William Bird of Media Monitoring Africa shares some thoughts. 1. How free is South Africa in 2019 when it comes to freedom of speech and press freedom? Like so many things in our fabulous country we have much to be proud of, and also many aspects that we need to guard and fight against with every fibre of our being. Such is the danger present, that if we don’t we may well fall into an abyss of anti-democratic unfree authoritarian Trumpian style hell.