Are the recent arrests of journalist and social media commentators, for allegedly inciting violence, not essentially an attack on media freedom, as it is yet to be conclusively proved that a co-ordinated insurrection was initiated? asks Aneez Salie.
THE ISSUE of journalists and social media commentators arrested for their tweets is an outright attack on freedom of speech and that of the rights the media have to report/opine/comment on issues of the day – in whichever country this occurs. Whether it is Turkey, which has the highest recorded number of jailed media commentators in the world, or South Africa, where we are once again beginning to experience a suppression of voices.
It was a feature of the hated and brutal apartheid regime that it regarded the black masses of South Africa as “slow thinkers”, lacking the ability to think for themselves and come to their own decisions; that they were easily swayed and misled by “instigators and agitators” and thus needed to be hand-fed a single narrative by the state.
History proved the regime wrong.
An ANC in liberation-struggle mode at the time, also warned its own members in its “Strategy and Tactics” document, that no group of cadres, no matter how well trained and armed and politically strong they were, would be able to liberate the country from oppression. Only the masses united against the common enemy, would triumph. And so it was.
At the dawn of democracy, the ANC also warned its followers, and the country at large, that unless we all learnt the lessons of the past, we were doomed to repeat its mistakes.
It would seem those lessons are a distant memory.
Take the recent arrest of journalists and social media commentators for their tweets that allegedly “instigated” the unrest in July. Is this not essentially an attack on media freedom, as it is yet to be conclusively proved that a co-ordinated insurrection was initiated?
That said, because there are those who believe it to be true, it needs to be proved as such, and so the State has set about verifying how certain individuals pre-planned and were responsible for misleading hundreds of thousands of desperately poor and oppressed individuals to rise and protest their lot in life.
If the state doesn’t succeed in proving its case, it will confirm that there remains a deeply entrenched and embedded apartheid mentality, ethos, and operators who, to all intents and purposes, pull the strings in the government today.
To date, there is little prima facie evidence to suggest there was a plot. The judicial system has been reluctant to prosecute and appears to have acquiesced only when pressure was applied by the prosecution. This is a grave concern for every citizen of the land.
Just as worrying is when the media is silenced or is permitted to present only one side of any story, and media freedom is extinguished, as too the right to express opinion. When this happens, it is our very Constitution that is threatened. Can our fragile democracy survive such a battle?
* Salie is Editor in Chief at Independent Media
