DURING Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini's imbizo against xenophobia on Monday President Jacob Zuma decried the Sunday Times front page picture of a Mozambican vendor being stabbed to death in Alexandra. According to reports he suggested it made SA “look bad”, and that the media should be more patriotic.The president has advocated that sentiment before. In September 2013, in dressing down SA’s media he called for “patriotic reporting”. He cited Mexico, where, he claimed, crime was not reported on. “But when I am in SA, every morning you feel like you must leave this country because the reporting concentrates on the opposite of the positive,” said Zuma.The inherent and self-harming foolishness of that idea is perhaps self-evident — deliberate or enforced ignorance is as sure a path to censorship as it is to denialism and that can only ever augment authoritarianism. Besides, criticism and honesty are in truth profoundly patriotic acts, contrary to what Zuma or the African National Cong...
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