ARTICLE: WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY 2014: STOPPING THE PRESSES?
2014-05-03
World Press Freedom Day was proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in December 1993, following the recommendation of a UNESCO General Conference.
Since then every 3rd of May is an anniversary of the Declaration of Windhoek and is celebrated worldwide as World Press Freedom Day. It is an opportunity to:
- Celebrate the fundamental principles of press freedom;
- Assess the state of press freedom throughout the world;
- Defend the media from attacks on their independence; and
- Pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the line of duty.
Workers Day – earlier this week – provided us with an opportunity to assess the state of employment and labour relations in our country.
A core policy directive in the Department of Sport and Recreation’s 2013 White Paper on Sport and Recreation stated that “The racial composition of national teams should not be advocated, nor should National Federations be prescribed to on how they should select their teams. National teams should be selected on merit but transformation should be implemented at school/youth levels to prepare a broad basis of athletes for participation at higher levels in future”.
The Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR) has just published its final policy proposals on land reform titled “Strengthening the Relative Rights of People Working the Land“.
Sunday, 6 April will be the 362nd anniversary of the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck in the Cape – and of the founding of our mother city – Cape Town.
I welcome Cyril Ramaphosa’s response to my speech of 31 January, which dealt, among other topics, with the ANC’s approach to transformation – as embodied in its National Democratic Revolution (NDR).
South Africans would do well to take note of President Zuma’s statement in Parliament yesterday regarding the ANC’s plans to “intensify the implementation of affirmative action policies in order to deepen reconciliation and social cohesion in our country.” The President did not grab these ideas from the air – they are a core element of the second phase of the ANC’s National Democratic Revolution.
International Mother Language Day (IMLD) – on 21 February each year – celebrates language diversity, variety and multilingualism throughout the world.
In a recent article (abridged in the Cape Times, 20 January 2014) Professor Jane Duncan pointed to the fact that although socialist ideas are widely espoused by the masses there is little reference to socialism in most of our media. She says that objective viewers “would probably conclude that socialism was consigned to the dustbin of politically bankrupt ideas long ago.”