Be very afraid now: journalists can bring about regime change
It could have been a good day for South African journalism when Tiso Blackstar editor-at-large Peter Bruce and his family suffered an attack straight from the Gupta gutter and Business Day editor Tim Cohen was assaulted by a proxy of that same sewer.
It could have been a good day for us hacks. Righteous indignation rose in our collective gullet, the bile never sweeter on our lips. Here was correlation between an attack by a race-addled entity and the Gupta-driven attempt to capture the South African state. Better yet, here was proof that journalism works as a defence of freedom and democracy; it got to the Guptas and their supplicants.
Consider, though, that journalists have no rights greater than those of any other citizen, as described in the Constitution. It means, celebrated as many journalists are, they neither demand nor deserve special treatment. It means also that they are entitled to the state’s protective embrace in equal measure to that with which the state is obliged to protect all its citizens going about their legitimate business, though suffocating the perpetrators, to take Police Minister Fikile Mbalula literally, may be going too far. He may be certain that journalists will report on that too.
Granted, suggesting that it might have been a good day for journalism betrays a degree of bravado, but consider the context. Journalists premise their storytelling on the idea that their readers are interested enough in matters concerning their own welfare and that of the broader South African community to keep on consuming a relentless stream of bad news. To maintain this relationship, journalists publish their best approximation of the truth.
And right there is the issue. The truth threatens people such as ANC chief whip Jackson Mthembu, who wants to revive efforts to create statutory control of the media. The print media, in particular, he sees as a “powerful tool that could effect even a regime change”. It is either that, or Mthembu contends that journalists are liars, but in the absence of any instance of fabrication or fib, we must assume the man is just plain scared.
This is probably a good thing, a fit state for a politician. But Mthembu should know that it could be worse. He is right to fear the truth, but the one thing worse than the truth is not knowing the truth, however unpalatable it may be. Imagine journalists not sounding the alarm about corporate and state malfeasance. Imagine navigating relationships or conducting commerce in which your word is not your bond, in which no one is held to account because, well, telling the truth is optional.
That is the parallel universe the Guptas and their ANC proxies would have us inhabit, were it not for the journalists who tell about it. Were it not for the citizens who eschewed careers in lavatory cleaning and as journalists chose to scratch about in the alimentary canal of the human soul, Gupta audit firm KPMG and Gupta public relations agency Bell Pottinger might still be rendering professional services to unsuspecting citizens. But now we know better.
THE TRUTH THREATENS PEOPLE SUCH AS MTHEMBU, WHO WANTS TO REVIVE EFFORTS TO CREATE STATUTORY CONTROL OF THE MEDIA
On any other day, an attack on journalists would have been a good day for journalism, but not on that day. That day was when SABC journalist Suna Venter was found dead from a stress-related illness caused by the untenable conflict between her personal integrity and the utter lack of integrity of her employer.
What Mthembu and President Jacob Zuma and the Guptas and KPMG and Bell Pottinger and all would-be censors would do well to realise is that society’s need to seek the truth is greater than its fear of the truth. It means that even if journalists spend most of their professional lives mired in dreck, it is worth it. It means journalists will not be intimidated, that the feeble attempts to do so fuel our passion. Suna Venter inspires us.
For every journalist murdered by cowards, another 1,000 citizens will rise. Nothing crawling out of the Gupta gutter can stop us. It means Mthembu is right about one thing: regime change is imminent. Lavatory cleaners and other citizens will achieve it — constitutionally, of course. That day will be a good day for journalism.