The Human Rights Commission’s (HRC) announcement that it would not proceed with its investigation into complaints of alleged racism at the Mail & Guardian and the Sunday Times – but was instead expanding the inquiry into racism in the media as a whole – was made as we were going to the printers last week.
We have, as a result, had a week to observe reactions to the announcement before having the opportunity of commenting ourselves. The delay has been instructive, particularly with regard to two editorials published by very different newspapers on Tuesday.
The first was The Citizen, which not long ago we referred to contemptuously as a “bastard child of apartheid”. We cannot help but reflect today that, in the new South Africa, happily even “bastards” can claim legitimacy.
The Citizen’s demolition job on the commission’s chair, Dr Barney Pityana, was in sharp contrast to the pusillanimous leader on the same day in The Star. The latter offered little more than a reminder of how attuned to current orthodoxy the country’s largest newspaper group has become, presumably with a view to Tony O’Reilly’s profit margins.
The Star’s editorial was so vague and confused that it does not bear quotation other than the headline which seemed to convey the general thrust: “Media probe not a problem”.
The probe in fact poses a string of problems, the first of which, relating to the lack of confidence in Pityana’s ability to conduct the investigation in a non- partisan manner, was admirably articulated by The Citizen.
Noting Pityana’s record as an excitable ideologue, The Citizen cited his infamous denunciation of the former law professor – now a judge – Dennis Davis, whom he publicly denounced as a “racist” without any justification whatsoever. The newspaper observed: “If that was Dr Pityana’s considered opinion there is no need for the commission to waste its precious time and money. Simply call us all racists and go back to the preferred pastime of begging for a bigger budget.”
Pityana’s irresponsible approach to the race issue is also illustrated by his handling of the original complaint lodged against us by the Black Lawyers Association and the Association of Black Accountants. The complaint was, in our opinion, self- evidently spurious, but the HRC treated it as serious to the extent that they asked us to respond to it. We did so with the help of senior counsel.
Pityana then blithely announced that the HRC was rejecting the specific complaints, “because the issue of racism in the media is not confined to the two newspapers alone”. He thereby not only left the slanderous allegations against us on the table, but by his unfortunate choice of wording created the impression that he had discovered evidence of racism at the M&G and the Sunday Times.
When we challenged Pityana on this at a press conference this week, asking why he had not made his ruling at the outset, he said he was required by the audi alteram partem rule to give us an opportunity to answer the allegations. When we asked why he had then failed to rule on the merits, he replied that our counsel had failed to canvass the merits and had merely challenged the HRC’s jurisdiction.
This answer suggests that Pityana did not bother to read our counsel’s submission, which devoted 10 pages to the merits.
This newspaper has no objection, in general, to an investigation into racism in the industry, or any other sector of society. Our record fighting racism is well known and we are as aware as anybody as to how insidious this form of social cancer can be.
But we are also determined to fight the encroachment of censorship and it is our perspective that the racism complaint is no less than a feebly disguised assault on freedom of expression. It is worth quoting extracts from our submission to the HRC to explain why.
The main thrust of the complaint against the M&G was that too many stories published by the newspaper focused on corruption by black people, not enough stories published about corruption by white people and not enough stories published about black people fighting corruption. Factually, we disputed their conclusions and their arithmetic.
Even more crucially, our counsel added: “The complaint is one of omission. It relates directly to the content of the M&G. It seeks to draw the HRC deeply into the regulation of content … The logic of the complaint of omission would inexorably drive the HRC towards scrutinising publications for their appropriateness, representivity and, ultimately, for the acceptability of the moral visions articulated in their pages and their conformity with state sanctioned standards of acceptability … The inarticulate premise behind the call to regulate omissions is the very essence of censorship.”
Recently the M&G warned, in another context, that there was a real danger of a drift towards a form of McCarthyism in South Africa, in which the emotive cry of “communist” is replaced with that of “racist”. The action by the associations of black lawyers and black accountants reinforces that fear and the antics of the HRC suggests this so-called “watchdog” is – at least under its present leadership – no bulwark against such attacks on our liberty.
In the circumstances it behoves the media to look to its own defences. We therefore welcome The Citizen’s commitment to the stand on principle. We equally regret The Star’s drift in the contrary direction.