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The past month has witnessed an extraordinary assault on press freedom and the democratic right of journalists to hold the most powerful to account.
Those attacks were not waged by rogue State House officials – although they have plenty to answer for – but by Kenya’s “most amazing money maker” and most profitable company. Safaricom describes itself as a “responsible corporate entity” and boasts that it upholds the “highest standards of integrity”. But these slogans are a far cry from what I have learned these past weeks.
Since the Daily Nation’s 29 October exposé of Safaricom’s collaboration with the police, the newspaper, its journalists, and now even civil society, have come under attack by the corporate giant.
By now you will have seen reports of Safaricom punishing the entire Nation Media Group, by cancelling all advertising revenues. The telecoms giant did this despite outrage from all corners of Kenyan society – from senators demanding investigations, to victims of recent abductions who fear that their location data had been breached. Even US envoy Whitman denounced the revelations.
But it gets more sinister.
The Vodafone subsidiary sent a threatening legal letter to the Nation in an attempt to bully and harass the newspaper into deleting its report and subsequent coverage, and demanding an apology and compensation.
It also targeted its legal threat at the individual British and French journalists behind the Nation investigation, as well as the Nation’s Kenyan reporters who penned the coverage of the ensuing outrage.
The good news is that the Nation has robustly defended its reporting, and stands by its journalists. For this we should be proud; public-interest journalism is a key tenet of democracy.
The issues raised in the Nation report, which include revelations that police predictively identify suspects using the Safaricom network, and that the company may have frustrated the course of justice, are grave and must be urgently addressed. Any responsible company would do so.
But it appears that Safaricom is prepared to do anything but.
As the Civic Freedoms Forum (CFF) has now revealed, the telecoms giant wrote a legal letter to Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) warning the organisation against publicly raising the Nation’s findings.
Safaricom also demanded that KHRC retract their open letter, which it wrote jointly with Muslims for Human Rights (MUHURI), an organisation that I chair.
CFF, a coalition of major human rights organisations, observes that Safaricom’s behaviour constitutes “brazen attempts to silence public interest journalism”. Such conduct is known as SLAPP, or strategic litigation against public participation.
Threats of SLAPP, like those sent by Safaricom to KHRC and the Nation, are a weapon used by large corporations to silence critics and avoid accountability.
KHRC and MUHURI have stood firm, and we should be thankful that they are now joined by a league of Kenyan civil society organisations under the CFF umbrella.
But the struggle is far from over. In another move designed to muzzle the case while distracting from the grave issues at hand, Safaricom has also filed a complaint with the Media Council of Kenya about the Nation’s investigative report and the subsequent coverage.
I have read Safaricom’s complaint to the Media Council: it is as laughable as it is outrageous. Its function is to bog the Nation’s journalists down in anything other than their jobs. The corporate evidently wants them to think twice before publishing work critical of the company.
Witnessing Safaricom’s attempts to silence the Nation and Kenya civil society, the renowned international organisation, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) issued a damning statement condemning the tactics. Worryingly, RSF also identified a coordinated smear campaign directed against the Nation and its journalists.
I have little doubt that the Council will see sense and tell Safaricom to stop wasting everyone’s time. I also hope it will take the opportunity to remind the company that it has yet to answer the allegations made against it.
I am told that the investigative report by the Nation is in fact the tip of the iceberg, and that there are more cases of impropriety – if not criminality – that Safaricom has engaged in with the police.
We can therefore not afford to let this issue slide. As Senator Okiyah Omtatah put it, “The question of data is not just a matter of privacy; it is a question of life and death.”
The admissions of senior staff from Safaricom contractor, Neural Technologies included in the Nation’s investigative report show that it developed artificial intelligence to predictively identify suspects, and remotely access Safaricom data to help track the targets.
That data is then used by Kenya’s paramilitary police and hit squads, such as those in the recce squad, to “take down” targets. This should alarm us all.
And the cases documented by the Nation’s investigation show what appears to be Safaricom frustrating justice when police are accused of crimes, typically enforced disappearance. The company refused to explain its conduct.
Given Safaricom’s near-total market dominance, this issue touches most, if not all, Kenyans. What we need right now is a robust civil society movement to echo the Nation’s findings and continue to demand that Safaricom address allegations of engaging in criminal conduct. In this regard, I am proud to see ongoing efforts, spearheaded by KHRC and MUHURI, to keep this issue at the forefront of the Kenyan people’s minds.
However, if that doesn’t succeed, we must take the fight to the UK, where Vodafone is based, and demand that it open a transparent investigation into its subsidiary and make wholesale changes. If it doesn’t, then it has no place operating here.
Kenya has a transformative constitution with one of the most modern Bill of Rights as its fourth chapter. Foreign corporates and their subsidiaries in Kenya must defend, protect, and uphold our Constitution.
When corporate entities wax lyrical about the rule of law and democracy, their practices must follow suit. In targeting journalists and civil society, Safaricom’s rhetoric has been exposed for what it is: perfidy, hypocrisy, double standards, and bullying of the very people defending Kenya’s constitution.
Among today’s many struggles for Kenya’s future, and the health of its democracy, this is one we cannot afford to lose.
