Yes, I am weary of the proposed tribunal and dislike the statutory nature of it, but I will at this stage support any effective organ, any mechanism that safeguard the little man, not the ANC, against the media. If you think I'm alone, look at this. They (media) are the single most imposing, liberal mouthpiece and left wing institution in South Africa who have, in their post-Struggle euphoria,  lost sight of what these rights entail and what responsibility they bear. As long as the tribunal does not include “prepublication censorship” (Jackson Mthembu), I can’t exactly fathom the fears of the public and press. My fears will be realized when (actual) law enforcement and courts stand impotent in the face of government corruption and its sad ethics. But the sideshow of paparrazzi has become outrageous and I experience it on a daily basis (and have for decades). Give us news and stop feeding the curiosity monster. Rather teach us that everything interesting is not necessarily of public interest. Think long. Then teach us the difference. Government corruption, if proven, IS of public interest.

The tabloids, my main gripe, is the last spasm of the declining mainstream newspaper. What a sad way to go. But I do not remember the Mail & Guardian once reverting to fact-stretching, Heat-magazine tactics and maliciousness (save Zapiro!). Maybe there isn't a problem, but my past two weeks in "media free" utopia, reads like this:

•    Two weeks ago my photograph was used in a large article about sexual harassment in the office (Die Sondag). WTF?

•    Ashlin Simpson gets paid by Channel 24 to list the top 10 worst fathers. I rated 5th for "not paying maintenance", when this is all I have done, never missing a single month in 22 years! She made this up, off course, and a Tribunal will take care of this kind of sick bitch's imagination.

•    One week ago the the ANC publication (NEW AGE)  sported a photo of me as the headlining act after Zuma’s speech in Durban on Heritage day. I know nothing of it. When I confronted the ANC organisers, I was threatened.

•  The truly pathetic Jean Meiring saw a pick on my blog of fans in "Steve For President" T-shirts. HE writes the article, so who will question him if HE decides that I actually dressed these people? Beeld, By(30 Des 2006). : “Steve Hofmeyr sit veelal sy rasieleiers in T-hemde waarop “Steve for President” staan. Where do they get this? Why do the place it? This is the talentless smut that I should support against the tribunal? I think not.

•    Huisgenoot harasses my circle of friends and colleagues for info that amounts to five front pages (none I agreed to) in 14 months. Lady Di would have been envious!

•    Die Sondag features front page stories on my outrages “ugly” car and one week later on a “tantrum” I was to have thrown at a public function. Untrue and completely unfounded. The only journalist present was the stoned, redfaced, motherless drunk Yolanda Barnard (left).

•    Huisgenoot commissions actual shrinks (doctors) to write a negative profile on my psyche without a single personal consultation (which would have had a confidentiality clause). The psycho-quack turns out to be in a relationship with the journalist. Yes, give these morons total freedom?

•    Two weeks ago the Huisgenoot exposes a gay couple for being a gay couple in an article that recalls the inquisitional witch-hunt and subsequent hanging of two gay boys, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni in Iran (pics below).

•    Yesterday (September 28) I had a great interview with Die Burger ("Hy het benadruk dat die media nie aan bande gelê moet word nie."), stating my case clearly. Back in Gauteng I had to buy Die Beeld ("Mediatribunaal 'n blink plan, se "slagoffer" Steve"?) to understand the storm around my head. This syndicated interview looks entirely different in another province. A little editorial license and a completely different slant and tone is projected. Who do I call? The Ghostbusters, I pressume.

•    The media lordliness knows no bounds: Charles Malan explains that talent (and Steve Hofmeyr) is nothing without media, when many of us sustain a career in spite of media, thank you very much!

•    One morning John Robbie (702, 4 th October) prescribes to Andre Nel exactly how to react on his pain and media humiliation, when the latter had him suicidal (Welcome, Andre, this happened weekly for two years in my life). This Dr. Phil know-all penchant to act as barometer for pain inflamed by themselves has amused me for decades.

•  When I was  denied a visa to the US in 2007 (I had the wrong visa), 702 Eyewitness News found that this was because of maintenance neglect. Where do they get this information? Why? How does it help?

ANY overweight, powerdrunk, capatalist institution, like the media (and the ANC!) needs to be checked under all circumstances. This much we know.

If Jackson Mthembu (ANC spokesman) can be trusted, I have yet to spot the problem: “...it is not a prepublication censoring mechanism, you still write what you want to write... but where you are writing wrongfully ...reporting maliciously and in a defamatory manner about a person, such a person should have recourse.” (Sunday Times)

The definition of a fascist state is where one group, faction or party enjoys unaccountability and others don’t. Selective freedom. Absolute liberty, but only for some. This and the existence of that impotent poor soul called the ombudsman, are my reasons for looking critically at those who look critically at us. Who is watching the watchdog?
I certainly do not trust the ANC agenda as far as I can throw my grandmother, but we need from the media exactly that which they have been demanding of us, of our churches, our governments our cultures and our ideologies, and that is a little self-scrutiny and accountability.
I see the paparazzi destroy lives & privacies on a weekly basis. We are not Hollywood and we are not multimillionaires who can afford and sustain the onslaught like a Lindsay Lohan. Die Son, Die RAPPORT and total drek like Die Sondag and Huisgenoot abuse a right I fought for in the old South Africa. A right that comes with some sort of responsibility, I had thought. I think differently.

I have a friend called Joost van der Westhuizen who has yet to be found guilty by a court of law for ...well, anything, really, but who has had to sacrifice his job thanks to the media circus surrounding him. In the realm of proportionate punishment for sins (not even crimes!), some of us will demand a liitle more sobriety. Truth remains, I can not seem to have this conversation with non-victims of media abuse. Read here how a columnist prescribes to me how to react on my own pain caused by his very ilk. Afrikaans media makes the old domineering Nationalist churches look like a playdate.

Please may we have the equivalent of the Sunday Times and The Mail & Guardian in Afrikaans, instead of the processed smut dished up as media freedom; where a witless Weideman, a hypocrite du Plessis, a punch-drunk Prins and stone-drunk Barnard becomes judge, jury and moralist on behalf of ordinary South African citizens.

God forbid.