There is a long list of people I need to apologise to, too long to list here and definitely too long to pen an open letter to each and every one of them. You know who you are, consider this my heartfelt apology coupled with a clear indicator of my laziness.

One person I don’t feel the need to say sorry to is Jacob Zuma although Steven Motale, editor of The Citizen, believes he owes the president a very lengthy apology. He believes he has been ‘party to the sinister agenda against JZ’ and has sought to right those wrongs by penning an open letter published on IOL. I’m going to take some extracts from that letter but feel free to read it in full HERE:

It’s a message about how the media is as much to blame for the current parlous state of this country’s politics and economy as the politicians and economists who have brought us here.

Was Zuma actually found guilty of corruption [during the Schabir Shaik trial]? And, should he have been fired in the first place?

If you read the papers or listened to those who did, you might have been inclined to think he was, because the judge, we were repeatedly told, found there was a “generally corrupt relationship” between Shaik and Zuma. But by now we should know better. Nowhere did he actually say that. The prosecution had said it at the time, all the time, but the judge never did.

More than a year later, the white-haired judge felt it necessary to point out that he had made no ruling on Zuma’s corruption or lack of it, and Zuma had not been on trial. Even the rape charge that was thrown at him around the same time (just to make sure of his demise, perhaps) proved to be an empty attempt to smear him…

I’ll spell out my point: Zuma was fired for a case in which he was not found guilty and his guilt was not even relevant. You may find that hard to believe, but go and read the ruling yourself…

But the truth is that I gloried in reporting on Zuma’s downfall with all the same glee as everyone else in the media at the time. We simply didn’t like him. He simply wasn’t good enough. We’d decided that Zuma would be no good and do no good, and so we read what we wanted in Judge Squires’ ruling, and ignored the old man when he tried to tell us we’d got it wrong.

In many ways the president has turned out to be quite measured, reserved and tolerant of us. Better than we may have expected him to be, and more forgiving than I would probably have been in the same position.

How, as the media, can we expect to be able to look at Zuma in the eye today and expect him to trust us, and live up to any kind of expectation for good, when all we’ve ever prophesied was inevitable doom?

…The hatred towards Zuma means that little he does or says is ever reported on positively. He can give a speech for two hours, but the only thing anyone is likely to read about what he said was something “controversial”. If someone is determined to paint you in the worst light possible all the time, what chance do you have?

How can we expect Zuma to rely on us, the media, when we have never rectified the basic facts of his constitutionally presumed innocence from 2005 onwards?

…With the past that Zuma has had, I actually don’t blame him for expending so much time, energy and our shared national resources to stay out of court. He still has powerful enemies, and South Africa was told in 2008 by yet another judge, Chris Nicholson, that the corruption charges brought against him were politically motivated. He threw out that case, once again sending the media into despair. Zuma still has many powerful enemies, and those enemies still have access to the levers of control in the media…

It’s not just government that’s still new to getting democracy right. The media is, too. And the bottom line is: we should be willing to try harder to be better at this thing called democracy, and one can only hope that, in return, somehow, our government will be too.

I’ve been party to the sinister agenda against Zuma, and can only apologise for that. I’m not saying I’m suddenly his biggest fan, but it’s time to admit I’ve been party to the unfairness, along with many of my colleagues.

Perhaps all of us should admit the same and try to move on after excising the festering tumour that we’ve been nursing like a vital organ. But it’s not. It’s dangerous, and needs to go.

As mentioned before, the above is merely a selection from the wordy apology but I’ve tried to capture the gist of what is being said.

So how do you feel now nasty South African media? Can we expect more open letters from other outlets expressing their remorse?

Maybe we will, maybe we won’t. You can be sure you won’t find one here however, and for that I won’t apologise.

[source:iol]