When dissent is shut down, fascism rises
The media play a big role in a democratic state. But, in my view, we are nowhere near being a democratic state. We still have the Protection of State Information Bill pending and I think Jacob Zuma is going to sign it into law, because that is the only way the state can hide its corruption.
The way the intelligence services behave is a clear sign that they want to shut down all dissent, be it civil dissent or political party dissent. The rise of a police state leads us to fascism and we must be ready for the puppets — the ruling party — to conform. You can look at the Right2Know report titled Big Brother Exposed.
During the dying years of apartheid, when the Mass Democratic Movement was fighting for freedom of expression, including freedom of the press, Naspers made sure that the Afrikaans media only advocated apartheid ideas.
The ANC is also looking for a space it can use to silence civil dissent. As we can see now, the ANC is protecting and maintaining the ideas of “white” monopoly capital and the tenderpreneurs. You no longer hear the South African Communist Party challenging the corruption of tenderpreneurs, because its general secretary has been co-opted into the management of bourgeois affairs. Now, these pseudo-communists are just individuals who want to get rich at the expense of the working class, particularly the black working class.
We must be vigilant in exposing the securocrats’ misdeeds. The people must know now that their enemy is also the ruling party, which promised people the implementation of the Freedom Charter. We must also start building alternative governance and a regime change. We all know that the ANC has told everybody that all those who want regime change are their enemies, meaning that the working class and the poor people are the enemy and apartheid ideologues are the friends of the ANC.
The ANC retains apartheid legislation, including the National Key Points Act, the Regulation of Gatherings Act and many more. We must fight for media freedom and diversity. There is no way the Zuma regime is going to be democratic because his predecessors were not democratic either.
There are no short cuts to democracy — we must build it. —