Category: annoying people

Mixed messages from PnP et al

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A lot has already been said about the allegedly “proposed” Media Appeals Tribunal (MAT) and the despicable Protection of Information Bill (PIB), not least in that post last week on here.
And so it continues with Gareth Ackerman, chairman of local retail giant Pick n Pay weighing in with his opinion:

Pick n Pay recognises there is a close link between economic and political freedom. The economic freedom on which business depends flourishes best when citizens are able to rely on an unfettered flow of information that is free from excessive government control and regulation.

And since so far, 99% of the criticism of these proposals has come solely from “the media”, creating an “us versus them” scenario, they leapt upon his words with gay abandon, obviously delighted to have an ally outside their close-knit ranks and quoting his ever so luscious soundbites one after another.
In the Times:

The business sector should not believe itself exempt from this duty of responsible citizenship, and we thus have no hesitation in adding our voices to those who have expressed their misgivings about the consequences of the governing party’s proposals.

And with cautious optimism in the Daily Maverick:

“Any erosion of our open society, now that we have achieved it, will only impede economic growth and national prosperity,” he said.
In airing these views… Ackerman may have opened the door for others of a similar persuasion to do the same, which may finally move the debate beyond an increasingly acrimonious to-and-fro between the ANC and political bodies on the one hand, and the media itself on the other… Ackerman has effectively called on the business community to stand up and be counted.

Of course, these words come from the same company that recently banned certain newspapers from its shelves, which had at least one columnist from er… The Daily Maverick up in arms:

After a couple of pesky complaints about “nudity” and bad language in the Afrikaans newspapers, Sondag and Die Son, Pick ’n Pay decided to no longer carry these papers on its shelves. This was despite the fact that the Sunday weekly is sold in supermarkets in sealed plastic bags.
Speaking to the Saturday Star, Ingo Capraro, Sondag’s editor, said the decision was disturbing: “The constitution enshrines freedom of choice, freedom of association and media freedom. Pick ’n Pay’s decision to decide on behalf of its customer what they are allowed to read flies directly in the face of freedom of choice.”

Pick ’n Pay appears to have taken the decision unilaterally, without any consultations with media or civic or watchdog organisations. The company acted as judge, jury and executioner… this would be a very bad time for Pick ’n Pay to start playing media censor.

Local tabloid the Daily Voice was also withdrawn from sale , although apparently it is now available “in selected Pick n Pay stores”.  So presumably T&A are not ubiquitously offensive. I’m not sure how one would go about deciding exactly which stores would have open-minded enough shoppers allow sale of such publications, but I’d be willing to be surveyed if it involved commenting on a series of pictures.

And yes, this is entirely different from “freedom of the press”, but then as Gareth has told us, all these freedoms – media, press, freedom of expression, political freedom, economic freedom, freedom of choice – are interlinked. Right?

But then, this isn’t the first time that PnP have made unilateral decisions and statements over the freedom of expression. Who could forget the whole 2009 “blasphemous” (or “unneccessarily offensive” as I thought), SAX Appeal magazine debacle, when PnP pulled the magazine off the shelves after receiving “several complaints”:

Pick n Pay spokesperson Tamra Veley said that “students putting the magazine together should be extra careful while documenting, reporting and cartooning their work to avoid blatant disrespect of any faith, culture and race. We therefore made the decision to remove Sax Appeal from sale in Pick n Pay stores.”

But Freedom of Expression Institute executive director, Jane Duncan, said last night that blasphemy was no longer a recognised ground for restriction of publications: “So arguments to restrict the publication on this basis do not hold water”.

Look, I’m not stupid (no, really, I’m not). I recognise that Pick n Pay is a business and a business needs customers to keep going. And to keep the customers spending money, you must keep the customers happy. That’s obviously why they chose not to sell those newspapers and to withdraw the SAX Appeal magazine from sale. And yes, Ivo Vegter is correct in his assertion that one must:

…distinguish between the legal right to publish, and the right to sell what you want.

But I fail to see how the media can suddenly flip-flop and conveniently accept the support of Gareth Ackerman and Pick n Pay in their vigorous campaign against the MAT and PIB. It seems hugely hypocritical to me and has a more than faint smell of desperation about it: it seems that when you’re struggling, you’ll accept help from any quarter – even one that has blatantly stood against the same principles you’re fighting for on several occasions previously.

To me, that devalues your message, your campaign and with it, your chances of success.

