In her apology on Saturday, communications minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams referred to her interference with the work of journalists as an “altercation”.
She went further to offer what she said was her sincere apology and assurance to the country of her commitment to media freedom. This followed an incident where Ndabeni-Abrahams placed her hand on an SABC camera to prevent journalists from filming a protest at the ANC’s manifesto launch in Mount Frere.
Her supporters have accepted her apology and enthusiastically affirmed that she, like all of us, is no perfect being.
For one, this reasoning demonstrates how low we have set the bar of accountability when we allow those in power to get away with merely confirming that they were wrong, without acknowledging the gravity and extent of their actions.
Two, we cannot use the principle of human fallibility to excuse the behaviour of those who intentionally abuse their power to undermine democratic activities.
There is simply too much at stake in our country. The last decade in particular remains a powerful lesson of the progressive destruction that settles in over time when the powerful are allowed to pull the levers of state with impunity.
As a civil servant in a constitutional democracy, her actions were completely unacceptable.
As a minister tasked with oversight of the SABC – and by extension the free flow of information in the country – her conduct was deplorable.
While we note her apology, we believe in its current form it is a disingenuous attempt to gloss over an incident which clearly demonstrated how impulsively she undermined a democratic principle to preserve political expediency.
The sting in Ndabeni-Abrahams’s actions is that it is precisely because she is communications minister that she believed it was within her powers to define parameters for the work of journalists, at the expense of the public’s right to know.
This must never be allowed.