Disease of mediocrity threatens our freedom

You could hear the massive collective gasp of shock across the nation last Tuesday. Hlaudi Motsoeneng, the SA Broadcasting Corporation chief operating officer who acts as though he is emperor of the airwaves, was at it again.

“Censorship is an English word. It is unknown in African languages. I don’t know the concept. I cannot be a censor,” he told a press conference.

Thus we wrung our hands in despair. We held our heads in our hands and wept.

We couldn’t believe just how low we have sunk. But why were we depressed by Motsoeneng? Why are we so surprised, so despairing, that a cretin such as this, an ignoramus of this order and magnitude, now runs the most powerful public broadcaster on the continent?

We should not be surprised at all by what is happening at the SABC. Mediocrity is now the new normal. It has been the normal since May 2009. What we are seeing now is merely a rerun of what has already happened across many parts of our government, our institutions and our state-owned enterprises.

The mediocre, so long as they bow and genuflect to Number One at the Union Buildings and smile and scrape at his lieutenants in Saxonwold, have now not only risen to the top. They are in charge.

Mediocrity is what President Zuma – a sexist, homophobic, crass, horrendously incapable and shameless man who has handed over appointment of his Cabinet to his friends – was the original symbol of, and on his watch it has flourished.

We lowered our standards when we voted for him in 2009 and lowered them even further in 2014. With him has come patronage and mediocrity. No wonder former president Thabo Mbeki said last week that our fellow Africans are appalled at what is happening in South Africa and how we have lost our way.

But mediocrity is not who we are.

When Motsoeneng claims that we Africans love him and what he represents, don’t believe the propaganda. For we are not mediocre.

Not by a long shot.

We are brilliant and amazing. We are clever. We are funny. We are competent. We have degrees. We have high standards. We are academic and we are street-wise.

We eat at the top table but we are also down with the people. We are left and we are right. We are everything.

We are everything but mediocre.

To understand who we are, to understand that we reject and are appalled at Motsoeneng’s mediocrity of thought and ideas, please read or listen to the suspended SABC economics editor Thandeka Gqubule’s speech in front of the corporation’s headquarters last Friday.

Gqubule went through an impressive and exhaustive roll call of the greats of South African journalism and called on them and their spirits to travel with journalists on this journey to defend their profession.

All the great journalists of our time were named: the great John Tengo Jabavu, Pixley kaIsaka Seme, Ruth First, Peter Magubane, Can Themba, Sol Tshekiso Plaatje, Allister Sparks, Percy Qoboza – there were so many, so many.

All of them were men and women whose achievements brought out the goosebumps.

Would you add Hlaudi Motsoeneng’s name to this roll call? Does his name deserve to be anywhere near that of Nat Nakasa, Casey Motsitsi or Zwelakhe Sisulu? He is mediocre. They were not.

Gqubule said it was the freedom of expression brought about by the works of these men and women over decades “that gave us this vocation”.

“Do not allow the sun to go down on us,” she said. We will not. We must not.

The future of our children depends on all of us raging, raging, against the dying of the light. Our children must enjoy the free press and the free thought we have enjoyed for the past 20 years.

There was a powerful message embedded in Gqubule’s speech. She referred to the dawn of democracy in 1994 and pointed to the fact that one of the conditions for the transition into democracy was to have a free, independent and balanced public broadcaster.

“Now we are at that moment again as we approach a highly contested election where forces of darkness are trying to bend the public asset, the public broadcaster, to their own ends,” she said.

The good people of this country need to realise that Motsoeneng is not the only problem.

The problem is the rise of mediocrity in our politics, the use of the “yes minister” type of person, like Motsoeneng, to undermine our freedoms and our institutions. You see such mediocre and pliable people at SAA, at the Hawks, at the SABC and many other places. With them in place, Zuma is secure in comfort.

We must rage, rage, against the dying of the light that is our democracy. They must not win. They cannot win. If they do, then what kind of country are we leaving behind for our children?