“Many may speak of muzzling the press in Africa, but few actually understand it. Professor Tatah Mentan is one of the continent’s best informed and concerned veteran journalists. He has lived the agonizing passage of African journalism from hosanna singers and entertainers of dictatorships to weapons of mass deception in the hands of phony democracies imported from Western aid donors. In this book he has made a spirited defence of freedom of the press, offering insights into what made for bad politics and bad journalism in the past and offers an extraordinary guide for how to employ journalistic tools bail Africa from cognitive domination from above and brutal repression at home. It is hoped that Tatah Mentan’s unblinking defence of press freedom in Africa can lay to rest the hypocritical official pronouncements on democratic freedoms from Cairo to Cape Town and from Banjul to Maputo. Rarely has a book been more timely and urgently needed. Whether one agrees with the author’s defence or not, this is a must read for those concerned with Africa’s future.”
