Johannesburg — SABC chairman Ben Ngubane has admitted he had opposed the suspension of CEO Solly Mokoetle because he believed Mr Mokoetle had not held the position long enough for his performance to be properly evaluated. Mr Ngubane, who has been largely silent on the crisis at the SABC, was speaking at a Save Our SABC Coalition and Cosatu panel discussion on Tuesday night.

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Cape Town — The decision last week by activists to publicise confidential government reports on provincial health departments would have been a crime if the proposed Protection of Information Bill were in force, activists warned yesterday.[more]

The dropping of charges against Sunday Times journalist Mzilikazi wa Afrika after all the song and dance about his alleged “fraudulent” coverage of Mpumalanga politics shows that, when put to it, those who mount witch hunts against journalists are often unable to substantiate their charges. But smear campaigns do work and some of the mud will stick.

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There is no doubt that sinister moves are afoot by the ruling African National Congress government, in their desperation to pass a bill censoring the media. Those who may be naive enough to give the government the benefit of the doubt, or who believe their latest protestations (in the cause of) protecting the rights of individual South Africans from embarrassment, defamation or ridicule as a result of incorrect press reports or information, read this as a warning: this is a smokescreen!

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SENIOR African National Congress (ANC) officials were told yesterday the media was setting up a committee of high-level stakeholders to look at ways of improving self- regulation and addressing some of the concerns raised by the ANC. Yesterday’s meeting between the South African National Editors Forum (Sanef), ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe and other senior party members in Johannesburg comes a week before the party’s national general council meeting in Durban, where the proposed media appeals tribunal will be discussed.

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Kampala — Last week, the Constitutional Court declared the sedition law unconstitutional. The judgment marked a major and symbolic watershed in Uganda's democratisation process. For almost a century, the law of sedition has been used by successive regimes in Uganda to stifle free speech. Although introduced by the colonial state to suppress African demands for independence, post independence governments of Uganda have continually retreated to this law to stifle democratic expression in this country.

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A TRUTH and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) — however imperfect its structure and process — was a mechanism for peace (in South Africa). I felt sure that, somehow, the TRC could prevent South Africa from disintegrating into an endless cycle of revenge and violence. The media played a central role in helping South Africa make sense of this complex, confusing journey.

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Durban - The real threat to SA media freedom is not be the proposed Media Appeals Tribunal but the media’s denial that it has serious inefficiencies, says President Jacob Zuma's special communications adviser, Zizi Kodwa. “The African National Congress’s proposed Media Appeals Tribunal is not a threat to the media freedom. The media is,” he said in Durban on Thursday night.[more]

THE RESPONSE by the South African National Editors Forum and journalists to the proposed media appeals tribunal – a discussion paper on media transformation for the ANC national general council – confirms the need to establish such a mechanism. The media have opted for a dismissive hypodermic approach instead of an objective debate around the media appeals tribunal proposal. This undermines the ethos which should guide the media – that of being a facilitator in a public sphere where there is an unmediated flow of information and ideas, a sphere in which citizens can use information to make up their own minds about particular issues or topics.

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There is this malicious journalistic practice perpetuated in Ghana and many parts of Africa which is essentially working for African disintegration rather than unity and integration. How many times have you read and heard about captions in Ghanaian media and other media houses in Africa that reads similar to this “Two Nigerians and a local nabbed by Police for attempted drug trafficking”? What of this: “One Kenyan, two Ugandans and a local caught for fraud”? Betters still: “Two Ghanaians, three Senegalese and one Nigerian caught by Moroccan officials for illegal migration” This raise questions whether it is the nation that is at fault or the individual African people involved.[more]