Peter Bruce's Thick end of the Wedge

A proper blogger comments on stuff and writes thought provoking articles for its readership etc.  Today I choose to post Peter Bruce's "Thick end of the Wedge" in its entirety.  I do this because I think Prez-for-Less Zuma is fucking up royally left, right and centre and he is threatening many of the freedoms that our constitution guarantees us.  Bob Moogabe did the same to Zimbabwe, amending their constitution liberally to allow him to maintain control - hence the Zimbabwe land grabs are legal.  He only did this once he was properly threatened - we cannot allow Zuma and the ANC to do this to South Africa.

WITH his party divided and rudderless on almost every issue of consequence it is little wonder, I suppose, that President Jacob Zuma  came out firing from every possible barrel this weekend about the media — it is about the only thing everyone at the ANC General Council in Durban next month will agree on.

Zuma, and the party elders around him, have very little choice but to try to muzzle the media. The government is battling to deliver even the most basic services to the poor, it has squandered the money it had for land reform and it has no coherent policies in place to make the economy grow and to create the jobs it claims it is dedicated to.

At the same time, as last week’s disgraceful ArcelorMittal “black empowerment” deal demonstrated (if more demonstration were needed), Zuma’s family and local and foreign cronies are feasting for all they are worth at the expense of the very people, the poor, he claims to be trying to help. Who wouldn’t want to cover all that up, especially from the poor?

Judging by the invective being hurled at the press by both Zuma and the ANC chaff around him, nothing less than a lickspittle press will do. As I have said before — do your worst. The consequences will be for the ANC and, tragically, the poor to bear. For us in the media, it’ll at least be a relief to stop pretending the ANC is a modern political party committed to running an open and democratic country, because it isn’t.

Here’s the President in his weekly online newsletter: “Can a guardian be a proper guardian when it does not reflect the society it claims to protect and represent?”

I’m not sure I understand the question but I’ll do him the courtesy of trying to reply. Sir, no-one is forced to buy Business Day, nor the Sunday Times nor any other newspaper. The only media we all have to pay for is the SABC which is controlled by, um, you.

Editors don’t claim to represent society in any way. That’s not how newspapers work. If they did they’d fail. But we do try to represent the people who choose to read us.

They feel threatened by poverty, for instance, which is why we keep them in touch with your progress.

You say you’re not sure whether we are qualified to judge government. Maybe, but we can count — people doing nothing, shanties spreading, hospital deaths, matric pass rates. That sort of thing. You’re not doing well

Comments

[Oliver]

For as long as having been in Robin Island or in the struggle qualifies you for a higher position in the big office, we will never have leaders who dont work like they are owed something. We need to start having leaders who actually accademically qualify for the positions they occupy then we can avoid self-enrichment we are seeing happening in our country. It is the independed media's job to report and inform us what this greedy people get up to with our hard earned money they so happily flaunt in front of us. Its actually pathetic!