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S. African ruling party accuses opposition of suppressing press freedom

Xinhua, March 17, 2015 Adjust font size:

The ruling African National Congress (ANC) on Monday accused the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) of initiating a boycott of a newspaper, allegedly for being pro-ANC.

The ANC "is shocked by the actions of the DA to censor the Cape Times by not renewing the Provincial Government's subscription to the newspaper," ANC national spokesperson Zizi Kodwa said.

In an internal memorandum leaked to the public, the DA-run Western Cape provincial government calls on all provincial departments to stop subscribing to the Cape Times.

"This deplorable behavior is a direct assault on the freedom of speech and media freedom that the DA continues to pretend that it promotes and defends," Kodwa said.

"For some time now, the DA has attacked the Independent Newspaper Group to which Cape Times belongs, accusing it of being pro-ANC -- all in an effort to ensure that only voices sympathetic to the DA and its cause are heard in society."

The DA-led government, Kodwa said, is using its financial muscle derived from taxpayers' money to punish those who dare publish independent views it perceives as being at odds with the DA's misguided, sensationalist and anti-ANC narrative.

Also on Monday, the South African National Editors' Forum (SANEF) said it was appalled by the Western Cape government's call for boycotting the Cape Times.

"SANEF finds it appalling that the executive committee of the Western Cape government, led by a former journalist, Ms Helen Zille, interferes at this level in the affairs of provincial department heads, who should have the freedom to choose which news mediums they find useful or not," SANEF chairperson Mpumelelo Mkhabela said in a statement.

Earlier this month, Director-General of the Western Cape Province Bert Gerber issued a directive for the departments not to renew their subscriptions or start subscriptions with the paper because of its ongoing decline in the quality of reporting.

The provincial cabinet "considers it to be fruitless expenditure to renew Cape Times subscriptions," Gerber wrote.

Mkhabela said the issue could have been handled differently.

"If the Western Cape government has an issue with the quality of content in the Cape Times, they should address it with the editor of that newspaper or through complaints to the office of the Press Ombudsman, and not by effectively calling for a government boycott of the Cape Times," he said. Endi