Wiki Wacky Who?

So WikiLeaks' recent publication of confidential communications between 274 embassies across the globe and the US State Department could push government into a stronger position to get The Protection of State Information Bill, which criminalises the release of classified state information enacted in its current format?

What exactly is contained in these WikiLeaks that affect South Africa so profoundly as to push our State to enact a diabolically sinister Act that serves one purpose and that is to silence?

Not that our State needs encouraging, having fared well enough, without prompting from an unexpected gifted excuse.

So a US legal adviser to the National Prosecuting Authority felt there was enough evidence to find Zuma guilty of corruption after Schabir Shaik was found guilty of trying to solicit bribes for Zuma from Thomson CSF to secure arms contracts?

So what? It’s not like we never knew that from local press and a highly publicised criminal trial?

With the Protection of State Information Bill, there would have been no trial and there would have been no debate.

That’s not to say there wouldn’t have been grumbling, mumbling, hints, allegations and things left unsaid.

Or, take the other cable “that made headlines” detailing ANC Youth League officials telling the US about leadership battles within the ruling party, indicating there were tensions between current president Zuma and then head of state Kgalema Motlanthe.

If this nugget of puerile gossip that was public knowledge and downright unbecoming in any event serves as grounds for bolstering the argument to gag an entire nation, then we have fallen to a level of immaturity and pettiness that defies belief.

Of course WikiLeaks also detailing how AT&T, Cisco, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Qualcomm argued leadership shortfalls within the Department of Communications hurt the sector is on the other hand not known and downright subversive and a definite threat to national security?

No-one knew leadership shortfalls within the Department of Communications hurt the sector and this information is profoundly damaging to our country.

If you believe this, and there are enough of you who do, then there is a strong argument for a new reality TV program.

The Wiki Wacky Who Show!

If cables, that disclose a playground spat, between two supposed dignified leaders, or disclose the fact that our Department of Communications, doesn’t errrrr..., seem to actually be able to, or, be capable of, communication, or, that an evidentiary Balance of Culpability Probability opinion, derived from public record findings, based on common law principle, serve as motivation to get The Protection of State Information Bill, enacted, then God help us all.

The Bang Bang Club were four photographers active within the townships of South Africa during the Apartheid era.

Two members won Pulitzer Prizes for their photography. Greg Marinovich won the Pulitzer for Spot News Photography in 1991 for his coverage of the killing of Lindsaye Tshabalala in 1990. Kevin Carter won the Pulitzer for Featured Photography in 1994 for his 1993 photograph of a vulture that appeared to be stalking a starving child in southern Sudan.

On April 18, 1994, during a fire fight between the National Peacekeeping Force and African National Congress supporters in Tokoza Township, cross-fire killed Oosterbroek and seriously injured Marinovich.

On October 23, 2010, João Silva stepped on a landmine while on patrol with US soldiers in Kandahar, Afghanistan and lost both legs below the knee. This was the second time he'd been injured in a war zone, with his first injury being hit by shrapnel in the face.

In July 1994, Carter committed suicide. A documentary entitled The Death of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the Bang Bang Club was nominated for an Academy Award in 2006.

The Protection of State Information Bill pours piss on the blood of these martyrs and the millions of others that gave us the postulated freedoms and limitations enshrined in our Constitution.

It is these men and women, who brought the true horror of our past into the living rooms of the world and into our collective consciousness and realities, that served more eloquently than any speech to help expose the Apartheid Regime and to bring about its downfall.

It is the men and women, who follow in their footsteps, men and women inspired by and in debt to those that have set the bar of what being a journalist entails, that bring us the truth today, that our current leaders wish to criminalise and imprison.

There is no doubt in my heart and mind that I am served by a Government that is fast becoming the very thing it set out to defeat and that I had come to despise.

There is a dearth inherent in our current leadership, of wisdom, of common sense, of vision, that cannot seem or somehow be capable of grasping the concept of historical consequence.

We will, irrespective of, or in spite of, but most certainly as a result of laws or acts such as The Protection of State Information Bill, reap the whirlwind one day.

If recent world events have taught us anything, it’s that the people will not be silenced and Governments will be held accountable, no matter how omnipotent they think they are, eventually...