THERE are many critical and significant moments in the recent politics of South Africa. The official birth of formal apartheid in 1948 and the turbulent 1960s are two of such moments.
By 1961 the National Party had established itself as the all-powerful ruler of the country. They held 105 of the 156 seats in the all-white parliament, and were on a roll.
Nelson Mandela was on the run, organising demonstrations and stayaways while evading the police, earning himself the nickname "The Scarlet Pimpernel".
White South Africans were preparing themselves to vote in a referendum planned for May 31 to break the shackles of British colonialism and create an Afrikaner republic. Mandela addressed the black masses through the media, making calls from public telephones.
The systematic attacks on the media by the white government are legendary.
The people of the country even began to believe the accusations made against the "hostile" English press. The government was moved to start a friendly newspaper, using public funds.
TheCitizen was born, and when readers did not respond to the publication that was meant to tell the citizens of all the good things the government was doing, they resorted to dumping copies to claim a higher circulation. The media exposed this sham.
Bit by bit, freedom of the press was eroded, sometimes like a cancer eating away at our bodies, at times through jailing journalists or closing down newspapers.
All through this we kept singing, like Martin Luther King, "We shall overcome".
Journalists were banned because the government was "satisfied that you engage in activities which endanger or are calculated to endanger the maintenance of public order".
Last week, we celebrated that momentous day when FW de Klerk announced to a stunned nation the unbanning of the ANC and the PAC and the release of Mandela.
We celebrated that never should we allow this country to experience the inhumanity to man that apartheid visited upon us.
We also celebrated when the Promotion of Access to Information Bill was passed.
And, even as we reflected on the events of that February 2, the ANC sent a powerful delegation to make submissions to the Press Freedom Commission. Led by the party's secretary general Gwede Mantashe, the delegation argued for effective reining in of the press through the Protection of Information Bill and the setting up of a media tribunal, which would have the power to deregister or jail errant journalists.
Nobody has ever argued that the media was perfect, nor will it ever be.
Just as much as government can never be perfect. Everyone, without fail, points to our human frailties, and errors will occur, as they do in every other endeavor of life. And newspapers are committed to correcting those while taking every effort to ensure few errors.
The threat to our democracy is quite clear in what the government's intention is with their proposed secrecy laws and the media tribunal.
It is a stick with which the government wants to beat the media into submission, and having done so allow the pillaging of our resources to flourish even as the voters go hungry, are homeless, jobless and powerless and without any idea of what the government is doing in their name as their voice has been silenced.
Someone once said that many of the reformers of the press are perhaps just as much in need of controls and curbs, since they are guilty of exaggeration, distortion of the truth, and the unproved assumption that they speak for the people.
A stick to beat the media into submission
THERE are many critical and significant moments in the recent politics of South Africa. The official birth of formal apartheid in 1948 and the turbulent 1960s are two of such moments.
By 1961 the National Party had established itself as the all-powerful ruler of the country. They held 105 of the 156 seats in the all-white parliament, and were on a roll.
Nelson Mandela was on the run, organising demonstrations and stayaways while evading the police, earning himself the nickname "The Scarlet Pimpernel".
White South Africans were preparing themselves to vote in a referendum planned for May 31 to break the shackles of British colonialism and create an Afrikaner republic. Mandela addressed the black masses through the media, making calls from public telephones.
The systematic attacks on the media by the white government are legendary.
The people of the country even began to believe the accusations made against the "hostile" English press. The government was moved to start a friendly newspaper, using public funds.
TheCitizen was born, and when readers did not respond to the publication that was meant to tell the citizens of all the good things the government was doing, they resorted to dumping copies to claim a higher circulation. The media exposed this sham.
Bit by bit, freedom of the press was eroded, sometimes like a cancer eating away at our bodies, at times through jailing journalists or closing down newspapers.
All through this we kept singing, like Martin Luther King, "We shall overcome".
Journalists were banned because the government was "satisfied that you engage in activities which endanger or are calculated to endanger the maintenance of public order".
Last week, we celebrated that momentous day when FW de Klerk announced to a stunned nation the unbanning of the ANC and the PAC and the release of Mandela.
We celebrated that never should we allow this country to experience the inhumanity to man that apartheid visited upon us.
We also celebrated when the Promotion of Access to Information Bill was passed.
And, even as we reflected on the events of that February 2, the ANC sent a powerful delegation to make submissions to the Press Freedom Commission. Led by the party's secretary general Gwede Mantashe, the delegation argued for effective reining in of the press through the Protection of Information Bill and the setting up of a media tribunal, which would have the power to deregister or jail errant journalists.
Nobody has ever argued that the media was perfect, nor will it ever be.
Just as much as government can never be perfect. Everyone, without fail, points to our human frailties, and errors will occur, as they do in every other endeavor of life. And newspapers are committed to correcting those while taking every effort to ensure few errors.
The threat to our democracy is quite clear in what the government's intention is with their proposed secrecy laws and the media tribunal.
It is a stick with which the government wants to beat the media into submission, and having done so allow the pillaging of our resources to flourish even as the voters go hungry, are homeless, jobless and powerless and without any idea of what the government is doing in their name as their voice has been silenced.
Someone once said that many of the reformers of the press are perhaps just as much in need of controls and curbs, since they are guilty of exaggeration, distortion of the truth, and the unproved assumption that they speak for the people.
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