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The relationship between the media and democracy
Secrecy obstructs democracy by keeping the public ignorant of information that it needs to make wise policy choices.1
This chapter argues that the media is a legitimate adversary – rather than an enemy of the people – in a fluid, changing and unrealised imperfect democracy. The ‘free’ press (and ‘free’ is used here in the sense of free from political interference, control and state intervention, not from economic, cultural or social interference) poses something of a challenge to the ruling alliance’s hegemonic discourse, with its desire to limit the polymorphic voices of a diverse media.
A dissonance has crept in between the Constitution’s ascription to independence of the media on the one hand and the government and state’s actions on the other, creating tension in the relationship between the media and the ANC. One of the ANC’s main problems with the media is what it conceives as inadequate and negative representation of its views as the ruling party. For example, at the launch of the ANC’s online publication ANC Today in 2001, the ‘Letter from the President’ noted:
Historically the national and political constituency represented by the ANC has had very few and limited mass media throughout the ninety years of its existence. During this period, the commercial newspaper and magazine press representing the views, values and interests of the white minority has dominated the field of the mass media. This situation has changed only marginally in the period since we obtained our liberation in 1994 (ANC Today: 26 January-1 February 2001).
One of the issues raised throughout this book is the compulsion of these discursive interventions, which are in many respects inappropriate to a constitutional democracy. While tension between the ruling party and the media is not a recent development, it became increasingly pronounced during the first decade of the new millennium and at the ANC National Policy Conference in Polokwane in December 2007 when a media appeals tribunal to regulate the media was proposed. This occurred against the backdrop of the ANC wanting a media which would act in the ‘national interest’, one which would reconcile conflicting interests towards national consensus. In July 2010 it was announced that the Gupta Group, which was closely linked to President Zuma, would fund a daily national newspaper, The New Age, which was due to launch in mid-September 2010 (Business Day: 6 July 2010). By mid September 2010 the paper had not launched, citing technical difficulties with the new technological systems from India, and a new date for the end of October 2010 was set. The paper launched on 6 December 2010 after a few shaky starts.
Although the main player behind the paper, Essop Pahad, denied that the paper would be affiliated to the ANC, it was clear that it would in fact be more than sympathetic. For example, the editor, Vuyo Mvoko, in an interview on Radio 702 on 23 July 2010, said: ‘We will show the positive side of government; it cannot be that our nation is just about crime and corruption’.
The struggle for freedom of the press from state control was a continuous one during the apartheid years, which culminated with press freedom becoming firmly entrenched and encapsulated in the 1996 Constitution. In 2005, South Africa received a favourable rating on a renowned international free press scale from Reporters without Borders, and was ranked thirty-first in the worldwide Press Freedom Index. But by October 2007 it was ranked forty-third on the same index, lower than Mauritius (twenty-fifth), Namibia (twenty-sixth) and Ghana (twenty-ninth).
In October 2007, editors gathered through Sanef to hold the third Media and Society Conference at which the independence of the media from political control was discussed. This took place thirty years after Black Wednesday, 19 October 1977, the day the apartheid government banned The World and The Weekend World newspapers, together with nineteen black organisations, and detained journalists, editors and anti-apartheid activists.
During the apartheid years there were three distinct streams of media. The mainstream media was made up, first, of the national broadcaster, and, second, of the English and Afrikaans language newspaper blocs (Jacobs 1999), a duopoly split between the Afrikaans conglomerates Naspers and Perskor and the English conglomerates South African Associated Newspapers and Argus Holdings. A third stream existed too, an independent or alternative press, consisting of smaller print publications such as the Weekly Mail, Vrye Weekblad, South and New Nation.2 The first two streams had very different approaches to reporting on the government of the day. The mainstream media tended either to toe the government line ideologically or to support the then whites-only opposition party (Berger 1999; Tomaselli and Muller 1989; Steenveld 2007; Hadland 2007b). Any criticism of the government was in the context of accepting the status quo and voiced from within the confines of that status quo. The English language newspapers tended to take a liberal perspective that criticised certain aspects of the apartheid policies, but in a way that did not challenge the status quo outright. The role of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and Afrikaans language newspapers was much more obvious – to support the National Party government and its policies. During this time the voices of the majority, the oppressed, were seldom heard via the mainstream media, and outright dissent was rare. Although there were newspapers and radio stations aimed at black South Africans, these tended to have little impact on the perceptions of those in power. Except for the ‘alternative or independent press’, the net effect was that the bulk of the media did little to challenge apartheid. In essence, the South African mainstream media promoted apartheid and the government supported the mainstream commercially driven media.
