MBABANE:Zweli Martin Dlamini, the editor of this Swaziland News who is also an independent media Contributor for the France based Reporters Without Borders(RSF) focusing on eSwatini media freedom, says he will write to international media organizations and forward names of journalists working as State Intelligence spies and, with an intention to destabilize the media.
The editor said, he was expecting the Eswatini National Association of Journalists(ENAJ) to launch an independent investigation into allegations suggesting that, some journalists are working as State Intelligence spies, secretly deployed to destabilize the media and spy emaSwati particularly those with different political views.
Kimberly Mavuso, a news reader at Channel S is a trained soldier and an employee of the Umbutfo Eswatini Defense Force(UEDF), he is also an Executive member of the Eswatini National Association of Journalists(ENAJ), the highest media policy organization in the country.
Another Channel S journalist working as a State spy is Phesheya ‘Steans’ Sibiya, he is a police officer while others work at the Times of eSwatini, Eswatini TV and the State owned Radio Station.
Dlamini said, the presence of State spies in the media remains a threat not only to media freedom but even to sources and/or whistleblowers because “they even reveal sources when compiling” their spying intelligence reports.
“This means, if this deployment of State spies in the media goes on unchallenged, decisions impacting journalists will be taken by soldiers and the police. The media is fast becoming the Army Barracks, a Police Station or a strategic institution for the State to spy emaSwati particularly those with different political views. These spies approach individuals pretending to be conducting interviews and then compile intelligence reports,” said the editor.
The media in eSwatini has been struggling to have an effective organization for journalists as the alleged State spies would just create confusion and collapse the organization.
In a letter addressed to the then National Commissioner of Police Isaac Magagula, Times Sunday journalist Mfankhona Nkambule also confessed to be a State spy.
Nkambule was seeking the intervention of the Executive Command to evade arrest and in the letter, he appealed to the National Commissioner to stop the police from arresting him as he was also working as a State spy.
“I am disgruntled because I have been a police informer for many years working closely with the Intelligence Department, violating ethics of journalism to get information, which, police used to detect political crimes.I can list five police officers I had worked with- I mean officers who taught me how to be a police spy, using dirty means to get the information,” reads the letter in part from Times journalist Mfankhona Nkambule to the then National Commissioner Isaac Magagula, the letter is dated 30th May 2013.
Editor Zweli Martin Dlamini.