Why do we need to speak  up for free speech?

Not since the days of apartheid has freedom of speech been under such threat in South Africa. Firstly, there is the Protection of Information (POI) Bill that will give the government wide-ranging powers to classify state information and jail those who reveal it. Secondly, the ANC and SACP is pushing for a state-appointed media tribunal to oversee complaints against journalists.  Lastly, the jackboot arrest and detention of Sunday Times investigative reporter Mzilikazi wa Afrika on the basis that he received a fax purporting to be the resignation of the Mpumalanga premier (but never wrote a story) suggests, in Wa Afrika’s own assessment, that the state plans to abuse both the POI Bill and proposed media tribunal.

So what is the POI Bill?

If it went through in its present form, it would give the government wide-ranging powers to classify  anything it likes if it is deemed harmful to the “national interest” and jail anyone for revealing classified information for between 3 and 25 years without the option of a fine. The national interest, however, is defined very broadly and includes, for instance, “the protection and preservation of all things owned  or maintained for the public by the State” (i.e. anything to do with parastatals ) and also  commercial  information in the government’s possession – therefore any information relating to tenders could be classified.

It gives the power to classify information to “subordinate staff members” in government departments and although the public would be able to apply to have information declassified through the Promotion of Access to Information Act, if the requested information is classified as top secret the government may refuse to confirm or deny it even exists.

At the moment the Bill is at the Portfolio Committee hearing stage in Parliament, where proposed laws (if the Bill is passed, it becomes an Act) are debated and submissions from the public and stakeholders are made. It is before the Ad Hoc Committee on the Protection of Information Bill chaired by Cecil Burgess. Intelligence Minister Dr Siyabonga Cwele said on August 12 that he needed two to three more weeks to consider all the submissions on the Bill.

Since then, however, the man who issued the original POI Bill, Ronnie Kasrils,  has condemned the new iteration of the Bill. In an exclusive piece for the Daily Dispatch newspaper, Kasrils has done a detailed analysis of the new POI Bill, showing how it was changed from the version he issued. The new version betrays the intention of the original Bill, he says, which was to make state information more transparent and accessible.

A bit of history on the POI Bill

The Bill was first issued in March 2008 by the Intelligence Ministry under Ronnie Kasrils and there was an immediate outcry that it was too Draconian. Kasrils sent the Bill to the Ministerial Review Commission on Intelligence comprising  Joe Matthews, Dr Frene Ginwala and Laurie Nathan. The aim of the review was to “strengthen mechanisms of control of the civilian intelligence structures in order to ensure full compliance and alignment with the Constitution, constitutional principles and the rule of law, and particularly to minimise the potential for illegal conduct and abuse of power”.

The commission came back a few months later with recommendations: Chiefly that the Bill be rewritten so that, among other things, the broadly defined idea of national interest be scrapped and that only the Intelligence Minister have the right to classify categories of information – subject to comment by Parliament and interested parties. The suggested changes would bring the Bill in line with the Constitution so that the right to freedom of expression would not be infringed upon.

Then in July 2010, the Bill reached the Portfolio Committee hearings stage and everyone realised that not only had the recommendations of the commission been ignored but that various “softening” factors contained in the original Bill had been removed and certain parts had been made harsher, for example, penalties for revealing classified information.

Further reading:

“How my Bill was betrayed” by Ronnie Kasrils (writing for Daily Dispatch)
Dave Steward, executive director of the FW de Klerk Foundation,  covering the nitty gritty of the Bill.
Video: Mail & Guardian editor Nic Dawes’ submission on the POI Bill at the Portfolio Committee hearing.
Constitutional-law expert Pierre de Vos’ analysis on the hearings.
“Secrecy law threatens SA’s democratic credentials” by Fiona Forde in Business Day.
“POI Bill is veil for ANC secrets going back to 20 years” by Gill Moodie at Bizcommunity.

Documents:

The report back from the Ministerial Review Commission on Intelligence comprising  Joe Matthews, Dr Frene Ginwala and Laurie Nathan.
The POI Bill.
Parliamentary Monitoring Group’s web page with submissions to the portfolio committee on the POI Bill and a summary transcript of the hearings.
The Bill of Rights in the South African Constitution.

What does the idea of a Media Appeals Tribunal come from?

The proposal for a tribunal was first raised at the ANC’s 2007 conference in Polokwane but fell off the agenda amid criticism that it would infringe on the freedom of the media.

