In the Your Say section of this edition, reporters asked people in Grahamstown for their views on the escalating tensions between the media and the ANC.
This topic has been covered only briefly in Grocott’s Mail, but quite extensively in many national newspapers, on radio and on television.
In the Your Say section of this edition, reporters asked people in Grahamstown for their views on the escalating tensions between the media and the ANC.
This topic has been covered only briefly in Grocott’s Mail, but quite extensively in many national newspapers, on radio and on television.
The ANC’s plans to pass the Protection of Information Bill, to set up a media tribunal and the recent thuggish arrest of a reporter have all converged to leave the media horrified about the prospect of an apartheid-style clampdown on freedom of expression.
When our reporters asked Grahamstonians for their views on this widely debated issue, many of them were either not aware of the altercation or they did not care.
Yet such draconian legislation, a media tribunal and ham-fisted police abductions are incompatible with democracy.
It is therefore disturbing that so many people are not concerned with an issue that wrenches at the very roots of democracy.
On Wednesday, a group of about 30 Rhodes students protested against media clampdowns outside the police headquarters on Beaufort Street.
Turnout was disappointing from an institution of 7 000 students where freedom of expression ought to be a cornerstone of university life.
Perhaps the protest was not well publicised, but surely in the face of such serious threats to our Constitution, any gathering at all should spontaneously protest against curbs on media freedom.
When the ANC won democracy for this country in 1994 there was no guarantee that victory would be everlasting.
There were more than a few anxious moments when we were indeed on the brink of a war – but sanity triumphed and we came through.
Less than a month ago we were all celebrating the conclusion of a successful Soccer World Cup – an event that united this country more than anything ever before.
And just as the foreign media were leaving South Africa telling the world about our wonderful democracy, government leaders were plotting to stifle criticism of the ruling party.
It is sad to see our young democracy under threat from the very party that fought so long and so hard to establish it.
