In the midst of a deepening economic crisis exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and shocking WFP prognosis that two thirds of Zimbabwe's population will need food aid by year-end, President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his Zanu-PF party are intent on further suppressing free expression. In his own words, he’s intent on ‘flushing out’ opponents of the regime, calling them ‘bad apples’ and ‘rogue elements in league with foreign detractors’. Journalists exposing corruption and many citizens protesting Zimbabwe’s slide into chaos are viciously silenced. Arbitrary arrests, torture and abductions are daily occurrences. #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister discusses what’s happening there with two powerhouse Zimbabwean women, wellknown journalist Reyhana Masters and award winning novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga.

What can be done when public trust in media is severely eroded and what are the consequences for democracy? It seems this worryingly negative trend across the continent in recent years may currently be in reverse but it’s too early to celebrate yet because of very complex African attitudes to freedoms, notably press freedom. This, according to findings of Afrobarometer, a Pan African series of national public attitude surveys on democracy, governance and society. #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister sits down with researcher Christie Keulder to shed light on these issues. Keulder heads the Survey Warehouse which conducts the Namibia assessment of the Afrobarometer.

How are the media – online and mainstream – covering issues relating to the Covid-19 pandemic; what news should be online and what not and where can we find quality rather than the quantity of information? How does or should legacy media reflect and report on what’s happening online – for example, mainly youth centered campaigns around the call to legalise abortion, petitions for a register of sex offenders, etc. Do newspapers, radio and TV have their fingers on the online pulse or are they losing touch? These are some of the issues that FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister chats about with Natasja Beyleveld, MD of NaMedia, which monitors what’s going on in our spectrum of media.

Arguably incidents of racism and tribalism shouldn’t still be happening in Namibia 30 years after independence and the fall of apartheid. But it’s almost like we’ve simply brushed the subject under the carpet through the policy of national reconciliation pretending it will all just go away. Clearly, we’ve still got a long way to go in fully addressing deep wounds and divisions in our ethnically diverse country. Gwen Lister and lawyer and human rights expert, Toni Hancox, Director of the Legal Assistance Centre, discuss the legal aspects and implications of hate speech including racism and tribalism, and what mainstream and social media can do about it.

Online platforms have given people voice they never had before the onset of the digital era, and while these fora are sometimes used as an an amplifier of progressive views opposed to racism and injustice, among others, they also serve as a platform for hate speech and insult. Gwen Lister and Dr. Admire Mare discuss these issues in the context of the #BlackLivesMatter and #GallowsMustFall campaigns.

How are Namibian newsrooms, their managers and editors, adapting (or not) to the hard new realities for the print media? And are young journalists being treated badly in the process? This is the focus of today’s Freespeak podcast, and guests, Max Hamata, owner and editor of Confidente newspaper, and Ronelle Rademeyer, news editor of Die Republikein and Secretary General of the Editors Forum of Namibia (EFN)weigh in on this topical discussion.

Gwen Lister hosts Johnathan Beukes, online editor at the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) and Jemima Beukes, senior reporter at the Sun newspaper, for a discussion about current constraints - both internal and external - faced by media in general, and journalists in particular.

Fiscal transparency is absolutely crucial during times of national emergency, says the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) who recently launched the findings of the 2019 Open Budget Survey. The survey measures and compares transparency, public participation, and oversight of a country’s budget process. Gwen Lister sat down with the IPPR team, Graham Hopwood and Martha Nangolo, to unpack the findings and their significance for Namibia.

Are media getting it right in terms of covering the Covid-19 pandemic? What is the media doing about the tsunami of lies and disinformation that proliferates at this time, especially online? These are the issues that Gwen Lister tackles as she sits down with Mahlatse Mahlase - Group Editor-in-Chief of Eyewitness News and chairperson of the South African Editors Forum, and Peter Deselaers - journalist and Country Representative of DW Akademie in Namibia.

Algorithms know a lot more about us than we know about them. The algorithm is a lot more than just predicting things we want to see and hear online, and the general public knows almost nothing about them, and even less about the engineers and coders who are creating them behind the scenes. Gwen Lister and co-founder of AlgorithmWatch, Lorenz Matzat, shed light on the characteristics and effects of complex algorithmic decision-making processes on the general public.