It did not take long for the South Africa media to react. A day or two after sending off a few hundred notices alerting them to the filing of a draft indictment with the International Criminal Court at The Hague that charges Zackie Achmat and his terrorist organization, TAC, with genocide, the national press began a small "feeding frenzy that has continued to gain traction", as they like to say these days.
Brink tells us that he "was interviewed by all the country’s major radio stations, SAfm, Metro, 702/Cape Talk, and more community and Muslim stations than [he] can remember". The earliest newspaper reports (in English) can be found here and here, and Brink's favorite (in Afrikaans) is here. A Google news search will provide as many additional examples as any could desire.
Thus far, Zackie and TAC have unsurprisingly kept their collective mouth closed, with the predictable exception of dismissing the indictment as the "ravings of a lunatic". Whether the story will acquire "legs" (as we used to say), and break into the international media as well, is a matter for the crystal ball and the calendar.
Whatever happens, South Africans can now be confident that the supporters of President Mbeki have neither been defeated nor silenced by their ferocious and powerful enemies. They can also be confident that the year has begun with them invigorated and in the driver's seat of the Freedom bus, and the cockpit of a fully armed F16.
Celia Farber has just published a very insightful commentary on the Brink indictment of Achmat.
It can be read here at Dean's World.
Posted by: Peter Olsen | January 15, 2007 at 10:10 AM
Thank you Mr. Olsen.
Over the coming days, I will be posting outtakes from the Brink indictment at Dean's World, for discussion. In this dialectic it seems that furniture can fly past our eyes and we still don't double-take.
Everything is swallowed whole, not digested.
The Information Age.
Posted by: Celia Farber | January 15, 2007 at 11:56 AM