Thomas Johnson - The Blog

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,...

UCT vice-chancellor Mamokgethi Phakeng congratulated honours student Mlandu Masixole, a fallist, for completing his honours research paper that included in the acknowledgements "One settler, one bullet". She responded to his tweet announcing the completion of his project in the Department of Politics.   Another Twitter user, UCT Conservative, criticised her for "congratulating a student for submitting a dissertation with ‘one settler, one bullet’ written in bold on page 2", and added "UCT will be an unsaveable dump in five years".  Phakeng replied: "Of course I can never be proud of promises of bullets, what am proud of is that you did the paper and completed it! I am deginitely proud that you finally clicked it off for assessment (sic)". After this became public , UCT issued a statement to Politicsweb condemning Masixole's statement. "Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng, as she often does, congratulated a student for completin...

In a statement in Politicsweb, Elijah Moholola, manager of the University of Cape Town's (UCT) media office, in high dudgeon, says the debate with Elisa Galgut and William Daniels about UCT's censorship of artwork is closed.  Judging from my and others' experience attempting to politely debate in private and public with UCT executives about matters the fall movement initiated proved to be futile. In my case , they either didn't respond or said they would, but I never heard from them again. UCT executive Russell Ally, with whom I correspondence and said he'd answer all my questions, too was "not open to listen to views that differed from his own". Is Moholola/UCT taking offense at the word "bullshit" or that Galgut and Daniels are allegedly "not open to listen to views that differ from their own", or both? "Bullshit" is one of the minor expletives, still socially acceptable, perhaps not in formal correspondence but cert...

The gleeful and glib responses from the DA and their predominantly white educated and well-read middle class supporters to former Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille's resignation on Wednesday October 31 is sickening and reflects a lack of introspection and political nous. Former DA leader Tony Leon was interviewed on eNCA 1pm news earlier the day and said the DA handled the case badly and must take "responsibility". Compare it to that gadfly  Douglas Gibson  who criticised her without questioning the DA's poor handling of the saga. Yes, De Lille didn't behave as well as she could have in the circumstances. But as she said in her statement, she won three court cases against the DA. And I think she would've won the one set down for November - the merits of the case - had the DA not, fearful of that outcome, made a deal with her, which they reneged on by charging her with corruption per the Bowmans' report recommendations. I  Note their recommenda...

Brett Herron, for mayco member for transport and development and ally of former mayor Patricia de Lille, resigned on November 1 after the city's speaker laid charges against him and De Lille for corruption. In a statement in which he said the "DA abandoned freedom, fairness, opportunity and diversity" said the reason for his resignation was DA city council caucus blocked the disposal of the Salt River Market for an affordable inner-city housing development. Herron was one of the hard working councillors but by no means without blemish. And by blemish I'm not referring to the corruption charges that I believe are without legal basis and form part of the DA's vindictive 'witch hunt'. I agree with him that hypocritically and conveniently, the DA is not pursuing other incompetent and corrupt members and officials. Incidentally I've been wondering how Mmusi Maimane mismanaged this thing so badly but I realised it's his inexperience and being tot...