I WAS greatly pleased that no less a person than President Jacob Zuma, in his response to this week's debate in the National Assembly on his State of the Nation Address, has declared that I should be free to pursue my calling. 

Which is to sit here, in this darkened corner of the Mahogany Ridge, and routinely insult those who, like the President, would seek to hold us in their sway and bother us with their misguided nonsense.

More than this, though, Zuma has committed his government to upholding Clause 16 of the Constitution, the part where our freedoms of association, expression and the media are guaranteed. The undertaking was made in the wake of that embarrassingly ham-fisted attempt to block our cellphones before SONA. 

"The security cluster has addressed and clarified matters relating to the signal distribution interference in the House last Thursday," Zuma said to loud applause. "It is an unfortunate incident and it should never happen again."

I wholeheartedly agree. It was all so very North Korean, wasn't it? Or it would have been, were North Koreans allowed to have cellphones. So here's to it never happening again. Pip-pip and all that.

What we do have a problem with, however, is the inference that the security cluster has dealt with the matter in any significant or satisfactory way. They have not.

The explanation offered by State Security Minister David Mahlobo at a media briefing on Thursday that glitches with "counter-surveillance tactical measures" led to mobile signal "disruptions" has been laughed off by the former intelligence minister, Ronnie Kasrils, who told Netwerk24 this was about as credible as the "dog ate my homework" excuse.

The wool, Kasrils charged, was being pulled over our eyes, and he wondered whether Mahlobo's department thought the public stupid enough to believe such a hopeless story.

"There was no jamming of the signal," Mahlobo had told the briefing, "because if it was jamming there was going to be a total shutdown."

Well, there was pretty much a total shutdown in the National Assembly. Some journalists did manage to get a signal but only in the men's room in the western corner  of the building - and then only if they stood near a window.

Mahlobo would not provide details of the jamming device, but he did get confusingly technical about what had allegedly happened. "We discovered that the timing of the system, it went beyond that particular time that we had planned, and then we have discovered there was that particular operational fail," he said. "In terms of our operational guidelines, in our full investigation, we'll be able to say was this error deliberate? If yes, was it a sabotage? If yes, what are we going to do?"

As George Orwell once explained, bureaucracies double-speak in this manner for very sinister reasons. But why, the question needs to be asked, was the device, riddled with "glitches" as it supposedly was, only switched off after a protracted series of protests from chanting journalists and MPs in the chamber? 

I learnt of the cellphone jamming at 5.47pm when I got to the press gallery. The phones were only unjammed at about 7.10pm. It was only when opposition MPs rose to point out to Speaker Baleka Mbete that the jamming was a violation of the Constitution that flunkies were stirred to turn the device off.

Up until that point most ANC members didn't appear to be too concerned about our rights to freedom of expression and perhaps they still don't.

But they at least must pay lip service to those rights, especially now that the President has boldly committed them to upholding the Constitution which, he stressed, is "the blood and soul of our democracy".

To this end, and in actions reminiscent of the Gupta wedding party saga at Waterkloof air force base, the hunt for a scapegoat is underway. 

As Mahlobo explained, "The operator failed to properly terminate the device and this affected proper access to some users of mobile phones. A departmental investigation is under way with a possibility of disciplinary action for those responsible for this operational failure."

Elsewhere, it would appear that the President's message about upholding our democratic institutions had yet to filter through to his party's members in the provincial legislature. Their unruly behavior there yesterday has resulted in the suspension of Premier Helen Zille's State of the Province Address. 

Sadly, their hooliganism wasn't very original, and included ANC provincial chair Marius Fransman protesting, among other things, that the live TV feed had been cut and that private security guards were waiting to enter the chamber.

There is thus a strong case for plagiarism, and opposition MPs should sue.

This article first appeared in the Weekend Argus.

Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter