Top editor calls Mbeki “unmitigated disaster”
Today, news broke that Mondli Makhanya, the editor of the country’s biggest Sunday paper, the Sunday Times, and its deputy managing editor, Jocelyn Maker, are to be arrested to face charges over the provenance of source material used in a recent article alleging that health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is a thief and a drunk.
In response, Justice Malala, one of the country’s most respected journalists, a columnist, political analyst and former newspaper editor, wrote a column that inspires tears for the beloved country.
I am angry and I am afraid. I am deeply afraid for my country.
The sound of silence has fallen over our country while the government of President Thabo Mbeki, in its anger and its shame over its numerous failures and acts of deceit, uses state security apparatus to go after every man and woman who dares to speak truth to power.
… The question has to be asked: is this the South Africa of Nelson Mandela and Albert Luthuli? Did the heroes of June 1976 and the veterans of the fires of the ’80s lose out on schooling and normal lives to be in a country where journalists are prosecuted as happened under apartheid?
The Mbeki regime has been an unmitigated disaster from the onset.
But ineptitude — ranging from the failure to deal with HIV/Aids and rampant crime to consorting with criminals such as Robert Mugabe — is different from pure, unadulterated corruption such as we see unfolding today in the Pikoli saga and now the persecution of Makhanya and Maker.
These are steps into the worlds of Mobutu Sese Seko and Mugabe. Only 13 years into our democracy, Mbeki’s Stalinist learnings are fully on show: journalists and editors arrested and jailed; opponents jailed on trumped-up charges; everyone in government living in fear that they are being followed, watched and bugged.
… I am angry and I am afraid. But mostly I am ashamed. Ashamed and embarrassed to call myself South African. Ashamed that in this country we all keep quiet while evil is so routinely perpetuated by a bunch we ourselves put into power.
More power to Malala’s pen. This is indeed a dark day for journalism, media freedom and political liberty in South Africa.