Then in 2010, it was back on the table again as a working paper for the ANC’s National General Council, planned for September. This comes after the Cape Argus newspaper in Cape Town came out with stunning revelations that a former political reporter and political editor of the paper used their positions to help former Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool – now on his way to the United States as South Africa’s ambassador – in a campaign against political rivals within the ANC. The former reporter, Ashley Smith, also claimed and that the two received money from a public-relations company that obtained provincial-government contracts.
The ANC and SACP say that media self-regulation through the Press Ombudsman is not independent as the ombudsman is funded by the media industry and that many people are prohibited from taking legal action against the media because going through the courts is an expensive and lengthy process.   (If a complaint is taken to the Press Ombusdman, the complainant waives the right to sue but the media are bound by ombudsman’s ruling. )

The ANC and SACP say they are committed to media freedom and the tribunal would be independent from government but the media and many in civil society are concerned that it will be abused by the state to crack down on exposes of government corruption and maladminitration – and used to penalise journalists for such exposes.

The South African Editors’ Forum (Sanef) is leading the fight against the POI Bill and state-appointed media tribunal, saying they will curb media freedom in a manner that is unconstitutional. Sanef has formed an action committee to build a coalition to fight against the tribunal and POI Bill. Recently, 36 of the country’s editors signed what they called the “Auckland Park Declaration” announcing their opposition to both.

Further reading:

Journalism.co.za article on the nitty gritty of the proposed media tribunal and the arguments for and against.
The Ashley Smith scandal and how the Cape Argus investigated and exposed the revelations.
How and why the Auckland Park Declaration was signed.
Constitutional-law expert Pierre de Vos on why the media tribunal is a case of “Boiled chickens pretending to be plumed peacocks”.
“Would Media Appeals Tribunal be constitutional?” by Pierre de Vos.
Tribunal a refuge for the corrupt, says (Cosatu’s) Vavi
The Press Ombudsman’s website, where it publishes all its rulings.
Sanef’s website.

Documents:

ANC document on Media Ownership, Transformation and Diversity.
The SACP on why it supports the ANC call for a media tribunal.
SACP deputy secretary-general Jeremy Cronin on why there is a need for a media tribunal.
President Jacob Zuma on the media tribunal and why the press need not fear it.

And then police swooped on Mzilikazi was Afrika…

How the Sunday Times covered the arrest of wa Afrika.

When the police arrested Sunday Times investigative journalist Mzilikazi wa Afrika outside the paper’s office on  August 4 while he was on his way to answer questions at a police station about a fax he had received purporting to be the resignation letter of the Mpumalanga premier, it put the scare into many – and not just the media – across the country.

The police had no arrest warrant, did not give Wa Afrika access to his attorney for hours even though he demanded it. They also searched his home and took notebooks without a search warrant and then refused to release him despite the fact that three prosecutors said there was no case. He was released on R5000 bail after his newspaper went to to the high court – but then there was nothing on the charge sheet.

Sound like the bad old days of apartheid? It’s no exaggeration to say there is now alarm across newsrooms in the country and that the proposed media tribunal and POI Bill seem far more sinister.
Wa Afrika himself says: “I am worried. I was arrested for receiving a fax. If this Bill is passed, what will they arrest us for next?… What happened (to me) shows how they are going to abuse (the Bill).”

The international media has picked up on Wa Afrika’s arrest and  big business has voiced its opposition towards these threats to media freedom. Interestingly, there is dissent in the ANC alliance. Both Cosatu and Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale have come out in support of the media – as has influential businesswomen and former struggle stalwart Mamphele Ramphele.

Further reading:

Main Sunday Times story on Wa Afrika’s arrest.
Wa Afrika’s account of what happened during his detention.
Sunday Times editor Ray Hartley’s open letter to President Jacob Zuma after Wa Afrika’s arrest.
Interview (question & answer) with Mzilikazi wa Afrika about his detention and reporting in Mpumalanga.
City Press journalist has gun pointed at him in Mpumalanga in the same week of Wa Afrika’s arrest.
Japhet Ncube in City Press: “How freedom dies”.
News24’s dedicated “Media under threat” page.

Popularity: 4% [?]

City Press’s Ferial Haffajee, journalism professor Anton Harber, media activist Mark Weinberg and ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu have their last say on media freedom in South Africa at the M&G’s Critical Thinking Forum in Johannesburg earlier this month. M&G editor Nic Dawes is the chairing the discussion. Click here to read the Daily Maverick story on the forum.

Popularity: 5% [?]

There are many curious things about the launch of the government-friendly The New Age newspaper scheduled for September but chief among them is that the editor, Vuyo Mvoko, is no ANC lackey. He’s a respected political hack (I worked with him at Business Day many years ago) so why, we media luvvies have wondered, would he accept such a position? Well, I interviewed Vuyo yesterday for Bizcommunity about the new job, the paper’s editorial line and what he hopes to achieve. Here are a few excerpts:

Question: You have said you want to have news from all the provinces beyond the major urban areas such as Joburg, Cape Town and Durban. But I can’t see how good news is going to sell in the rural areas such as the Transkei in the Eastern Cape, where people are trapped in desperate poverty and they feel abandoned by the provincial and local governments. Clinics are not staffed properly and do not have the drugs they should; the schools are falling apart…

Mvoko: Look, you would find it hard to convince someone who feels hard done by lack of service delivery. Being at the receiving end of inefficiency or injustice or lack of service delivery hardly makes you receptive to a good-news story because your world is bad. But what we’re saying is that rational thought should form part of any public discourse and give credit where it is due. That is not to say we’re going to tell everybody that everything is hunky dory, thank you very much…And it doesn’t mean we’re going to listen to every politician who says “we’ve done a lot”. We will interrogate those facts…

Question: You might feel you’re a pathfinder but lots of people see The New Age as a government mouthpiece. Aren’t you worried how this position will reflect on you professionally?

