Today I want to grumble and begrudge the public's hypocrisy when it comes to their treatement of journalists. First; I'm picking a bone with the Hit Squad [Bheki Cele and his two political bosses] that is running the Police force in this country who instruct their goons to 'shoot to kill' which is equivalent to killing the executing the suspect. Okay, since that instruction was granted they have indeed executed quite a few.So, last month they argue that e.tv should disclose two thugs who were 'threatening' to attack tourists during the World Cup. Suddenly the ANC, ever the leash-dog of government follows suit with threats of their own which as journalists we nowadays laugh them off - even though we live in the Wild West (Mpumalanga Province) where gun-culture is the way to sniff out the people you don't like.
With subpoenas to e.tv I was suddenly surprised when two journalists disclosed that they have spoken to a hit man who had a long Wish List of people some powerful politician wanted snuffed. I waited to hear police demanding that the journalist disclose who the alleged hitman is - but nah, silence. After all the cops care more about foreign tourists than locals, that is why when one comrade threatened a man with an early appointment with the hangman they said someone should lay charges first - and when some guy threatened another one with crying sulphuric tears they looked the other way. Which makes me wonder; what would have happened had the guys threatening tourists appeared wearing ANC t-shirts? Would we have had the same furore or would they have been dismissed like Julius talking about nationalisation?
Okay; however my point today is actually about a picture I used in a newspaper recently. If you live in Mpumalanga Lowveld you know what I'm talking about. A mother is sitting next to her dead son's corpse. Some people are suddenly accusing me of self-hate. They shout rhetoric like, "during 9/11 we never saw dead Americans but we saw tons in Haiti. The media only respects the corpses of whites and not those of Blacks. You are being operated from outside". And now you know how hard it is to tell an ignorant argumentative fool that you saw corpses of whites during the Balkan Wars when Serbians and Muslims and Bosnians were having a field day bayonetting each other.
However the picture in quesion was used for a specific reason. It is not self-hate but precisely for the same reason The World newspaper used the picture of Hector Pietersen and SWAPO used that of the piled corpses in Kassinga. To shock people to pause and think. That woman sitting next to her dead son is not happy by a far shot. She is distraught, sad, heartbroken and feels like dying. It is a situation no mother should ever find herself in.
But that picture is used to warn mothers to do all they could in their power to make sure that they never sit next to their dead sons who have been killed by the community because it got tired of being terrorised. The picture is meant to say, 'if you can't adjust your child now, you are definitely going to trade places with this mother and it's not a pretty feeling'.
Finally, a young man died and was killed by the community and the story says that I know who killed him. However I'll put my dick on the block to say that no cop will ever subpoena me to disclose the names. WHY?
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