In the third report of his series on transformation, John Matisonn examines changes in the media after 1990
In the SABC’s radio archive, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s first speech on his return to Russia in 1917 survived 46 years of apartheid censorship. Lenin’s speech was still in the files in February 1994 when, after the SABC’s employee blacklist fell away, I was put in charge of the SABC’s radio election coverage.
Nelson Mandela’s speech from the dock at the 1964 Rivonia trial, arguably South Africa’s most important historical document, had been recorded and stored there. But someone had ordered it cut out of the tape with a razor blade and presumably destroyed.
I needed Mandela’s voice at the trial for a radio documentary history of apartheid that we planned to broadcast during the long wait for 1994 election results. To illustrate the Sharpeville protests and the Soweto uprising, we found white voices on archive tapes, but not a single black South African speaking about either of these historic events.
We had to wire the audio of interviews with Murphy Morobe, a leader of the Soweto uprising and now chair of the government’s finance and fiscal commssion, and other black South Africans about the student uprising , and tapes of people speaking at Sharpeville, from National Public Radio in Washington, DC, to juxtapose against white government leaders – starting with prime minister DF Malan’s speech announcing the policy of apartheid in 1948. What an indictment of the national broadcaster!
To say that the mainstream South African media was in a rut when the African National Congress was unbanned in 1990 would be an understatement. But after Mandela’s release from prison in February 1990, change in the media began to take place in a big way.
Most of the important English-language newspapers had been in place since shortly after the Anglo-Boer War. They were controlled through South Africa’s common pyramid holding company system by Harry Oppenheimer’s Anglo American Corporation. When criticism of his papers surfaced, Oppenheimer had been known to say: “Do not let the great be the enemy of the good.” In other words, they are not bad, but one cannot aim unrealistically high.
Black newspapers established 100 years earlier had been closed or taken over and rendered innocuous long ago. The two Afrikaans language groups included official National Party newspapers.
Most South Africans relied on SABC radio as their major source of information. The SABC had been established in 1936 as a colonial version of the British Broadcasting Corporation. After taking power in 1948, the National Party systematically turned the SABC into a propaganda organ of apartheid.
Though I cannot be totally dispassionate when writing about a field I’ve participated in for 20 years, it seems hard to argue with the notion that the mainstream press let its readers down.
Major stories of the 1980s – such as third force government violence against citizens and the campaign against the states of emergency – appeared in small, under-funded alternative press like The Weekly Mail, Vrye Weekblad and New Nation. Reporters who tried to get these stories into the mainstream papers speak angrily about how they were undermined, and how their papers downplayed or even disbelieved them in favour of misleading police sources.
Some editors viewed reporters who pursued stories documenting the oppressiveness of the apartheid system as partisan and did not appreciate the professionalism, not to mention physical risk, that reporters underwent to get those vital stories.
Shortly after the ANC exiled leadership returned, a meeting was held in the basement of the Methodist church in central Johannesburg where Aziz Pahad, then from the ANC’s information department and now deputy foreign minister, told journalists what the ANC thought about the media.
Pahad spoke of the excessive concentration of media ownership. He did not offer specific recommendations, but asked the journalists present to come up with proposals.
He described the kind of press that the ANC wanted as “free but responsible”. One alternative newspaper editor, The Weekly Mail’s Anton Harber, asked what that meant. Pahad’s comments reminded some journalists of the kind of journalism the outgoing white government had demanded.
In March 1990, two months after the ANC had been unbanned and exiled leaders were still planning their return home, the NP government made what was seen by opponents as a pre- emptive move. It appointed SABC chair and Broederbond member Professor Christo Viljoen to head a commission to review the future of broadcasting. In addition, a few community radio stations suddenly got temporary licences.
Civil society groups feared the NP intended to privatise the SABC before a democratic government could be elected. A coalition developed to stop privatisation.
The coalition brought together the Film and Allied Workers Union, journalistic and anti-censorship groups, and unions fearing job losses, including the Congress of South African Trade Unions. Through a conference in the Netherlands and another at the University of the Western Cape, a plan emerged: an independent board must replace Broederbond control at the SABC, and an independent regulator must emerge to open up the airwaves to fair, new broadcasters.
This move in 1993 was crucial. The media would be the first institution to change, driven primarily by the need to ensure the election was fairly covered.
The “campaign for independent broadcasting”, once it had the ANC on board, succeeded. The SABC board was chosen in public hearings.
The handling of the board appointments became one of the fiascos of the transition. But in the end, the process finished white male domination of the nation’s broadcasting. The independent panel of jurists who interviewed the nominees in public chose Professor Njabulo Ndebele, rector of the University of the North (Turfloop), as chair.
Then president FW de Klerk intervened, refusing to accept the independent panel’s decision. Next, advocate Ismail Mahomed, now head of the Constitutional Court, made the mistake of failing to stick by the panel’s decision and accepted Dr Frederick van Zyl Slabbert as chair of the SABC board. In turn, that destroyed the attempt by Van Zyl Slabbert, a liberal politician who had opposed the NP government, to play the role of honest broker between the ANC and De Klerk’s party.
He lasted only two months as the board chair. He resigned after board member Dr Fatima Meer, a Mandela confidant, told fellow board members that she acknowledged the stand Van Zyl Slabbert took in opposing the NP in the past, but people had to recognise he is a white Afrikaner male, and “we have to change that”.
