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Attacks on the Media under an Increasingly Autocratic Government

Some time back, I had occasion to write on the threats to media freedom in SA from an increasingly uncomfortable government.  These threats are now becoming more imminent.  The proposed Media Act will put severe restrictions on what can be freely reported, severely curtailing an ability to whistleblow shenanigans at all levels of Government and by figures in Government, business and public life in general.

Yesterday we saw the first steps in an increasingly autocratic regime.  Six police cars and a large number of police were used to arrest Mzilikazi wa Afrika, a senior reporter with the SA Sunday Times.  He was on his way to the Rosebank Police station to report as requested by the police, but was arrested with great noise and clamour outside a Rosebank location where a large number of SA Editors and journalists were discussing the Media Bill. 

His arrest is apparently in connection with possession of a fraudulent resignation letter from the Premier of Mpumalanga. Wa Afrika is one of the journalists who wrote the story on police commissioner General Bheki Cele last week in the Sunday Times, which questioned his involvement in a R500 million lease for a new police headquarters in a building owned by his personal friend.  

A co-incidence ?  Perhaps.  A salutary example to the assembled media heads ?  Perhaps.  One might also question why the Hawks were involved in wa Afrika’s arrest in such a seemingly trivial matter.  At the time of writing wa Afrika’s whereabouts are unknown.

The Government has been mumbling about “a need to manage information on the Internet”, and several commentators have favourably mentioned the Australian and Chinese attempts to control what internet users can see and write.  I expect some of you will say “there is nothing to worry about, I don’t intend to do anything unlawful so they can do what they like”.

But think on this. There are laws of libel to protect those defamed by the media, not least the need to be accurate and truthful. There are obscenity laws to protect us from pornographers.  Have they suddenly become inadequate ?

It is central to any democracy to be able to uncover, investigate and report the misdeeds of the great and the good, and the not-so-great and not-so-good for that matter.  When what you write or broadcast is assessed by a government censor to determine if it falls outside a narrow and probably vague definition of what is permissible, when you stand to be arrested on his/her interpretation, and when you are limited in what you can see on the Internet based on the religious or political beliefs of others, we have lost.

We lose freedom by inches, and if the Media Bill proceeds in it’s present form, and is supplemented by an Internet Control Bill, that’s a lot of inches.