Massive abuse has been hurled at the media for coverage around Jacob Zuma. It comes mainly from his supporters, yet you don’t have to be a fan of ”Msholozi” to note that there are issues — especially those around identifying people in cases of alleged rape.
What is not the case is ”the media” finding a man guilty before trial, despite the institution being blamed en bloc for doing so by the Zuma-ites. It is plain nonsense when South African Communist Party leader Blade Nzimande proclaims: ”The media has massacred comrade Jacob Zuma by trying him in public and finding him guilty before he even appeared in court.”
It’s also self-serving when Zuma himself declares: ”Yet again, as with the corruption case, the media has passed judgement … It has become a trend for the media to disregard our enshrined constitutional rights of the presumption of innocence, dignity and human rights.”
Part of the press-bashing is the unsubstantiated claim that the media are selectively anti-Zuma — as argued by people such as former journalist Kaizer Nyatsumba, former head of the army General Siphiwe Nyanda and African National Congress Youth League leader Fikile Mbalula.
True, not many journalists seem to like JZ. But nor for that matter does President Thabo Mbeki enjoy respect and acclaim in the press. Rather than the media being to blame, it’s the actions and inactions of these politicians that reflect adversely on themselves.
Also misplaced is the criticism of Zuma coverage by the conspiracy theorists. According to the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), in running the initial rape claim story the Sunday Times was ”either practising the worst form of reckless and irresponsible journalism or, as we have long suspected, it has joined a political faction which has an agenda to slander and damage the careers of individuals”.
Likewise, the SACP has weighed in with the verdict: ”The media in our country seems to be playing cheap, factional and divisive politics on our [tripartite] alliance.”
Instead of serious evidence of media bias, however, one finds rantings such as those of Jon Qwelane who has slammed ”the self-proclaimed judges in the media”, branding them as Mbeki’s ”lackeys in the so-called mainstream newspapers”. He has especially slammed the ”slimy” Sunday Times for ”their deliberate smear” against Zuma, and for ”defaming” the man ”by spreading outright lies about him”.
Strangely, coming from a person who should know the media, Qwelane also impugns the Sunday Times as a paper run by ”media hacks, who are ready pawns, willing to be used like putty by the power orchestrators” and who had ”really struck rock-bottom” with the rape story.
In contrast to this cacophony, the Sunday Times rape story made it last week into the finalist ranks of the still-to-be announced winners in the Mondi Shanduka Newspaper Journalism Awards 2005.
Against the paper’s detractors, the point is that the rape claims story turned out to be true: indeed a charge was laid against Zuma. It was also one serious enough to lead to a major trial.
On the other hand, you do not have to be an acolyte of the erstwhile deputy president or his allies to see that it can be potentially problematic for a man to be named in the press even before a case emerges.
In fact, in terms of South African law, the identities of parties in a rape case are not up for media grabs. First, the alleged rapist can only be named when he pleads in court. Second, the alleged victim remains anonymous — unless she agrees to being named.
A symbolic watershed was crossed in 2004 when many media outlets, except e.tv, ignored these principles in the case of Judge Siraj Desai and his rape accuser Salome Isaacs. (Journalists opportunistically argued at the time that the story was in India where South Africa law did not apply.)
So, it is not wholly surprising since then that in the Zuma rape case — despite its wholly South African character — the disclosure of identities has been a free-for-all. After Zuma himself was named by the Sunday Times, the story was picked up by many other media — yet this identification was several months before he actually pleaded (not guilty) in court.
On the same day that the Sunday Times made its disclosure, the Sunday Independent publicised — with her permission — the name of a woman who at the time denied that she was laying rape charges against him. The Sunday Times story reported her denial, but did not name her.
The next day, Beeld newspaper went further with a photograph and biographical sketch of the woman. And so it was that both the alleged perpetrator and the alleged rape survivor came to be fully in the public domain.
