South Africa: The thick end of the wedge [opinion]

I hope I never become one of those “former editors” who complain all the time about how poor journalism is “today” and, by implication, how good it was when they were around. I’m proud to be a hack. I’m proud of all the hacks in the country. Almost everything we know about the rot in SA is because of journalists and opposition politicians. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in print or on radio, TV or the internet — journalism makes this country a better place.

Of course, things aren’t what they should be. I wish The Weekender was still there. I wish the 50 or so extra editorial jobs there were at Business Day when I became editor 10 years ago were still there. The Star and other daily papers have lost even more. But those cuts have been made by managers and owners, not editors. And still they run about looking for cost cuts where none are possible, fault where none lies and revenue where it is only fleeting. It is now so expensive to produce any form of publication with journalism in it that it is a wonder any print editorial exists in SA at all.

The internet, I know, is supposed to sort all that out. You don’t have the distribution costs newspapers do. But advertising on the web is so cheap that without the support of newspapers, or radio stations to be employed at, the journalists whose work appears on the web would starve.

I think there’s a case to be made for newspapers not being owned by public companies at all. When you consider the contribution they make to democracy it may be worth ruling that only newspapers owned by trusts or something similar can register as newspapers with the Post Office.

Having said that, it was a newspaper (City Press) owned by the mother of all local listed media companies ( Naspers ) which for the second or third week in a row yesterday gave us some insight into how Julius Malema has made his millions, and, in turn, added to the insight into why he feels he can’t be contained. Why? Because with R54m in your bank account no one can tell you what to do.

Only, thanks to City Press, we know now that Malema hasn’t paid any tax on his ill- gotten millions and that could mean he goes to jail. Fantastic! But will it happen? The new SARS boss, Oupa Magashula, had a wonderful interview with Sake24 (Rapport, also Naspers) yesterday in which he warned that “the choices we make now will make or break us (as a country). If we don’t do everything possible to create jobs for our young people then we plant the seeds for a revolution.”

He could not be more right. But in a developing and transforming economy like ours, you start creating jobs by putting yobs like Malema away.

By cheating the government, by “winning” tenders to be paid for with public money even though you have no chance of meeting the conditions of the tender, you are robbing the public purse and, therefore, you are robbing the poor.

Looked at that way, Malema is a thief, but he is treated like a hero by the poor. It’s a measure of how desperate they are. Give them a potato salad and they’ll cheer him to the rafters. It is up to people with legal and moral authority like Magashula to put their money where their mouths are.

He needs to show the poor that their interests are served not by spewing champagne but by hard and honest work. The ANC’s national leaders are too far gone to be any kind of an example.

But Magashula could be. No one seriously expects Malema to have paid his taxes. So? Charge him. Try him. Put him behind bars where he belongs if he’s guilty of evasion or fraud, and to hell with the politics. They wouldn’t be all that grave anyway.

No one is going to start the revolution to save this punk.

In the meantime it is going to be interesting watching Malema squirm his way out of the media interest he has created around himself.

The race now among every journalist who considers himself or herself “investigative” is to come up with proof that he is indeed a thief. By my count, that’s around 30 hacks, with City Press well in the lead.

God help him.

- March 08, 2010 by Peter Bruce

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Source: www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx (accessed on 09.03.2010)