Zuma, media suppressing the truth about the PAC
STEVEN Motale’s mea culpa is not an earth-shattering spectacle (“Dangerous anti-ANC double standards”, The Star, August 14). He has apparently been thinking about it since 2005.
It’s not even a road to Damascene conversion some media practitioners, like Kay Sexwale, make it out to be.
It is most probably done to curry favour with the ANC and its president and for personal gain. The media determines society’s culture and sets the agenda and the limits of discourse.
The media might have been unfair to President Jacob Zuma, but his appointments are not portraying a complimentary picture of the man.
For years, the media and the ANC had been ganging up against the PAC and its founding president, Robert Sobukwe, but many journalists said nothing. It cannot be gainsaid that the PAC and Sobukwe received scant coverage even from African journalists such as Motale. Part of the coverage was even negative. Former Citizen editor Martin Williams is one of the few white journalists who holds Sobukwe in high esteem and has written about him. The other was Patrick Laurence of The Star. There are many African or black journalists who have not written anything about Sobukwe.
Motale bemoans the fact that an individual has not been treated fairly but has said nothing about institutions or liberation movements like the PAC and Black Consciousness Movement (BCM). When are we going to hear about Mthuli ka Shezi, the first martyr of the BCM, Onkgopotse Tiro and Mapetla Mohapi, not only from The Citizen but the media in general, including the ANC-controlled SABC?
Zuma is among those who are suppressing information about the PAC, BCM and its leaders. Speaking after viewing the gallows at Pretoria Central Prison about four years ago, he said most political prisoners who were hanged were from Umkhonto we Sizwe. That’s untrue and Zuma knows it. Most were from Poqo, the erstwhile military wing of the PAC and forerunners of Apla. Is that not treating those people and their families and the PAC and Poqo unfairly? When is Zuma going to recant that statement?
Kagiso, Mogale City