The Media Institute of Southern Africa (Misa) has condemned bodyguards’ destruction of media photographs of President Thabo Mbeki entering a Pretoria Medi-Clinic on Thursday.
This amounted to ”gross censorship unacceptable under South Africa’s Constitution”, Misa’s chairperson Raymond Louw said on Sunday.
Mbeki’s bodyguards removed memory cards from the cameras of Beeld photographers.
Louw likened their conduct to that of the police and bodyguards of former deputy president Jacob Zuma, who chased reporters out of a Johannesburg court where he appeared on rape charges in 2005.
”Misa-SA is appalled at the wider significance of this act of censorship especially in view of the Cabinet assurance, given only a few days earlier on August 24 that the government had no intention of ‘muzzling the press’,” said Louw.
He said their actions questioned the value that could be placed on assurances about important issues like freedom of the press.
”It poses the question under whose authority the bodyguards were acting. The excuses given by Mbeki’s spokesperson that the guards were worried about Mbeki’s safety are spurious.”
Louw said Mbeki was walking in a public place where the photographers were entitled to photograph him.
Removing the memory cards and erasing the pictures did not have anything to do with the president’s safety.
”Misa-SA will support any action taken by Beeld to seek redress and compensation for this outrageous attack on press freedom and the public’s right to know,” Louw concluded. – Sapa