Media freedom scored a victory this week when the High Court in Johannesburg granted an interdict against the Black First Land First to stop harassing, intimidating and assaulting journalists.
It is alarming that journalists in democratic South Africa have to seek the protection of a court in order to work and live in safety.
After the interdict was served, members of the BLF, including their leader Andile Mngxitama, vowed to continue protests against journalists who push "white interests".
"White people are going to die with you!" was one of the insults hurled at leaders of the South African National Editors' Forum as they left court on Friday.
Mngxitama and his group of hooligans claim to speak on behalf of black South Africans, but that in itself is patronising. The BLF has no mandate to represent black South Africans or to attack white people on their behalf.
The group is under hire by the Guptas to pursue their agenda to foment racial antagonism, just as British PR firm Bell Pottinger did. The brief to Bell Pottinger from President Jacob Zuma's son Duduzane was to manipulate public discourse on the economy along racial lines. The BLF became one of the mechanisms to drive this operation.
Although that agenda has now been exposed, it still had resonance at the ANC's policy conference. The Guptas' pawns in the ANC tried to muscle the party into declaring "white monopoly capital" the "strategic enemy".
They did not get their way.
More protests
Mngxitama and his band of thugs are still trying to project themselves as crusaders for economic equality, threatening more protests at banks and journalists' homes.
They will defy the interdicts granted to Absa and Sanef to ride on the publicity when they get arrested and appear in court.
If members of the BLF were genuine activists against racism and exploitation of black people, they would direct their protests against their paymasters.
The Gupta brothers and their minions believe every black person in our country comes with a price tag - pay them enough money and they will hand over control of a state-owned company, the National Treasury or the Presidency. Get a provincial MEC on your payroll and he will swing you a deal that sees the state pay R30-million for a family wedding.
The family requested that white people serve them at the wedding because they think black people are not good enough to do so.
Yet Mngxitama and his crew hide behind the fig leaf that the Guptas are black and need to be defended. They probably do not have a colour preference when it comes to the Guptas' cash.
Bumbling minister
During the ANC policy conference, an ANN7 journalist tried to bait Minister of State Security David Mahlobo with a question about whether the South African media was part of a "regime change" agenda. The bumbling minister, who thrives on conspiracy, mercifully did not take the bait.
Ugly tactics such as surveillance and rumour-mongering about people's private lives are being used to delegitimise the work of credible and experienced journalists.
The media fraternity is fighting back as much as possible, and, as happened on Friday, the law and the constitution watch over us.
But the legal system can be deficient when thuggery and harassment become severe, as was the case with SABC radio producer Suna Venter. The prolonged trauma and harassment that she endured by goons defending Hlaudi Motsoeneng, another megalomaniac who hogged public space, compounded the "broken heart syndrome" that killed her.
Judge Corrie van der Westhuizen began his judgment against the BLF on Friday by saying: "The life of a journalist is not easy." Nobody becomes a journalist to have an easy life, but one among us was buried this week as a result of the assault on media freedom.
They broke Suna's heart, but they must never be allowed to break our country.
