The online news and journalism that exists today in South Africa

By Lindokuhle Mnisi

@LindokuhleMnisi

Online reporting tends to be the dominating form of journalism in the new South Africa. Majority of people (and journalists) now prefers reading online news articles than newspapers. This is because everything is on their fingertips and newspapers’ spots are far from them (readers); mobile phones have access to the internet, people walk/drive with their laptops and iPhones that they access internet with everywhere they go. Online reporting is versatile as it entails print together with broadcast.

Audio clips, video footages and pictures are uploaded to complement their articles. This gives the print journalists another job of taking videos and audio clips to place with their reports. Everything in the news sites is categorised. The different navigation links makes it easier for readers to know where to find a story of their interest. These navigations include news, politics, business, columns, lifestyle, sports, weather etc.

All the stories that are published in the Sowetan newspaper are also posted on the sowetan website (www.sowetan.co.za), the same thing with City Press (www.citypress.co.za) and The Star (www.thestar.co.za). Some of the broadcast cooperation also provides news on their websites, like Talk Radio 702 and 567 Cape Talk; they have Eye Witness News website (www.ewn.co.za) which report some stories that they cover on their news bulletins. SABC also has a SABCNews site (www.sabcnews.co.za) that gives only news. All the above sites are well designed and the navigations are clear and never disappoint readers (they take readers to the stories)

Advertisements are done on these news sites. To check them, one should simply click on the hyperlink that transfer readers to the advertisers e.g. www.vodacom.co.za. The journalism practiced in online news is very diverse.

Online news has advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages: 

·         Readers get fresh news (breaking) every minute as they happen. Online publications never wait for tomorrow to publish a certain story. Unlike newspapers, they only publish every morning (stories that happened the previous day). If something happens they wait for tomorrow to publish.

·         Stories are complemented by enough pictures, audio clips and possible videos. But in newspapers space is limited.

·         Interaction is easier and faster, people can comment on the reports immediately on the discussion boxes. But people’s comments can only be published the following day in newspapers.

Disadvantages:

·         News can be only accessed by people who have internet access. People in the rural areas cannot get updated and informed immediately as they lack resources.

·         Internet is expensive.

This shows that onlines news are good and also bad to some people.

The State Of Nation Address (SONA) address job creation

By Lindokuhle Mnisi

@LindokuhleMnisi

Jacob Zuma (Picture from Google)

The South African State president, Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, delivered the 2012 State Of Nation Address speech on Thursday evening (19:00pm SA time), in the opening of the Cape Town parliament, where he addressed various issues affecting the SA citizens and mentioned the new strategy to implement the promises that are makes this year.

In his speech, Zuma, started by recapping on the promises he made in the last year (2011) SONA and he provided results on those promises. “We declared 2011 the year of job creation and mobilised our social partners namely, business, labour and the community sector to work with us in implementing the new growth path. The results are encouraging although we are not out of the woods yet, given the global economic situation,” said President Jacob Zuma. “During 2011 a total of 365 000 people were employed, this is the country’s best performance since the recession of 2008, Zuma added”

Majority of South Africans were expecting the president to mainly focus on the youth empowerment, unemployment and job creation (strategy), Zuma said “Forth quarter figures released on Tuesday indicates that the rate of unemployment have come down from 25% to 23,9% as a result of new jobs.” R10billions had been announced to be set aside by the IDC for job creation; Zuma confirms that about R1.5billion was approved for 60 companies to promote job creation.

Zuma assured the nation that all the new jobs are the formal sector of the economy, in sectors such as mining, transport, community services and trade. In everything that has happened in the year 2011, Zuma said there are at least two main things that the government did right in 2011 which are contribution to the joint factors “Firstly, we mainstreamed job creation in every government entity including state owned enterprises. Secondly, we strengthened social dialogue and cooperation between government, business and the community sector,” Zuma said.

Zuma declared the mining industry as one of the job drivers in the new growth path and as critical role players in the socio-economic development of the country. As part of addressing the triple challenge of poverty, inequality and unemployment, government has developed a strategy which seeks to provide opportunities in the downstream part of the mineral sector. “We remain committed to the creation of favourable and globally competitive mining sector and to promote the industry to attract investment and achieve both industrial growth and much-needed transformation,” Zuma stated.

The nation was urged to join and work with the government to write a new story about South Africa, a story of how working together unemployment was driven back and economic inequality and poverty was reduced. “It is beginning to look possible; we must not lose this momentum. For the 2012 and beyond we invite the nation to join government in a massive infrastructure development drive.”

In his speech, Zuma also mentioned other development strategies that are to be pursued to improve the lives of voters in South Africa. Education, health, crime mining and business infrastructures to name a few, were address in the State Of Nation Address. He mentioned the total of R300million that have been allocated for the preparatory work towards building new universities in Mpumalanga and North West. As people continue to need more, the government tries to provide where possible. “With regards to higher education, we are exceeding targets. Close to 14 000 learners were placed in workplace learning opportunities over the past year, and over 11 000 artisans have completed their trade tests,” he said.

