Media’s role continues

The ANC’s Jackson Mthembu sounds more like a National Party official than someone who would like us to associate him with the “struggle”. The media were responsible for exposing Sharpeville to the world in 1960, leading to the first arms embargo against the apartheid regime. Similarly, it exposed the Rivonia Trial in the mid-1960s.

Yes, it was antagonistic to the rise of Black Consciousness in the late 1960s, portraying it as reverse apartheid, but soon got in line following Onkgopotse Tiro’s explosive speech in 1972.

Black journalism came of age in 1976 as the only source of the story of the Soweto riots as no one could enter the township except Africans. The World and Weekend World were at the forefront during the riots and demanding answers about the circumstances of Steve Biko’s death. For this, they earned a shutdown with their editors detained.

The East London publication Daily Dispatch was similarly at the throat of the regime; fortunately, being a “white” paper the wrath of the regime was limited to the banning of its editor. The heat put on the regime by the media led to Louis Luyt’s bid for the company that owned the Rand Daily Mail, and when he was unsuccessful, they created the Citizen to prop up the National Party.

The irony is that it is the very same media that has brainwashed the population, leaving struggle history only as a doctored ANC story, removing their struggle rivals from the scene.

Dr Kenosi Mosalakae Houghton