign media worked on these.
One such story that irked Biya’s government was published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) which published reports in 2016 accusing Paul Biya of spending over four-and-a-half years at the Hotel Intercontinental in Switzerland since 1982 – his luxurious hotel of choice where each trip, according to the investigative journalists, cost 40.000 USD per day. No media outlet in Cameroon ran the story for fear of being targeted by authorities, though it did go viral on social media. The government-owned Cameroon Tribune, published a rebuttal, claiming the reports were false and meant to destabilize Cameroon (Freudenthal, Batchou, and Tjat, 2018).
In July 2017, Cameroon’s National Social Insurance Fund, better known by its French appellation Caisse Nationale de Prévoyance Sociale (CNPS) was rocked by a scandal involving its general manager, Alain Noël Olivier Mekulu Mvondo Akame. Akame was accused by one of the company’s accountants, Patrick Hervé Bessala of falsifying documents and enriching himself to the tune of 68 billion CFA Francs (nearly 2 billion Rand). News reports also alleged that Akame had given out 500,000 CFA to former Cameroonian football star, Roger Milla from the company’s coffers and had traveled to Spain to watch an El Clasico FC Barcelona vs Real de Madrid match at the expense of CNPS (Agbaw-Ebai, 2017). Cameroonian newspapers ran the story but were ever careful not to state things matter-of-factly and no investigation was conducted by the authorities nor were investigative stories conducted by journalists. Akame retained his job and the matter ended at that perhaps this could be because of the fact that the CNPS general manager is appointed by the minister of finance who is answerable to the president. That would mean investigating such a story would somehow end up being linked to the president who is omnipresent in Cameroon’s national affairs and appoints his supporters to influential positions in large state-funded corporations such as CNPS (Feka Wakai, 2018).
In March 2016, Cameroon was once again in global headlines. This time around for its dilapidated public healthcare system which demanded that a pregnant woman pay first before she would be attended to. Thirty-one-year-old Monique Koumateke was seven months pregnant and died shortly after going into labor at the steps of a hospital in Douala. In a desperate attempt to save her twins, Koumateke’s sister cut her stomach open with a razor blade (Sa’ah, 2016; Afom, 2019). The minister of public health who was not present at the scene claimed Koumateke and her twin babies had long died before arriving at the hospital and that her death was not a result of negligence on the part of the hospital. This became the version that state media ran and though private media were critical in reporting how the hospital dealt with the matter, no thorough investigation was carried out by reporters to disprove what the minister was saying. Koumateke never got any justice and the story ended at that. Calls for the minister’s resignation were not heeded nor was an investigation conducted.
A few years earlier, in August of 2011, 17-year Vanessa Tchatchou had put to birth a premature baby boy at a public hospital in the capital Yaounde. She woke up one morning and her baby was missing from the incubator. Tchatchou and her family were convinced of the complicity of the hospital in the disappearance of the baby and staged a six-month-long protest sitting at the hospital and demanding answers (Afom, 2019). None were provided and Tchatchou was eventually forcibly removed from the hospital by police and gendarmes (Afom, 2019). Journalists didn’t conduct investigative reports to dig deeper and find out what the facts were beyond the disappearance of the baby.
Conclusion
As pointed out from the select instances above, journalism in Cameroon needs to add an investigative side to it. This would mean taking on a lot of risk which is what most Cameroonian journalists fear. Cameroonian journalists also need to be more ethical and decline taking bribes from their sources and realize that their job first and foremost is to their audiences rather than to the powers that be. It is very easy to draw connections between Cameroon’s poor journalism and the thriving corruption which seems to have permeated the profession as well as journalists have normalized collecting money from their sources (Skjerdal, 2010).
As James Carey, a media theorist posits, journalists need to realize that ‘journalism’ and ‘democracy’ are “different names for the same thing” (Carey,2000) and once they realize that and take their job more seriously in the Cameroonian context, there is surely going to be a change in that society. The quest to improve Cameroonian journalism and see it take more of an investigative approach (since sources will hardly give them information anyway) is not just one to fight corruption, but especially one to promote democracy. As Carey points out “Journalists can be independent or objective about everything else but they cannot be aloof about democracy, for it forms the ground condition of their craft” (Carey, 2000).
For a country with a president who has been in power for 38 years who is hardly accountable and rarely makes any public appearances, this is especially the case. Cameroonian journalists need to take on the hard stories, wade into dangerous waters, and tell the stories that will help improve the lives of their citizens. Too many are not properly trained, but this is the lesser issue until they begin to be willing to take risks to tell the stories that matter in ways that will not be refuted by the powers that be.
