Howard Barrell
Human Rights Commission chair Barney Pityana co-authored a newspaper article three years ago in which he effectively prejudged the central issue into which he has now called a commission of inquiry – whether there is racism in the South African media.
The terms of reference of the Human Rights Commission’s controversial inquiry ask it to establish, in the first instance, whether there is racism in the media. But in 1997 Pityana co-wrote an opinion piece, published by the Sowetan on August 25 of that year, in which he says the media “continues to practise subliminal racism by creating a negative image of Africans”.
Lawyers said this week this amounted to an “effective prejudgment” by a commissioner of one of the key issues the commission must decide.
The legal opinion given to the Mail & Guardian is that a pronouncement like Pityana’s before an inquiry has begun constitutes a strong case for the recusal of whoever uttered it. Pityana’s article therefore throws into doubt his ability to play any further part in the inquiry – if, indeed, it continues in the face of the growing furore over the way it has been conducted so far.
The commission’s terms of reference clearly do not presuppose the existence of racism in the media. Instead, as the following excerpts (italicised for emphasis by the M&G) indicate, they require the commission, among other things, “to investigate the handling of race and possible incidence of racism in the media and whether such racism as may be manifested in these products constitutes a violation of fundamental human rights as set out in the Constitution”; and “to establish the underlying causes and examine the impact on society of racism in the media if such racism is found to be manifested in the product of the media”.
The two concluding paragraphs of Pityana’s article for The Sowetan, however, read: “The media is only patriotic to a minority section of our society. What it is doing and continues to do unchallenged is to promote the notion of European conservative superiority and excellence against incompetent and fraudulent Africans who lie their way to the top.
“It continues to practise subliminal racism by creating a negative image of Africans. It we are to have any glimmer of hope of an African Renaissance, this type of reporting has to be seriously transformed.”
Pityana’s co-authors on the article are listed as William Makgoba, the Wits University immunologist who now heads the Medical Sciences Research Council, Makaziwe Mandela, then Spoornet’s human resources manager, Vincent Maphai, then chair of the Presidential Review Commission and recently appointed chair of the SABC board, and Lindiwe Mokate, then an adviser to the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Pityana’s designation is listed as “Human Rights Commission Chairman”.
The article, headlined “Media is an obstacle to change”, starts out as a defence of the reputation of Professor Sam Nolutshungu, a prominent black South African academic and intellectual whose reputation the writers felt had been impugned by the press when he did not take up the post of vice-chancellor at Wits University. Some press reports in 1997 suggested Nolutshungu was not serious about taking up the Wits offer and was, instead, using it as a bargaining counter to secure a better position for himself at Rochester University in the United States. He died in the US after he had declined the Wits offer.
While the article never refers to the M&G, it was in fact the M&G that carried the stories under attack. But while the M&G’s articles were sourced news pieces, other columnists, including Jon Qwelane, also raised questions about Nolutshungu’s failure to take up the post.
The article co-authored by Pityana then proceeds make a number of judgments about “the media” and “the press”, which are dealt with as homogeneous entities. It says variously that:
l “[Nolutshungu] had to die to be believed by his country because of the influence of an ill-informed, racially biased and malicious media campaign that persists in portraying Africans as untrustworthy”;
l the press judges Africans’ “integrity … using foreign values in order to pursue a neo-colonialist conservative liberal agenda”;
l the media is “questioning and killing the locus standi of the African”;
l the media is out to “damage the integrity of Africans”, with potentially serious consequences for South African society;
l the media “uses the clich of press freedom to continue to abuse its powers and the limits of that freedom”;
l the media “has subconsciously elected not to understand the African”;
l the media “continues with impunity to negate the African mindset”;
l the press’s “columns are littered with racial innuendos and statements”; and
l the press is engaged in “negating African excellence in order to gain advantage for the dying and endangered conservative liberal agenda”.