South Africa, under the leadership of President Cyril Ramaphosa, has gotten the nod for the Nobel Peace Prize from a recipient of the prestigious honour, legendary Philippine journalist, Maria Ressa.
This was after South Africa dragged Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for genocidal crimes against the people of Palestine.
Ressa, who was bestowed with the Nobel Prize in 2021 for her Rappler.com news site’s heroics in her country, believes that South Africa led the way for world peace with the ICJ move.
The intrepid newshound was talking to Sunday World after her arrival in South Africa for the announcement of the World Democracy Assembly coming up in November.
According to Ressa, who is the chairperson of the steering committee of the World Movement for Democracy, South Africa’s move to the ICJ under Ramaphosa’s leadership, should not be underestimated in a world dominated by warmongering, anger and hate.
“I think you find that many in the global south welcomed the move by South Africa under President Cyril Ramaphosa to the International Court of Justice.
What we are seeing is a global test of whether the rule of law works – is it for everyone?
Are we all living under the same rules? “South Africa has put that question firmly on the table for the rest of the world to ponder.
“And that is the test that the world and the powers that be need to prove to all of us. We see in real-time the deaths of 28,000 people; it is a test for the world. In that sense, South Africa led the way.”
Ressa further said the world was desperate for peacemakers and champions of democracy like South Africa in the age of democracy that is regressing across the globe with populist authoritarians on the rise.
The former CNN journalist has fallen victim to autocratic regimes in her home country, the Philippines, after being slapped with 11 criminal charges for standing up for the truth through Rappler.
“In 2010, I began to see that the internet was going to play a significant role. And that is what created Rappler. Rappler, which we created in 2012, is now the top digital-only news site in the Philippines.”
This new venture would become her worst nightmare barely four years after it was born when the controversial Rodrigo Duterte became president of the Philippines.
Despite Rappler passionately covering Duterte’s presidential campaign with vigour when their colleagues from other news organisations could not bother, the man would turn against them once he reached the highest office.
Duterte, among his first moves as president, issued an executive order on freedom of information, and Ressa’s Rappler was not spared.
Rappler was to become the third target as Duterte was hunting down any news organisation that dared to contradict the official government narrative of atrocities his government was committing, including the manipulation of the number of people that were dying at the hands of the regime.
Among the atrocities the Duterte regime committed was its war on drugs, where thousands of people were killed, and the government attempted to downplay the number of people allegedly killed.
“So the numbers magically disappeared. Rappler refused to change the numbers; we kept track of what the government said, and because we did social network analytics, we began to investigate disinformation,” she said.
“The administration began to attack all of the media in his first year; they wanted to close us down relatively quickly, but we held tight. We held the line because these were our rights.”
It was because of Rappler’s refusal to toe the line that the administration went personal and started targeting Ressa, the head of the institution, with trumped-up criminal charges, but she kept on fighting.
And for her heroics, she was bestowed with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 alongside her Russian counterpart, Dmitry Miratov, for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression.
She believes that South Africa should be rewarded with the gong for her courage.