Mvoko: I’m not worried. The reality is that each and every editor is under some pressure or the other on a consistent basis. There are people who want to influence you, not just your stories on a particular day but also the direction of your publication…My point is that the whole holier-than-thou attitude (towards The New Age) is not on. The issue for the editor is how you deal with those pressures, how you make sure that at the end of the day you service your reader and speak to the values of your editorial direction. You will lose some and you will win some.

Click here to read the full interview at Bizcommunity.

I believe Vuyo when he says this but, frankly, it is highly unlikely that the Gupta family who is the major shareholder in The New Age’s publishers and is close to the Zuma family, will not want Zuma-friendly coverage and for those in Zuma’s inner circle. Click here to read a May 2010 story by the M&G on the relationship between the Guptas and the Zumas.

Vuyo Mvoko

Of course, Mvoko is right about pressures on editors countrywide but The New Age is quite openly ANC-aligned: besides the Gupta funding, Essop Pahad is on the board of directors, one of Zuma’s son was floating around at the paper’s launch and  The New Age name is a resusitation of a 1960s ANC journal.

Mvoko says the paper will be critical of government when its needs to be and the raison d’etre here is to do good news but, let’s face it, when you’ve got 32 pages to fill on a daily basis, all those crime and grime stories will have to be used. The government news agency, BuaNews, is already paid to find happy-camper delivery stories and they don’t come up with more than a handful  a day. Then the pressure will really come down on Mvoko’s head so watch that space.  I would advise that Mvoko try avoid taking calls from unhappy publishing higher-ups as much as possible. This apparently worked well for Zwelakhe Sisulu when he was head of the SABC.

The other interesting things about The New Age is:

1. The sheer ambition of the project. Conventional wisdom tells us that new newspapers take four to five years to break even so you have to have deep pockets to go the distance. There are plans for 170 000 circulation sold at R3.50 (the biggest paper in the country, the Daily Sun, has taken more than five years to get to about 480 000 sold for R2.30 and they started at a R1 cover price). On top of that there are plans to buy a press, which will be megabucks, and give us overcapacity in the SA printing industry as both Media24 and Caxton have fabulous modern web presses.   (Look out Avusa, who has said it is looking for new options beyond its TNPC joint printing venture with the Independent Group in Johannesburg.) Click here for a very good article at The Daily Maverick on the business side of things at The New Age.

2. The fact that The New Age will be an unusual format for SA — the narrower Financial Times format — and is breaking with convention and offering advertising on centimetre square basis as well as column centimetre. I asked a senior media planner if this will prove to be a hassle to advertisers and he said:

With regards the pricing…they will offer two forms of pricing to begin with…traditional column centimetre rates as well as the per square centimetre rate. The square centimetre method does give advertisers more flexibility in terms of sizes, but I don’t know that many advertisers will see it this way. I would think most advertisers would just supply the same sized material that they produce for the other papers anyway. I do think it is going to cause huge confusion though when it comes to advertising agencies’ billing systems and how we load and invoice clients. I think there could quite likely end up being many account queries because the agency understood things to be one way, but the newspaper understands them to be another way. So I think if they proceed in this manner, it will be an interesting first few months until everyone gets their heads around the calculation of rates and ad sizes… They say they adopted the model from The Times of India and that whilst it did cause confusion there for a while, it has become the new standard in terms of how all newspapers there now do business. Time will tell how it will work here.

3. I am getting the sense that The Times of India is a very active strategic partner in The New Age’s owners, TNA Media. The New Age’s IT system is a repilca of theirs, The New Age is adopting advertising measures from them and Mvoko told me that The Times of India’s publisher was in SA about two weeks ago to meet with him and others. The Times of India is a massively successful operation — about 4-million daily circulation — so they certainly know their potatoes when it come to English publications in multilingual developing nations. I think they are the best thing that The New Age has going for him and, who knows, maybe The Times of India’s publisher is looking for a foothold in SA with an eye on our substantial Indian community that is by and large a high-LSM group. In the press release for the paper’s launch, The Times of India’s group CEO, Ravi Dhariwal, said: “We are excited about this opportunity to partner with a new national daily and a young nation. We will work closely with our partners in The New Age to fulfill their commitment to produce a quality broadsheet while empowering the emerging South Africa”.

