Malema's war on the media escalates

The battle between the EFF and the media escalated on the second day of the red berets’ second National People’s Assembly at Nasrec in Johannesburg.

Delivering his lengthy political report, EFF leader Julius Malema chastised eNCA senior political journalist Samkelo Maseko for asking a VBS-related question during the party’s media briefing on Friday.

Malema said: “To demonstrate how stupid some journalists can be, yesterday during a press briefing, a journalist asked EFF treasurer general Leigh-Ann Mathys if the conference was paid for using VBS money. How does an entity facing liquidation pay for anything?

This shows the lack of intelligence. Journalists should ask smart questions.”

After this outburst, the eNCA announced that it was withdrawing it’s coverage of the EFF conference, in solidarity with other news organisations that were denied accreditation to cover the event.

“The eNCA has taken what it believes is a principled decision to stop covering this weekend’s EFF elective conference.

This after the party barred several news organisations from covering the event,” said eNCA editor Jeremy Maggs. He added that the decision was not taken lightly as the EFF’s actions amounted to “an attack on media freedom in the country and should be condemned in the strongest possible terms”.

Maggs said while it was regrettable that the channel would not be “bringing its audience news of the event, eNCA was left with no choice but to take a firm stand in solidarity” with the news organisations that have been barred from covering the elective conference.

In his response to the eNCA’s coverage withdrawal, Malema said the 24-hour TV news broadcaster should no longer cover any of his party’s events. “It’s a very sad decision taken by the eNCA to withdraw from [covering] this conference. However, since they have done so, they should not attend all EFF events. We announced which media houses we were not going to associate with and we never had a problem with eNCA.

“I have been to the eNCA [studios] so many times since we announced in September that we were no longer going to associate with the Daily Maverick,” said Malema.

The EFF leader also criticised News24 editor-in-chief Adriaan Basson after he said: “As an act of solidarity with our colleagues at the Daily Maverick and elsewhere who have been banned from covering the EFF’s National People’s Assembly, News24 will make available all our copy from the conference and ask questions on their behalf.”

Said Malema: “Now we know that any questions from News24 journalists are from the Daily Maverick and the proponents behind them.”

According to the SA National Editors Forum, the organisations that were barred by the EFF were investigative news outlets – the Daily Maverick, Scorpio, amaBhungane and City Press sister newspaper Rapport.

Read: Daily Maverick is Gordhan’s mouth piece — EFF

Yesterday Branko Brkic, the Daily Maverick editor-in-chief, said they would be approaching the courts over the EFF’s decision. “We at the Daily Maverick believe that the EFF’s ban is unconstitutional and we intend to test it in court in the new year.”

Brkic said the EFF had refused to give them a clear response as to why they had been denied accreditation to cover the conference.

On Friday EFF deputy president Floyd Shivambu accused the Daily Maverick of being a political mouthpiece of Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan. He said if it took the party to court or Parliament, “its chances of winning the case were next to nothing”.

“No court will force the party to accept people we don’t want due to [their] power of association,” said Shivambu.

Godrich Gardee, the party’s secretary general, had earlier said the EFF did not have the capacity to accommodate all journalists. He said more than 600 journalists had applied for accreditation.

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