Notes from Africa

There are other ways to say it...

Stef Terblanche

(This column is published weekly in Leadership magazine's online bulletin.)

I had better be careful what I say here this week.

These days in South Africa people like me are getting skinned alive, or worse even, they are being fired, their columns shredded and their ideas and thoughts bagged, zipped up and buried as if it were nuclear waste. All because of what they say, or rather write.

Problem solved? Wrong. Only one person’s particular articulation of a problem or issue has been done away with. And the sensibilities of only one party to what should have been a civilised debate among different parties have been soothed by what sometimes seems to be little more than a kneejerk reaction.

Such considerations, however, did not stop the hapless columnist of the The Sowetan, Eric Miyeni, from joining a number of (previously) esteemed colleagues like Jon Qwelane, David Bullard, Deon Maas and Kuli Roberts in journalism’s outer Siberia. It also did not prevent a minor shake-up in the South African media this past week with one editor departing and two new ones being appointed.

Snakes in the grass. People without front teeth. Eish! Nonetheless, journalism has always been a dangerous profession, if one can give such title to the doings of the Fourth Estate.

Messengers have always stood first in the firing line – poisoned or fed to the lions in Roman times; scalped by the Apache and other Native Americans; cooked and eaten by cannibals in the Congo; assegaied by the Zulus; shot, lynched or quartered by European settlers in Africa and the New World; banned and placed under house arrest by the apartheid rulers; hanged in Nigeria; and chased out of press conferences for being a “bloody agent” with “that white attitude” by Julius Malema, the Little King of the ANC Youth League.

Only three years ago the former editor of Egypt’s Al-Dustur newspaper, Ibrahim Eissa, was jailed for six months for the crime of speculating about then President Hosni Mubarak’s health. Yesterday the paper could finally take revenge when it gloated “Egypt’s revolution has won” in response to an ailing Mubarak dressed in prison clothes being wheeled into a courtroom cage on a hospital stretcher to stand trial for murder, corruption and other charges. The wheel turns, and the pen grinds...

And yet, while people like Malema frequently profess to hate and despise the scribes of the modern world who prise into their affairs and lay bear what they would rather keep hidden, they cannot live without them. Just imagine how insignificant Malema, or Bob Mugabe, or the Queen of England for that matter, would have been without any media to affix them firmly in the public mind.

That is not to say that journalists, and particularly columnists, have unlimited licence to say what they like about anybody that meets their fancy. Everybody knows – or should know – that the pen is mightier than the sword. But when its tip has been dipped in an overdose of poison ink, it takes on a deadly and self-destructive menace.


While South Africa’s much hailed Constitution is widely seen as one of the most liberal in the granting of freedom of speech, this freedom, like any other, is balanced by certain obligations, or limitations. In South Africa’s case Section 16 of Chapter 2 of the Bill of Rights extends freedom of speech to the press and other media; freedom to receive or impart information or ideas; freedom of artistic creativity; and academic freedom and freedom of scientific research.


It limits this freedom not to include propaganda for war; incitement of imminent violence; or advocacy of hatred that is based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion, and that constitutes incitement to cause harm. To this should have been added “or when it transcends the reasonable bounds of common decency”.


Just like Malema was once willing to die for Jacob Zuma, I am willing to die – well, maybe – for the right of everyone, including especially journalists, to share freely their thoughts, information, knowledge and ideas. But it is the way in which one presents those ideas and thoughts that is the issue here.


One can roast a turkey to cinders and it will leave a bad taste in the mouth and churn the stomach; or you can cook it with care and consideration, and it will be appreciated by most, even those who don’t necessarily like its taste. (That is not really an African saying, it’s just something I sort of made up...but the reader will get my drift.)


In Miyeni’s case he called City Press editor Feriel Haffajee a black snake in the grass and an agent of white capitalists who, if it were the 1980s, would have been “necklaced” with a burning tyre around her neck. Harsh stuff and all because Miyeni disliked Haffajee’s paper having had the audacity to expose Malema’s money-spinning private trust that requires a few questions to be answered. Not unlike Malema’s own song-and-dance call to the youthful masses to kill the Boer, you might say.


In a homophobic attack Qwelane stomped heavily on gay toes. Roberts said coloureds were violent people without front teeth who “breed as if Allan Boesak sent them on a mission to increase the coloured race”. Bullard made a few unflattering statements about Africans and colonialism. And Maas included Satanism in a call for tolerance when writing for a largely conservative, God-fearing readership. All could probably have said it differently, and their points would still have been taken...minus the hullabaloo and them losing their jobs or columns.


Whether it was really necessary to fire journalists or have the resignation of an acting editor, who was not even on duty when Miyeni’s column went to print, is another matter. Perhaps clearer guidelines and better editorial supervision would be the answer.


Nonetheless, these days the line between what is appropriate and inappropriate has become extremely blurry, worsened by the ascendancy of citizens’ journalism, social media, bloggers, and free-for-all debates and online comments by readers of news stories. While this may arguably make it more complicated to determine the merits and bounds of a case like Miyeni’s, it should be the responsibility of the formal media and its professional journalists to set the example and standards in this world of instant exchanges of thoughts and opinions.


There are certain moral obligations such as standards, decency, sensitivity and responsibility that should weigh heavily on all journalists, in addition to reporting truthfully, balanced and without favour or fear. Which brings me to something else.


When clearing out some news clippings and notes left over from the recent local government elections, I came across the following jewel. Commenting on SABC TV on the incoming election results, Eusebius McKaiser, political commentator and radio talk show host among other things, reported at one stage that the Democratic Alliance had won 68% of the counted vote in the Western Cape, followed “closely” by the ANC with 24%.


Well, one man’s yard is another man’s inch. Ask any fisherman!