Nzimande tries to purge City Press while Mantashe tackles the SABC
The new ANC leadership is losing no time in attempting to take control of the media. It appears to think it can carry out purges within the press as it is doing in parliament and in executive posts at various spheres of government.
The extraordinary letter from Blade Nzimande to the management of City Press's owner Media24 accuses editor Mathatha Tsedu and his team of "provocatively factionalist, divisive and highly subjective" coverage. He suggests the editor is not capable of a professional relationship with the new ANC leadership, that a boycott of City Press has crossed the ANC's mind, and that a meeting between Media24 and the ANC is indicated to "help save this once proud title".
For all its flowery rhetoric and use of questions rather than accusations - including the question whether Media24 itself directed the preference for Mbeki - it is a threatening letter indicative of the intolerance we can expect from the new ANC leadership. All media houses must stand firm.
The SABC has already been subjected to several meetings. GCEO Dali Mpofu has been on the carpet for the corporation's anti-Zuma pro-Mbeki bias and new Board Chair Khanyi Mkhonza has, according to Sunday Independent, seen NEC members including ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe. No one who saw Mantashe snarl at South Africa's deputy chief justice and therefore the judiciary, on SABC TV news, will have any hope that he harbours any respect for the independent functions of the fourth estate, another component of a liberal democratic state.
Let there be no doubt how much greater the danger for the free flow of information and exchange of ideas becomes under the new ANC. The Polokwane media policy tells us in so many words that the ANC's values are "the developmental state and collective rights" as opposed to "the current main steam media's ideological outlook", which it describes inter alia as "a weak and passive state and over-emphasis on individual rights".
Our Constitution is based on checks and balances, operating within and against the state and on fundamental individual rights. The new ANC is positioning itself against the Constitution and the Polokwane communications policy is the hopelessly incoherent document it is because it is trying to work around the Constitution. The only thread that runs clearly through it is that the media must serve the National Democratic Revolution and the ANC.
Mr Jacob Zuma's decision to withdraw some defamation actions against various newspapers tries to draw a distinction between reputation and dignity. It is a nonsensical distinction because reputation rests on the right to dignity. Dignity is the new buzz word for the ANC as it tries unsuccessfully to find a justification for creating a media appeals tribunal. What it really means, is that all reportage of rulers must be respectful and that the press is not free. And that is unconstitutional.
This statement by Dene Smuts MP, DA spokesman on communications, was issued on February 3 2008