Nonetheless, the role the media played during apartheid is an uneven one. There were also instances of exposures of corruption of the ruling class and brutality from police and prisons. Over and above the prohibition of information that came from the banning of political opponents and the general milieu of repression, the National Party government also introduced a host of legislative acts at various times during its rule that affected the media either directly or indirectly, creating an environment that controlled the information reaching the public and violated freedom of the press. Between 1950 and 1990 over a hundred laws were introduced to regulate the activities of the South African media. The most prominent was the Publications Act of 1974 (Durrheim et al 2005), outlining the rules and regulations imposed by the state on the media. According to Steenveld (2007), three acts ensured the political climate of media repression: the Internal Security Act of 1982 which prohibited the circulation and debate of ideas relating to alternative social and political policies for South Africa; the Protection of Information Act of 1982 which prohibited the obtaining of forbidden information and its disclosure to any foreign state or hostile organisation; and the Registration of Newspapers Act of 1982, which gave the press the option of falling under the Directorate of Publications (the state censorship machinery) or subjecting themselves to self-regulation under the Media Council.
In addition to the constraints imposed on the media by the political climate, economic imperatives and ownership of the media also affected its role and independence. Until 1990 the concentration of print media ownership in the hands of one or two conglomerates also acted as a threat to media independence. William Gumede (2005: 3-4) was one of the academics arguing that it was necessary to include financial independence, not just political independence, in any discussion of democracy and media freedom. For him, although there has been a proliferation of new newspapers and radio stations throughout South Africa since the inception of democracy, often as a result of the interplay between old and new technology, the real danger in the media being free to report as it sees fit is that content is increasingly shaped by economic imperatives. His argument is that the pressure to remain profitable can result increasingly in urban, consumer-focused media with a declining concern for the voiceless who cannot pay and the race for profits.
To understand the ANC and the media, it is necessary to sketch the ANC media policy and note its shifts over the years. The question I pose is why the ANC, given its stated commitment to the democratic objectives of the Constitution, should be so ambivalent, if not downright opposed to, the freedom of the media. The negotiated settlement that led to the compromise of a liberal constitutionalism (albeit with critical social democratic elements) reflected the triumph of one ideological strand, the liberal one. It was a far cry from socialism or what was called ‘democratic centralism’.
The shifts in ANC media policy
It could be argued that not all members of the ANC supported a negotiated settlement. There was disagreement and ambivalence between the hawks and doves in the ANC, some arguing for an armed insurrection via Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the military wing of the ANC, as a means to end apartheid, while others were in favour of peaceful negotiations. These differences were also reflected in media policy. Ruth Tomaselli (1994) pointed to the distinction between these two positions as reflecting, on the one side, a more militant position and, on the other, the more pragmatic approach of the doves. The ANC first discussed media policy in November 1991. There is a small clause in the Draft Workers Charter, also of 1991, which states: ‘Big business and the state must ensure effective workers’ access to all sections of the media’ (ANC, 1991). Prior to this date, ‘media’ policy or issues were like a ‘second cousin’ to the ANC, Tomaselli observed, noting that there were more pressing concerns for the ANC at the time, concerns such as housing, social welfare and education – but also the South African Broadcasting Corporation. The discussions on media in November 1991 were then drafted and adopted in January 1992. The Media Charter stipulated basic rights and freedom, democratisation of the media, public media, media workers and society, education and training, and promotional mechanisms. Tomaselli noted that the focus was on the broadcast media and the SABC, but she also observed that the charter was framed in ‘idealistic terms’ and should be seen as a philosophical statement of intent. The document did not specify how a future ANC-led government would fulfill such terms. However, what was happening politically at the time also had a bearing on how media policy was viewed by the ANC. Tomaselli wrote: ‘In media policy, as in other policy debates, ANC pragmatists came to realise, by late 1992, that the traditional hardline assumption that the liberation movement would ascend to government in the form of a “people’s assembly” following a seizure of power though “mass insurrection”3 was an unlikely scenario’.
The reality, Tomaselli pointed out, was a standoff situation in which the National Party and the ANC had to negotiate at every level of policy planning. Having researched ANC media policy, Jane Duncan (2009) also pointed to the shifts from the broad guidelines of the Media Charter, adopted in 1992, to the changes in the 2000s. Upon a careful reading, one senses that the shifts are not for more liberalisation, nor for more democracy. Some of what has taken place between the media and the ANC signals a definite shift for tighter state control over the media. Duncan noted that the evolution of the ANC’s media policy was closely linked to the transformation of South Africa’s apartheid media and in the run-up to the 1994 elections the ANC ‘focused on the need to establish independent media institutions rather than to exert its own control over the media’. This culminated in the Media Charter. She pointed out that the ANC’s 49th and 50th conferences in 1994 and 1997 did not focus on media policy, suggesting that it was not a serious issue at the time.
A decade and a half after the ANC first discussed media policy, Duncan noted that there seemed in fact to be a swing back, from a focus on diversification to the desire for more state control.