To address the issues affecting students in tertiary institutions, Zuma said “To expand access to tertiary education as per our announcement last year, 200 million rand was utilised to assist 25 000 students to pay off their debts to institutions of higher learning.”

Press freedom will never be under threat in South Africa, Nelson Mandela says but it's not pructical.

By Lindokuhle Mnisi

“Press freedom will never be under threat in South Africa for as long as the ANC is the majority party” Nelson Mandela.

The South African Constitution is yet facing another threat of being destroyed by the very same people who created it (SA ruling party, ANC). ANC has been up trying to implement a BILL that intends to regulate the classification of state information, protection and dissemination of state information, weighing state interests up against transparency and freedom of expression. That is how the ANC came up with the Protection of State Information BILL which is commonly referred to as Secrecy BILL.

This legislation has resulted to a whole lot of confusions and controversy as it contradicts with Section two of the South African Constitution, (BILL OF RIGHTS). This attack to the media by the government doesn’t only infringe in the media’s rights but to the citizen’s rights too. While the media is denied access to information; its freedom of expression, freedom of speech and rights of the press are challenged, the citizens suffers the denial of their right to know and be informed. It is their rights that were acknowledged by the ANC when it got in power in 1994 and when the current constitution was drafted in 2006. The BILL was not thoroughly checked for its accuracy and transparency, I still ask my self how it passed through the National Assembly yesterday (22 November 2011) when 229 MPs voted in support and 107 were against and 2 abstained. Mandela said in his quotes that “Press freedom will never be under threat in South Africa for as long as the ANC is the majority party” but what is happening now? Now that he is not in parliament, they do as they please.

The concern here is that the ANC want so severely to turn its back against the voters. The very same people who voted for them are now facing hardships and censorship. Looking at the people in the rural areas, they are always bound to abide by any legislation that is proposed in the Parliament. They are not granted the right to raise their views, to express their sentiments and grievances. Decisions are taken on their behalf, because they only exist during voting times. Yet these laws affect them in one way or the other. As a rural home boy I can assure you that life is not balanced amongst all South Africans and yet not fair, segregation still survive even 17years after Apartheid was defeated. People in the rural remain deprived in every aspect of life. Now my biggest concern in this case is that they don’t come to us to explain the significance of these laws they always lambast us with. In hospitals and public clinics we will be denied answers to any question we will be having.

If a patient dies suspiciously, all whistleblowers will be afraid to expose while the employees will just say “this is state information”. In police stations, dockets will go missing unjustifiably and it will be state information. The councilors will misuse money and again no one will be doing anything to expose that. In the rural we live in destitute and no body does anything about that. We are far form information already; this BILL will make things worse. We don’t have sufficient facilities but now that we cant say anything about that. Who is going to take care of this? Who is going to come and listen to the sentiments in the rural and explain to the government when journalists will be living under threat? The government doesn’t come to us so we sometimes depend on journalists who “sometimes” try to come listen to us. They just abandoned us to the Chief who does nothing to empower our lives.

South Africa is going down. This started unnoticeably with the RICA act; RICA denies us the right of privacy. Every call we make is recorded and listened to by strangers. We are no longer entitled to our own constitutional right (right of privacy), Now there comes the so called Protection of State information Bill, this law affords the Government the right of privacy and keeping secrets. The government wants to remain superior while voters stay inferior. This is just another form of trying to incubate corruption. They argue saying they are trying to fight against irresponsible reporting amongst journalists but in reality they are in a mission of implementing laws that will cover up the corrupt officials within the ruling party.

Everything that happens in our country should be exposed immediately so that people can start planning on how they can drive this to a better country. I got surprised when doing my random interviews and one of my fellow journalism students at the Tshwane University of Technology said “Exposing everything about our Government portrays SA negatively to the international countries” he added by saying “the weaknesses of the country should be protected to maintain it’s image” I was flabbergasted looking at the fact that we, voters, should be denied access to information to benefit the reputation of the government who doesn’t consider our needs. The very same international countries facilitated the distraction of Apartheid now they shouldn’t be aware is happening. Sometimes I feel like the country is going back to Apartheid but this time around the OPPRESSED BECOMES THE OPPRESSOR.

In the economic perspective, these laws are a grim threat to the international investors. Where there is a confusion of laws you will never see investors, and that jeopardize the SA Economy.

Maybe I’m being too broad with this but the point here is that this Protection of State Information BILL is poisonous for our country. It breaks us apart, not fair and logically impracticable. The fines are not fair to the journalists and to the citizens. Being found in position with information that is declared “classified” that person faces chances of being jailed for about 5 to 20 years. That is too harsh. Where is the future of journalism, when journalists are censored then who is supposed to inform the public? Civil Societies, Right2Know campaign, Political parties and other citizens slams the BILL and are still up in the fight against this it. DA leader Helen Zille raised her views saying “The BILL has been reported to the Constitutional Court and that is where it will be demolished”

It is still going to pass through the National Council of Provinces before being signed officially by the president, Jacob Zuma. But it’s clear that he is going to be in favor with it.

Concerns from the SANEF are that if they can change and add at least some clauses in the BILL more specially the Public Interest defense clause. Journalists should have a defense at least.