Dying breed: In the 1980s and early 1990s, labour reporting formed an important part of South African
journalism. Photo: Supplied
With the country marking the 32nd anniversary of May Day since the democratic breakthrough, an increasingly uncomfortable question arises: who will tell the story of labour and how, in a context where the labour beat is steadily disappearing from mainstream media?
For much of South Africa’s democratic journey, labour occupied a visible place in public debate. Workers were not only present in protest action and bargaining chambers but also in daily news reporting.
Labour disputes, wage struggles and union interventions were once treated as central political developments because they reflected wider questions of democracy, citizenship and social justice.
But today that visibility has weakened considerably. Labour appears less frequently in headlines and when it does, it is often framed narrowly through economic language rather than its broader democratic meaning.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, labour reporting formed an important part of South African journalism. Newspapers followed strikes, factory occupations, wage negotiations and worker mobilisation as key developments shaping the anti-apartheid struggle. Journalists understood that workplace struggles were inseparable from larger political battles.
This was the period that scholars like Philip Hirschsohn described as social movement unionism, a form of unionism in which workplace demands were linked to wider community and political struggles.
However, some argue that, post-apartheid, organised labour movements such as Cosatu moved towards “political unionism” by becoming part of the alliance with the ANC and SACP, as noted by Devan Pillay.
Nevertheless, the visibility of labour changed with the restructuring of the media industry after 1994. This was the period when sections of the alternative press shifted towards commercially driven operations as donor funding declined and market pressures intensified.
In this context, newsrooms were forced to reduce specialist reporting areas. Labour journalism was among the first casualties. Dedicated labour correspondents became fewer, newsroom retrenchments accelerated and many publications shifted attention to areas considered commercially more attractive.
The result is that labour now enters the news mainly during moments of crisis. Strikes are covered when they disrupt production, transport or public services.
Wage disputes become news when they affect markets or investor confidence. The language of reporting often foregrounds cost, instability and economic loss, while giving less attention to why workers mobilise, what conditions they face and what broader structural inequalities shape labour conflict.
This shift is visible even in publications such as the Mail & Guardian, one of the few surviving titles from South Africa’s alternative press tradition.
During apartheid, alternative newspapers treated labour as central to democratic struggle. But, like many institutions in the post-apartheid media environment, they too have had to adapt to commercial realities. Labour remains present but often through shorter and more episodic treatment than before.
This is not simply a matter of editorial preference. It reflects deeper structural changes in how news is produced under capitalism. In a commercial media environment, newsworthiness increasingly follows profitability.
Specialist reporting that requires historical depth, institutional memory and long-term attention becomes expensive to sustain. Labour reporting, which depends on context and continuity, suffers under such conditions.
The consequences are serious. Labour remains central to South Africa’s democratic life. Questions of wages, public services, unemployment, social inequality and economic restructuring all continue to shape everyday political life. Yet journalism increasingly struggles to represent these questions through labour’s own voice.
Even when labour leaders appear in the media, their contributions are often reduced to immediate economic consequences. Public discussion quickly turns to production losses, fiscal pressure or market reactions. What disappears is the larger political meaning of labour as a democratic force.
Ownership patterns deepen this tendency. South Africa’s media remains concentrated within a small number of corporate groups. Of course, such concentration does not mechanically determine content but it influences editorial priorities and newsroom culture.
Labour perspectives therefore compete in an environment where business, finance and political elite voices are often structurally privileged. This helps explain why labour anniversaries, worker campaigns and union interventions seldom receive the same sustained attention as corporate developments or financial events.Labour is often visible only when conflict becomes unavoidable.
A further complication now emerges through artificial intelligence. Since the arrival of generative AI systems, newsrooms have increasingly adopted digital tools to summarise reports, automate routine tasks and accelerate content production.
In South Africa, editors are cautiously integrating AI because of financial pressures and newsroom constraints. But this technological shift raises an important concern.
If labour reporting has already weakened because of reduced human capacity, automation may intensify the trend. AI systems rely on existing datasets and dominant patterns of visibility. Where labour is already underrepresented, automation risks reproducing that absence.
This means that labour’s marginalisation is no longer only an editorial issue; instead, it may become embedded in future digital systems of knowledge production. Without conscious intervention, technology may deepen an already unequal communicative field.
The issue therefore goes beyond restoring a traditional reporting beat. It concerns democratic communication itself. A democracy in which workers become less visible in public storytelling risks weakening public understanding of inequality, labour rights and economic justice.
South Africa requires renewed public-interest journalism capable of restoring balance. Community media, labour publications, progressive digital platforms and public broadcasters all have an important role in ensuring that labour remains visible in national conversation.
Digital tools, including AI, can support this work but only if guided by ethical commitments that prioritise social inclusion over speed alone.
The disappearance of the labour beat is therefore not just a newsroom issue. It reflects a broader weakening of class visibility in public discourse. Journalism that loses labour loses part of its democratic function.
As the country marks another May Day, the central question is not nostalgia for an earlier media moment. It is whether democratic communication can still make workers visible in ways equal to their continuing role in shaping South African society.
If labour disappears from headlines, an important part of democracy disappears from public understanding as well.
Mandla J. Radebe is a professor of strategic communication at the University of Johannesburg and the author of Apartheid Did Not Die: South Africa’s Unfinished Revolution. He writes in his personal capacity.