The World

There is a good, strong editorial in this morning’s FT condemning a proposed law in South Africa that would go a long way to muzzling the press. The law would allow government ministers incredibly broad powers to classify information as secret and envisages penalties of upto 25 years in prison, for journalists who publish unauthorised secrets. The definition of a “secret” includes sensitive business information.

The proposed law is a major threat to South African democracy. Yet, I have been struck by the almost total silence of the British press on this subject. Papers that devoted acres of space to the success of the World Cup cannot be bothered to follow up with a report of what’s going on in South Africa now. Even the famously liberal Guardian has not uttered a word, although it was assiduous in covering the outrages of apartheid. (To be fair, the Guardian’s sister newspaper, The Observer, carried a short piece over the weekend.)

Why this reticence? Partly, it is because newspapers have short attention spans. The South African government will have calculated that the world’s attention would move on, after the World Cup, and that now was a good time to bring forward this outstandingly illiberal piece of legislation. Partly, it may be the “it may never happen syndrome”. Yes, the law would be terrible. But it hasn’t gone through parliament, yet. But given the ANC’s huge parliamentary majority, this should not be a problem.

Partly, it may be an uncomfortable feeling that slamming the South African government for cracking down on press freedom is not the sort of thing that white liberals should do, since it might smack of racism.

But the lie that press freedom is just a white South African concern needs to be nailed. A crackdown on the press is already underway in South Africa, and the main victim so far has been an outstanding black South African journalist. And this article, condemning President Zuma for threatening to turn his nation into a “banana republic” was written by Mondli Makhanya, a black South African and the editor of the very mainstream Sunday Times.