4. What has also puzzled me is the presence of Essop Pahad, Thabo Mbeki’s minister in the presidency and his main enforcer. What does this mean? Is Pahad looking for political comeback by getting on the right side of  Zuma? How fascinating. We shall see what we shall see. Click here for Alec Hogg’s interview with Pahad  on his SAfm radio show.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Ah, politics in Cape Town. The cynical allegiances. The bitter battles. The spy tapes and the scandals.

A review of the city and province’s politicians over the past 15 years reads like the cast of characters in a Carl Hiaasen novel: the musical Peter Marais and Gerald Morkel who liked to lunch with Jurgen Harksen, Niel Barnard and his penchant for spy games and then lately we’ve had Ebrahim Rasool v Mcebisi Skwatsha and Helen Zille v Badih Chabaan.

The big Cape Argus expose.

This contested, murky battleground is a fascinating place to be a political journalist but, as we have seen recently, it is also a dangerous one. The Cape Argus gobsmacked us at the end of June with revelations that Ashley Smith, a reporter for the Argus until he resigned amid a disciplinary enquiry in April 2006, had confessed in an affidavit to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) that he acted as a spindoctor for Rasool, then the Western Cape premier.

Smith told the newspaper he and Joseph Aranes  – then political editor of the paper and who has since resigned from the Argus – used their positions to help Rasool in his campaign against political rivals within the ANC. He also claimed and that the two received money from a public relations company that obtained provincial government contracts. Click here to read the Argus’s remarkable  expose of its former political reporter’s confession and here to read the paper’s front-page editorial that accompanied the story.

Rumours of this skullduggery had been bubbling around for quite some time and the Argus itself first came across the allegations five years ago when members of the Western Cape ANC claimed that two of the paper’s staff members were secretly being paid to write news articles that were favourable to Rasool. Click here to read the Argus’s story run on page 15 of the paper on the same day about the sequence of events over the five years and their attempts to nail down the allegations.

The Argus’s  package made for shocking and utterly compelling reading. If true, this is a serious breach of journalistic ethics and a terminal abuse of the public’s trust in journalism. Not since former City Press editor Vusi Mona, now a spindoctor in the presidency, emerged as a chief player in a bribery scandal in a Mpumalanga court case last year, have we had such skandaal in Media Land.

But I think everyone is agreed that the Argus, which is owned by Independent Newspapers,  played this exactly right. Most hacks – whether they be junior reporters or editors – find that if they apologise sincerely when things go wrong or mistakes are made that the readers are, in fact, quite forgiving.

Under the astute and ethical leadership of Chris Whitfield, a former editor of both the Cape Times and Argus and now editor-in-chief of  both papers plus the Weekend Argus and Daily Voice, the Argus played open cards with its readers to a remarkable degree. The cynical among us might say they had to ‘fess up before another paper got hold of it. In fact, the Mail & Guardian had a stab at it last year based on a set of tape recordings involving Rasool’s successor, Lynne Brown.  Whitfield, however, felt the M&G story – which alleged Argus reporters were being paid cash in brown envelopes –  was on shaky ground factually and the M&G’s ombudsman agreed. (Incidentally, payments of this kind did not come up in Smith’s confession.)

It is clear from the Argus’s own tale of how they finally got to the bottom of the allegations that they made every effort over five years to pursue it and lay their hands on actual evidence of wrong-doing. And in fact, Whitfield told me this week that senior reporter Murray Williams, who authored Wednesday’s front-page story, was put on this investigation six months ago…CLICK HERE TO READ THE INTERVIEW WITH WHITFIELD AT MY REGULAR COLUMN SPOT AT JOURNALISM.CO.ZA

Popularity: 6% [?]

Lucky for President Jacob Zuma and First Lady Nompumelelo Ntuli Zuma that the World Cup came along and shifted the country’s attention from the recent allegations of infidelity in the extended presidential household.

Or perhaps the timing of that remarkable letter (claiming that MaNtuli, as she is known, had had an affair with a bodyguard who then committed suicide) faxed to newsrooms around the country is auspicious. The eve of a big international event such as a World Cup is a choice time to embarrass the president if  that was the intention and it’s possible that those behind the anonymous letter did not realise how the soccer jamboree would swamp SA’s media to the extent that it has.

This shouldn’t surprise us as all political leaders have enemies and Zuma would have more than most, given the bitter battle he waged and promises he made to get the top job. And of course, information is seldom leaked to journalists without an agenda. But this was all looking suspiciously like a smear campaign into which the press were suckered with abandon until it also started looking like it was true.

Though the mainstream press have found it hard to nail down independent corroboration of the allegations, I’m convinced after speaking to Eric Ndiyane  – the editor and news editor of the KwaZulu-Natal isiZulu-language newspaper Ilanga that broke the story – that it is indeed true.

