SAHRC makes a valid point; Abbey Makoe misses it completely
The wild response of SABC Political Editor and FBJ interim chairman Abbey Makoe to the SAHRC's considered ruling on the Forum of Black Journalists and its contentious closed session with Mr Jacob Zuma sounds like the notoriously overwrought and ignorant rhetoric of the ANC Youth League.
The SAHRC finding was not a "banning order against a black initiative" in which journalists were "found guilty for being black". The SAHRC agreed that the right to association entitles the FBJ to exist, and points out that exclusion on the basis of membership would have been acceptable.
However, exclusion occurred purely on the basis of race, and this is the key point which a body charged with interpreting the values of the Bill of Rights should, and did, uphold. Prof Shadrack Gutto is wrong when he argues (on SABC) that the SAHRC ruling calls affirmative action into question. People may never be excluded from eligibility under a constitutionalised right to equality - but competitors for posts, positions and so forth may be preferred on the basis of race alongside other indicators of potential and qualifications, in order to achieve equality.
Media people were excluded from the Bulelani Nguka-style black briefing purely because they were not African. Why not consider amending the FBJ's constitution, the SAHRC asks, to open membership to sympathetic journalists, subject to the aim of furthering the advancement of black journalists? That is the question Makoe should be addressing. We would like to hear his answer to this point; as the political editor of the SABC he has a duty to serve all South Africans.
But he is engaged on a political rather than a professional initiative, using Mbeki-era rhetoric for damage control after an ill-advised attempt to cosy up to Mr Zuma. We have already asked the new SABC Board to consider the conflicts inherent in his position, and will raise his inappropriate response to the SAHRC at our next meeting.
Statement issued by Dene Smuts, MP, DA spokesperson for media & communications, issued April 9 2008
