In a way, the political sideshow that now accompanies the annual state of the nation address is of the president's own making: Zuma moved the speech from its traditional Friday morning slot to 7pm - taking South African politics into prime time - in search of larger TV audiences.
However the opposition wants those audiences, too - and the EFF's penchant for co-opting the event, upstaging the president with its parliamentary antics, has now been met with an unprecedented show of security that affects the coverage in and around the houses of parliament.
"We're not used to that. Parliament has always been a parliament of the people from the era of Nelson Mandela to the presidents who came after him. And ... now the use of the soldiers - it's very intimidating when you see people with big guns ... walking around the red carpet. It's very difficult to do your job in a case like that where you can't walk around freely," says Sam Mkokeli, chairman of the South African National Editors' Forum (SANEF). [...]
Journalists there say that, during the 2014 elections, they were told that 70 percent of their coverage of the government had to be positive.
Two years later, during local elections, the use of any video of violent protests was reportedly banned - on the orders of executives loyal to Zuma's ruling African National Congress.
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