Ndiyane said the paper found three independent sources to corroborate the allegation that MaNtuli had an affair with bodyguard Phinda Thomo, who then allegedly took his own life after the affair was discovered. (If true, this puts the paternity of MaNtuli’s unborn child in doubt. Her pregnancy was confirmed recently.)

Like everybody else, Ilanga was faxed the letter on Monday, May 31, and it spent the next couple of days nailing down independent corroboration so that the paper could break the story on Thursday, June 3.  Later on that day the Johannesburg-based national Sunday paper, City Press, took the unusual step (for City Press) of putting a story up on their website, which then forced everybody’s else hand. Except for the Mail & Guardian, almost everyone, his blog and his dog piled gleefully into the story, citing Ilanga though few had their own independent sources for the story or had probably even read the original in isiZulu.

This raises a number of interesting questions about journalism in South Africa. Was it irresponsible for those to publish the allegations on the say-so of someone else? Can the president’s wives expect some measure of privacy? Was it necessary to name the bodyguard? While you can’t defame the dead, the hurt caused to his family would have been great but, on the other hand, what kind of privacy can a presidential bodyguard expect if he is allegedly caught having an affair with one of the first ladies?

Having spoken to Ndiyane, City Press editor Ferial Haffajee and Mail & Guardian editor Nic Dawes about how they covered the story, I can say the decision to publish was not taken lightly at any of these newspapers… CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THIS COLUMN, CALLED “BACKSTORY”, AT WITS UNIVERSITY’S JOURNALISM.CO.ZA

Popularity: 8% [?]

ANC Youth League President Julius Malema has utterly dominated the news of South Africa’s media in the most remarkable manner in the past month – and it’s good for the media business.

Not since the 1990s, when Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was at the height of her powers as the ANC’s Loose Cannon has one individual fascinated and repulsed South Africa to such a degree. In the ‘90s, newspaper editors would talk of how papers would fly off the stands when there was Winnie hijinks – and now Malema is doing the same. He’s tailor made for splashy attention-grabbing headlines that move papers and push up websites and radio audiences.

It’s not hard to see why. Malema is no enigma wrapped in mystery. He’s a vile careerist – controversial and divisive. He appears to shoot from the hip and says outrageously disrespectful things about his senior colleagues in the ANC-SACP-Cosatu alliance that are occasionally quite funny.  And now, through the revelations of the past month, he has become the “tenderpreneur” poster boy. This goes to the heart of what is most wrong in South Africa today: the kleptocracy that is frittering away taxpayers’ money on lavish lifestyles for the political inner circle at the expense of service delivery to the poor. Malema is, in fact, a frightening sign of our times.

But it’s worth pausing and considering that it is the media that feeds the beast. Malema has become happily accustomed to his every pronouncement making headlines across the country. I confess I feel somewhat punch drunk with the ever more outrageous statements by the odious man and ponder what a swift kick up the pants it would be for him if the major media houses got together and decided to just stop covering Malema. He would be instantly emasculated.

But the media of the free market and of a democratic society doesn’t work like that – and nor should we wish for such collusion.

What is fascinating is that the media’s determination to expose Malema’s crooked dealings and the SACP’s desire to squash the little toad has intersected in a rare sweet spot. It is well worth looking at how the current run of exposes of Malema’s wealth came about – and it all seemed to start in November last year with a column by the astute Jacob Dlamini in a column for Business Day… TO READ THE REST OF THE COLUMN, CLICK HERE TO GO TO MONEYWEB.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Eugene TerreBlanche’s murder has set South Africans on a major soul searching on the state of our nation and race relations. I tuned into the open-line show on SAfm today and ordinary folk of every ilk were calling in  to give their views on the AWB leader’s death in the context of the Zuma presidency, how divided a nation we are and even God’s plan for the universe.

The ghost of TerreBlanche, who had a special talent for the dramatic gesture, must be delighted by all this, considering he had disappeared from the national political stage in the last decade and was largely viewed as an anacronistic  buffoon.

His death, however, came in the divisive and inflammatory climate created by ANC Youth League president Julius Malema over the past few months – and especially of the last week when Malema said he would defy a court ban on  singing the controversial “Kill the Boer” struggle song.  The media set the breaking news of   TerreBlanche’s death – and Rapport beat all the Sunday papers with the most comprehensive story – against this background from the onset even though the murder appears to stem from an argument over wages between TerreBlanche and two farm workers.

Though it was an obvious link to make in the heat of a big breaking story, in retrospect one has to question the wisdom of this and not since ANC leader Chris Hani was killed a by right winger in 1993 has SA   been so tense, race relations so exposed in all their ugliness and the government and law enforcement agencies so nervous about potential violence.