If you want media freedom

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Ah – about time I passed comment on the Sunday Times journalist thing.
And by “thing” I mean the arrest of Sunday Times investigative reporter Mzilikazi wa Afrika on Wednesday by the Hawks. Since then, the charges against him have been thrown out, then (possibly) reinstated and he has now been freed on R5,000 bail.
Apparently, anyway – the waters around this are a little muddy since the media has got its panties in a right twist around the whole story and thus getting a reasoned and accurate version of what is actually going on is proving rather difficult.

What appears to be the case is that the charges allegedly relate(d) to a fax that wa Afrika allegedly received from the fax machine of a rural school in Mpumalanga, allegedly containing this allegedly fake letter of resignation allegedly from Mpumalanga Premier David Mabuza.
Doesn’t look much like a cut & paste job to me, oh no. (cough).

Obviously, there was no question of wa Afrika having actually written this letter – there simply aren’t enough spelling errors for it to be a Sunday Times piece.

But the media is complaining that this was intimidation and a clampdown on journalistic freedom ahead of the debate over the already much debated Media Tribunal.
Apparently, wa Afrika was simply making his way to Rosebank Police Station to hand himself in when, in the words of his editor Ray Hartley, “somebody decided they wanted to make something more dramatic out of it” and he was arrested by several officers from the Hawks.

So his handing himself over at Rosebank was to be a quiet, understated affair was it, Ray?
Weird that he chose to walk there, rather than hop in a car. Weird that you helpfully had several photographers with him along with someone videoing his short walk from freedom. Weird that, since you object to somebody deciding they wanted to make something more dramatic out of it, Times Live rather dramatically published a dramatic picture of wa Afrika’s empty desk.

If I were a cynic, I might be tempted to think that they were using this to try and win hearts and minds.

Of course, Hartley et al are vehemently opposed to the Media Tribunal. The M&G quotes Nelson Mandela in a full page ad today and The Times published an emotive audio statement by SANEF Chairman Mondli Makhanya in which he “reflects on the dark days of apartheid”.

So why do we need this Tribunal? Well, as Jeremy Cronin of the SACP states:

Media stories, especially sensational allegations about prominent personalities, have legs of their own.
Saying sorry after the event is just not good enough. Sorry doesn’t undo the damage, whether the sorry is prominently displayed or obscurely tucked away.

And these apologies range from inaccurate stories about cricketers to inaccurate stories about Christine Qunta and Ronald Suresh Roberts, incorrect allegations of corruption against the SABC and wildly inaccurate allegations against Transnet and the Land Bank, leading Chris Moerdyke to say:

Whenever I see front page apologies, which seem to be more and more common these days, I am saddened that once again the mass media in this country has had to admit that they have got things wrong. For those who believe so strongly in the freedom of the press and the integrity of South African media, it is just plain bloody embarrassing.

Words that the Sunday Times editor at the time of those sensationalist Land Bank and Transnet embarrassments would do well to consider.
That man is, of course, Mondli Makhanya. Hmm.

And he would be the same editor that stated:

…our relationship of trust with our readers is paramount and no damage to this trust can be tolerated

back in December 2004 as he reluctantly dismissed an investigative reporter “on charges of acting contrary to the Sunday Times code of conduct by allowing a conflict of interest to develop and of bringing the Sunday Times’s credibility into disrepute.”

That investigative reporter? One Mzilikazi wa Afrika.

Cronin’s statement yesterday might have only touched on one part of the alleged reasoning behind the proposed Tribunal. Many more cynical individuals would argue that it’s more about preventing genuine and negative stories about the Government from being published. But while the SA media keep publishing inaccurate rubbish, they are helpfully generating a handy reason for the ANC and its allies to instate such a body.

Simply, if you want media freedom, you must use it wisely.

UPDATE: Should have put this in the original post, as it’s an excellent point. As you might expect, because it’s by me.

There’s another hugely important point I have to make here – given their legendary sensationalist and wholly inaccurate reporting (read here: http://6000.co.za/the-times-they-arent-a-changin/), why would I be foolish enough to believe that same media on the possible effects and implications of a possible Media Tribunal? Why wouldn’t they spin this story like they seem to spin most others?
Why would I be so (rightfully) cynical about their other stories and articles and take this one at face value?
Why would anyone?

Indeed.

UPDATE 2: All the ANC wants to do is stick these sort of warning stickers onto your newspapers.

