"So This is Democracy?" is an annual publication from the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), which records incidents of media freedom violations monitored by MISA in the previous year.

Although this figure marks a decrease of 10 percent from the previous year, the nature of alerts and their bearing on the psyche of journalists have culminated into an environment in which journalists practice self-censorship, where media organisations are either closed down by governments through the application of repressive legislation or as a result of degenerating economics conditions and where the pursuit of independent journalism is often labelled as unpatriotic.

The publication includes: a review of events affecting media workers; a detailed breakdown of press freedom violations and violent attacks against journalists for each country monitored over the course of the year; identification of trends noted within each country; a "gender and media" overview for the entire Southern African Development Community (SADC) region; and, new in 2005, a review of government policies that do not include sufficient involvement of civil society organisations and those most affected by these policies (called the African Media Barometer - ABM).

Countries monitored in 2005 include: Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The book is intended not only for media activists but also for scholars and others interested in plotting the trends and identifying the various devices used to undermine media freedom and the free flow of information.

Hard copies of these publications may be ordered from MISA's Regional Secretariat: resource@misa.org

Click here to view a summary of the most current version of this publication and for access to downloading all versions as PDF documents.