The SACP claimed that all this coverage was a ”reckless abuse” of the rights of both individuals. Mbalula said the media was undermining the rule of law and attempting to turn South Africa into a banana republic. For hyperbolic measure, Cosatu declared that that for the named pair, ”there can be no worse violation of human rights”. It further claimed: ”Such practices by sections of the media pose a real threat to our democracy and its institutions.”
Putting aside the exaggerations, there clearly is an issue at stake — whether the papers were ethically justified to have published.
No doubt there were vested political interests promoting (and benefiting from) the two different stories — the Times‘ one airing the rape claims, the Independent highlighting that the accuser denied having made them.
Yet all the politics in the world do not diminish the fact that there was the burning public interest in the press publishing the rape charge story and its denial. A potential president was accused of rape, and this came against the background of a widespread view that the man’s ambitions were being blocked by an Mbeki conspiracy.
It was in this context that legalities took second place to the press deciding to tell the public about these highly dramatic developments and the key actors involved.
In the end, the Sunday Times‘ story was vindicated: the charges laid led to an investigation that produced the current court case. For the Sunday Independent‘s side, it seems — at least from recent court evidence — that the paper was used to try to dismiss the fact of the charges as pure fiction.
In an unfortunate version of the Sunday Independent‘s story published in the Sunday Tribune, the text read: ”And a cruel disinformation campaign has been launched against Zuma: a number of newspapers have been given ‘information’ that a rape charge has been laid against him.”
The original, less partisan, version in the Independent read: ”And, according to the Zuma camp, a cruel disinformation campaign has been launched … [my emphasis]”.
Nevertheless, despite their differences, both stories clearly showed overriding public interest in revealing sensitive names long before the case came to court. While the two protagonists found themselves in the limelight prematurely, South Africa as a whole was put on high alert.
We knew that Zuma was either a possible rapist or that he was being set up by his political enemies, or that both scenarios could prove to be correct.
Since those early disclosures, the judge in the case has now issued strong instructions that nothing should be published that could identify the complainant. This edict came in reaction to the behaviour of the Zuma supporters.
A subsequent report by the national news agency noted that the supporters were displaying placards that bore the woman’s name and surname, and added ”but Sapa [the South African Press Association] cannot name her as identifying complainants in rape cases is prohibited by law”.
However, the same agency also gave renewed clues to the woman’s identity in a different report that named a person it further described as ”the best friend” of the accuser. In addition, Sapa also named and described in some detail another woman who had lived with the complainant during two specific months last year.
In other words, if anyone had missed who the complainant was up to this point, it would not have been too hard to establish her identity.
A similar problem appeared recently in an entirely different story where Sapa reported the gang rape of a woman in the crime case in which four-year-old Makgabo Matlala was murdered in Lenasia.
The Sapa article here explicitly identified the rape survivor here as a ”domestic worker”, and also cited a police spokesperson describing her as the dead child’s ”nanny” and as the ”helper”.
The Star for its part reported that ”three suspects have confessed to the murder of Makgabo and the gang rape of the family’s domestic worker”. Privacy for the alleged victim in this particular case? Nope.
Complaints by the Zuma supporters about privacy rights violated? None to be heard.
The early disclosure of identities in the Zuma saga can lay strong claim to public-interest rationales, and to original agreement by the complainant that she could be named in her denial of having laid charges. Not so in the Matlala case where the identity of an ordinary person was partly revealed for no legitimate reason.
That the vicious gang attack, coupled with the murder of the child, demonstrates the barbarism entailed is not enough for the woman to be pinpointed through describing her job. All it must do is to add to the huge trauma she must already be experiencing.
Identifying people in rape cases is a highly sensitive and complex matter. There should be watertight reasons for violating the law that forbids doing exactly this.
While there was fair cause for naming Zuma, and his accuser, this is not the case with people of lesser prominence. Criticism of the media regarding the Zuma case is often misdirected, but that should not overshadow the broader issue.