Seen it all before

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One of the biggest eye-openers you can have is seeing a story in the press of which you have personal knowledge.
When you read the article, you can marvel at just how inaccurate and mis-representative the reporter or journalist is being.
Applying this new-found enlightenment to other stories in the media can lead to chronic cynicism when reading newspapers or perusing internet news sites. You may suddenly find that you want to take the content with an appropriately sized pinch of salt. Builder’s Warehouse sell 25kg bags of salt for exactly this purpose. Buy a couple – they’ll will last you a week.

Of course, it could be that you just got unlucky and that all the other stories out there are 100% bang on, deadly accurate.
But that seems rather unlikely, doesn’t it?

And it was with a heavy and cynical heart that I read the latest attack on Brazil’s preparations for the 2014 World Cup in the Guardian.

And so to 2014. Three years ago, when Brazil was unveiled as the host of the next World Cup, the country’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, promised a tournament so well organised that even his country’s greatest rivals – the Argentinians – would be unable to criticise it. Now, however, even Brazilians are starting to speak out against the lack of progress in stadium construction and infrastructure projects, amid concern over corruption and bad planning and calls for the number of host cities to be cut from 12 to 10.

It’s exactly what they were saying about South Africa 4 years ago. And that’s got me on the phone to my local salt mine.

Because the issues over crime and security were unfounded. The allegations that the stadiums would not be ready or would not be up to standard were nonsense. Our transport system upgrades were completed and well utilised. And when the media realised this, they moved on to more trivial, more foolish stories of snakes, race wars and the like.

I know you’re as thankful as I am that SA stayed free of significant seismological activity during the tournament.

The Guardian article describes Brazil’s 2014 bid as being “ambitious”. Well, good. What were they expecting? Brazil to submit their bid documents detailing six 50-year-old stadiums and hope that visitors will find their way around on foot, noting that it might be a long walk from Rio to some of the stadiums in the north of the country?

And then the dig at the transport infrastructure:

Even in the country’s affluent south-east, motorways are often crater-ridden dual carriageways; in the poorer north-east and mid-west their standard is frequently life-threateningly bad.

Has Tom Phillips actually relied on anything other than hearsay and his own creative licence before reporting that? Because it does sound like much of the stuff I was hearing about South Africa in the (elongated) run-up to the 2010 World Cup. And I know that a lot of that wasn’t actually true – or was at the very least blown out of all proportion. Who could forget Louise Taylor’s nonsense in the… er… Guardian (and which I dealt with ever so briefly at the bottom of this)?

Marcotti wrote of some long, unpleasant drives in the dark after covering matches. Commenting on the lack of dual carriageways and lit highways in certain areas, he described negotiating one road heading towards Jo’burg as “like snorkelling in a sewer filled with squid ink”. Shortly afterwards came the sad news that a German journalist had been killed in a car accident while driving to a Confederations Cup match.

Personally I’d have preferred the 2010 World Cup to have gone to Egypt. Yes, it would have been very hot (although it’s a dry heat) and it would, in places, have been dirty and ultra-chaotic, but it would also have been friendly and welcoming. And, in terms of crime, Egypt is extremely safe. Eyebrows would doubtless have been raised at the potential for organisational mayhem, the nightmarish Cairo traffic and the downtown air pollution, but surely if the Egyptians could build the pyramids they could host a World Cup.

Of course, the Egyptians did host the World Cup back in 4010 BC and it was a highly lauded tournament – but with their abilities as pyramid builders, it was always going to be a success. And this even though many of their roads were very poorly lit.
And South Africa’s success some 6000 years later was achieved despite it going dark at night. Amazing.

But I digress.

Maybe Brazil are behind schedule. Maybe the transport infrastructure is poor. Maybe there is political interference at every level (perish the though that this would occur anywhere else in the world).
But I don’t believe all I read in the newspapers. And I’ve seen what can be achieved in four years and thus I refuse to write them off already. Looking at many of the comments below Phillips’ piece, I can see that a lot of others are losing faith with these stories too.

Of course, when Brazil isn’t ready and the 2014 tournament is in disarray, Phillips will be able to look back and tell us that he told us so. But where is Louise Taylor’s admission that she got it so very hopelessly wrong about South Africa in 2010?

Força, Brasil!

Scapegoat

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Oh dear.
Some orange people aren’t very happy.

It seems that they weren’t the ones who won the World Cup last night and they think it’s the referee’s fault.
I don’t agree – they were rubbish and they deserved to lose – but let’s let them have their say.

Arjen Robben, for example:

We sat there in the dressing room and only talked about some of the refereeing decisions.
There were a few things which were hard to take, but there is no point talking about them now.

