Populists attract followers with their empty grandiloquence but they are really nothing more than the voice of confusion with a megaphone. In this country we see the rise of populism in all sectors of society.It is worrying that there is always support at hand to prop up populists and massage their egos.The recent decision by our public broadcaster not to televise acts of vandalism during public protests is but one of the many populist decisions to emerge from the SABC.The reason for the decision given by the corporation's controversial Chief Operations Officer, Hlaudi Motsoeneng, is that people mindlessly ape the violence they see on their televisions and other media platforms.He says that, if the SABC stops broadcasting such footage, all South Africans will behave.Newspapers operate in a space that is regulated. But the regulations are there not to hide information from the public but to limit the harm that might ensue from its publication.Newspapers self-censor every day - but within the rules set out by the Press Council.The SABC is regulated by the Broadcasting Act, which is very clear on what it should and should not show on television.Although many people have praised Motsoeneng and said that his was a brave decision, we should all pause and rewind our clocks for a moment.Back in the 1980s the apartheid government saw fit to censor news about the troubles in our townships. They banned news about the South African troops fighting in Namibia and other parts of Southern Africa.Now Motsoeneng is reinventing the apartheid wheel.It cannot be that all the chaos we see in our streets can be attributed to images on television. Service-delivery problems will not stop just because the SABC is not showing the people venting their frustrations on a state that does not deliver...