By Richard Crouch
April 01, 2008
I remember back when the National Party was running the country one of the ANC’s complains was that the media was “controlled” by the government and was not reporting the true facts of apartheid.
Well it has now come full circle, the ANC is now proposing a The Media Appeals Tribunal that would be a statutory body and answerable to Parliament. Once the tribunal is accountable to parliament, freedom of expression and press freedom will be threatened.
This is how totalitarian governments keep control, by restricting the media they keep the citizens in the dark. Instead of controlling the free flow of information maybe they should just clean up all the corruption in their party and the media will have nothing to report on.
There are so few checks and balances in government right now, the ANC has the majority in parliament and they have the presidency, they can almost do anything they want. The last entity attempting to keep them honest is the media. We need to be very vocal against this latest move by the ANC, no wonder they have not outrightly condemned the Mugabe government.
Filed under: South African Government, South African Politics
