During the apartheid era it was not unexpected for newspapers in South Africa to be closed. It was also not unexpected for journalists to be arrested and harassed by the Security Branch of the South African Police or by the country’s Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB) – a government-sponsored counterinsurgency unit - during that era.
In a democratic South Africa, one would have thought that such tactics as censorship of the media were in the past but sadly, they are not. Oppression and persecution have just taken a different approach but with the same end in sight, and that is, to stifle opposing views to those in power.
In its short lifespan as Independent Media, the publishing house has carried the torch of freedom of expression, as desired by former president Nelson Mandela, in a free South Africa. Madiba said that the domination by one group over another should never happen in South Africa again … and for that, the country needs a free press.
It is not for nothing that the press is also called the vanguard of democracy. However, today, South Africa has democracy in name only, with Madiba’s dream of a free press on the verge of becoming a concept in name only.
An immediate risk to media freedom, is Standard Bank’s move to close down Independent Media’s banking facilities over so-called “reputational risk”. In a country where one of the main scourges we are fighting, post-Covid-19, is unemployment, the prospect of adding a further 1 400 jobless to that number is not something to be entertained lightly. Yet this is precisely what will happen should the bank prevent Independent Media from trading.
Banks spend millions of rands each year to attract customers - the more customers the higher the profit. But in a strange twist, we see that Standard Bank wants to reduce the number of customers, which goes against all business rationale. When the power of money speaks, truth is silenced.
As Chapter nine institutions and other agencies have been found wanting in their statutory defence of democracy and the battle against corruption, the media, particularly Independent Media, has been leading the fight to hold the government to account and to ensure transparency.
Capitalism by its very nature is exploitative. Workers under capitalism are forced to sell their labour for less than the value of the yields due to the lack of ownership of the means of production.
Independent Media has made no qualms about exposing corruption and the immoral extraction of wealth from the poor to the already rich and all powerful elite, some of whom are now using Standard Bank as an instrument to silence Independent Media, a publisher unashamedly on the side of the impoverished masses.
The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality, as so famously articulated by American businessman and writer, Max de Pree. But currently, reality is being distorted by those in power. At threat to these “distorters”, is Independent Media’s exposure of them and their deeds.
Those who thought that oppression of the poor came to an end in 1994 should think again.
With the privatisation of state-owned enterprises (SOE), many workers with secure jobs and excellent fringe benefits, such as pensions et al, are on the verge of losing them. Our SOEs are all being led down a slippery slope to privatisation and unadulterated crony capitalism.
It is true that in a time of deceit, speaking the truth becomes a revolutionary act. It is this revolutionary act that Independent Media is guilty of. They have dared to call the emperor out for having no clothes on. For this, they have to pay the price, that may cost the lives of 1 400 workers. Worse still, is that this kind of collective punishment will not only affect the employees but their families too.
Nothing happens by accident in South Africa, and anybody thinking that Standard Bank is making a decision to close down Independent Media’s bank accounts in a vacuum, should also think again. Standard Bank would not make such a bold decision leading to so much misery if they did not have top cover.
It is in no government’s interest that any media is silenced. Under apartheid, as previously mentioned, many people never knew how the state coffers were looted by the South African Reserve Bank (SARB), for example a lifeboat “loan” of more than R1 billion to the Bankorp Group, to bail out the bank but with no obligation to pay it back.
There are certain factions in the ruling party who would rather see a “dependent media” rather than an independent one. One that could go “rogue” and tell the truth… imagine that…
Masibongwe Sihlahla is an independent writer. The views expressed here are his own.