Last week, shocking revelations concerning the activities of the ANC Youth League spokesperson Nyiko Floyd Shivambu came to the fore. According to a letter published in various news outlets, a complaint was laid by 19 political journalists with the Secretary General of the ANC, against Shivambu. This complaint letter detailed attempts by Shivambu to leak a dossier to certain journalists, purporting to expose the money laundering practices of Dumisani Lubisi, a journalist at the City Press. The letter also detailed the intimidation that followed when these journalists refused to publish these revelations.

We condemn in the strongest possible terms the reprisals against journalists by Shivambu. His actions constitute a blatant attack on media freedom and a grave infringement on Constitutional rights. It is a disturbing step towards dictatorial rule in South Africa. We call on the ANC and the ANC Youth League to distance themselves from the actions of Shivambu. The media have, time and again, been a vital democratic
safeguard by exposing the actions of individuals who have abused their positions of power for personal and political gain.

The press have played a vital role in the liberation struggle, operating under difficult and often dangerous conditions to document some of the most crucial moments in the struggle against apartheid. It is therefore distressing to note that certain people within the ruling party are willing to maliciously target journalists by invading their privacy and threatening their colleagues in a bid to silence them in their legitimate work.

We also note the breathtaking hubris displayed by Shivambu and the ANC Youth League President Julius Malema in their response to the letter of complaint. Shivambu and Malema clearly have no respect for the media and the rights afforded to the media by the Constitution of South Africa. Such a response serves only to reinforce the position that the motive for leaking the so-called dossier was not a legitimate concern, but a insolent effort to intimidate and bully a journalist who had exposed embarrassing information about the Youth League President.
We urge the ANC as a whole to reaffirm its commitment to media freedom and other Constitutional rights we enjoy as a country.

Blog Roll

http://thoughtleader.co.za/siphohlongwane
http://rwrant.co.za
http://vocfm.co.za/blogs/munadia/
http://vocfm.co.za/blogs/shafiqmorton/
http://blogs.news24.com/needpoint
http://capetowngirl.co.za
http://thoughtleader.co.za/sentletsediakanyo
http://thoughtleader.co.za/davidjsmith
http://letterdash.com/one-eye-only
http://boyuninterrupted.blogspot.com
http://amandasevasti.com
http://blog.empyrean.co.za/
http://letterdash.com/brencro
http://6000.co.za
http://chrisroper.co.za
http://pieftw.com
http://hamishpillay.wordpress.com
http://memoirs4kimya.blogspot.com
http://thoughtleader.co.za/azadessa
http://watkykjy.co.za
http://fredhatman.co.za
http://thelifeanddeathchronicles.blogspot.com/
http://blogs.timeslive.co.za/common-dialogue/
http://www.clivesimpkins.blogs.com/
http://mashadutoit.wordpress.com
http://nicharalambous.com
http://sarocks.co.za
http://blogs.timeslive.co.za/stompies/
http://helenmoffett.book.co.za/blog/
http://01universe.blogspot.com
http://groundwork.worpress.com
http://iwrotethisforyou.me
http://fionasnyckers.book.co.za
http://attentiontodetail.wordpress.com
http://blogs.women24.com/editor
http://www.missmillib.blogspot.com
http://snowgoose.co.za
http://dreamfoundry.co.za
http://www.vanoodle.blogspot.com
http://www.exmi.co.za
http://cat-dubai.blogspot.com
http://alistairfairweather.com
http://www.zanedickens.com
http://www.nickhuntdavis.com
http://guysa.blogspot.com
http://book.co.za
http://baldy.co.za
http://skinnylaminx.com
http://blogs.african-writing.com/zukiswa
http://www.mielie.wordpress.com
http://blogs.timeslive.co.za/gatherer/
http://thoughtleader.co.za/sarahbritten
http://stii.co.za
http://blogs.news24.com/FSB_AP
http://twistedkoeksuster.blogspot.com
http://whensmokegetsinyoureyes.blogspot.com/
http://trinklebean.wordpress.com
http://commentry.wordpress.com/
http://matthewbuckland.com
http://blogs.news24.com/colour-me-fran
http://gormendizer.co.za

Gladly one of my resolutions this year was not to blog more. If it had been I would have failed in a massive way already.

Blogging still bores me somewhat right now. I honestly don’t know if I am going to recover sufficiently to allow myself to actually maintain 2 blogs and a lifestream (nicharalambous.me). I’m over it. I’m over talking, writing, opinions, publishing and the bollocks that goes along with it.

I’m frustrated and fed up. When is the next big thing getting here? I’m bored.

I think Twitter killed my blog

With the help of Justin Slack I have (read: “He has”) finally managed to get nh [dot] com back up. Finally.

I say this with much trepidation. I am not sure how I feel about having my blog back up and running. I feel a sense of pressure back and looming over my head. I feel a slight sense of relief that it’s up and running and I think I feel a bit sad that I couldn’t go on without it. Some part of me wants to let it go.

But I can’t, and I wont.

Strangely though it took me almost a week to figure out that my blog had gone down. It took a further week for anyone else to notice and it took a further week for me to get off my lazy ass and ask someone for help.

Three weeks of downtime. Three weeks of no blogging concerns. Three weeks where I just didn’t care. Although I must admit that I think it is more than three weeks since I started the end of my extreme blogging days.

Twitter has killed me blog. There I said it. I’m not sure if I believe it but I said it out loud for everyone to read.

As a writer deep down inside it pains me to think that a service offering me 140 characters has usurped my focus from a platform that allows me almost endless freedom to write whatever comes to mind in as many words, sentences, paragraphs and pages as possible. Maybe this is a further sign of our times? Maybe the 30 second generation has become the 140 character generation and is soon to become the “Icanliketousesmallwordsandnospaces” generation?

Am I the only one who is potential a bit concerned by this? Again I give you: Maybe…

Nevertheless I love using Twitter and wont stop, I love writing and wont stop blogging and still am not fond of the book in my face.

How quiet is too quiet?

I have recently been chastised at every turn for “falling off the radar” so to speak. By “the radar” most people are referring to that of the social media world; blogs, twitter, the book of face and many others.

But here’s my question, How quiet is too quiet? I don’t feel I’ve dropped of the radar too dramatically. I completely agree that I am blogging less but I think that’s because my paradigms are shifting a bit.

I no longer believe that the web is the best place to throw down your thoughts and hope for some response. I no longer believe that my blogs are the best way for me to spend my time online. I have a job that pushes me to my limits almost every day and fulfills my need to constantly be innovating, creating and developing within a new and uncharted territory. So what do I need blogs for?

Don’t get my wrong, I love my blogs and they are a great outlet for me to do precisely what I am doing right now, a dump of mental thoughts (moughts?) running around my head that help to keep my very few readers up to date with the direction of my thinking and life. That’s it.

SA Rocks serves an entirely different purpose so that’s not really worth discussing in the same context.

Regarding Twitter, the book of face, the space of my, linked in, last fm and any (every) other social network I belong to, I am fast feeling that they are all relatively useless to me. I don’t understand the value of Facebook. Linkedin is a network worth keeping alive, but just barely and the others were great for me when I wanted to keep abreast of the latest tech out there. But right now, I am in a different paradigm that has very little to do with the web and how social it can be right now.

So I think I am being the correct amount of quiet up in here.

This is P2. A microblogging wordpress platform that inspired Automattic to start blogging again. I’ve noticed how Twitter has begun to eat in to my drive to blog. So I thought that this might be a solution to the problem.