The history of acrimony between powerful people who are in the wrong and truly independent media is generally littered with the resignations of the former. The scenario is often the same: the powerful person does something crazy, illegal, or just plain stupid, then watch in horror as the first slivers of truth about their misdeed reaches the public. So they go for the cover-up, and in the end the attempts at evading the truth are much more damning than the original sin. Does the name Watergate ring a bell?

SABC news chief Snuki Zikalala landed himself in hot water by pushing his agenda of separating the good (and sometimes pliable) commentators from the potentially troublesome ones, and by not being subtle about it. So what? South Africa's multiparty democracy has long been supplanted by one-party rule, and it is not surprising if the SABC news boss manages to badly misconstrue his mandate. Serving the nation. Serving the ANC. Two easily confused concepts.

Solution: admit the mistake, swear to never ever do it again, blame it all on work pressure and wait to be forgiven. What can your enemies do about it, anyway?

But the SABC board's reaction to the Sisulu commission's report, however, is the stuff that scandals are made of. (The decision to form the commission in the first place sounded positively Churchillian, and almost everybody in the SA media world expected the usual non-committal report, with extra patting on the back for SABC executives for their decisive action.) The supposed summary that was published was so far removed from the report itself that, once the original was leaked the public's confidence that the SABC could serve the truth was left in shreds. And that was before the court challenge seeking to plug the leak.

MAVERICK
Branko Brkic is editor of Maverick Magazine
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The decisive defeat of that court action had another interesting repercussion: it confirmed the media superstardom of Ferial Haffajee, editor of the Mail and Guardian. Audaciously obtaining the report and publishing the whole thing had already added to her (not inconsiderable to start with) stature as a well-connected investigative reporter. Her courage under fire was confirmed again, as it is every time the M&G goes up against an opponent with a legal budget bigger than her paper's annual turnover. She also became an even stronger inspiration for journalists everywhere, because she was fighting not only for herself during that long night in court, but for the media's rightful position in the future of this country.

In our de facto one-party system the odds are stacked in the government's favour so strongly that it is hard to do any damage whatsoever by hostile media coverage. It's not as if there is any true opposition that can gain power because of a ruling-party scandal. The ANC can just ride out the bad and wait for the tide to turn.

In such a system, the role of the media is simply to matter. Haffajee and her team's principled stance on issues like the Zuma saga, the Prophet Muhammad cartoons (that one got her death threats), Oilgate and others show the way. Always look for the truth regardless of its price, always serve the nation and not narrow interests within it. Make the people in power take notice when they should, even if you can never effect direct change. Make the people in power make the change.

It would be an understatement to say that the next year or two will be crucial in this country’s history. We’re standing at the fork in the road and it is by no means certain that we will choose the right direction; so many things can go wrong. In such uncertain times it is absolutely crucial to have a fearless media companion that will be there for us, no matter what dangers lie ahead. I'm counting on Ferial and her team.

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