Ambivalence
In its renewed call for a statutory media appeals tribunal in 2010, Point 58 of the ANC’s discussion document ‘Media transformation, ownership and diversity’, drafted in preparation for its National General Council (NGC) on 20-24 September 2010, stated that a ‘cursory scan of the print media reveals an astonishing degree of dishonesty, lack of professional integrity and lack of independence’. Yet research by Media Monitoring Africa (MMA), in a paper ‘The state of South Africa’s media’, presented to Sanef ’s Media Summit on 30 August 2010, showed that it would require a significant study involving a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods carried out across a substantial sample of media to prove the statement made by the ANC. William Bird, director of MMA, observed: ‘To then be able to make an informed claim to the extreme of, an “astonishing degree” would require a comprehensive study and not a “cursory glance”. To our knowledge a comprehensive study of this nature has not been carried out in South Africa. No evidence for these claims is presented in the document’ (MMA 2010). The MMA’s research found in its survey of election coverage, for instance, that eighty-four per cent of stories were fair, without any bias towards any political party, while the media’s role during the 2010 World Cup was to encourage social cohesiveness and was overwhelmingly positive. The ANC’s arguments that the media needed control because of its ‘false reporting’, ‘irresponsible reporting’ and ‘consistent anti-ANC bias’ was belied by the small number of complaints to the ombudsman by the ANC and government officials in the previous year (ending August 2010) about stories published – twenty-four out of tens of thousands.
On the other hand, according to the ombudsman, four stories about the ANC or ANC Youth League were found to be unfair or inaccurate in the past three years, from eight complaints lodged (Sunday Times: 29 August 2010). That is a fifty per cent success rate for articles taken to the ombudsman by the ANCYL.
The ANC and the SACP’s calls for a media appeals tribunal did not remain static before the September 2010 NGC. Blade Nzimande, the SACP general secretary and minister of higher education, and one of the main proponents within the alliance calling for curbs on the print media’s excesses, did an about-turn after the party’s Central Committee meeting in Johannesburg on 30 August 2010. He announced that a media appeals tribunal should not be used for pre-publication censorship, and should not be appointed by parliament, but from a range of representative structures from society, to guard against political manipulation (Nzimande 2010b). Cosatu’s general secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, announced the week before the SACP’s about-turn that the media appeals tribunal would be a refuge for the corrupt and the federation would not support it (Mail & Guardian: 27 August-2 September 2010). While Cosatu’s view on an independent media could be seen to be consistent, as there was no history or evidence of the workers federation hailing the media as ‘enemies of the people’, the SACP’s about-turn showed ambivalence. For example, just three weeks earlier, Nzimande had stated that the media was a threat to democracy: ‘If there is one serious threat to our democracy, it is a media that is accountable to itself … we have no opposition other than the bourgeois media’ (The Times: 2 August 2010). In another, more glaring, example Pallo Jordan wrote that ‘the value we place on a free media, independent and outspoken press in democratic South Africa cannot be overstated … I cannot imagine an ANC government that is fearful of criticism’ (The Times: 20 August 2010) yet announced in a press conference on 24 September that the ANC had adopted a resolution to forge ahead with the media appeals tribunal and said it was an example of the ANC’s ‘commitment to press freedom’ (see Appendix 2 for the resolution adopted). And in October he told the Pan African Parliament that the media was not reflecting the transition to democracy (Sunday Independent: 24 October 2010). There most certainly is ambivalence, but is there a fetishistic split too? Kay explained the fetishistic split in Žižek’s theorising, using his example of Tony Blair: ‘We voted for Tony Blair in Britain because he is deceitful and a master of spin, even though we also believe he is sincere’ (2003). The fetishistic split that ensured his success ran something like this: ‘We believe he is upright and moral, but all the same, we know he is scheming and underhand and thus can be relied upon not to change things much, though he may make the status quo work a bit better’. How can we apply this to the media and the ANC in South Africa? We can do so simply by suggesting that the ANC believes in media freedom and supports it, as it states frequently, but that it wants a media appeals tribunal anyway, because it is insecure and afraid of press freedom. While this split might not be so obvious at this stage in the book, what is clear is that there was ambivalence.
The ANC’s gaze on the media displays an ambivalence which also characterises the swings in Žižek’s theories. For example, in The Sublime Object of Ideology Žižek argues, from a fairly liberal perspective, for freedom, while in his later work, Did Somebody say Totalitarianism? (2002a), he argues for more state intervention and control which limit democracy. His theoretical ambivalence reflects the lived experience of confusion and ambivalence reflected in the ANC’s approach to freedom of expression and democratic culture. A possible explanation for the ambivalence is the history of democratic centralism embedded both in Žižek’s theoretical background as an intellectual and in the ANC’s past as an underground organisation marked by Soviet Marxist influences. This is the undecided nature of the ANC today, as it is the undecided nature of Žižek’s theoretical framework – both with one foot in a Stalinist past and the other in liberal democracy. Before delving too deeply into psychoanalysis and exploring the relationship between the idea of democracy as a floating signifier (without fixed meaning to ‘democracy’) and an independent press in South Africa, we need first to turn to the origins of democracy and democratic theory in order to understand its varied manifestations historically.
History of democracy
David Held, tracing models of democracy, cited the political ideals of Athens as ‘equality among citizens, liberty, respect for the law and justice’ (1994: 16). The Athenian city state was ruled by citizen-governors, while citizens were at the same time subjects and creators of public rules and regulations. Citizens are intrinsic to democracy, but not all people are citizens and this was true for Athens as much as for modern forms of democracy. So Aristotle was not a citizen as he was from elsewhere. Women were not citizens either, nor were certain categories of ‘commoner’. Direct democracy, Held commented, encompassed the idea that citizens could fulfill themselves through involvement in the polis, a commitment to civic virtue towards the common good, in an intertwining of the public and the private, as he argued in a later work (2006).
