Posted inMediaNews/Politics

JZ killed the weekly newsletter

The Sunday Times has welcomed the fact that Jacob Zuma won’t continue the tradition of a weekly ANC president’s e-comment. The implication being: we no longer have to wade through screeds/screens of high-brow discourse each week. Au contraire — the change means there will be even fewer opportunities to get a handle on JZ’s thinking […]

Posted inMedia

Mashabane coverage prompts culture clash

Weekend coverage critiqued ANC political factions for expressing their conflict over the grave of former diplomat Norman Mashabane. Interestingly, there were also clashes over coverage of the man’s death, raised at last Friday’s conference that was convened by the SABC and the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef). I myself grew up in a detribalised […]

Posted inMediaNews/Politics

Media dignitaries debating dignity

Racial dignity was a hot theme during the 2001 Human Rights Commission inquiry into media racism, and it emerged again at the SABC-South African National Editors’ Forum conference last week. Responding to my speech there, SABC CEO Dali Mpofu raised racial dignity as part of his opposition to the Sunday Times’s stories on Health Minister […]

Posted inNews/Politics

Roots of our political warfare

Commentator Xolela Mangcu asked last week what Mandela would think of the current political warfare. The answer can be guessed. But there’s a more profound question to consider: How would he, and we, analyse the way democratic debate has deteriorated into devastating factionalism? One answer lies in Mbeki’s penchant for a centralist style of power. […]

Posted inNews/Politics

Whatever happened to ideology?

Back in the struggle days, delineations were political. The regime stood for racism; the white opposition for deracialised capitalism. There were the black consciousness people, the non-racial ANC, the workerists in the unions, and the commies who believed in delaying socialist revolution for a national democratic one. Politics was easy to explain. But it’s been […]