AN F IN FREEDOM SCIENCE
Wits University has long been a bastion of free thought, so the comments this week by its spokesperson, Shirona Patel, defending the refusal to allow the media onto the campus during the student protests, were jarring and at odds with that proud legacy.
"[Protection services] feel that having the media in the midst of the action sometimes inflames the situation, which makes it harder to manage,” she said.
That may be so, but freedoms cannot be arbitrarily dumped to make life easier for those curtailing those freedoms.
She did apologise that journalists were manhandled by campus security, incidents that came in the same week that Gaddafi Zulu, a reporter of the Zululand Observer, was allegedly assaulted by former Mtubatuba mayor Mandla Zungu.
Hey mamparas, a free press is an essential part of a free society.
We have no hesitation in conferring on Patel an honorary PhD in censorship and 1980s-style state of emergency regulations.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.