Leave whoever took Manto's records; our political health is at stake

Who makes the judgement call about what resources to deploy in a police investigation, and then whether to pursue a prosecution?

Because whoever did so in the case of the Sunday Times leadership, who are now apparently facing prosecution, seems to have been motivated by reasons that go beyond sheer law enforcement. And sheer logic.

If you really must charge an offending journalist (whose publishing a judge had already found was in the public interest), then allocate a routine cop to prepare the case of why a law was allegedly violated along the way. Instead, in this case, we see a top dog taken away from other duties to investigate the “sins” of a newspaper – and he even gets sent to New Zealand nogal.

And, having got the evidence, isn’t it still the easiest thing in the world to decide to drop charges on the basis that a case isn’t worth the candle? Where’s the proportion here? It’s hardly a situation of South African journalists stealing records left, right and centre, defrauding the public for private purposes in so doing, and so forth.

The intention in this pursuing of the Sunday Times, it appears, is twofold:

one, to teach “the media” (and editor Mondli Makhanya in particular) a lesson (or two); and

two, to switch attention away from the information about the health minister, towards the issue of how the information was acquired.

Far from succeeding, this is a poor political calculation on all counts. It’s backfired in three ways:

Supposing Makhanya is convicted for possessing health records without recognition — he’ll get a small fine, a warning or a suspended sentence. Hardly a deterrent against journalists who believe in public interest as a higher value.

Supposing the bigger signal that the state is attempting to send is: “Don’t mess with Manto, because you’ll get tit (and more) for tat.” Such throwing down of the metaphorical gauntlet is not going to “chill” our very proudly South African journalists from doing what they have to do.

Supposing it’s also an attempt to switch agendas. The result has been a resurrection of what the Sunday Times did originally publish. Own goal.

Further, the state’s action has added additional damaging issues to the original agenda: the image of a vindictive bully-boy government abusing state institutions for political purposes, on the one hand, and the Sunday Times as martyr on the other.

So who drives these decisions? They’re doing a disservice to everyone — including themselves. I think we need the records of who they are.

(Not that all the media are very savvy (or saintly) — see how some screwed up the reporting on the fiasco.)