The letters and opinion pages of SA’s newspapers have been filled with TerreBlanche and Malema this week – some of which is the reasoned voice of analysts and journalists calling for South Africans to divorce the two. But in the minds of many South Africans, the link is there although it does seem that the ANC-SACP-Cosatu alliance’s top leaders have taken Malema aside, thank the Lord, and told him to keep a low profile in order to take the temperature down a notch or two. (Click here to read about ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe calling for restraint form ANC members at a press conference today.)

Here are some very interesting takes on the situation that are all well worth pondering:

To hold Malema responsible, if it turns out the lyrics inspired the murder, would be about as fair as holding a film maker or artist responsible for the actions of a psychotic teenager who gets inspired by a film or heavy metal song and who then takes a sword to school and kills or assaults anyone crossing his mad path. Imputing direct moral blame to the film maker is misplaced. It is the teen whose agency should be indicted.

From Eusebius McKaiser on why we cannot hold Malema responsible directly or indirectly for TerreBlanche’s death.

Certainly the ANC’s exhortations to violence have created a context where the killings of white people will see a degree of suspicion falling around the party and its supporters.
It is of concern therefore that the police’s senior management are on record as saying that they will not consider a political motive or partial motive for the killing of Mr Terre’Blanche. This suggests an early effort to cover up the ANC’s possible culpability for inciting the crime.

From Frans Cronje of the South African Institute of Race Relations on why its plausible consider that the ANC’s “exhortations to violence” may be a contributing factor to Terre’Blanche death.

I was a journalist at Hani’s funeral in Johannesburg and watched as mobs fought gun battles with police and set houses alight in anger. I thought South Africa was about to collapse in anarchy. Brave leadership by Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk stopped that from happening.
Malema and the ANC need to put that song to rest and whites who link Malema to Terre’ Blanche’s murder need to quieten down too.
And as for us in the press, we need to choose our words and headlines carefully in the coming weeks, because, while words don’t kill, they can inspire evil.

From Daily Dispatch editor Andrew Trench on how the media can easily be drawn into demonising individuals such as Terre’Blanche, Malema and Hani and the fatal effects of this.

It is somehow fitting that Malema’s behaviour is in the spotlihgt because of Terre’Blanche’s death. They are very similar politicians: dramatic, divisive, shallow careerists – commentator Sipho Hlongwane calls them the “two sides of the same ugly coin, dragging  the entire country down the path of ever-greater polarisation” while Charles Leonard, who covered Terre’Blanche and the AWB as a Weekly Mail reporter for many years, notes grimly:

Now, 16 years into our democracy, there is a gloom similar to when Hani was killed. TerreBlanche, even with his legacy, did not deserve to be hacked to death as though he was something in a butcher’s fridge. Farm herders, hate speech and songs, mistrust and racial intolerance are part of the South African zeitgeist again.

I don’t think it’s overstating things to say that most South Africans today are  thinking  hard about politics and race relations in our country – and how it can be that intolerance has reared such a large, ugly head again.

Many are saying that this is a big test of  President Jacob Zuma’s leadership and that he has not appeared to take charge of the situation. But these are early days and I think tensions will heighten as we have to get through  Terre’Blanche funeral and then the trial of the murder accuseds.

Law expert Pierre de Vos says from a legal standpoint he believes the  trial of the 28-year-old accused should be separated from that of the 15-year-old and open to the public (the state has said it will hold the trials in camera because of the minor). Further, De Vos writes:

Excessive secrecy may well lead to misunderstandings and distrust and may well allow people to question the legitimacy of the legal process – regardless of the outcome – in a manner that could severely harm the authority and integrity of the judiciary.

I agree with De Vos and believe it is crucial that justice must be seen to be done in the case of the 28-year-old accused but I also fear that, whether or not the political climate created by Malema influenced the two accused’s alleged actions  – even if this was merely a fight over money — the obvious legal defence to take is that the two were politically motivated and to ask the court to view this as a mitigating factor.

If that occurs, that is when we will need to see leadership from our president to calm the situation.

What saddens me the most is that we have come to this after South Africa was blessed by a such remarkable leader in our very recent past. Nelson Mandela’s ability to put the interest of the country above himself, his family and sometimes even his own comrades steered this country through the death of Chris Hani and many other touch-and-go situations. He showed us that tolerance was a necessary and desirable virtue in our country.  Have we — and our especially our political leaders — learned nothing from his legacy?

Popularity: 12% [?]

We are, most of us in this fair land, subjects of the AbaThembu kingdom – according to a declaration of secession presented to Parliament recently.

If this comes as a surprise to the good folk of KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape, Western Cape, Northern Cape and parts of Gauteng and the Free State – who are all claimed as part of the independent AbaThembu kingdom – it’s been a hugely compelling issue in the Eastern Cape recently, not least for the AbaThembus whose most famous son is Nelson Mandela.

It’s been an amusing topic of discussion in the Eastern part of the province and, for the past month, the letters pages of the East London-based Daily Dispatch newspaper have been filled with strident views on the secession attempt and its apparent leader, King Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo.

