THE IMPERATIVE OF NATIONAL UNITY AND THE CONCEPT OF PRESS FREEDOM: THE CASE OF EAST AFRICA *

The issue of whether national unity justifies constraints imposed upon the African press has proven a persistent dilemma. Western, and some-times non-Western, students of the African press have looked for manifestations of press freedom contending that freedom is a natural human right. African leaders, on the other hand (Senghor, 1962; Nye-rere, 1966), have argued that the imperative of national unity overrides the value of individual liberty. This author shares the concerns of African leaders and proposes that the imperative of national unity constitutes a central value in African thought and should be considered a guiding principle in any assessment of the condition of the press in the continent. Specific attention is given to the case of East Africa. Hitherto, students of the African press have given little attention to the conflict between individual and collective interests. Although Ainslie (1966) recognized the impact of national unity on the role of the press in the continent, she did not identify the concept of the collectivity as predominant in African thought. Analysing the African press, Hachten (1972) gave national unity no more than passing com-ment. And had Barton (1979) paid attention to the centrality of the collective value in African thought, he might have been less hasty to dismiss the Zambian press as &dquo;President Kaunda’s Press.&dquo; Awogu (1975) concluded that African political institutions and thought have developed within a cultural context embracing both change and continuity. One continuing belief resistant to changes of post-Independence modernization, has been a political philosophy of &dquo;groupism&dquo; (collectivity). This collectivist world view, Awogu ob-served, has been distinctly different from the European (and at least colonial African) political philosophy’s emphasis on the individual