If the ANC should have learnt anything from the dampening of debate during the Thabo Mbeki era, it is this: South Africa needs a free media. Everyone, each ANC tendency included, needs a space where news that is officially out-of-favour is free to try its luck within the arena of public opinion. Yet with some ANC people resurrecting the idea of a statutory Media Tribunal to control the press, it seems this lesson is not yet internalised. So, let’s put it baldly: whichever political tendency rules will use a Tribunal to halt bad publicity about it – including anything that benefits rival tendencies within the same party. You’d be naïve to think that politics doesn’t work like that. [more]

Africans with a sense of history will thank South Africa for the honour done to the continent by the successful hosting of the World Cup. This interesting remark was attributed to the columnist Charles Onyango-Obbo in this weekend’s Sunday Times. The newspaper got it right – this is how he assessed the football experience. But the man being quoted was also incorrectly described by the Sunday Times as being editor of Uganda’s Monitor newspaper. That’s wrong. He is a former editor of that paper, but left as long ago as 2002. Now an executive editor for the Nation Media Group, Onyango-Obbo is amongst the leading journalists in Africa and he really ought to be known as such by Sunday Times journalists.[more]

The SA media have hopped on the patriotic bandwagon over the World Cup, writes Franz Kruger in the Mail & Guardian. But there are worrying signs that there may be an outbreak of xenophobia, which may be the flipside of the patriotism and will need the best journalism the country's media can muster: The World Cup has created an extraordinary opportunity for seeing South African patriotism at its best -- but it has also shown an ugly side that may yet cancel out any improvements in our international reputation. Who can forget the flags that sprouted on cars and homes around the country in the weeks leading up to the kick-off? Traffic became a constant national parade. Patriotic fervour hit its peak just before the opening game against Mexico, and that Friday the entire country seemed to grind to a joyous, vuzuzela-fuelled halt. [more]