In a recent article in Daily Maverick, She’s been gone so long, but Twit-Zille is mounting a comeback, Richard Poplak launches a worryingly extreme attack on one of the country’s few respected politicians. This is a brand of journalism that needs to be challenged on a number of fronts.

Let’s look at the facts. Ms Zille’s tweet reproduced a picture of four University of Cape Town students, with the question: “If this woke bunch hate being UCT students so much, pls help them out of their misery and withdraw their funding.”

Let me concede at the outset that Ms Zille must bear the blame for raising a serious issue in a medium that is wholly inappropriate for reasoned discussion. She is lucid and convincing in argument; the better course would have been a short article on her website with the tweet pointing to it. It was stupid to tweet a complex thought, especially in the current climate, in which everything, it seems, is wilfully misconstrued.

Mr Poplak takes special exception to the use of the epithet “woke” in a way that does not imply total approval. Worse, Ms Zille is committing the sin of mounting an attack on “four black kids who think UCT Is a bit of a dive”. But this cannot be admissible as a criticism in the context of political debate—within the confines of 140 characters, Ms Zille was simply signalling her feeling that “wokeness” has pressing questions to answer. It surely can’t be that the “woke” movement can be presumed to be composed of highly sensitive people—it has a record of violent, intolerant and even faecal protest action and speech.

In fact, it is hard to see why this tweet should be seen as inherently racist. It can’t be the fact that the students in the picture were black and brown, because given the demographics of the country and the movement in question, any representative photograph would properly show people of these hues. Mr Poplak foregrounds their colour, which Ms Zille does not mention.

And it can’t be that Mr Poplak himself shies away from robust discourse. His articles generally, and this one in particular, cross every imaginable line when it comes to excoriating those of whom he disapproves.

In this article, to quote just a few examples, Ms Zille is described as a “massive, prehistoric slug” with a “brushed steel forehead and serial killer eyes”. She is repeatedly portrayed as “lunatic”, and is equated to Donald Trump and Jacob Zuma—one could not imagine no more insulting, or unfounded, accusations.

She is not only an “asshole”, but an A-grade one.

This is not debate, it is an aria from centre stage front, designed to drown out any opposing voice.

Issues, please

One is forced to the conclusion that Ms Zille’s real crime is raising serious questions relating to the Fees Must Fall campaign that are simply not permitted because they disturb the approved media narrative. In the real world beyond the media, all sensible people are increasingly concerned that the whole question of university funding has been hijacked at the barrel of a gun. Senior people at two of our leading universities have privately confessed that the hundreds of millions needed to make up the fees shortfall, and hire thousands of formerly outsourced workers at more generous salaries, will be coming from library and research budgets.

“In five years, you won’t want to send your children to any of our universities,” one told me with great sadness. “We pretend to ourselves that we will catch up later, but we know it will not be possible.”

Ms Zille is voicing the frustration that sane South Africans are feeling as this bandwagon gains momentum with virtually no reasoned debate, especially as so many of the students themselves are at pains also to denigrate every aspect of the institutions they wish to join.

The same illogicality and bad faith is evident in the position of Ntokozo Qwabe, the confused Rhodes Scholar and luncher-out.

I would argue that there is something even more pernicious behind Mr Poplak’s condemnation of Ms Zille, root and branch. One unacknowledged element his rage seems to be the extraordinarily patronising view that a DA politician, and particularly a white one, cannot be seen to take on a group that is perceived to be black. Mr Poplak does not say this in as many words—he is too astute for that—but it’s implied in the view that Zille is putting “the natives in their place” and in the allusion to the DA’s efforts to be inclusive.

On the contrary, I would have thought that Ms Zille is guilty only of seeing the “woke” movement as equals worthy of getting as good as they give, whereas the Poplakian view is patronising in its assumption that the students need special protection from on high.

Madam and Mmusi. Really?

A similar view underlies the extraordinary assertion that Mmusi Maimane does not rein Ms Zille in because he is not actually the party leader, but has bizarrely consented to be a front for Ms Zille to retain control of the party. This view appears to be founded on the basic belief that darkies must necessarily be subservient house-boys, and that powerful, argumentative women are an affront against nature.

Clearly, it would be impossible even to consider the possibility that Mr Maimane is, as he seems to be, a good leader who may become great, that maybe he accepts that the Premier of the Western Cape is entitled to raise real issues in a highly accessible public forum if she wishes—and that the voters like her for it? During her administration, the DA has grown to become the majority party in the Western Cape with 63 percent of the vote.

Even worse, Mr Poplak’s is a profoundly undemocratic viewpoint: the will of the people is sovereign only and until they vote off script. “Why do we keep voting for all these A-grade assholes? Asked another way, Why does Helen Zille feel entitled to behave like an A-grade asshole?” Mr Poplak wonders, in his trademark vitriol.

This rhetorical question is part of a theme in the article that puts Ms Zille in the same category as Donald Trump. Equating Ms Zille with Donald Trump (or Jacob Zuma) is, of course, ridiculous on the facts, but the wildness of the assertion does in fact raise a bigger point.

Those of the Richard Poplak School of Reporting seem to have now almost completely abandoned journalism for commentary and opinion-making; deviant views are not tolerated and are simply shouted out of court. This is a travesty of journalism—the story is not what journalists think but what society thinks and does.

By not telling the story, it creates a gulf with far-reaching and highly detrimental consequences for our society.