The stuff of nightmares
HOBGOBLINS have returned to haunt us. The very people who gave sleepless nights to John Vorster and his apartheid apparatchiks are back again: Desmond Tutu, who at one stage threatened to murder all of us in our beds; writer and painter Breyten Breytenbach, who had the temerity to defy the Mixed Marriages Act and marry a Vietnamese girl; Nadine Gordimer, who had no respect for the traditional South African way of life; Andre Brink, who was a troublemaker from way back; and Mary Burton, of the Black Sash. Say no more.
They've returned to again tip ordure on the government of the day. They urge citizens to join them in a groundswell of opposition to the Protection of Information Bill. They badmouth the government as they always did, Brink having the confounded cheek to say we are back in the 1970s when the government imposed censorship. They propagate their liberal rubbish and do their best to discredit the government.
I turn a couple of pages in the newspaper and there I find the Archbishop of Cape Town again spouting venom, castigating the government the way his predecessor did back in the 70s, over the same Protection of Information Bill and the proposed Media Tribunal.
It's a recurring nightmare. But I can't tell if it's a Nat nightmare or an ANC nightmare because absolutely nothing has changed.
The daily flow
Meanwhile, just to page through yesterday's newspaper gives an idea of the daily entertainment we would be deprived of by the Protection of Information Bill.
We would have missed the knockabout comedy of Metro Mayor Obed Mlaba and his daughter. She got contracts worth R2.6 million with the municipality, using a provision for by-passing the normal tender process – and without even telling her Dad, with whom she lives.
This is a sidesplitter. What will these kids get up to next?
We would have missed the latest episode in South Africa's favourite soap opera, titled SABC. In terms of the new Bill, infighting on the Board almost certainly has nothing to do with the ordinary citizen. Does it matter that the chief executive of the public broadcaster has been suspended? Whose business is it if the SABC offers to feature provincial government activities in return for payment?
Similarly, we would have missed the latest episode in that other top soapie – titled SAA – because what right have ordinary taxpayers to know about misspending by executives that runs into the millions? Would the SAA chairwoman have felt it necessary, and in the national interest, to publicly brief MPs as she did?
That pesky R1 million donated to the ANC by a man now charged with corruption would no doubt also have bitten the dust as a news item because whose business is it anyway?
Would the scale of disruption to road, rail and air traffic, caused by a power failure, have made it into the news columns? It's debatable, this kind of report is embarrassing and puts out all kinds of wrong impressions.
And so it goes on. There's a stand-off at Parliament between the Speaker and opposition parties over the release of interim reports on military service conditions. Is there any need for this to be broadcast to all and sundry?
Yes, our newspapers could end up looking very drab – something like in places such as North Korea and Mnyanmar (which they used to call Burma).
Tailpiece
A LITTLE guy is sitting in a bar drinking his beer, minding his own business, when a great big dude comes in and – Whack! - knocks him off the bar stool. He says: "That was a karate chop from Korea."
The little guy gets up king again when - Whack! - the big dude knocks him down again. "That was a judo chop from Japan."
The little guy gets up, brushes himself off and quietly leaves. He's gone for a while then next thing he's back. He walks up behind the big dude at the bar and –Wham! -he knocks him off his stool, knocking him out cold.
He says to the bartender: "When he gets up, tell him that's a crowbar from the hardware shop".
Last word
When they discover the centre of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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