I can see why Robben was incensed. He made a HUGE error seven minutes from the end of normal time by inexplicably staying on his feet when Carles Puyol appeared to hold him back.
Robben’s decision was inexplicable for two reasons: firstly, that if he had gone down, Puyol would have been sent off, but moreover secondly, that he actually appeared to know how to stay on his feet.
Quite why it took him until 7 minutes before the end of the final game of the tournament to realise he had this ability is another question completely. But football365 agrees with me:

Had Robben gone to ground on the edge of the box when Puyol reached an arm out, Holland could have had a free-kick and Spain could have been reduced to ten. As it was the status quo was retained, and Robben’s complaints deservedly fell on deaf ears. The man goes over so easily, how does he expect to receive decisions when he stays on his feet? Surely a referee can only assume the challenge was incredibly light.
He made the kind of protest that is only made because things didn’t go his way. Imagine if Howard Webb did stop the play before he reached Casillas. He’d have been furious to have been stopped in his tracks. If you let the play go, allowing the advantage, you can’t then come back and send Puyol off. The advantage was allowed, Robben didn’t capitalise. End of story.

But anyway, as Arjen correctly states, there’s no point talking about it now. Although he is.
And so am I. And so is Arjen’s mate, Nigel.

Yep, Dutch number 8 Nigel de Jong was also unhappy, because he felt that the major calls went the Spaniards’ way:

There were a few curious decisions in the game, but that is football.
Football is football, maybe I am a little old school, but I remember the games back in the days when there were worse fouls which never even got booked.

Hang on, Nigel – are you saying worse fouls than this? [youtube]

Because if you are, I’m struggling to recall at what point in the “old school” of football this sort of thing went unpunished. Perhaps you’re getting it confused with the old school of Tae Kwon Do, in which “one point is scored for an effective attack to the trunk“. Or perhaps you’re just looking for a scapegoat.
Let’s bring in the  impartial football365 again:

Dutch fans who feel they have been hard done by should hold their tongues, frankly. I thought Howard Webb’s biggest two mistakes were not sending off players bedecked in orange. Nigel de Jong’s almost neck high, straight-legged assault on Xabi Alonso was nothing short of a red card. There is dangerous play, and there are tackles which you know when you commit them are capable of seriously injuring someone. This was in the latter category, and should have resulted in Holland being down to ten a long, long time before the game’s conclusion.

But if Webb sends him off then the Dutch are down to 10 men for most of the game and the match as a spectacle is ruined.
And who gets the blame for that? Well, Howard Webb, of course. It’s a classic no-win situation. Which Spain won.

The Dutch certainly didn’t hold back with their challenges and they can have no complaints with the number of yellow cards (and the one red) they received. But of course, in any big game, emotions run high and games don’t come any bigger than this. And when your own frailties are exposed and you let yourselves, your country and your fans down, then you’re bound to say some things you might regret later.
Blaming the referee conveniently deflects the attention away from a poor Dutch effort and attempts to trivialise their approach to the game, which was nothing short of thuggish. World Cup finals are rarely pretty – there’s too much at stake (compare and contrast the free flowing football of the “no pressure” third place game the previous evening) – but this one was at least full of incident.

That the Oranje caused most of that incident and then tried to blame it all away on the referee is a disgrace.

UPDATE: Not overly dramatic from Kevin McCarra in the Guardian.

Holland were already being rebuked prior to the final but these events were on a wholly different scale and Fifa should take additional action considering the harm done to the culmination of a tournament that means so much around the globe.
After a World Cup final of so toxic a nature the stadium is in need of decontamination more than the regular clean-up.

And some good stuff from Richard Williams in the same place.

UPDATE 2: And the more I read that football365 post, the better it gets.

Dear Uruguay

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Dear Uruguay,

As an honourary South African, may I first apologise for the huge amount of anti-Uruguayan sentiment that has been demonstrated amongst the locals here since Luis Suarez’s last-gasp handball against Ghana. Labeling the whole team as “cheats”, “scum” and “cheating scum” due to the instinctive actions of one player is rather foolish and unnecessary in my humble opinion. Equally as bad are the appalling and unamusing puns around the name of your country: “Ur-a-gay” and “Ur-a-gone”, which of course, you’re not, although last night’s defeat means that you will be exiled to Port Elizabeth for the weekend. I’m sorry about that too.

