Closed minds will eventually lead to closed graves
· Citizen
As I write this, watching another gorgeous Caribbean sunset, sipping my pina colada on the pristine beach of my private island (picked up cheap from one Epstein, J), I log on to keep track of the billions in my Swiss bank account and check to see if there is an urgent message from Bill Gates, the World Economic Forum or the illuminati.
I can’t believe I am here, in the lap of luxury, all because I am able to string a few words together on a news platform.
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Writing and printing lies for all the bad people who want to control the world, force vaccines upon us and change the weather is one incredibly lucrative career. Who knew?
That’s the picture many people out there have of journalists who, because they are guilty of writing something that person doesn’t like, must be taking money for it.
If I collected the badges of every intelligence agency I’ve been accused of working for in my career I would have more stickers than the proverbial Volksie bus has on its windows as it meanders down a gravel road in Kruger.
Let just see: MI5, MI6, the CIA, South African Military Intelligence, the Zimbabwean Central Intelligence Organisation, Rhodesian Special Branch, BOSS (the old SA Bureau of State Security), NIA (the National Intelligence Agency), the SASS (SA Secret Service)…
Perhaps I’ve picked up such a lot of “trade craft” from the spooks that I live out the legend they created for me: My car is 22 years old. My dog is 14. My house has three bedrooms, but no air-conditioning.
We don’t have a swimming pool. You wouldn’t guess, just to look at me, that I am loaded. Or perhaps I am just a journalist, standing in front of you, not asking to be loved – you wouldn’t do that – but just to be understood.
Well, a little bit anyway. Veteran journo Redi Tlhabi – whom I once employed as a columnist years ago and who now is an anchor with Al Jazeera – is taking exactly the “you are somebody’s paid whore” flak on social media because she dared question the wisdom of SA allowing Elon Musk’s Starlink into the country.
She has been accused of being paid by the government – “you hosted government events” is the lie some are using against her – to keep Musk at bay.
I annoyed a few, too, when I recently published what was seen as “PR puff” for Woolworths, simply because it aired the view of one of the company’s suppliers who says he has a great relationship with it. At the same time, we ran a story detailing complaints about alleged bullying of other suppliers.
The positive piece had nothing to do with Woolies, who would probably rather we forgot about the company entirely…
The fact that my critics insinuated I was on the take from Woolies reminded me of the truism in this country that, once you give a dog a bad name (as Woolies has been in the eyes of these suburban Temu activists), then you are not permitted to challenge that narrative at all.
Same thing happened with Robert Mugabe and Jacob Zuma who, conventional wisdom goes, are totally beyond redemption or defence.
That attitude, though, complicates an accurate recording of history – and we journalists are responsible for its first draft – because it excludes all the nuances.
Social media is becoming a toxic echo chamber, making people less able to deal with nuance, more likely to see issues only in terms of extremes.
That is contributing to driving people apart right across the world. Closed minds will eventually lead to closed graves.
Now, who would pay me to say that?