In the dangerous game of media-bashing, in which some elements of the ANC have recently been indulging, the charge has been levelled that the press has failed to discharge its responsibilities. This week the cry was taken up by President Nelson Mandela who reportedly criticised the South African media for failing to expose the role of the “Third Force” behind political violence in the country.
“It is rather a poor reflection on the part of our journalists, including very top journalists,” said the president. He held out, as a contrast to the failure of the local press, an expose of the Third Force which, he said, had been published several years ago by a British correspondent, then based here, John Carlin of The Independent.
Mandela’s apparent reliance on the commercial media in defence of the national interest in this regard is something of a tribute to the local media. There can be few other countries in the world so dependent on the media to protect state security. At the same time, it does not say much for his trust in the government agencies charged with this duty and funded from the public purse to the tune of hundreds of millions of rand a year.
But, that point aside, we must confess to puzzlement over Mandela’s remarks. Without wishing to detract from Carlin’s excellent contributions to foreign understanding of the South African saga, we must confess ourselves unable to discover the shining example of British investigative journalism to which Mandela refers.
But any search through the newspaper archives will turn up numerous examples of investigations into the political violence by South African journalists of which the South African press can take much pride. To mention only a few there were the exposes of the CCB by the late Kit Katzin of The Star; Vlakplaas, Eugene de Kock, the Askaris et al by Vrye Weekblad and Inkathagate and, perhaps most crucially of all, the Caprivi 200 by the Mail & Guardian.
Indeed this newspaper has devoted so much of its limited resources (none of it from the public purse) to the pursuit of the Third Force, that many well-meaning critics have, over the years, warned us that we were in danger of digging our own commercial grave — – boring our readers to death by our seemingly endless obsession with the subject. To now be attacked by our own president for dereliction of duty in failing to pursue the Third Force, would be painfully ironic, were it not laughably so.