Still, not all were included in the original ‘democratic’ project. Women and slaves, for example, were excluded from citizenship. While some theorists still insist on dating democracy to the Athenians, and maintain that democracy is as old as the hills – over 2 500 years old – it was clearly not real democracy because of its exclusion of aspects of society, or its elitist and sexist nature. Women and slaves combined would have made up more than half the population during Athenian ‘democracy’. Democracy has travelled a significant journey towards greater inclusiveness since then, according to Dahl (1998: 43) but the journey is not over. For many post-structuralist theorists: Derrida, Mouffe, Laclau, Butler and Žižek, the journey can never end, hence this framework, which supports radical democracy.
Mouffe elucidated in The Democratic Paradox that the commonest trend, and the most talked about model of democracy was the deliberative democratic model but, in her view, this was merely the revival of the fifth century Athenian model or a process of deliberation between free and equal citizens. She argued that the so-called ‘new’ paradigm was a model of deliberative democracy that had come full circle, ‘the revival of an old theme, not the emergence of a new one’.
Antagonism, therefore, was ineradicable and pluralist democratic politics would never find a final solution. This was the democratic paradox. ‘What the deliberative democracy theory denied was the division of undecidability and ineradicability of antagonism which is constitutive of the political. A well-functioning democracy called for a vibrant clash of political positions’ Mouffe said in 2000. She argued that deliberative theorists negated the inherently conflictual nature of modern pluralism. She explained the meaning of ‘agonistic’ in her work: an agonistic approach acknowledges the real nature of democracy’s frontiers and the forms of exclusion entailed, instead of trying to disguise them under a veil of rationality or morality. Because there is the ever-present temptation in the deliberative model of democratic societies to essentialise identities, the radical democratic model is more receptive to the multiplicity of voices in contemporary pluralist societies. This argument is important in understanding the role of the media in South Africa’s democracy.
Antagonism takes place between enemies, or persons who have no common symbolic space. Agonism, on the other hand, involves a relationship not between enemies but between adversaries or friendly enemies. They share a common symbolic space but they are also enemies because they want to organise this space in a different way. Thus, according to Mouffe, the radical pluralist democracy model advocates a positive status to differences and questions homogeneity. So, then, applying this argument, the media and the ANC have a common symbolic space, democracy, and this must be accepted. Within this space there is no room for labelling such as ‘enemies of the people’. Mouffe’s argument with deliberative theorists such as the liberal democratic theorists Rawls and Habermas is that their approach, far from being conducive to their aim of a more reconciled society, ends up in jeopardy because the struggle between adversaries becomes, rather, a struggle between enemies.
The above distinction is pertinent to my analysis of the role of the media in democracy in South Africa, to show how the ANC seeks consensus with the media, how it attempts foreclosures, and how it exemplifies an unprogressive and narrow hegemony. There can be no rational consensus for a true democracy. However, for society to function there has to be some minimal consensus although, to avoid unnatural foreclosures, we should relinquish the very idea of rational consensus.
In this argument, then, homogeneity and political unity as a condition of possibility for democracy constitute an unprogressive hegemony which applies to the unravelling of the relationship between the media, the ANC and democracy in South Africa. This point will be highlighted when I discuss what various journalists and editors in South Africa argued in relation to whether the independence of the media was contingent on a particular historical context – in this case, early stages of democracy in South Africa, or a transitional democracy.
The argument for a radical democracy is helpful when I discuss the ANC’s use of ‘us and them’, as well as the ideological interpellations or labelling of the media as ‘enemies of the people’. Mouffe’s concept of an agonistic pluralist democratic project typifies this tension in South Africa where there is an inability to distinguish between adversaries and real enemies. Agonistic pluralism advocates viewing the ‘us and them’ in a different way, not as an enemy to be destroyed but as a legitimate opponent. Both Mouffe and Žižek would lean towards a Lacanian definition of democracy with a socio-political order in which ‘the people’ do not exist – certainly not as a unity. In this argument, which I incline towards and use in the forthcoming analyses, the radical differences in a democratic society are intrinsic. The opposite would be totalitarianism or the complete closing off of spaces. In this mode of thinking, totalitarianism, then, is an attempt to re-establish the unity of democracy. The argument for radical democracy, adapted from Mouffe and Žižek, is that because of the open character of society there will naturally be conflict and there cannot be a ‘unity of the people’.
As Mouffe notes, ‘democracy is something uncertain and improbable and must never be taken for granted. It is an always fragile conquest that needs to be defended as well as deepened’ (2006: 6). The empirical in the research leading to this book will show the fragile, contradictory and ambivalent nature of South Africa’s democracy – and, in fact, the fragile and ambivalent nature of the independence of the media. For example, even though a resolution was taken by the ANC to investigate a media appeals tribunal in December 2007, by 2010 there was still no certainty about it: whether it would indeed be implemented; and if it were to be, who would oversee it and what form would it take. But the threat remained, hanging over us like a black cloud of foreboding uncertainty. This remained the case in 2012.
