Thomas Johnson - The Blog

The South African National Editor's Forum and journalists laid a complaint at the Equality Court against the EFF and Julius Malema regarding threats and intimidation against journalists.   With threats and counter legal action, how can any journalist be objective about the EFF? Recently Andrew Donaldson again wrote about the EFF – the third time in a month – from the safety of Brexit Blighty (he emigrated in December). It's unlikely a writer with an axe to grind would be published, as I know from personal experience.   But revealing media disingenuity and agendas, anything against the EFF is fair game. Max du Preez is listed as a complainant against EFF. But in the form of specious “analysis” he publically supported President Cyril Ramaphosa, aka Ramaposter, and ANC for 2019’s general elections. Peter Bruce is not among the complainants but also endorsed Ramaposter. Once upon a time Karima Brown, now a self-described “political analyst”, and Independent Media...

Public Protector (PP) Busisiwe Mkhwebane released her  findings  this week that Western Cape Premier Helen Zille violated the members’ code of ethics and constitution by assisting her son and exposed herself to a conflict of interest.   Zille denied it and said she will take it on review. This is the second finding Mkhwebane made against Zille.   The first was that her colonialism tweet was racist, which Zille also took on review. The details of the case can be obtained in the PP’s full report here , but the basics were Zille facilitated her son Paul Maree’s company, Paper Video, to conduct a pilot project supplying educational software to be installed on computer tablets at schools in 2014. Maree was also a teacher at the school in question. Zille’s supporters are outraged and have hurled abuse at Mkhwebane and those who criticise her, particularly on Politicsweb. Ironically, this week Mkhwebane also released finding that former Minister of Sport Fikil...

Karyn Maughan writes in Business Day : "While [Ajay Gupta's about the NPA withdrawing charges in the Estina dairy case] words have been greeted with scorn, derision and outrage, he may not be wrong. The Estina prosecution, and its multiple failures, is illustrative of the mess that Batohi will walk into when she takes over as national director of public prosecutions in February. Underresourced, dispirited, divided and forensically incompetent, this is an National Prosecutions Authority (NPA) in the midst of a credibility and staffing crisis." "Forensically incompetent" - SAPS and NPA and the various director of public prosecutions (DPP) offices. Over the past year (and once before years ago) I experienced SAPS' and NPA's (Cape Town DPP's) amazing , hard-to-put-in-words incompetence and indifference as a complainant in a serious, life-and-death criminal matter. Inter alia, 14 months after the case was opened, a policeman arrived to take stateme...

The National Assembly adopted the proposed amendment to section 25 of the Constitution to expropriate land without compensation . South Africa had former president Jacob Zuma for almost 10 years and they never seriously considered EWC. OK, then it was about personally enriching No.1, ANC cadres, Guptas and friends and the blatant theft of South Africa under our noses. But now that Zuma is no longer in government (although probably pulling strings behind the scenes), the ANC is supposed to be stronger and mending with Ramaphoria the Saviour. Instead it's gone full-tilt crazy. I don't understand. Isn't cutting out the tumour - Zuma and state capture - and undergoing therapy supposed to make the patient better, not starkers? It can't all be about Ramaposter securing his place in 2019 bec it's unlikely the ANC will fire him so soon. EFF is a marginal party making a lot of noise and the media and others giving it a larger profile than it deserves. So it can't ...

Politicsweb's editor and publisher James Myburgh has had a disagreement with Africa Check's fact-checking about (white) farm murders this year. In four articles - here , here , here and the latest, The Africa Checkists on November 28 - he disputed Africa Check's findings and/or interpretation of the number of farm murders (and here ). This is a cause célèbre and obsession for Myburgh. I know the feeling, but sometimes one must let it go. First, Africa Check and their researcher on farm murders Kate Wilkinson are media and writers and not economists, sociologists, statisticians and demographers. They rely on second-hand data they source elsewhere (as Myburgh has). My point is while journalists are trained in research, they don't have unique, expert insight into a subject or the competence to interpret and analyse specialised data. They must defer to that expertise when necessary. When AC published this article researched by Gopolang Makou, Did the DA create 7...

The South African National Editors Forum (SANEF) is seeking the public's support for media freedom against the EFF's and its leader Julius Malema's threats against journalists . But the irony is in their own way its members are working against media freedom. In related news,  the EFF has banned the Sunday Times from its events and briefings. In a statement issued on November 27 SANEF's executive director Kate Skinner said: "While we acknowledge Malema's right to criticise the media, we remain gravely concerned about the threats and intimidation of individual journalists." Malema's and EFF's threats are unacceptable and must desist through legal means if necessary if they refuse to do so. But there's much hypocrisy among the media about the 'right to criticise' them and free speech. In many cases the media and editors tolerate no criticism of their publications and actively hinder freedom of speech, one of the fundamental tene...

Part 1: The Conversation bans me  In what is the latest example of the politically correct liberal-left media’s hypocrisy and tyranny, The Conversation Africa banned me from commenting on its site. Education editor Nontobeko Mtshali , after first removing three comments, petulantly booted me off because I said the removal of my (civil) comments about terms “racially decolonised” and “decolonisation” in the context of an article “ How the colonial past of botanical gardens can be put to good use ” by Brett Bennett of the University of Johannesburg was censorship and a subjective and personal editorial dislike of my comments. Her pretext for removing the comments was that I was allegedly off-topic. The Conversation Africa’s editor is Caroline Southey. In my first comment (not removed) I said Bennett used “racially decolonised”, a neologism I and probably most people don’t understand (I’d not heard or seen it before until now). The Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens G...

Part 2: Academia, The Conversation and media captured I joined The Conversation forum in April 2017. Soon after, on August 7, the editor Caroline Southey emailed asking me to fill in my profile because they “noticed I was active on the site”. It’s not a requirement and I said so; m any other non-contributing academics commentators’ profiles are blank. She replied, “You’re very active on our site (which we welcome warmly), so we thought a profile would be useful”. I gathered it was because my comments were often article-length, interesting, informed, added value, well-written and sometimes better than the articles I commented on, which other commentators remarked on too. I mainly read the Africa edition with regular forays to other editions. The Conversation was founded in Australia as a platform for the academic community in which to publish non-peer-reviewed material of general and academic interest. Its motto is “academic rigour, journalistic flair”.   However,...