Small Business Stuff Chat about SMME issues

Media Freedom – the Viral Choice

As on-line marketers, we are all writers, or aspiring writers.   What we write and how we write it is key to our success.  We see media exposure as a vital component of our business plans.  We can write what we want, provided it's within normal legal limits.  That is what we expect from the constitutional guarantees in this democracy, and we all respect that. 

However, there is the potential for it going pear-shaped as the ANC implodes and uses whatever means it can to retain power.   I hear the goose steps of authoritarian fascism coming down the passage.

I used to think wee JuJu was a figure of fun.  I used to giggle at the jokes about him circulated on e-mail.  I used to write witty pieces about his latest antics. (I thought they were witty anyway).  Now I am not so sure.  He acts and sounds like his namesake, Julius Streicher, the founder and editor of Goebbels virulently anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi rag, Der Sturmer.

He was heard last week to say "I will personally arrest journalists caught breaking the law".  He was also heard to rant and rave about a “Boer Press” campaign against top public officials, including himself.

Floyd Shivambu, his acolyte and spokesperson in the ANCYL threatened nineteen of the country's top journalists when they questioned the authenticity of a dossier he’d attempted to leak. The subject of the dossier? The private life of City Press reporter Dumisani Lubisi, who, you may also remember, was instrumental in exposing Youth League president Julius Malema’s various business interests.

Malema has at best a sketchy knowledge of the law, especially company law, and is clearly not bothering to study the laws relating to powers of arrest, and because of his antics, those of incitement to racial hatred, libel and slander.   The law under which he is proposing to carry out his arrests is his new personally developed law making doing, saying or writing something he doesn't like an offence.  Or just being white.

That we have a body of jurisprudence, case law and precedent, operated by a pretty much independent judiciary seems not to matter one whit.  He will stamp on anyone that disagrees with him.

What is clear that constitutionally guaranteed media freedom is under serious threat, and not just from  Malema. The silence from the Presidency and senior members of the ANC is deeply worrying.  The history of the SABC as ANCTV is no comfort.

Where it is particularly relevant to the SMME online sector is that on-line publications, including blogs and websites fall under the ambit of current law.  Adding controls on what you must or must not publish or advertise and the way in which you do it will affect your business.  We are already limited in email correspondence.  People have been fired for sending email that someone considered objectionable, even if they were not the intended recipient.

The portents are there.  Generalissimo Cele militarises the SAP and encourages Wild West shootouts, VIP bodyguards feel free to attack journalists going about their lawful business, the blue light bullies go about their merry way with impunity.  People have already been killed.

The greatest portent is the way in which the arrogant  bumptious Mini Me’s of government consider themselves to be so high and mighty that they are above the law and Parliament.  They ignore court subpoenas, parliamentary committees, policy, procedure and governance. 

Keep buying the M&G.  Twitter your opposition to the threats to media freedom with the #SpeakZA tag, visit http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/siphohlongwane.