Media professionals and a few politicians have expressed horror at Wednesday’s heavy-handed arrest of
a journalist in Johannesburg.
Media professionals and a few politicians have expressed horror at Wednesday’s heavy-handed arrest of
a journalist in Johannesburg.
Eight policemen were sent to arrest a man who was on his way to the police station anyway. It was an act designed to terrorize journalists in the Sunday Times newsroom and the editors who were gathered in the same building to discuss the ANC’s campaign to muzzle the media.
The man was not charged and was taken off to an unknown destination without any explanation whatsoever.
The Hawks prosecutor has since declined to press charges, thereby acknowledging that Mzilikazi Wa Afrika is completely innocent of any trumped-up charges (nobody knows for sure what they were supposed to be) and there is no case against him.
The thugs who abducted Wa Afrika must have known that he has no case to answer, and yet even after the prosecutor refused to press charges, the police would not free an innocent man.
It appears that the ANC government is keen to emulate the apartheid style of detention without trial. It is disturbing to see how little most South Africans care about the Protection of Information Bill or the ANC’s plan to set up a media tribunal.
Perhaps people do not understand why a police abduction of a journalist (no warrant of arrest) should be of more than a passing interest to them.
All South Africans should be deeply concerned about the government’s sudden interest in oppressing the media because if the ANC has its way, the media will not be allowed to tell you that senior officials are extravagantly throwing your money away on five star hotels; R700 meals and fleets of outrageously expensive cars.
We will not be able to present information to you (the reader and the taxpayer) about essential poverty alleviation programmes such as buying submarines and fighter jets.
How will you ever be able to make informed decisions if only one party involved in a dispute is allowed to express its view?
The ANC’s campaign to undermine the constitution and revert to apartheid style information control, jackboot arrests and detention without trial should be of great concern to all citizens because today it is the media – and tomorrow?