Transformation of the media in post-apartheid South Africa
To the ANC and its alliance partners, transformation of the media after apartheid meant deracialisation and diversification of ownership of the media companies, of the newsroom (the journalist), and of content (who and what is written about).
The changes in the media landscape of 2000, compared to 1994, were exponential. In a 2000 paper ‘Deracialisation, democracy and development: Transformation of the South African media 1994-2000’, Guy Berger plotted the changes in ownership and staffing by race, class and gender. He argued that the transformation contained new challenges, which were part of global changes and showed the growing global cross-ownership of media and telecoms, entertainment or computer software companies; the outsourcing and multiskilling of media workers; the internationalisation of supply and market-chains; technological convergence and the Internet; satellites and broadband networks; and the decline of classical journalism in the face of rising entertainment. He noted that the ‘media has emerged from apartheid significantly transformed from what it was before. Racism exists in South Africa, but it no longer rules in either politics or media. Democracy and development are part of the daily diet of a transforming society’.
Berger did however point out that the end point of transformation was the doing-away with racial distinctions altogether. His paper examined transformation in the media, deploying the categories of race, democracy and development, and scrutinising ownership, staffing, conceptions of political role, content and audiences. The apposite point Berger made was that the final destination of the transformation was not meant to be re-racialisation. However, if you look at newsrooms today, you will see that the racial composition changed anyway, as the majority of reporters and editors are black.
According to an ANC discussion document, Media in a Democratic South Africa (ANC National Conference, Stellenbosch, December 2002):
Considerable progress has been made and some significant milestones achieved with regard to ownership patterns, licensing of new media, increasing of black and women journalists, repositioning of the SABC, a measure of diversity in ownership with black empowerment groups and union funds controlling some of the assets … These are putative first steps towards the transformation of the media industry.
In an unpublished paper on the tabloid newspapers, presented to a politics and media discussion group in Johannesburg, May 2009, Anton Harber observed of the ANC’s comment above: ‘It is apparent that the ANC’s definition of transformation was based on three elements: diversity of ownership, particularly the need for black owners; more representative staffing and management; and content less hostile to the ANC-led transformation project’. (The argument that race in the media should be a Master-Signifier is deconstructed in Chapter Four in a discussion on the Forum for Black Journalists and its ultimate failure to re-launch.)
In Berger’s 1999 critique of the changes and concentration in media ownership, ‘Towards an analysis of South African media. Transformation 1994-1999’, he suggests that there is some ambiguity in the effects on competition and democratic outcomes. On the one hand, plural democracy itself might be compromised by concentration, yet the competition prompted the launch of more diverse newspapers that added to the deliberative quality of the media. There were other changes that came in with the new democratic era: in 1994, the Irish businessman Tony O’Reilly bought thirty-five per cent of the Argus Company). The company name changed from Argus to Independent Newspapers, under whose umbrella reside The Star, Cape Times, Natal Mercury, Pretoria News and Sunday Independent. By 1999, O’Reilly had bought out the whole company. As Berger commented:
Considered in terms of concentration, this foreign investment was not a positive development from the vantage point of pluralistic democracy, in that in Cape Town and Durban the same company now owns both morning and evening papers. However, at the same time, the entry of international capital saw a noticeable increase in competition in the newspaper industry – even if this was only at the higher end of the market. It took the form of more vigorous competition by Independent titles with those of other groups ...
There were other changes regarding the trend in foreign ownership, he noted. The English company, Pearson PLC, bought half of Business Day and the Financial Mail from Times Media Limited (Times Media then became Avusa at the end of 2007). Partnerships with foreign investment also occurred in 1998, when The Guardian in London bought sixty-two per cent of the Mail & Guardian, which prevented the closure of the paper. Subsequently, in 2001, it sold most of these shares to the Zimbabwean newspaper mogul Trevor Ncube, still the majority owner and publisher. Another foreign ownership-cum-partnership occurred when Swedish group Dagens Industry bought twenty-four per cent of black-owned Mafube Publishing. Berger noted the irony that liberation in South Africa saw the death of the liberation movement’s media as funding dried up because donors felt the country was now ‘normal’. The small newspapers South, Vrye Weekblad and New Nation, met their demise in the early 1990s.
In addition to the above foreign partnerships and ownership trends, there were significant racial changes in ownership, according to Berger. He noted five main developments. Dr Nthatho Motlana formed New Africa Publishing (owned thereafter by New African Investments Ltd or NAIL) and in 1993 he bought the Sowetan. This was then bought by NAIL, a black economic empowerment (BEE) company. Second, thirty-four per cent of the holding company of Times Media Ltd, Johnnic, was sold to a BEE group, with the ANC politician and subsequent businessman Cyril Ramaphosa spearheading the deal. This group, the National Empowerment Consortium, consisted of: NAIL, the National Union of Mineworkers (Num), and the SA Railway and Harbour Workers Union (Sarhwu), precursor to the Transport and General Workers Union (T&G) which became the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu). Third, Berger noted a partnership between Kagiso Media and Perskor in 1998 but this split in 1999. Subsequently, Caxton bought Perskor and took ownership of the Citizen. Then the Union Alliance Media (UAM), a subsidiary of Union Alliance Holdings representing the two major union federations, Cosatu and Nactu, each with over two million members at the time, acquired shares in media companies.
