ANCWL: “Do we have human beings behind the desks of our newsrooms?”
The African National Congress Women's League (ANCWL) has questioned the humanity of newsrooms.
“Do we have human beings behind the words and the desks of our newsrooms?” asked secretary-general Meokgo Matuba in the league’s “response to media reports on the allegations of abuse of state resources against minister Nosiviwe Maphisa-Nqakula”.
The Sunday Times had exposed how the minister of defence had smuggled a Burundian woman‚ Michelle Wege‚ into South Africa on an air force jet.
Mapisa-Nqakula claimed she had come to Wege's aid because she was being abused by her father‚ and because she was good friends with her children.
The Sunday Times subsequently reported that Maphisa-Nqakula’s late son‚ Chumani‚ was romantically involved with Wege‚ and the couple had plans to marry.
Matuba skirted the legal implications of Maphisa-Nqakula’s actions‚ saying: “While as a league we understand the sensitivities around immigration laws‚ we are not hearing the story of the woman whose life was subjected to abuse by her own father.
“We cannot turn a blind eye and pretend we are not aware of the high levels of sexual and physical abuse against women in many African Countries.”
She criticised the media for under-reporting issues like the “abduction of school girls in Nigeria by Boko Haram [which] seems to have a permanent place in the back pages of newspapers if covered at all”.
“How soon do we forget the stories of young girls who today have children after being impregnated by their own fathers? How soon do forget about the young women who are used as sex slaves by their own fathers or in the hands of law enforcement agencies?”
She described as “unethical” the use of a photograph of the minister “mourning the death of her son” – Chumani was stabbed to death‚ allegedly by his friend Carlos Higuera‚ in Bezuidenhout Valley‚ in October last year – and depicting her “visibly in pain” to accompany media stories on the issue.
“What happened to the spirit of ubuntu? Are circulation numbers more important than the subjects of the stories?”