Talk of secession, whether it comes from Texas or the Isle of White, is compelling in today’s world as it seems so loony. And Dalindyebo, who is Mandela’s clan nephew, is a colourful and controversial figure of the first order. He has a talent for dramatic gesture and has made headlines for years, from public spats with the Matanzimas over who is the rightful AbaThembu king to claiming in court papers that Mandela led an ANC coup to unseat him in 2002.

However, Dalindyebo is also a very influential traditional leader. Not only are the AbaThembus an important Xhosa royal family, but the king has political blue blood as Dalindyebo’s father, Sabata, chose exile over the apartheid government’s Bantustan policy. King Sabata Dalindyebo, after whom the Mthatha  municipal area is named, was no National Party stooge.

The fact that it took about a decade to bring the current king to trial in the Mthatha High Court last year for a raft of serious crimes – including kidnapping, culpable homicide, arson and assault with intent to commit grievous bodily harm – shows just how influential he is.

Dalindyebo was sentenced in October last year to 15 years for his crimes. They included ordering in 1995 that one of his subjects be beaten up as well as ordering the kidnapping of a mother and her children after the woman’s husband failed to pay a fine Dalindyebo had given him.
Then in December Votani Majola, Dalindyebo’s lawyer and head of The King Dalindyebo Justice Task Team, demanded that the state compensate the AbaThembu nation R80-billion and the royal family R900-million for the humiliation suffered as a result of Dalindyebo’s criminal conviction. Failure to do so would result in the nation seceding, charged Majola.

Majola served notice on President Jacob Zuma’s office and the National Prosecuting Authority about the intention to secede and then, on January 14, a declaration of secession was given to Parliament. Parliament has confirmed it has received the declaration but said it was not sure such an issue fell within its jurisdiction. Nevertheless, Majola  threw down the gauntlet and told the Daily Dispatch last month: “I served the notice on 14 January. We have officially cut ties with South Africa and we are no longer South African.”

Dalindyebo is a wily political player and has been careful to make no pronouncements on the issue but his spokesperson, Phumla Matshaya, has confirmed that the king was aware that Majola had served notice on Parliament. “Votani  is working with us,” said Matshaya. “He has done his research. He is not a crazy man and he got his act together.”

Well, we AbaThembu subjects are relieved to hear the good lawyer is not completely potty. But there are serious questions raised by this peculiar turn of events. Is this a looming constitutional crisis or is   Dalindyebo South Africa’s answer to Mad King George? And how should the government and the ANC respond?
It must certainly be embarrassing to Zuma and the ANC’s national leaders, who have always treaded softly around the Eastern Cape kings. The Eastern Cape is the ANC’s historical and political heartland and the ANC’s OR Tambo region – which encompasses Mthatha – is the party’s biggest voting region. Further, Zuma went out of his way to court the traditional leaders of the region prior to being elected ANC president in 2008 and the 2009 national election.

My guess is that this a tricky little hot potato that no one wants to react to officially.  The presidency referred me to the  Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs on the matter. The Dispatch reported  that  that department stated it would intervene only if Dalindyebo approached it.
Until now the king’s chief advisers have distanced themselves from Majola’s claims.

At a  meeting – that included the king and Patekile Holomisa, the president of the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa – of AbaThembu leaders and ordinary people at the king’s Bumbane Great Place in Mthatha two weeks ago,  a decision was taken to help find funding for the king’s appeal against his convictions but the issue of secession was not discussed.

The media were barred from the meeting but Holomisa said afterwards that the issue of secession would be discussed at another meeting scheduled for later in February.

The Johannesburg-based Majola told me that he was not at the meeting but he would proceed with the secession process. “Secession was decided as early as December…The issue of secession is on and we are continuing to proceed,” he said, adding that his task team wanted the process to be peaceful.

Majola said that his task team were in the process of consulting the people on the ground in the Transkei and, after that, the next step would be formal engagement with the government. Provinces such as the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal were included in the claim, he said, because these were the pre-colonial lands of the AbaThembu.

Bantu Holomisa, the leader of the United Democratic Movement and one-time leader of the Transkei homeland, said Transkeians will not take this seriously until they are consulted on the matter. But he also believed that Zuma and the ANC national leaders must be shocked and embarrassed by the turn of events from such a prominent king.

The ANC is probably using its influence on the ground to put a halt to the secession attempt, says Bantu Holomisa, so the upshot of the today’s meeting will be intriguing.

There are those who believe that this is a serious issue. Pierre de Vos, a law professor at the University of Western Cape who runs a successful blog, has warned that if the king and his lawyer act on the threat in anyway, they could be charged with treason. “There is always a thin line between expressing a wish and acting on a wish,” De Vos told the Dispatch.  “Once they start encouraging people to be disobedient towards the state they will be threatening the security of the state.”

