Court grants editors interdict against BLF

07 July 2017 - 12:18 By Khulekani Magubane and TimesLIVE
subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now
A Black First Land First member confronts former Business Day and Financial Mail editor Peter Bruce outside his Johannesburg home over opinion pieces he wrote about the Gupta family
A Black First Land First member confronts former Business Day and Financial Mail editor Peter Bruce outside his Johannesburg home over opinion pieces he wrote about the Gupta family
Image: LEFEDI RADEBE

The South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) on Friday won an interdict against Black First Land First (BLF).

Sanef had approached the court to interdict the movement from intimidating and attacking journalists reporting on state capture.

The court interdict‚ requested at the High Court in Johannesburg‚ was sought by Sanef after the BLF held a demonstration outside the private home of journalist and Tiso Blackstar editor-at-large Peter Bruce and assaulting Business Day editor Tim Cohen last week.

The High Court started off hearing arguments from legal aides on Thursday.

BLF founder and leader Andile Mngxitama insisted after the first day of the court proceedings that his organisation would continue to pursue "white journalists" as he believed the media was under white ownership and therefore anti-black.

Mngxitama said the BLF had no desire to attack black journalists‚ but to "free black reporters" so that the media could be free.

"We have no beef with black journalists. All of them‚ including those we call askaris. Our job as BLF is to protect black journalists but to also free them. Once we destroy white monopoly capital‚ then we will have free media‚ then black journalists can report the truth‚" said Mngxitama.

Arguing on behalf of Sanef‚ advocate Thembeka Ngcukaitobi told the High Court that an order interdicting the BLF from attacking journalists should be made a final order as opposed to an interim one.

He argued that the intimidation journalists have faced at the hands of the BLF permeated through to social media networking site Twitter.

However‚ advocate Brandon Shabangu argued on behalf of BLF that not all tweets against reporters could be attributed to the BLF and not all tweets attributable to the BLF were threats.

The group has accused mainstream media of propagating the notion of "state capture" as part of a racist conspiracy to undermine black business and radical economic transformation in general.

However‚ there is a prevailing view that the BLF are hired runners linked to the politically connected Gupta family as a grassroots front against media coverage and civil society activism in protest against the Guptas.

- BusinessLIVE

subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now