BACK TO FINGER-WAGGING (My letter in Business Day)

The oppressive circumstances of the 1980s were well encapsulated by Pieter Dirk Uys’s satirical portrayal of PW Botha, a finger-waving autocrat declaring: “The army is here, the police are here, and the press is not here. Therefore we are in charge.”
Who thought we would return to those days?
The late Dr Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert warned that the African National Congress’s (ANC’s) commitment to democracy would be tested once they started losing elections. The ANC has already lost a province and municipalities throughout SA to the official opposition, and seen a decline in support during last year’s general election.
Placing a higher premium on power and control, the ANC feels uncomfortable with institutions such as opposition parties and the media calling it to account and insisting on effective and transparent government.
Failing the Slabbert test regarding its commitment to democracy, the ANC is now calling for totalitarian measures that remind one of a finger-waving PW Botha rejoicing at the absence of the media. Freedom of speech and a free media are the oxygen of a viable democracy. Any attempt to suppress it must be met with fierce resistance.
The introduction of a media tribunal and legislation for the protection of information will be a slide back to the dark days of apartheid. With the ANC reluctant to provide opposition parties in Parliament with adequate answers when asked about the way Cabinet ministers conduct their business, it is often only the press that stops at nothing to expose incompetence, corruption and skewed ideological objectives promoting hidden agendas.
Media restrictions must be declared the number one enemy of a free society and resisted at all costs. Let independent thinkers, opposition parties, etc offering alternative ideas to the ruling party’s policies be labelled and insulted as much as the ANC likes, but heaven forbid the erosion of our hard-earned freedom, underscored by a constitutional democracy. Never again must the people be delivered to the whims of a self-serving government. If the ANC waves its PW finger, it must be answered with the middle finger.
Francois Bekker
Via e-mail