Don’t attack journalists, lest their message gets ruined

Don’t shoot the messenger. I repeat, don’t shoot the messenger – or break her phone. Or else you might miss the point of the whole story.

It has been nearly a month and a half since I parted with my phone in an intense and surreal moment during a protest at the Senekal Magistrate’s Court in October following the murder of farmer Brendin Horner.

The Senekal saga was a spur of the moment thing and you were either there, or saw it on social media and in the news. I don’t think anyone planned that day, it just happened.

When the farmers moved towards the court’s holdings cells, I knew trouble was coming. I can’t remember if the shots were fired first or when the police vehicle was overturned. But I clearly remember the moment my phone was grabbed and snapped in front of my eyes.

So what, you say? It’s just a phone. No, it’s not, it’s about the moral of the story.

You see, a few moments before I was approached by an angry farmer, I was hanging onto a window burglar bar to get a glimpse of the chaos imploding before me. I mean, you only read these type of adrenaline-packed stories in newspapers. Please note that a group of farmers had helped me up the wall to where I was peeking over at the group of protesters.

From on top of the wall, I saw a group of angry white farmers, hitting, shoving and beating with all their might to get through what looked like a window covered by burglar bars.

At that moment, I did not see it as right or wrong, but as desperate. These men were desperate for justice. A part of me was surprised the farming community was standing up for itself for a change. We have become used to seeing them peacefully protesting with white crosses. Now, they were blowing their tops and getting their hands dirty and I had a front row seat. Their frustration was somewhat understandable. They were in mourning and, frankly, had had enough.

Wouldn’t you have taken a photograph?

“I am going to break that f***ing phone,” a farmer old enough to be my father shouted at me. I climbed down, put my phone away and started moving off. The farmer stormed towards me.

I still can’t believe the big cloud of smoke my Huawei phone produced when it was twisted and snapped in half.

The next few words the farmer shouted at me were a blur as I was trying to make sense of what had just happened. Wasn’t this the same community that expects the media to report on protests when political party members do the same as they did on that day? If it had been Economic Freedom Fighters members breaking into the holdings cells to harm a suspect, would they not expect me to do the same?

The cherry on top was that afterwards, many of the protesters and many who were not there called it fake news. “Why do you only write about the protest and what the farmers did wrong and not about peaceful protests.”

Funny how quickly they forgot that the good part of the story was on the broken phone.

For the record, I wholeheartedly believe no journalist would travel three hours and expend all that effort to suck a story out of their thumb. That’s not how it works. We can only report on what people do.

I repeat: don’t shoot the messenger.

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