Showing posts with label free press. Show all posts
Showing posts with label free press. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Is Democracy In South Africa Dead?



"█████ ██ █ ████everything ███ █████ is█████ ████ ████ fine ████ ███ █ █████ love,█████ ██████ ███ your █████ ████ government #BlackTuesday" - This is a message that has been doing the rounds today on the web, and on Facebook. The topic of conversation? The controversial "Protection Of Information Bill, aka the "POI" Bill. It was today passed, after being railroaded through Parliament.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Censorship And The Demise Of Personal Liberty

For some time now, religious fundamentalist extremist groups in South Africa have been campaigning to ban various things in this country. Unsurprisingly, these include the usual list of things people of this ilk seem to disapprove of, and work to deprive those around them of access to them as well.
 
A few months ago, a massive crowd - all of 18 actual people - picketed outside the Sexpo in Cape Town, demanding a return to what they called "traditional" and "family values" - oh, and the banning of pornography of course. This transpired, much to the amusement of the 20 odd thousand people drawn to the Sexpo by their very negative press, which unintentionally turned out to be very positive for the event instead. 
 
Such groups have held numerous protests and mounted email campaigns against "soft-porn" on E-TV, so-called "blasphemy" in student "rag" magazines (which now no longer exist, thanks to these idiots with the over-tight underpants) and of course, marches against abortion. 
 
And who can forget the actual thousands who gathered in South Africa some years ago to oppose marriage equality for gay people - because of course, gay people falling in love and getting married is just way too bad for "the family", and will cause our fragile civilization to collapse?