In a split vote, the independent panel voted to replace Van Syl Slabbert with a sociologist, Dr Ivy Matsepe-Cassaburri, who had been in exile with the ANC. White male domination had been broken.
Culture clashes occurred daily. With blacks and women and other outsiders sitting at the decision-making table, a lot of sighing took place. Head of SABC radio news and current affairs Malan Otto complained to me: “My friends constantly tell me we are giving too much attention to this election. They believe we should do much less.”
I replied: “I’m sure that’s quite true.” We continued, and the audience ratings were high.
Other democracies had developed a culture of independent public broadcasting, which has greater responsibilities for being balanced and comprehensive than commercially owned ones.
At the SABC, we intended to demonstrate that journalism could be vigorous as well as balanced, despite the inevitable criticism of the dozens of judgments that had to be made every day. The activities of the third force were now reported on SABC television and radio.
People from the alternative press, Radio Freedom and South Africans in the foreign media all had to work together with the existing SABC staff. The new way had to provide space for legitimate pride in the nation’s achievement and respect all points of view. We wanted to guard against return to the days when South Africa’s president – as former president PW Botha did – could change the content of a news bulletin with a phone call to the studio.
As the 1994 election results came in to Radio Xhosa, the pride that the next president would speak the language of that station was in everyone’s eyes. Some people worked for 48 hours at a stretch.
Two more key developments happened at the World Trade Centre negotiations that crafted the shift from white minority rule to democratic elections.
First, the interim Constitution enshrined freedom of expression and of the media. And second, the parties agreed to set up an independent broadcasting regulator.
The regulator, the Independent Broadcasting Authority, would have the task of opening up the airwaves to public, community and private radio and television. It would restrict foreign ownership of a station to 20%, encourage local programming and historically disadvantaged ownership, and ensure diversity of programming and ownership.
Among newspapers, the crown jewel of the press in terms of size was the Argus Company. Although the Freedom Charter’s implied support for nationalisation looked less likely by the day, the most controversial near monopoly Anglo American held was in the media.
Through JCI, Anglo controlled the Argus Company and Times Media Limited. The Argus owned The Star in Johannesburg, the Cape Times, Cape Argus and Weekend Argus in Cape Town, the Natal Mercury, Daily News and Sunday Tribune in Durban, The Friend in Bloemfontein and the Diamond Fields Advertiser in Kimberley. Argus had a half share of the Pretoria News and owned the Sowetan, which it was selling to the expanding black business of Dr Nthatho Motlana, Mandela’s physician and Soweto leader.
JCI seemed to prefer to sell Argus newspapers to an overseas company. Anglo considered international media owners like Rupert Murdoch, but evidently had concerns about the way he used his papers to interfere in local politics.
The Irishman Tony O’Reilly became the frontrunner. O’Reilly had a remarkable business career. He is the only individual to hold simultaneously the titles of chair, president and chief executive officer of the Heinz Company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Besides ruling over Heinz, O’Reilly owned major media interests in Ireland. He would soon add to his media ownership the Independent Newspapers of South Africa – the former Argus group.
O’Reilly’s staff negotiated with the ANC’s Pallo Jordan and Moeletsi Mbeki, Deputy President Thabo Mbeki’s brother. They wanted assurances that he would expand black participation at shareholder and director levels and end inequalities in employment conditions.
The choice of buyer was Anglo’s, through the directors of JCI. They wanted to sell before the election, but at a meeting in South Africa they wanted a signal that O’Reilly would be welcomed by Mandela. “Is Mandela in town?” O’Reilly asked the directors.”They watched in some amazement as one telephone call later he was in Mandela’s home drinking tea with him,” according to Ivan Fallon, now CEO of Independent Newspapers in South Africa.
Mandela had met O’Reilly through Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe. The Irishman is an important figure in Zimbabwe as the first, and one of the few, foreigners to be allowed to buy a controlling interest in a company in that country since Mugabe became head of state at independence in 1980.
Mandela had stayed at O’Reilly’s Bahamian holiday home twice.
JCI signed with O’Reilly that afternoon, selling him 31% of the Argus Company. O’Reilly became the first significant foreign investor in the new South Africa.
According to Moeletsi Mbeki, ANC support for the newspaper sale to O’Reilly was conditional on the new owner opening up the industry to competition and increasing participation by blacks at top levels.
Numerous private discussions between O’Reilly’s representatives and the ANC took place after the sale, trying to get O’Reilly to agree to increasing black shareholding and black advancement, “all to no avail”, according to Moeletsi Mbeki. “At the end of 1994, O’Reilly broke off contact.” O’Reilly has since raised his share of the company to well over 50%.
While in many parts of the country competition would become vigorous, O’Reilly gained a monopoly of English newspapers in Cape Town and Durban. Several people raised this concern, but nothing was done to stop it.
“A critical moment was lost,” says Harber.
O’Reilly has continued to increase his shareholding in the South African company. According to sources, he intends to increase it to the point that he can create a black shareholding of up to 20% without losing an absolute majority. But whatever action he is taking, several sources say that Thabo Mbeki is not as enthusiastic about O’Reilly as Mandela has been.