The ousting of eTV chief Marcel Golding – Team Zuma strikes again
By Alec Hogg
The conclusions are obvious. Despite all that lip service to an "independent media", friends of the Zuma Administration want Golding out because he is the last line of resistance to the ANC's goal of controlling eTV's news bulletins. They are trying to use an unrelated red herring to cast him aside.
Golding refuses to go quietly. He realises that in resisting, he will expose more dirty laundry than an overbooked three star hotel. But for that, all South Africans should be grateful. His affidavit shows Golding to be a true believer in the Constitution, the highest law in our land. Especially Section 16 which he says enshrines that "editorial independence is part and parcel of the constitutional right of the media to freedom of expression."
To paraphrase Britain's wartime prime minister Winston Churchill, Golding's disclosures are not the end. Indeed, they're not even the beginning of the end. But they may herald the end of the beginning of South Africa's own phoney war. And bring into the open the battle for the very soul of the country's status as a Constitutional Democracy.
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