JOHANNESBURG - If the Zuma-ANC have one redeeming feature it is that they tend to come at you while yelling, and waving a large panga in the air, from about six hundred yards away. It is an approach that is certainly frightening, and allows for little doubt as to their ultimate intentions. But it does have the advantage of giving one some time to prepare defensive measures against a clearly articulated threat.
This approach is quite different to that of the Mbeki-ANC. In those days you would have been graciously invited into a barbership, and sat down in a comfortable chair. Your beard would have been gently lathered with fragrant soap. By the time you realised that the razor by your throat was not going to be used for that shave you expected, but for a rather more nefarious purpose, it would be far too late to protest.
There can be little doubt after the statements and events of the past two weeks that the ANC is planning to curtail the independence of the press in South Africa. As the Sunday Times editor Ray Hartley has noted "There is a systematic move on several fronts to strangle independent critical journalism." In the thuggish detention of Mzilikazi wa Afrika we came face to face with the future - should state secrecy and media tribunal laws make their way onto the statute book.
It is not too difficult to pick holes in the arguments the ANC has summoned up to justify the imposition of restrictions on the media. Much of its recent finger pointing at the media is more appropriately directed back at the ANC itself.
The ANC has fractured, and as a result the party (and state) is leaking like a sieve. In its recent discussion document on the media the ANC complained about the briefing of journalists by faceless leaders within the Alliance and possible payment arrangements between them.
But it is ANC politicians who are briefing against each other and ANC politicians who are (if the ANC is to be believed - and it should know) paying off reporters. Moreover, many of the more dubious articles that have found their way into the newspapers emanate from ANC sources eager to smear their internal party rivals.
Thus, many of the problems that the ANC is anxious to lay at the feet of the media emanate from within its own ranks. If it is unable to impose internal discipline what right does it have to demand compliance from the press?
Partly, though not solely, because it is so internally divided the ANC also lacks any real moral authority. We have come a long way from the early Mbeki-era, when a monolithic ruling party was able to set down a ‘national agenda', to which most of civil society meekly submitted.
For a liberation movement which once laid claim to being a vanguard party, it must be psychologically difficult to be confronted with a critical and generally disrespectful press. But this is the very thing that makes South Africa a better and more robust democracy than it was a decade ago.
The ANC - and Jeremy Cronin - have also made much of the cost of taking civil action against libel. But the real reason why certain ANC leaders are reluctant to launch such legal actions is not because it is too expensive, but because it is too risky. The last thing such individuals want is to end up in court, before an impartial judge, having to explain their conduct under cross examination by senior counsel.
One could also take ANC complaints about defamation more seriously if the Scorpions had not been dismantled, and President Zuma had refrained from bunging dodgy party loyalists in to head up the police, national prosecuting authority and intelligence service.
This brings us to the critical point. Elements of the ruling elite have put themselves in a position where they can violate the law, and plunder state resources, with impunity. It is this situation which makes investigative journalism and an independent press so critical to our democracy, but so threatening to those intent on using political power for gross self-enrichment.
In democratic societies where those in power can break the law, with little prospect of being watched, investigated or prosecuted, an independent press becomes critical. As Alexis de Tocqueville noted:
"There are certain nations which have peculiar reasons for cherishing the liberty of the press, independently of the general motives that I have just pointed out. For in certain countries which profess to be free, every individual agent of the government may violate the laws with impunity, since the constitution does not give to those who are injured a right of complaint before the courts of justice. In this case the liberty of the press is not merely one of the guarantees, but it is the only guarantee of their liberty and security that the citizens possess. If the rulers of these nations proposed to abolish the independence of the press, the whole people might answer: Give us the right of prosecuting your offenses before the ordinary tribunals, and perhaps we may then waive our right of appeal to the tribunal of public opinion."
South Africa is one of those nations. And the proper answer to the ANC's proposal to curtail press freedom should be much the same.
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