Download - Media Institute of Southern Africa

SOUTH AFRICA
State of the media in Southern Africa 2002
supervision of whites, Tsedu said.
Violence against journalists remained all too common. The year saw a number
of rural journalists being intimidated or physically assaulted for their reporting.
Four journalists with African Eye News Services (AENS), a rural news
agency, were assaulted or intimated in separate incidents in Nelspruit, the
provincial capital of Mpumalanga, over a nine-month period.
The incidents prompted MISA to call for police protection for the journalists.
“Rural journalists already work under far more difficult conditions then their
metropolitan counterparts. They also enjoy significantly less institutional support,
which makes it all the more important that effective societal safeguards,
such as police protection, are in place,” MISA said in a statement.
The Johannesburg offices of the South African Press Association (Sapa), the
country’s news agency, was robbed bringing its editorial operations to a complete
halt. Five men, one of them armed with a pistol, forced their way into
the offices of the news agency, tied up one of the reporters and then stole vital
equipment in the newsroom.
On a more positive note, the Mail&Guardian scored an important victory in a
R3m defamation suit Housing Minister Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele filed
against the newspaper. The court ruled on September 27 that a cabinet minister
should not have the standing to sue for defamation, where she was being
criticised in relation to the execution of her function as a minister. The newspaper
had published an evaluation of the minister’s performance in December
1998, which said she “cannot deliver in a key Ministry”.
However, more negatively, a simmering battle between Parliament and the
parliamentary correspondents burst into the open when the Speaker of Parliament
Frene Ginwala told the Press Gallery in early January 2003 that they
will be moved to new premises, outside the confines of parliament. Ginwala
said the legislature wanted the media out to make way for parliamentary staff
that will translate proceedings into all the official languages.
MISA-SA then called on all editors, publishers and owners of the media to
oppose this arbitrary action. “The original decision to house journalists in
parliament was to give them the freedom and facilities to carry out their duties.
By removing them to another site, it must be equally obvious that their
effectiveness will be seriously reduced,” MISA said in a statement.
The organisation reminded parliament of the Minister in the Presidency, Essop
Pahad’s speech on June 12. He said “those who take the trouble to elect parties
and their representatives to parliament are entitled to know what these
representatives are doing and saying, how they behave, and how they approach
the many issues that confront the nation. Parliament is not an exclu-
So This Is Democracy? 101