LAGOS, Nigeria — The police moved in on a squat building along a deserted industrial street here one night this month, quietly sealing off the headquarters of Newswatch, one of Africa's most independent and respected weekly news magazines.
A day later, Newswatch was shut down officially by government decree and its three top editors were charged with violating the Official Secrets Act. But that week's edition was already on the street, unveiling the long-awaited secret report of a presidential task force charting Nigeria's future.
Such drastic actions, or the ever-present threat of them, keeps the press cowed in most African countries. But the press in Nigeria, considered by far the freest on the continent, was emboldened by the recent confrontation.
"Government has . . . killed a fly with a sledgehammer," the newspaper Vanguard complained in a front-page editorial expressing a popular sentiment.
Refrain Joined
Lawyers, doctors, academics and labor leaders joined the refrain, using the pages of the country's two dozen newspapers and three surviving weekly magazines to call the ban on Newswatch illegal, undemocratic, fascist and a blot on the country's human rights record.
The heated reaction was clear evidence that despite the setback, Nigeria's lively press is resilient. But the episode also pointed up the enduring hazards of publishing in Africa, where written guarantees of press freedom are usually undercut by unwritten rules about what types of news and comment pose a threat to the stability of a developing nation.
"Publishing in the Third World is like walking through a mine field while blindfolded," Ray Ekpu, editor of Newswatch, said. "When government can act by whim, it becomes more difficult to know where to stop, to see the safe cut-off points."
Mugabe Angered
In Zimbabwe last week, for example, the editor of the Sunday Mail was suspended for reporting that Cuba had expelled some Zimbabwean students. The story angered Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, who was hosting Cuba's foreign minister at the time. The previous editor of the paper, which is run by a state-owned trust and has the largest circulation in the country, was fired two years ago for not bowing to government pressure over editorial policy.
In most African countries, official, government-owned newspapers, magazines and wire services are the only outlets for news, and nearly all of the radio and television stations on the continent are controlled by governments.
