inlsa
Nzimande
Piet Rampedi and Babalo Ndenze
The South African media came under sustained attack yesterday from President Jacob Zuma and SACP leader Blade Nzimande.
Nzimande – a confidant of the president – who is also the minister of higher education and training, said the media actively opposed the ANC-led tripartite alliance and Zuma’s government.
He said that almost all media houses refused to acknowledge the ANC’s achievements, criticised party leaders unfairly and resisted transformation.
Zuma described statements that the country’s inequality gap was widening as a “farce” and said South Africans should stop falling for the “propaganda” and “spin”.
“Notions that the gap between the rich and poor in South Africa is widening is a farce. Why now, after 1994, do we say it’s widening?” asked Zuma.
Addressing traditional leaders, he said the “spin” had increased since 1994. “People writing newspapers are educated and they think they’re writing the truth. It’s propaganda and we also repeat it – nathi [us] – because it is being said by educated people,” he said.
Nzimande, who was speaking at the SACP’s conference of commissars, reserved his blade for the big three of media organisations – Avusa, Independent Newspapers (publishers of The Mercury) and Media 24 – accusing them of reporting that was unfair, unethical and lacking in balance.
He said the state-owned SABC had joined this “posture” of late through SAfm.
The radio station read on air only those SMSes that called ANC leaders “hooligans”, Nzimande added.
He dismissed the media as part of an anti-Zuma “liberal offensive” that dishonestly claimed there was a leadership crisis in the country – which he said was by proxy a call for Zuma’s removal from power.
The SACP boss urged party members to rethink their engagements with the media, including the “so-called Midrand Group”. This is a group of black intellectuals who have been largely critical of Zuma and his government in writing for the opinion pages of newspapers.
“The SA media have thrown away every pretence at fairness and balance. They are not even following their own press code by the way. I don’t know why the ANC has retreated on the issue of the media appeals tribunal,” Nzimande said.
Mondli Makhanya, the chairman of the SA National Editors Forum, rejected Nzimande’s accusations as baseless. He said they smacked of dictatorial tendencies similar to those of Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin.
“The South African media behave in a manner that any media in a free society will behave, and this is obviously alien to Nzimande.
“There is no conspiracy among newspapers, there is no agenda, there is no onslaught on any politician. We reflect society and its politics as they are,” Makhanya said.
He dismissed Nzimande’s suggestion that it was a mistake for the ANC to retreat from its proposal for a media appeals tribunal.
Makhanya said the industry had introduced “much stronger” self-regulatory systems which “all the rational people” in the tripartite alliance had accepted as credible and having “strong teeth”.
Media24’s Esmaré Weideman, Independent Newspapers CEO Tony Howard, and Print and Digital Media CEO Ingrid Norman either failed to respond to questions sent or could not be reached for comment yesterday.
SABC spokesman Kaizer Kganyago rejected Nzimande’s accusation that the public broadcaster had “deteriorated”, opposed the government and used its SMS lines to tarnish the image of ANC leaders.
“The SABC supports all its stakeholders, including government, and therefore it is not true that we are opposed to government and other stakeholders,” said Kganyago.
Nzimande said that big media groups were quick to buy successful, small newspapers that were in private hands, to undermine media diversity.
Accusing the media of dishonest debates, he challenged journalists to judge the ruling party on the basis of its promises contained in its election manifesto rather than on “imaginations”. 8P2