These were major changes in media ownership. Owners included blacks and workers, and were a shift from the old patterns under apartheid, of white, male, capitalist owners. According to Jane Duncan, in an e-mail interview on 17 March 2008 for an article I wrote in Enterprise magazine, ‘The media’s political and economic landscape’, this period could be described as ‘the golden season of diversification’. She outlined the three main shifts. The first was between 1994 and1996 when transformation of the media ensued with attempts to unbundle the three major newspaper groups which were owned mainly by the mining and finance houses. Attempts were made to introduce some level of black ownership. The second, Duncan said, was the financial crisis of 1996 which led to the introduction of Gear (Growth Employment and Redistribution – the growth strategy of the ANC under Mbeki) when ‘credit became more costly’ and ‘black empowerment deals unwound’. This then led to the third, the ‘reconsolidation of media into three big groups once again, Johncom (now Avusa), Independent Newspapers and Media 24/Naspers’.
The shifts that Duncan highlighted showed that as quickly as diversification took place the deals just as quickly unravelled. The government used the opportunity to call for measures to curb concentration while at the same time trying to muscle into the free space of the media. In the same interview, Duncan pointed to the ‘growing executive control’ of the media:
Government advertising is also used as a means of exerting political pressure on media; recently the government threatened to withdraw advertising from the Sunday Times newspaper after it carried reports critical of the health minister … The ANC is also investigating the setting up of a media tribunal to address the ‘deficits’ in the self-regulatory system, which may well lead to greater statutory control of the print media, considered to be a thorn in the side of many in positions of power.
As the story of the fight for democracy between the ANC and the media unfolds it becomes clearer how the ANC has used the concentration of media ownership as an excuse for its political subjections.
Media and democracy in South Africa
Using the conceptual tools of radical democracy and psychoanalysis my argument is that the trend of the interpellations against the media was based in ideology which is meant to mask antagonism within the ruling party itself: it deflects attention away from its own shortcomings by focusing on the media’s shortcomings. Evidence will be provided in the case studies to follow. These interpellations began with Nelson Mandela and became quite intense during Thabo Mbeki’s time as president. During Jacob Zuma’s presidency we see legal interpellations in the form of law suits against media groups and individuals, for example the cartoonist Zapiro, and we see the Protection of State Information Bill (which would impede the work of investigative journalists) and the proposed media appeals tribunal.
The interpellations began with Mandela and it is noteworthy that, while the first democratic president was not paranoid about the media, he too showed misunderstanding of the media’s role in democracy and assumed that because you were a black journalist you would necessarily be soft on the ANC and its flaws. To a group of Sanef editors, he said, in 1997: ‘While there are a few exceptional journalists, many like to please their white editors’ (cited in Rhodes Journalism Review 1997). It could be said that Mandela desired unity with the press, and expected it of black journalists. I argue that this kind of unity suggests foreclosures which are not ideal in a radical democracy characterised by heterogeneity, open spaces, and fluidity. Mandela’s statement appears to be an attempt to create hegemonic unity out of irreducible heterogeneity, and an attempt to hermetically seal off the multiplicity of space, but using race.
Mbeki’s first interpellations against the media were recorded by the journalist Mark Gevisser in his 2007 book, The Dream Deferred. He recalled how the ‘first volley’ by Mbeki against the press took place in 1994 just after his appointment as deputy president. In an address to the Cape Town Press Club he mounted a critical assessment of the media, accusing it of ‘harbouring a tendency to look for crises and to look for faults and mistakes’, an allegation that became his pattern, and then that of the ANC. Gevisser wrote that by September 1995 Mbeki was branding any media criticism of the ANC as racist.
The interpellation took place on two levels, one against black journalists and another against Anton Harber, former editor of the Weekly Mail. Looking at Harber, Mbeki said: ‘Now criticism and complaining is what I expect from him. This forum, on the other hand, has to see itself as change agent, and not just criticise. The message to black journalists, I wrote at the time, was clear: Roll up your sleeves and stop whingeing like a whitey. Get with the programme’ (Gevisser 2007: 644). In Mbeki’s understanding, or misunderstanding, of the media’s role in a democracy, he fails completely to recognise that the media is a relatively independent agent, independent from the ruling party and his rationale is that if you are black you will automatically heed the ideological interpellations of the ruling party. In other words, you will recognise that you are indeed an enemy of the people if you do not and you will begin to toe the line ideologically rather than report critically.
I would also argue, drawing on Mouffe, that Mbeki did not make a distinction between a legitimate adversary such as Harber and an antagonist; he viewed the editor as an antagonist, in the sense of not being supportive of the ANC’s programme of transformation as the ANC saw it. Mouffe disagrees with Carl Schmitt whose argument did not permit a differential treatment of conflict but could only manifest as antagonism, ‘where two sides are in complete opposition and no common ground exists between them. According to Schmitt, there is no possibility for pluralism – that is, legitimate dissent among friends’ (Mouffe 1999: 5). In this sense, Mbeki’s interpellation of Harber was Schmittean.
