In this week’s African Media, we look at how African journalists worked on the Panama Papers; and we hear about one journalist's prison experience in Botswana. Being thrown in prison became a "blessing in disguise" for Sonny Serite, a freelance investigative journalist in Gaborone, Botswana, arrested for almost receiving classified government documents. RFI talks to Serite about his experience and why the President Ian Khama government does not support freedom of speech. Why were you arrested? I was arrested on suspicion—I was going to receive a confidential file from the office of the president. It was suspicious that someone waiting in the office of the president was going to give me a file—that was why I was arrested. That was the official reason, but you have written a number of articles criticizing President Ian Khama’s government. Do you think that came into play? Did you know the person who was giving you this file? First of all, let me start by admitting that there is a hostile relationship between the government and the private media. There is no cordial relationship. Yes, I’ve been writing a lot of articles about the presidency and the ruling government. So, I don’t know what led to their suspicions that this guy was going to give me this file. And I must say that this guy has been my personal friend since 1997. He’s not just an employee in the office of the president, he was, he is my personal friend first and employee of the office of the president second. There has been some speculation in the media that part of this issue is because of some articles you wrote about Transnet,[ a South African company and Botswana Railways who reportedly violated procurement regulations when signing the deal]? Yes, because on the same week that I was arrested, actually a day before I was arrested, I did an investigative report exposing the alleged corruption between Transnet and Botswana Railways. It had acquired some coaches and locomotives from the Transnet, a South African company, and there were some alleged corrupt practices in the acquisition of these coaches. So I had exposed some of the deal. You were arrested, about to receive these documents but you don’t know what was in them, and you were taken to prison. You wrote about this for the Sunday Standard in Botswana. It’s a pretty harrowing description of your days in prison. Can you give insight into how that was? It was bad, it was bad. If you look in that article, I explained that the holding capacity of that prison is 170, but it has 421 inmates as we speak. So that’s more than double the holding capacity. You can imagine the hygiene—it’s despicable. The sleeping space is very small to accommodate a lot of people there. So, it’s not a nice place to be, I want to tell you the truth. It’s quite interesting that you actually could—as a journalist would—pick out some of the people who had been on trial previously and were doing major time for heinous crimes. Exactly—it’s dangerous. As you can imagine, I was remanded; you know, I haven’t been convicted of anything, but I was there with some people who are serving 60 years in prison. First, people can be dangerous, because they have nothing to lose. They can just fight with anyone. There’s some people there who have given up on life, so for you to be mingling with such people is a very dangerous situation. Have you ever been to prison? This was my first time in prison. I’m a law-abiding citizen. You’ve described this in such detail and you’ve also talked about this on social media. It sounds like you have, perhaps, a new investigative piece that will be coming out. Oh yes, yes. In a way, going there was a blessing in disguise. Because as a journalist, the good thing about journalism is that you take your work with you wherever you go. So, if they were locking me in to stop me f