Members of the public have in the last few weeks complained that the Drakenstein Municipality is silencing them by not allowing them to comment on the DM Facebook page.
In general the feeling is that the taxpaying public has the full right to keep an eye on the municipality and be able to air their views.
The municipality has denied however that they are trying to muzzle the public. They however claim that they are only blocking comments on certain posts.
They further say that the public are indeed welcome to give their opinions and comments on certain municipal posts, but have indeed turned off the comments on some of the other posts.
The reason why the municipality turned off the comments on certain posts is because they do not want the public to “register their complaints” (about e.g. power outages, broken street lights, potholes and so on) through Facebook.
According to the municipality Facebook is not a complaints management platform.
But looking at previous (and current) interaction on municipal issues, was the influx of complaints on this public platform not getting too hot for the municipality to handle?
This smells far too much like censorship from an era we would rather forget!
