6RXWK$IULFD but later caved in under pressure and anonymous threatening phone calls. The SACP and the ANC called for a banning of the painting, and its members burnt copies of City Press. Five months later, by October 2012, Haffajee said she was manipulated; she regretted her decision to remove the painting: “We were played,” she said.3 The ANC had shown its pattern of paranoia its reactions. The same pattern was evident with presidency spokesperson, Mac Maharaj’s reaction to Mail & Guardian accounts of alleged corruption with transport tenders and Swiss bank accounts. Criminal charges against journalists: 26 July 2012: M&G editor Nic Dawes and amaBhungane journalists Stefaans Brummer and Sam Sole were charged with “theft” of confidential records and disclosing information for which they could get 15 year sentences after they published a story in November 2011, alleging that Maharaj and his wife received large sums of money through the arms deal. The hysteria moves from spurious theft charges against journalists to pulling television programmes from the public broadcaster, dubbed party broadcaster, (the SABC) if they are too critical. SABC politicisation: The tension between freedom of expression and rights to dignity was played out when the SABC found that popular cartoonist, Jonathan Shapiro’s “Zapiro” cartoons were too “insulting” to President Zuma. Hence, in the first week of December 3 She made this comment at the launch of the book Fight for Democracy: The ANC and the Media in SA, 10 October 2012, at Wits University, where she was guest speaker. 6R7KLVLV'HPRFUDF\" 2012 it dropped a pre-recorded interview with the cartoonist. “We are very sensitive about all peoples’ rights and dignity and so we could not carry that interview, Zapiro must do what he does best, but we disagree and we can’t endorse his cartoons on our platform,” said CEO Hlaudi Motsoeneng.4 Shapiro said he was “blacklisted” for the third time. The other two occasions were on SABC radio: Metro FM and 5FM. In a further SABC censorship incident, on 7 November 2012, head of news Jimi Matthews blacklisted from his journalists from using the term “Nkandlagate” in their reports. The term described the inordinate amount of money, about R280-million (approximately US$30million), on Zuma’s homestead development in KwaZulu-Natal. The SABC, the biggest media body in the country, lurched from crisis to crisis (management, leadership, board and financial) in 2012. This seemed to be the position of the SOS Coalition, which was set up to monitor the role of the SABC, shine a light on corruption, review broadcasting policy, and try to steer the institution towards being a public broadcaster rather than a party mouthpiece. Then there were new concerns when the SABC linked hands with the ANC’s benefactor, The New Age (TNA), to conduct what are termed “business breakfasts” which cost hundreds of thousands and funded by mainly by State-owned enterprises (SOEs), indirectly the State, and therefore the taxpayer. These break4 M&G: Zapiro cartoons too insulting for SABC: December 14-20, 2012.