However, Professor Stephen Friedman, director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy, says that in the practical world of politics, Dalindyebo is not going to be tried for treason.

Whatever the outcome of the meeting later this month, we can be certain that Dalindyebo is not going to step quietly off the stage. He has been granted leave to appeal his sentence and the Mthatha High Court has also granted the state leave to appeal the sentence on a culpable homicide charge – so it can up the charge to murder.

It seems Dalindyebo is determined to use everything in his arsenal to avoid a jail term so the ANC government hasn’t seen the last of the troublesome king.

* A version of this article appeared frist in Business Day.

* See also the Dispatch report on one of its reporters receiving threatening phone calls over the secession story.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Julius "Too Cool for School" Malema

Our popularist president is clearly feeling the heat of his seat in government. Why else would he would be prancing around on stage and trading jocularities with that Too Cool for School ANC Youth League buffoon Julius Malema?

We saw in the national election that Malema’s talent for shooting from the hip up the skirts of authority, white people and women that Julius can do wonders for aligning you with the masses. Malema’s vacuous popularism upsets so many also delights millions more and so to Limpopo went Mr Zuma to tell Malema’s homeboys that young Julius was a “leader in the making” and someone who would be worthy of inheriting the ANC. Click here for the full story on IOL.

Zuma also said, reports IOL:

“He is a young man who is in the process of growing up.”

Making fun of Malema’s expanding girth, Zuma said “he is a bit bigger now and he can intimidate bigger people”.

Zuma went on to say Malema did not merely speak about theory, he also did things and he was “real and not artificial”.

Articulate stuff but the truth is that Malema is neither that young (he’s 28, an age when most middle-class South Africans are knuckling down in their jobs and thinking of buying property) nor real. He peddles a ridiculouly transparent brand of popularism. He’s a ruthlessly ambitious, ill educated fat cat and would be better suited to hip hop than politics.

But then this is South Africa and look at our president… ruthlessly ambitious, transparently popularist, ill educated. He would be a fat cat if he didn’t have so many wives and children to support but he’s not doing too badly with girlfriends on the side and a coterie of rich businessmen to cover his expenses through The Friends of Jacob Zuma trust.

Makes me shake my educated, underambitious, financially struggling head, it does. It would be amusing if it weren’t so damn discouraging.

Click here to read an excellent M&G profile and analysis of the Malema phenomenon from a couple weeks back.

And take this from whence it comes, YouTube. It’s a video clip of Zuma speaking about Malema on something purporting to be “MTV Base” posted today on the site:

Popularity: 14% [?]

At the opening of East London’s new mega-mall last month, I couldn’t help noticing that few people paid much attention to a speech by the province’s finance MEC, Mcebisi Jonas. And it wasn’t because they were being rude as everybody had listened closely to the speech before, from the hugely respected BEE developer and home boy Sisa Ngebulana.

Jonas is no stranger to controversy and had the gall to start his speech by saying something along the lines of “When I was asked to speak at the opening, I didn’t want to…” (now that’s how you win friends and influence people). But as the decision-makers of the Eastern Cape, such as they, tucked into the canapes and chatted away in a desultory fashion throuhg the MEC’s address, it got me thinking about how South Africans view our leaders.

The record turn-out in the April national election and whopper of an endorsement for the ANC surpirsed many — myself included, especially here in the Eastern Cape. Sure, it’s the ANC’s historical heartland but the vast majority of Eastern Capers in townships and the rural areas have also been largely abandoned by their ANC leaders. Clinics, schools and housing are in a shocking state and the Bhisho’s bigwigs continue to mismanage, look after their buddies through dodgy tenders and siphon off taxpayers’ money. Hell, even the quality of the water in this poor benighted province is going to the dogs — and if you can’t even deliver clean water to your citizens, what can you do?

I personally thought Cope would do much better than it did in the national poll in the Eastern Cape though, all told, the party did well for its first time at the stumps and it is now the province’s official opposition. The DA lost ground as did the UDM and the PAC;  the ANC still has an overwhleming majortiy in the provincial legislature.

But then, there’s the 2011 local government elections to come and I wonder if that’s where we will see the real shift. The local East London paper, the Daily Dispatch, has been running a series of what they call “Dispatch Dialogues” over the past year and the ordinary folk who turn up, black, coloured and white, are gatvol of their local authorities and are demanding better services.

My feeling is that the vast majority of ordinary South Africans – and by that I mean the millions of people in the townships and rural areas – see the ANC national government as something far away, emblematic of their decades of struggle for democracy but essentially meaningless to their worlds. Voting for the country’s president is akin to voting for an Idols contestant, methinks.

Provincial government is one step closer but also difficult to access and to influence but when it come to your local municipality and ward councillors, that’s what people really care about. Bring on 2011, I say.

Popularity: 7% [?]