Howard Barrell
The government plans to set up a White House-style presidential press corps to improve dramatically communications with the media and the South African public, President Thabo Mbeki announced this week.
Mbeki said that he and the government were treating as a matter of urgency an improvement in the flow of information and perspectives from the president to the public.
He told a meeting of editors in Pretoria on Thursday afternoon that it was “just pressure of work” that had kept him from maintaining regular contact with the media an issue on which he has been bitterly criticised at times by the media and on which a number of South Africa’s misfortunes abroad have been blamed.
Questioned on the situation in Zimbabwe, Mbeki said that he was not aware of any conditions laid down by his ministers when they recently made offers of South African help to Zimbabwe.
Mbeki said that he envisaged that the press corps, which would consist of journalists nominated by their respective news organisations, would receive regular briefings from himself and senior government officials as and when necessary and depending on his availability.
Mbeki acknowledged that there had been shortcomings in the way the presidency and government had dealt with the media and tried to get their message across.
He had agreed to set up a White House-style press corps at a meeting with a smaller group of editors recently. All that was now required was for the media groups to appoint their representatives to this elite pool.
The presidency and the government intended in the near future to hold a “workshop” with editors further improving government-media relations.
Mbeki said that it was not up to him to set limits on legitimate criticism of public figures such as himself. He thought that the manner and extent of criticism voiced in any media organisation should be “a matter for the conscience of each editor”. He added that it was not for him to say “what kind of criticism is permissible”.
He felt that the media in South Africa suffered from both a lack of professionalism and insufficient pride among some journalists in their profession.
On Zimbabwe, he said that South Africa’s view was that it was necessary for Zimbabwe to do “certain things” in order to restore some degree of peace and prosperity to the country.
These views had been conveyed clearly to the government of Zimbabwe, he said.
South Africa had told Zimbabwe that “there should be no occupation of farms; there should be a process that addresses the interests of all Zimbabweans; there should be land redistribution that is just”.
In answer to another question Mbeki said that the South African economy alone was unable to support the recovery of Zimbabwe.
Involvement by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank was also necessary.
South Africa’s understanding was that, if Zimbabwe collapsed, it would be South Africa that would bear the brunt of uncontrolled migration of people it would not be Zimbabwe’s former colonial master, the United Kingdom.
Questioned on crime Mbeki said the police National Commissioner, Jackie Selebi, had told him that there were a lot of cases in which policemen were leading crime syndicates. He called this “very worrying”.
Police intelligence had also indicated that a number of people involved in organised crime were “the kind of people who aren’t particularly happy with the fact that we are a democratic country.
“When the arrests take place, we will all of us see some of these names,” he said.
Mbeki sidestepped questions over highly controversial legislation to unite South Africa’s top-ranking courts and to give the government the ability to police the affairs of the legal profession.
ENDS