South Africa: Moves to gag media may be a red flag for a new era [opinion]

THE move to gag the media is, ironically, a silver lining around the darkening political cloud. Going by past experience, if the government succeeds, it will signal the end of a tragic period with a red flag stirring the slumbering and eclipsed spirit of genuine patriotism.

The threatened action is not really about the media, which has been reporting things, such as the toyi-toying masses being rubber-bulleted and hose- piped . Their material struggles have been substituted by uneasiness, disquiet and stirrings in the spiritual and intellectual realms, the arena of the battle for hearts and minds. After the masses have been sidelined, the media is now about to be pilloried.

 

On this score, and remembering the last days of apartheid, when newspapers went blank as the struggle intensified, the country has entered a most sparkling and significant phase. When a regime faces mounting crises and criticism in spite of its efforts to manipulate people through propaganda, when social pathologies multiply and there is failure to deliver basic services, and when the regime has come to the end of its tether and wits, it will seek to stifle the media.

 

The attempt, however, would be like using a broom to mop up floods of ineptitude, corruption, moral and social decay and political irresponsibility. The problems are fundamental, societal and concrete; the media merely reflect this . The incumbents — as yesterday’s agitators, who benefited from a critical media — know not just the media’s crucial role but its capacity to campaign for a new dispensation in hopeless situations.

 

There has been a progression of curbs even within the ranks of the ruling alliance: Frank Chikane and Zwelinzima Vavi, true blue comrades, are the latest victims. A kind of democratic centralism — with its authoritarian streak amidst a decaying muddle and a disintegrating movement incapable of being in government — drives the process. This drive is mainly to cover up incompetence, disarray and corruption.

 

The Scorpions were summarily and spuriously dismissed to allow corruption to continue unabated. The National Prosecuting Authority was bullied into dropping corruption charges against the top brass. A state president was unconstitutionally ejected in a display of tragicomical kragdadigheid.

 

This juggernaut has been characterised by high- handedness and bullying; more bludgeons are looming with increasing blunders. Why, then, be surprised when restrictions are extended to the irritating media? It’s a logical and necessary evolution of cowardly arrogance by the besieged. The brazen actions will be passed, given the rubber-stamping nature of our “democratic” Parliament. At this rate, states of emergency may be in the offing.

 

The overall decay does not need the media to expose it anymore; only the overhaul of the system and substituting the incumbents will do. Yet obsolete slogans, manipulative statements and vague promises continue to be cunningly used to hide naked greed and growing decay. This process is made easy by the indifference, confusion and despair foisted upon the country and cultivated for such ends.

 

So the ruse to deal with the media could not have been more timely and propitious.

 

However, the media is not innocent; it has endorsed or is indifferent to measures fuelling the ego and sustaining the grip of the misruling party. Discriminatory restrictions based on colour exist; parents and teachers are hamstrung in disciplining their charges; social interference and injustice abound, yet the media has remained aloof.

 

Now it is the media’s turn and it shouts, while many other critical and “moral” voices continue to be quiet, scared and swelling the number of anonymous citizens. This has led to national prostration and the poverty — and failure — of politics; drifting and shifting, a rudderless and ungovernable state with pervasive and mounting crises. In consequence, an insecure regime panics and pronounces threats against the messengers reporting doom and gloom, setting off a vicious spiral. It should inaugurate a struggle for liberty , principles and ideals. A failure to respond would unleash not tragedy, but reveal how farcical this democracy has been.

 

- Mabogoane is a freelance writer.

 

-August 11, 2010 by Meshack Mabogoane

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Source: www.businessday.co.za/Articles/Content.aspx (accessed on 13.08.10)