The ruling party's online weekly journal, ANC Today, has issued a rant worthy of Adolf Hitler himself against the truth-seeking journalist Justice Malala, in its drive to liberate the media in South Africa from unwelcome news about the predator elite. "A Looter Continua!" it (almost) concluded this hate-filled stream of invective.
To get an idea of the cliff-edge at which South Africa stands right now, readers should read this article from ANC Today, from start to finish.
If I were Justice Malala, I really would worry, following this rant, whether I would wake up tomorrow morning in my own home or in the hands of party/state bullies sent to teach me a lesson.
Malala's crime, in the eyes of ANC Today, is that in his Monday morning column in The Times last week (4 October), he committed the unforgivable sin. He compared the ruling party's drive to control the media through a Media Appeals Tribunal, as well as the baseless and groundless detention by police of the Sunday Times investigative journalist Mzilkazi wa Afrika, to the brutal treatment dished out in exile to its own critical members at the hands of its former security department, iMbokodo, "the grindstone", and their fate in its Quatro concentration camp.
Readers should read Malala's column for themselves to decide which of the two pieces of writing they find more trustworthy. And which a threatening omen.
Further useful reading on this subject on the TimesLIVE network last week came in the reply to Malala by the former ANC Arts and Culture Minister, Dr Z Pallo Jordan (5/6 October), himself for six weeks a detainee of iMbokodo in exile, and from a response by a reader, KB Malapela, in a letter headed "Justice Malala is ignorant - or a liar" (also 5/6 October). These both make important reading too.
My own response, "In appreciation of Justice Malala", was posted on the TimesLIVE website on 7 October, written in the light of what I had published or written myself about iMbokodo and Quatro over the past 20 years.
I made this contribution to the debate as a former banned journalist under the media control laws of the apartheid regime, and as the co-editor of a banned magazine, Searchlight South Africa, which published in exile the earliest firsthand, detailed account of Quatro concentration camp. Readers may see for themselves how the rant in ANC Today measures up to the points made by Justice Malala and myself, and to the response of Dr Jordan .
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