Patrick Bond is evidently a very angry man, but uncontrolled anger makes bad journalism and can harm the cause he is so passionate about (Pambazuka News 98). By airing all sorts of negative judgments and comments, many of them personal, he has made his article read like a tirade that alienates most of whom he hopes to appeal to. Two kinds of people enjoy a tirade: one is the few who are as passionately attached to the rager's cause and who also share the rager's particular set of antipathies and prejudices. This is a small audience, and one which does not need winning over. The other kind of people get fun out of witnessing the rager rapidly digging his own grave and making a fool of himself, and is sure to include all those he evidently considers as enemies. The more merciful readers feel embarrassed and simply stop reading. I presume Patrick wants to be read, to win others to support his cause, and not to be enjoyed as a foolish spectacle.

Better then to let facts speak for themselves (and be careful not to select facts to suit your cause: it may work in the short term, with the uninformed reader, but in the long term harms your credibility); and distinguish between facts, opinions, judgments, speculations and assumptions about people's motives (the last three belong to gossip not journalism).

There is more than enough objective evidence that Africa is being cheated left right and centre; our own hearts tell us how to react to these abuses, without the need to be lectured to about what our response should be. And it is counterproductive to resort to unethical rhetoric, which does no credit to the writer or to the publication which agrees to print his words.

Ben Kobus