The popular perception amongst the nouveau riche of footballing knowledge (and by nouveau, I mean “I’ve learnt everything there is to know about soccer in the last 4 weeks”) seems to be that Suarez was at fault for Ghana’s exit. However, this is surely only the view of those who watched that game through African tinted spectacles. When viewed through neutral eyes, Ghana’s defeat was actually due to the fact that they couldn’t score any goals – especially from the penalty spot.
I’ve done some rudimentary calculations and it appears that statistically speaking, 85% of penalties are scored. In that quarter final, Ghana managed to pop a whole 40% in. Quite how that pitiful inaccuracy has been twisted and turned into apparently being Mr Suarez’s fault is somewhat beyond me.

The cheating allegations continue. That your players dive in order to get fouls. Like dear Luis again, for example, when SA goalie Itumeleng Khune tripped him up. Although, in fairness, that one was because he was tripped up by Itumeleng Khune, rather than because he dived.
But anyway: diving. It’s ugly and I dislike it.  We all do. Uruguay are, of course, the only nation whose players do this. Well, apart from Arjen Robben and Robin van Pear-See of Holland. And Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal. So Uruguay, Holland and Portugal, then. And maybe Fernando Torres a bit as well. So add Spain too.
(We’d probably include France, but they weren’t really here long enough for anyone to notice.)
But Uruguay are definitely the biggest cheats at diving, because South African fans say so (while conveniently ignoring Teko Modise’s pathetic 3m springboard antics).

And talking of Teko, we can also add to this growing list of reasons that we hate each and every one of the 3,500,000 inhabitants of your country so very much, the fact that you effectively ended Bafana Bafana’s dreams of World Cup glory by comprehensively outplaying them and scoring three more goals that they did in Pretoria on the 16th. How dare you?
Of course, that’s what you came here for – to win as many games as possible.
But against the host nation? Don’t you study history at all?
Do you not recall how Germany declared war on Italy after their semi-final defeat in 2006? How Japan refused several shipments of rose-flavoured candy after Turkey knocked them out in 2002? Or how France didn’t actually take any action whatsoever after they weren’t beaten on home soil in ’98?
No Uruguay. You got lucky when South Africa just decided not to like you very much after that 3-0 drubbing in Tshwane. We could have gone a lot further, like giving your kids vuvuzelas.
(Note to parents: Just. Don’t.)

And then there’s the personal insults. Mainly about Diego Forlan’s hair. Obviously, none of the other players playing in the World Cup here have silly hair (Siphiwe Tshabalala) (cough) so this makes Diego a prime target. This is exacerbated by his annoying habit of scoring really good goals. Siphiwe only struggled with that goalscoring issue rather briefly way back when.

All in all, it’s clear to see why some South Africans have suddenly discovered this hatred from all things Uruguayan. The spirit of Ubuntu only goes so far and the bottle had obviously run dry by the time we got down to U in the alphabet. Wait til you see what they  have in store of the Zimbabweans next week – a bit of booing and some hairstyle abuse is going to seem like a game against Bafana… er… I mean like a walk in the park compared with what they’re going to get.

All in all, I think you were hard done by. Quite what people expected you to do when faced with opposition football teams in an international football tournament escapes me. I would have stopped that shot with my hand if I’d have been on the line that night. So would David Beckham, so would Lionel Messi, neither would Robert Green.
That’s just part and parcel of football. And that’s probably why so many people here just don’t get it.

UPDATE: Some more posts on this, from Jacques Rousseau and Jeremy Nell.

UPDATE 2: More – Incoming from Jacques:
From a good football blog I’ve just discovered:

Then, Ghana. This is my sixth World Cup, and I have watched a lot of football over the last 20 years. (Time I’ll never get back, Isuppose.) And I’ve never seen an ending weirder, more arbitrary and more cruel than the freakshow of missed penalties and evil-doing rewarded that brought the Black Stars’ inspirational, continent-uniting underdog run to an end. I loved it.
See, Ghana distinguished itself by becoming the only African team that knows how to get a result, come what may. Dating back (at least) to their cold-blooded 2006 elimination of the United States, they’ve always been willing to do the business. Dive in the box? Waste a little time with a fake injury? Why not? It’s a Man’s Game, after all.
Football’s message to Ghana: “Oh, you think you’re hardboiled? Meet Luis Suarez’s hand!” I’ve been wracking my brain for a Hand-of-God-style sobriquet for Suarez’s last-second “save”—someone will get there, I’m quite sure—but in the end, it was just the kind of bizarre intervention that twists history one way and not another. Plan all you want, and you cannot plan for Suarez’s hand.
Sorry, Black Stars—but you had 120 minutes to win it, and you didn’t, so fare thee well.

He’s right, you know?