The nature of the beast & what goes around ...

Just got home after attending a debate on freedom of expression at the University of Johannesburg (it’s 9.20pm GMT +2 — we journos like accuracy, see).

The debate, sponsored by The Weekender newspaper, was chaired by Prof. Adam Habib and featured Jessie Duarte, spokeswoman for the ANC, Patrick Craven, spokesman for Cosatu, Karima Brown, political editor of Business Day and Stephen Grootes from Talk Radio 702.

The theme was: Is freedom of expression and media freedom under threat in SA?

Everyone — with the exception of course of the ANC — will answer instantly, “Well, duh!”

Beyond any doubt media freedom in SA is under dire threat from numerous quarters, including our esteemed reichsmasters at Luthuli House. Section 16 of the Constitution notwithstanding, thinly veiled threats that emanated like noxious deadly poisons from Polokwane last year want to set all kinds of state controls on media freedom.

Despite Duarte’s inept and diaphanous protestations and Craven’s clumsy attempts to divert attention from the issue under debate, the ANC and the tripartite coven want all kinds of Draconian measures put in place including vindictive laws like the Film and Publications Act (which reeks of Orwellian mind-control) and the sinister “Media Tribunal” that is a pen stroke away from hardcore Stalinist state censorship.

The fact that the ANC already owns and controls the SABC and has a proven (or so said Judge Chris Nicholson) track record of deliberate and illegal meddling in affairs, even to the sacrosanct realm of the judiciary, was not lost on the 500-odd people in the audience. Mbeki’s loss in the Constitutional Court today should have warned Duarte and Craven that they stood no chance. But then again, as Einstein observed, only stupidity is infinite.

And that’s what was most heartening about the debate — it proved as sure as gravity that the ANC is in deep, deep trouble at present.

Looking more like long-tailed cats in a room full of rocking chairs, Duarte and Craven displayed the muddled, discombobulated, bumbling and clueless thinking we see in every apparition of the ANC since September, from the desperate thrashing about of Kgalema to the bully-boy I’ll-break-every-bone-in-your-body rationale of Mantashe. If the opposition can get their act together (which is itself highly questionable), our government next year will be a very different ANC.

And that is cause for great hope. Maybe I will be able to vote again in 2014 …

At the same time, I cannot let the opportunity pass by not to reprint, in full, a media statement issued this afternoon by the SA National Editors’ Forum. Those of you acquainted with this notorious blog which catapulted me into a dubious place in history as the first South African to be fired for blogging, know the background.

This is what Sanef, of which I am a proud member, had to say:
For Immediate Release

12 November 2008

South African National Editors’ Forum Press Statement re: Concern over university curbing freedom of expression.

Sanef expresses concern at the growing cult among institutions to try to curb freedom of expression by instituting disciplinary action against employees for criticising conditions at those institutions.

Sanef has learned that the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) has instituted disciplinary proceedings against two of its professors, Nithaya Chetty (physics) and John van den Berg (mathematics), following statements they made which were reported in the media and in an email posting and which were highly critical of the conduct of vice chancellor Professor Malegapuru Makgoba.

The two professors were interviewed in several newspapers, including the Mail and Guardian, earlier this year about their unhappiness with the way in which Makgoba allegedly blocked senate’s consideration of a Faculty of Science and Agriculture document on the state of academic freedom in the university.

The professors are now being charged with having failed to exercise due care in communicating with the media and for having released confidential senate information, as well as dishonesty and/or gross negligence.

Sanef contrasts these charges with the recommendations of a recently released report on institutional autonomy and academic freedom in South Africa, written by a task team established by the Council on Higher Education (CHE), where the proposition is made that if academic freedom is to be realised, higher education institutions must “protect the freedom of expression of academics … from undue sanction by their own institution”. It adds that “Senates, as institutional bodies, are bound to uphold the right of individual academics to freedom of expression and freedom of scientific research”.

Sanef has also taken note of a ruling by the Constitutional Court that employees have the right to criticise their employers — in this instance the employers were the SA National Defence Force (SANDF), which normally tries to ensure secrecy about its conduct.

Sanef has no intention of interfering in the issue, which is the subject of the disciplinary hearings, but is deeply concerned about the effects of such disciplinary proceedings on media freedom and of access to, and the dissemination of, information about conduct in public institutions which is in the public interest.

Sanef has noted with concern there have been other cases where employees have been punished for speaking to the media about matters related to their employment conditions – material, which is normally openly aired at trade union or professional institution meetings — and on the effect the punishments have on the flow of information.

One result is that employees stop voicing their complaints, leading to an unacceptable drying up of sources of information and thus public interest issues being kept secret. Another outcome is that such people supply information on the strict condition that their identities are protected by the media, which leads to an undesirable increase in stories based on information from confidential sources.

Sanef underlines that academic freedom is an essential support for the maximum exercise of Constitutional freedom of expression by the media and people generally. Universities must diligently carry out a principled commitment to academic freedom and thus the disclosure of public interest information.

Sanef has noted the punishment meted out to a student at a Western Cape educational institution for supplying information to a newspaper about improper conduct by students on campus, disciplinary action against “whistle-blowers” and, indeed,

the dismissal of a journalist for disclosing conduct in a newsroom.

Issued by: SA National Editors’ Forum (Sanef)

For further comment please contact:

Khathu Mamaila – Sanef media freedom chairperson
Raymond Louw – Sanef council member
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I bumped into Oom Ray on my way out of the Arts auditorium. He was my editor-in-chief at the Rand Daily Mail back in 1980s and one of the greatest, most indefatigable and courageous journalists this country, if not the world, has ever had. He asked if I’d seen the statement. I said it had already gone through for broadcast. Then he said something that’ll stick with me forever: “I think we (Sanef) didn’t support you well enough back then, Llewellyn.”

I shrugged my shoulders, shook his hand, said thanks and left — humbled and elated simultaneously. C’est la vie. It’s history, Oom Ray. Let’s just make sure it doesn’t happen to someone else again. Anywhere!