Evidence wa ka Ngobeni
One of South Africa’s most prominent liberal voices, Sheena Duncan, has resigned from the Human Rights Commission Trust in protest at the inquiry into racism in the media.
Duncan, a stalwart human rights activist, was attached to the Human Rights Commission’s (HRC) fundraising wing. She says she has been dismayed by the HRC’s “violation” of the right to freedom of expression.
In her resignation letter addressed to the HRC chair, Barney Pityana, Duncan says: “I cannot allow my name to be used by a trust whose sole function is to raise money for the work of a commission which is now violating the rights it was established to promote and protect.
“I am old enough to remember the process by which the press was controlled and freedom of expression denied by the National Party government in the apartheid years. Intimidation by subpoena with the threat of a possible sentence of six months’ imprisonment, inquiries and commissions, followed by a network of laws which sought to control the press and other media completely.”
Duncan’s resignation from the HRC trust follows a stinging attack on the controversial racism probe last week by Rhoda Kadalie, a former member of the HRC. In a letter to the Mail & Guardian, Kadalie blasted the commission’s decision to serve subpoenas on more than 30 journalists and called on journalist to defy the subpoenas.
HRC representative Siseko Njobeni said this week that the subpoenas were not intended to intimidate, but rather ensure the editors’ attendance.
But Duncan (67), who served on the anti- apartheid Black Sash organisation from the 1950s, said: “In those [apartheid] days it was claimed that all was justified by the creation of the image of an enemy labelled communism. Now it seems the HRC has embarked on a process claiming justification in the name of racism”.
The rights to equality and human dignity cannot be protected by the violation of the “right to freedom of expression which includes the freedom of the press and other media”, she says.
Duncan criticises the HRC for basing its work on the Media Monitoring Project’s and Claudia Braude’s reports into racism in the media “because everyone who read it thought it was ridiculous”.
Helen Suzman, another former commissioner at the HRC, said: “The commission does not get its facts right. I agree there is still racism in this country and it needs to be dealt with. But it needs to be dealt with properly.”
The HRC, Suzman says, “is engaged in a ridiculous exercise. It must start again the whole process to regain its credibility. The fact that their subpoenas were based on an awkward report makes it more even more invalid.”
Meanwhile, the HRC may find itself with a fight on another front after Edward Bird of the Media Monitoring Project and Braude distanced themselves from the subpoenas. Bird raised concerns this week that the HRC has misinterpreted the researchers’ analysis and used it to “violate press freedom”.
Njobeni refused to comment on the issue. Earlier he said every institution that had been mentioned in the interim report into media racism, compiled by Braude, would be called to participate in the hearing.
But Bird says his organisation did not make any allegations in its report on racism in the media. All items quoted in the report, Bird said, “were used as examples of racial stereotyping and in no way suggest that these reports constitute human rights violations or require censorship”. About 36 editors have been subpoenaed to appear at the HRC hearings.
At the time of going to press five prominent black editors – the Sowetan’s Mike Siluma, the Daily News’s Kaiser Nyatsumba, The Independent on Saturday’s Cyril Madlala, The Evening Post’s Lakela Kaunda and Sunday World’s Charles Mogale – had agreed to attend the commission regardless of whether the subpoenas were withdrawn.