The day Merafhe ridiculed himself

In government, Merafhe is known as a conservative whose take on freedom of expression and other civil liberties border on control.

To the extent that the MISA event tried to bring together the conservative views held by Merafhe and others of his ilk and the liberal views of the press, the event could have been critical as a building block towards rapprochement between the two parties. The Vice President's speech was too long, unnecessarily pedantic and boring as it tended to regurgitate huge chunks of the ill-fated Media Practitioners Bill and the Press Council code of ethics. For the longest part, Merafhe's speech was self-serving and seemed to quote some passages out of context either to mislead or to score cheap political points against imagined 'miscreants'.