Thapelo Lekgowa, Jane Duncan and Bheki Buthelezi on the media coverage of the Marikana strike and massacre

on MEDIA coverage x264 from marikanabuch on Vimeo.

Journalists failing South Africa on police violence

Jane Duncan, Sunday Times, 27 October 2013

Last month, 17 year old Nqobile Nzuza was shot dead by the police in a protest over housing and evictions in Cato Crest informal settlement, Durban. Another person was shot and wounded. The protest was part of a series of road-blockades organised by the shackdwellers’ movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo.

The police maintain that they acted in self-defence. They say that they were called to the area to respond to a disturbance. Two policemen were attacked by a large crowd, which stoned their vehicle, breaking the windows, and attempting to pull them from it, and they shot at the crowd to prevent themselves from being killed.

The Oscar Pistorius case: Time magazine is wrong, Lulu is right

by Christi van der Westhuizen, Thought Leader

Two mainstream media companies have turned the Oscar Pistorius case into an opportunity to ruminate on the perils of post-white rule.

Time magazine and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) have both in their recent coverage used Pistorius’s defence to weigh in on the South African “culture of violence”. It is notable that these media companies have their roots in countries forged through violent processes of colonialism at about the time when the colony that became South Africa was being settled, also through violence.

“Bhele” Tholakele Dlunga & Greg Marinovich on the Marikana Massacre

Notes from a Farmworkers' Strike

by Ben Fogel, Mahala

Politics is not only about the exploits of big men (and the occassional woman); it’s not only about Zuma vs Motlanthe or Malema vs Zille and the rest of this sorry, but entertaining coterie that our political class consists of. Politics begins with people being able to talk and organise in their own communities or workplaces, it begins with ordinary men and women, rather than the latest Manguang related shenanigans.

Gaza Through Israeli Eyes

by Nina Butler, The Jacobin

Israel’s largest circulation English newspapers, the Jerusalem Post and Ha’aretz,have constructed an alarmingly patchy impression of the aerial bombardment of Gaza the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) waged last week.

Take Ha’aretz, lauded as the most left-leaning Israeli publication, with sophisticated and provocative “opinionistas” that routinely criticise the conservative, trigger-happy seats of power.

The Unpreparedness of the Educated Classes in South Africa

by Himal Ramji

“It so happens that the unpreparedness of the educated classes, the lack of practical links between them and the mass of the people, their laziness, and, let it be said, their cowardice at the decisive moment of the struggle will give rise to tragic mishaps” (Fanon, 1963: 119).

How has this statement been proven true in post-apartheid South Africa?

This essay seeks to unpack the statement by Fanon, seeking to understand in what ways the educated classes have proven to be ‘unprepared’, ‘lazy’ and ‘cowardly’ in the face of liberation, how they have failed to continue the struggle through a dialectic with the people, and how these failures have led to the current situation South Africa is in. This piece takes ‘laziness’ as an unwillingness or inability to engage in conversation; indeed, it is much easier to speak to those you know, those with the same interests as you than it is to enter into an egalitarian discussion with those with different backgrounds, needs, interests.

From Gaza to the Congo: Whose blood is more worthy of attention?

by Khadija Patel, The Daily Maverick

There has been a marked disparity in the coverage of conflict in Gaza and the Congo in recent days. A disparity that has led some to question whose blood is more worthy of mainstream media attention. It’s certainly not a competition, but the disparity and the continuance of these conflicts is an indictment of a lot more than a jaundiced media focus.

In August 2009, around the time I still believed myself to be sane, I interviewed Professor Norman Finkelstein while he visited South Africa on a speaking tour. I was buoyed by the curious combination of nervousness and confidence that only the young and stupid can attest to. Finkelstein had, just months before that, made headlines for losing tenure at the university where he taught owing to his views on Israel. As I spoke to Finkelstein, about Gandhi, colonialism and the legacy of the Holocaust in his own family, I also asked him how he responded to observations that conflict in Middle East was apportioned too much media coverage. What about the Congo, where more than 1,000 people were killed in December 2008 – around the same time as Israel’s Operation Cast Lead? Why does Gaza get more attention than the Congo?

The Selling of a Massacre: Media Complicity in Marikana Repression

By Ben Fogel, Ceasefire

The 16th of August 2012 will surely join June 16 1960* and March 23 1976** as a day of infamy in South African history. The police force of the democratically elected government shot 102 black working-class miners (killing 34 and wounding 78), while arresting an additional 270 men at the Lonmin (London Mining) mine in the small North West town of Marikana. This followed the deaths of 10 other men in the week leading up to the massacre, beginning with the murder of two miners- allegedly by NUM (National Union of Mineworkers) officials.

Media freedom debacles aside, the press is failing us

by Julie Reid, The Daily Maverick

Let me be clear. There is a small collection of really courageous journalists and editors in this country who consistently and tenaciously produce outstanding work in their dogged pursuit of the truths that matter, and ferociously battle to keep the reading public informed, sometimes at great personal cost. This column is not about them.

This column is about the flip side: the much larger number of journalists and publications who are rubbish.

Marikana prequel: NUM and the murders that started it all

by Jared Sacks, The Daily Maverick

Because the Marikana Massacre marked a turning point in the history of our country, I went to the small mining town in the North West. I wanted to know what truly happened and what it meant for the future of our so-called democracy. I hoped my trip would enable me to answer some of the burning questions left obfuscated by media, government and civil society campaigns alike.

Marikana and the problem of pack journalism

Jane Duncan

by Jane Duncan, SABC

The televised images of armed miners rushing towards the police in Marikana on the 16th August, and the police opening fire on the miners, will haunt South Africans for many years to come. 

Reporting from behind the police line in relative safety, journalists presented to the world images that on the surface of things vindicated the police’s view of events, namely that they shot in self-defence.But subsequent academic, journalistic and eyewitness accounts have called this narrative into question, with evidence having emerged of a second ‘kill site’ where miners were allegedly killed in a far more premeditated fashion by the police. 

The Thinking about Social Change is Structured In a Fundamentally Elitist Manner