More than freedom of expression is under threat in South Africa

Thought Leader blogger Anja Merret recently mused about whether we were being brainwashed into panic. She asked, with considerable justification, whether our media and their international news networks were pumping so much doom and gloom into the already murky and polluted waters of South Africa’s national psyche that we were becoming the proudly SA Borg culture.

For those unfortunate readers who have never heard of the Borg and probably never watched an episode of Star Trek , our heartfelt commiserations about your deprived upbringing.

The Borg are a race of cyborgs (cybernetic organisms) that share a collective “mind”. They are in essence like a colony of bees or ants instantly exchanging information through a collective consciousness. They have no drive but to survive and to do so by conquest and assimilation of everything, organic and otherwise, in their collective path.

Cosatu and the SACP worship the Borg.

Everyone else in the universe, even the Klingons, equate them with pure evil because individuality, choice, personal freedom and moral rights are all obliterated and only the colony exists. Which might give us an insight into why bees have their entrails ripped out of them when they do their duty and sting in defence of the hive – but that’s another issue Blade Nzimande or the eviscerating Vavi can answer.

As mentioned, Anja’s observations have merit (excuse the pun), but there is a far greater horror being perpetrated. The reason it’s taking so long is that it is much more invidious, cunning, imperceptible and ACCEPTABLE than paranoia is.

We naturally shy away from paranoia. We are panic-averse. This is evolution and it’s quite natural.

Vulnerable children and adults have to be taught the unnatural response of “stranger danger” just to keep them safe. We are unconsciously hot-wired to be compassionate, to accept help, to believe in the good of all other people. And while paranoia, anxiety, fear, avoidance and panic do strike deep (with apologies to Buffalo Springfield, who were wise to its nature nearly 50 years ago!), they’re unnatural.

You’re welcome to call me paranoid. I guess I am. I could show you the photos of vandalism at my home, transcripts of the threatening phone calls and the printed emails from this time last year, but you would probably pooh-pooh that as being, well, paranoid.

But would you call Jimmy Mohlala paranoid? Remember, he was the one who blew the whistle on the R1-billion Mbombela 2010 stadium scam. He died in a hail of gunfire outside his house on Sunday. His son is fighting for his life.

Jimmy is not the only whistleblower to have been whacked. It’s common practice in South Africa (research the taxi industry a little). And the lines between politically motivated assassinations and plain old common or garden variety whack jobs has blurred to near-invisibility in this happy land. It is too easy to hide an assassination behind the cover of a “botched” burglary or hijacking as well (remember Brett Kebble?).

Do yourself a favour and start ticking off all the suspicious hits in the run up to our “free and fair” elections, especially in KZN and Eastern Cape, in the coming months. Maybe you’ll have a change of heart.

Silencing whistle blowers has become such a threat to the very democratic fibre of SA that august institutions such as the Freedom of Expression Institute, the SA National Editors’ Forum, Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders have voiced their serious concerns. Repoirts have been circulating even at the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Numerous books have been published by real life “silencers”, “enforcers” and “envoys” (aka muscle, hit men and cleaners) telling of the tactics employed by governments and big money in clearing their pathways of irritating persons. Hit movies have been made about Karen Silkwood and Jeffrey Wigand among others.

The international hit series Zeitgeist, with all its “fokkops en voos kolle” (to quote Breyten Breytenbach), has yet to be shown in SA. Maybe that is good. We simply are not mature enough for it yet. Besides, the typical docile ovine reaction would be: “Ah, you see, that’s Bush. That’s America. That would never happen here.” Excuse the background noise of raucous laughter.

In SA it has become SOP (standard operating procedure) in most companies to threaten employees with disciplinary action, warnings, demotions and even dismissals if they bring shadowy and corrupt coportae procedures into the open or level criticisms at their bosses. And when a critical employee is whacked/dismissed, it is used as powerful weapon to silence any other wannabe critics. And it works, Beautifully!

Our banking cartel has now put pressure on the Competition Commission to try to silence exposure of their long-known, but unproven Illuminati-like tactics. Sorry for them, it’s much too late because the commission’s full report has already been leaked on the Internet.

So, while I agree with Anja that sub-standard and mismanaged journalism, the tragic lack of specialist reporters and inadequate quality control across all our media can be a fertile pasture in which to sow the seeds of panic, it is a pasture equally fecund for producing a fine flock of gullible, sycophantic and malleable sheeple. Especially ahead of important events such as a general election or a big ballgame.

The only shield against this is knowledge born of relentless, remorseless, rigorous questioning. Moulder and Scully were right all along — the Truth really is out there.

Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, agrees (except in different words): “Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.”

Maybe in that world Jimmy Mohlala would be a hero, not a corpse.