The country is hardly done patting each other’s back for a job well done on the soccer world cup when they slap cuffs on a journalist who published and uncomfortable article about our new police chief. Ironically this is just days after the previous one got a 15 year jail sentence.
Where do they come up with these people?!
From IOL:
“Sunday Times journalist Mzilikazi wa Afrika has been arrested by the Hawks only days after his controversial article about National Police Commissioner General Bheki Cele.
Sunday Times editor Ray Hartley, who attended the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) meeting, said the paper’s lawyers had been unable to get a clear answer from the police on the charges against him and where he was being held.
“I am deeply concerned at the fact that a journalist can be arrested and held at an undisclosed location in a country where the rule of law ought to apply,” Hartley said in a statement posted on TheTimesLive website.
“He was arrested by a large number of policemen in an operation which was clearly designed to intimidate and I can only conclude that this was the true motive for what took place today.”
Hartley said Wa Afrika was one of the authors of a story published on Sunday about the rental of new police headquarters at the cost of R500-million, allegedly without following the correct tender proceedings.
“I hope, for the sake of our country, that he was not arrested on spurious charges in order to punish him for what he wrote,” said Hartley.”
