Why media freedom remains fragile in SA
Despite our Constitution, the battle for media freedom in SA is not over, and attacks on journalists continue
Four decades after the Black Wednesday crackdown on the media and the black consciousness movement, SA is a different country. Freedom of expression is guaranteed in the constitution and a slew of institutions and laws support the guarantee. At the same time, powerful groups continue to seek ways to limit and undermine journalism. On October 19 1977, two South African newspapers, World and Weekend World; and a church journal, Pro Veritate, were closed, journalists were banned and detained and some 18 organisations of the black consciousness movement were banned. Since then, the country’s journalists have marked the day as Media Freedom Day. The 1977 crackdown went further than even the apartheid cabinet of the time had decided: cabinet minutes from the day before, laboriously written in longhand in leather-covered volumes held in the national archives, record the decision that the World newspaper "be suspended for a week" and that the editor Percy Qoboza and others be detained. The ...
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