A further misunderstanding, or even deliberate misrecognition, of the role of the media in a democracy can be witnessed from the discourse of the president of the ANC, Jacob Zuma, when he said on the ANC website:
We are faced with the virtually unique situation that, among the democracies, the overwhelmingly dominant tendency in South African politics, represented by the ANC, has no representation whatsoever in the mass media. We therefore have to contend with the situation that what masquerades, as ‘public opinion’, as reflected in the bulk of our media, is in fact minority opinion informed by the historic social and political position occupied by this minority. There are many examples we can cite to illustrate this point. Every day brings fresh instances of a media that, in general terms, is politically and ideologically out of sync with the society in which it exists (ANC Today: 18-24 January 2008).
In Zuma’s gaze the media should be ‘ideologically in sync’ with society. How does he know this? How does he know what the whole of society thinks? It seems to be a conflation: society equals ANC. It is within this discourse that we can see what Torfing meant, in New Theories of Discourse: Laclau, Mouffe and Žižek, when he described the difference between discourse and the discursive (1999: 92). There is always something that escapes processes of signification within discourse, and the partial fixing of meaning produces a surplus. In other words, a surplus of meaning (what is not said, but is implied or read into meaning) is illogical and leads to an indefinable surplus, a meandering discussion which is off the point. There is surplus attached to the media in all three discursive interventions by Mandela, Mbeki and Zuma. Their expectations are in excess of the role of the media. Both the former presidents of the ANC and the current president appear to be obsessed by the media.
Their words show an attempt to create a hegemonic unity out of irreducible heterogeneity. But a radical democracy is exemplified by the acceptance of the multiplicity of spaces (and the media would be one such space): all open and not hermetically sealed, with fierce contestations and engagements all in flux. The call for too much unity, and consensus about everything, limits the free speech and criticism that are good for democracy. From the ANC presidents’ words and their interpellations on the media, it can be seen that they would prefer a media that is at unity with the ANC, but this is not the role of the media in a democracy. This brings us back to the topic at hand: what is the role of the media in a democracy? It is not to be in sync ideologically, or to curry favour with politicians, and it is not – contrary to what the ANC desires – a media which should be involved in ‘nation-building’.
On the one hand, there is support in the ANC for an independent media (in theory) while on the other it appears as though the ANC find the media goes too far in its criticisms. Take, for instance, Zuma’s lawsuits against Zapiro, totalling R7 million for defamation (this amount was reduced to R5 million in 2011). Zuma says that he supports the free press, and yet he persists with the lawsuits, saying this is his right as a citizen (The Weekender: 15-16 August 2009).
The media’s responsibility is to report news truthfully, accurately and fairly, according to the South African Press Code (see Appendix 1), and to keep public spaces open for debate and dissension, according to the democratic theory visited in this chapter. ‘Truth’ here, is to be understood in journalistic terms rather than in any transcendental philosophical way: that is, reporting the facts, and giving the citizenry as many different voices as possible. By playing the role of watchdog and holding power to account and by exposing corruption, the media plays a critical role in civil society. But is it that easy and is it that simple? It is worth pausing here to turn to three journal articles in Social Dynamics on public spheres, by Cowling and Hamilton (2010), Cowling (2010) and Serino (2010). The article by Serino discusses how topics for debate enter the South African public sphere, using the Sunday Times as an example. This takes place, research showed, through professional journalistic norms (for example what is newsworthy) but also through the Sunday Times’ notion of what is in the public interest, in the context of its role in transformation and democracy. Through the selection or non-selection of stories and use of expert opinion, the Sunday Times sees itself as an agenda-setter; and therefore there is some orchestration of debate (Serino 2010). Serino also noted that there was a level of ‘self importance’ attached to the way in which this was done and conveyed. Cowling and Hamilton (2010) agreed with Serino on the ‘orchestration’ question, arguing that while it is an accepted practice in journalism there is not enough responsibility attached to it. ‘The idea of public interest is thus a fuzzy but critical concept at the heart of journalistic practice’ vis-à-vis choices of topics for debate governed by public interest, but it is undefined and learnt by journalists from their engagement with the news production process, and through negotiation and discussion. However, it could also be argued that perhaps even more should be left undefined and fuzzy in order to make the process of news selection more authentic. Cowling and Hamilton’s research showed that on AM Live presenters played a key role in constituting the show’s form; the mode was carefully orchestrated; and finding the ‘right’ guest was important. Therefore, their argument goes, why was there such a fuss about the SABC banning certain commentators? A point that Cowling and Hamilton raised was that, given that the paymasters were the SABC, who shared the ideas of the ANC on the developmental state and nation-building or, as the two authors put it, ‘the national project of development’, journalists nonetheless acted according to their own professional standards. A further point that they raised was that in the selection and production process there is a lot taken for granted and journalists are often not critically engaged. Then there is the question of ‘orchestration’, which implies deliberate, almost cynical and sinister, undertakings whereas in my experience of newsrooms in the last two decades, as an employee and freelancer, I found selection to be much more random than this, having much more to do with the public interest, production process, deadlines and what ‘fits a page’, rather than any coherent and conscious ideological positioning.
