Why I won't apologise
2008-03-03 11:42
Jon Qwelane
I have written a formal letter to the SA Human Rights Commission asking it to investigate the nauseating tendency of Radio 702 to manufacture "news" through its "in-your-face" arrogance and so-called "pushing the envelope" because, in my view, that tendency violates the public's constitutional right to be informed.
I am writing another letter to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission to ask it why it lets that station mislead the public with "news" that is not entirely truthful, accurate, honest and balanced as the code requires.
At the outset I must disclose that I spent nearly 10 years of my life working at 702: some might say I have axes to grind and scores to settle, but I feel that I am qualified to comment with knowledge on the manner in which 702 functions, having been exposed to its methods for so long.
I want to state unequivocally here that black people have every right to assemble by themselves to discuss whatever affects them directly; we do not need anybody's approval, and it is time blacks asserted themselves and stopped apologising at every turn for attempting to correct the debilitating situation they find themselves in, through no fault of their own.
We have the right to meet by ourselves to seek solutions to the huge crises affecting our communities, because we experience and live the pain and misery of black people in this country. Unlike 702, white people and coconuts, we do not intellectualise about our experiences, we live them: we are painfully aware of the pressures and social ills afflicting our people, especially our children and our youth.
Racists and coconuts always quote Nelson Mandela as "having no bitterness in him, why can't you be like him?" That is one of the reasons why I believe that the so-called policy of reconciliation is a farce, and the real racists have never acknowledged or appreciated the hurt and dehumanisation they visited upon us in our own country.
False sense of comfort
Because some people pretend not to know what I mean by "coconuts", I am referring to those "plastic" blacks who are shallow and superficial in outlook - those unfortunate lackeys who are trapped between aspiring to be white and denying they are black; they have only ice-cream inside their heads, and no brains.
The tendency by racists and some blacks with white girlfriends and lovers to label us as "racists" is convoluted sophistry, and I reject it outright. Perhaps it gives them a false sense of comfort to shift the unbecoming label to us, the real victims of racism.
Black journalists have the constitutional right to free assembly, meaning at such assembly we have the right to associate freely. Implicit in all this is our freedom to choose with whom to associate. What all that means is that we have the right to reject and eject from our midst whomever we wish. We do not - at least I don't - apologise for that stance.
The freedom to assemble on grounds of mutual interest is exercised - among many other groupings - by the SA Jewish Board of Deputies, the Afrikaner Sakekamer, and the Greek, Italian, and German Chambers of Commerce. I am not aware that 702 ever staged a song and dance about the exclusivity of these groups!
But 702 thought we were a soft target, and with typical arrogance they provocatively came to our meeting with the distinct purpose of causing mischief. Steven Grootes carried a tape recorder to our off-the-record briefing with Msholozi; his boss, Yusuf Abramjee, came armed with a boring speech, which he held in trembling hands, while his fawning sidekick, one Kieno Kammies, was a pathetic little "militant" proclaiming he would walk out because his white colleague had been ejected.
Mark you, FBJ interim chairperson Abbey Makoe had, in two interviews with 702, made it patently clear that the meeting would be open to black journalists only.
Abramjee pompously lectured us about our "unacceptable" decision. Kammies, trying very hard to sound important, claimed that Helen Zille and Allister Sparks had brought them - presumably meaning the 702 crowd - to where they were as journalists, and more such incredible rubbish.
I later learned that 702 news editor Katy Katopodis had asked the SAHRC to investigate the FBJ, and that Sanef had uttered similar nonsense. Sanef chairperson Jovial Rantao was himself one of Bulelani Ngcuka's favoured darkies at his blacks-only "off-the-record" briefing where Zuma was rubbished and tried in absentia. Both Sanef and 702 saw nothing wrong in that, only content to feast daily on Ngcuka's unlawful tactics and utterances!
A simple lesson
I then wrote a counter-complaint to SAHRC chairperson Jody Kollapan about the hypocrisy of 702, asking him to investigate its habit of "manufacturing news" - thereby violating the public's constitutional right to be informed with news that is honest, truthful and accurate.
If Abramjee, Katopodis, and Kammies are indeed concerned about our alleged "racism", then they are being disingenuously inconsistent: their uberbosses, the Kirsch family - the true owners of Primedia and 702 - are affiliates of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies, yet I have not once heard even a whimper of protest by our unlikely liberators Sultan Abramjee and his cohorts.
Charity ought to begin at home; Abramjee, Katopodis and the rest - if they are honest - must demand that the Kirsch dynasty cut ties with the exclusivist SAJBOD and ask the SAHRC to "investigate" it. Anything less means they are in reality grandstanding frauds, concerned only about the Kirsch shekels - which I strongly suspect to be the case.
Radio 702 must be taught a simple lesson, because they clearly do not know it: the right of freedom of association implies the freedom to choose with whom to associate or NOT to associate - with whites, in our case as the FBJ. To paraphrase Plato, in a free society free black people associate freely!
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