When the liberators re-attach shackles of apartheid

I feel shamed and betrayed by the ANC as, 20 years later, censorship again reigns in the SA media

HOW can I describe what it feels like this morning - this sense of shame for my nation?

The closest description I can find is to possibly compare it to that cutting loss of faith at the realisation that a religion no longer provides an explanation for the way the world is put together.

This morning, my loss of faith is in my country that seems to have taken a path that I no longer recognise.

Melodramatic as this might seem, this feeling is rooted in a real and present danger and speaks directly to a threat to my profession.

That betrayal and shame is, I must add, mostly reserved for the ANC, the only party I have ever voted for.

How else can I describe what I felt when I saw Friday's Mail & Guardian and the blacked- out paragraphs that had offended Mac Maharaj, President Jacob Zuma's chief spin doctor?

How else can I relate to the threat to my profession from a man so utterly disgraced by the Hefer Commission in 2004?

On Thursday night, I did what I do most nights - trawl through Twitter and newsfeeds. There, in the midst of tweets about the global economy and Kim Kardashian, was an apology of a tweet from Nic Dawes, my colleague at the Mail & Guardian: "Sorry to give a paper that looks like this. A glimpse of life under the secrecy bill."

A previous tweet offered a link to two photographs.

One showed a front page of The Weekly Mail in 1986, as the M&G was called back then, with the words: "Our lawyers tell us we can say almost nothing critical about the Emergency."

The other shows Friday's M&G, a picture of Maharaj along with a "censored" sign slapped across, with the words: "We cannot bring you this story in full due to a threat of a criminal investigation."

The real threat from Maharaj is in his lawyers' letter to the paper, warning of "the consequences the use of unlawfully and illegally obtained information had on a publication such as the [British] News of the World".

We know what News of the World did. It spied on British citizens, hacked into their phone voicemails and paid police officers and private investigators for the spying to be facilitated.

But is this really what the M&G is guilty of or did it do what any investigative newspaper would do when its reporters found evidence of an investigation into Maharaj that emanated from the arms-deal probe?

But, like the secrecy bill that hangs over our heads, Maharaj invoked a criminal section of the National Prosecuting Authority Act which makes it an offence "to disclose evidence gathered in camera by a section 28 inquiry, providing for a maximum penalty of 15 years in jail".

So a 2011 paper I read today resembles one from 20 years ago.

Max du Preez, who is intimately acquainted with media repression during apartheid, tweeted this in response: "Today's M&G makes me nostalgic about the '80s & angry that those who fought with us are now undoing the gains of that struggle."

And so continues the march against the media, particularly print media and their journalists. Where will it end?

If it weren't such a real danger, it would be laughable to hear politicians these days - irrespective of party affiliation - cash in on the threats to media freedom.

These days, their attacks are prefaced with, "We support your freedom, but ... "

Then it is followed by - as it was recently in a meeting with COPE president Mosiuoa Lekota - a hysterical 30-minute rant about integrity, accusations of peddling agendas and journalists accepting bribes for pushing stories.

The implication is: obey or we throw you to the vultures already circling parliament, who will push through the Protection of Information Bill.

We are further told that we should not assume that the media tribunal has disappeared and that our bleats of self-regulation are defensive and inadequate.

How did SA's media, particularly print media, become such a dangerous beast that it must be controlled and fettered through legislation and bullying, particularly over the past few years under a Zuma administration?

And so, in order for us to be "liked" by the Union Buildings and Luthuli House, I guess I'll have to become a praise singer for my president, turn a "patriotic" blind eye to the lack of leadership and loss of integrity that have grown during his term in office? And we must also, as Maharaj asked last month on Press Freedom Day, exercise our minds widely and openly when it comes to the government and the president in particular.

As I was reading about recent attacks on the SA media, I came across a story from Time magazine. "The South African government, harassed by taut racial tensions, is as sensitive as a naked nerve to everything that affects South Africa, including what its people read ...

"While his government is conducting an official inquiry into the policies of its own press and ceaselessly sniping at foreign correspondents who report from South Africa ... "

It was published on November 12 1951.

As they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same. What a shame.