There is also the question of ‘self-importance’ that Serino (2010: 110) raised, quoting Mondli Makhanya starting off a 2007 news conferences by asking (referring to his paper): ‘What will the highest court in the land say this week?’, and ‘the Sunday Times will select topics that it believes can advance the discussion of issues of relevance to South Africa’. This is interesting and thought provoking. Let’s now turn to a piece by Peter Bruce, editor of Business Day, which might show this ‘self-importance’ (but I think he was merely observing certain facts). This is an extract from Bruce’s column, Thick End of the Wedge:
I think there’s a case to be made for newspapers not being owned by public companies at all. When you consider the contribution they make to democracy it may be worth ruling that only newspapers owned by trusts or something similar can register as newspapers with the Post Office. Having said that, it was a newspaper (City Press) owned by the mother of all local listed media companies (Naspers) which for the second or third week in a row yesterday gave us some insight into how Julius Malema has made his millions, and, in turn, added to the insight into why he feels he can’t be contained. Why? Because with R54m in your bank account no one can tell you what to do. Only, thanks to City Press, we know now that Malema hasn’t paid any tax on his ill-gotten millions and that could mean he goes to jail. Fantastic! But will it happen? […] By cheating the government, by ‘winning’ tenders to be paid for with public money even though you have no chance of meeting the conditions of the tender, you are robbing the public purse and, therefore, you are robbing the poor. Looked at that way, Malema is a thief, but he is treated like a hero by the poor (Business Day: 8 March 2010).
Bruce was celebrating the uncovering by the media in February 2010 of the ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema having been caught with several companies registered in his name through alleged fraudulent tenders and having R54 million in his bank account while his salary was R20 000 a month. The stories showed details of fraudulent tenders, and the media called him a ‘tenderpreneur’ and remorselessly subjected him to scrutiny. This exposure is the role of the media in a democracy. The public was given the chance to question where taxpayers’ money was going – into the pockets of corrupt leaders or towards solving the country’s crime, unemployment and flailing infrastructural problems. If South Africa had a media that was ideologically in sync with the ANC, there would be no exposure of fraud and corruption. As Bruce said in the above column, it’s the exposure of cheating the government by winning tenders, and the ‘thieving’ (Business Day: 8 March 2010) that made him proud of being in the profession.
Malema talked back. He refused identification with, or declined to appropriate, what Judith Butler had called ‘the injurious term’ (Schippers 2009: 78). He said he was just a ‘poor child’ and the media was jealous of him; he was not guilty of corruption and had nothing to hide from the South African Receiver of Revenue (SARS) (Sunday Independent: 28 February 2010). He also accused journalists of being opportunistic and having a conspiracy against him (The Times: 3 March 2010). The details of Malema’s corruption are not the focus for this discussion, but the fact that he was exposed and that there was the space for this to occur signalled something encouraging for the media’s role in this democracy. Malema also received a chance to talk back, via the media, when he claimed to be a poor child. What all this showed was the media playing the professional role according to the South African Press Code: ‘The primary purpose of gathering and distributing news and opinion is to serve society by informing citizens and enabling them to make informed judgments on the issues of the time, and, the freedom of the press allows for an independent scrutiny to bear on the forces that shape society’. There are shortcomings in the way the media operates, as noted by Cowling and Hamilton, and by Serino. For example, a lot is taken for granted and often not critically engaged with. There may be some self-importance. Nonetheless in playing this role, even in a less than perfect way, the media does hold power to account. (In my experience journalists can sometimes be lazy with a penchant for desiring ‘freebies’ more than they should. They can also be unethical but this is not commonplace. In June 2010, Ashley Smith, a Cape Argus journalist, admitted to having taken payment from Ebrahim Rasool, the former ANC provincial leader in the Western Cape, to write stories favourable to the ANC. The press body condemned this, made it a big story in the newspapers and broadcast media, and also condemned the fact that the government appeared to be going ahead with its plans to appoint Rasool to the US as ambassador.)
Through the Malema example we can witness how secrecy can obstruct democracy by keeping the public ignorant of important information. It can be argued that there is little secrecy in South Africa because the media appears to be loyal to its professional – although we don’t know how much is hidden, of course. Reconciliation of society (à la the theories of Žižek and Mouffe) that is, unity between the media and the ANC, seems impossible, and this is good news for the unrealised democracy. Moreover, as Johannsen, quoted at the beginning of this chapter, observed, ‘Secrecy obstructs democracy by keeping the public ignorant of information’.
NOTES
1Johannsen RC (1994) Military policies and the state system. In Held D (ed.) Prospects for Democracy: North South, East, West. Cambridge: Polity Press.
2Newspapers such as the Weekly Mail called themselves independent, not so much for being independent from political parties but for being commercially independent. In other words, they were not part of the big newspaper conglomerates (Perskor, Naspers, or the Argus Group), and were not profit driven.
3Tomaselli was quoting Mzala, a writer and radical within the ANC, who penned some of the ANC’s analysis, strategy and tactics.
