February 2, 2021
"Power hates scrutiny. Many of those who rule us will pay any price to be rid of critical voices and the news platforms that amplify them."
This book is a collection of 16 autobiographical essays by exiled editors, reporters, bloggers, and other media workers from West, Central, East, and Southern Africa. The essays share their accounts of how their unrelenting conviction to tell the truth forced them to flee their homelands and live in exile.
Intended as a tribute to journalists and a record of history, the book seeks to shed light on the high price African journalists are paying for unearthing the truth and keeping anti-democratic authorities in check. As explained by the editor, "Stripped of the names of journalist victims and the countries they come from, the stories are depressingly similar. Whether it's the midnight phone threats to a newspaper editor in Sani Abacha's Nigeria or the volley of bullets fired at a news correspondent's car in Somalia, the willingness to lock up journalists or kill them because of divergent opinion makes Africa a numbingly dangerous place for independent reporting."