Console Tleane
CROSSFIRE
In his attempt to engage Sipho Seepe, Jack Mokobi shoots himself so mercilessly in the foot that one hopes there is some kind-hearted bureaucrat at Union Buildings who has provided him with bullet-proof socks. (“The media should give credit where it’s due”, February 9 to 15).
Mokobi’s response to Seepe raises questions about whether we are gradually regressing to the painful past, where people would be prevented from expressing their views. In 1989 Mandla Seloane, now a researcher at the Human Sciences Research Council, wrote a short article entitled “The undemocratic practices of democrats”.
Seloane sought to demonstrate how advocates of the Freedom Charter (the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) then) were, through their actions, violating the very principles that they were advocating.
That was during one of the most painful episodes of the liberation struggle: internecine violence between members of the African National Congress-aligned United Democratic Front and the black consciousness movement.
Seloane was writing from an experience of having been prevented from addressing a rally in Cape Town by members of the MDM. He also wrote about how members of the now defunct Action Youth were refused permission to distribute pamphlets at a Congress of South African Trade Unions rally.
That era is over. We have a democratic Constitution that, among its many celebrated features, contains a Bill of Rights that guarantees freedom of expression. But how loyal are members of the ruling elite to the Constitution?
Instead of proving that some intellectuals advance ill-founded criticisms against the government, Mokobi helps us realise that what Noam Chomsky wrote in Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies is actually right. Chomsky said that most governments, when they realise that they cannot defend their inability to deliver basic services to the poor or their engagement in questionable projects, resort to controlling what people think. In attempting to control what people hear and eventually think the powers that be would also want to control or even suppress what those who do not agree with them (including intellectuals and journalists) write.
In the absence of overt mechanisms to plainly suppress them, as is the case in dictatorships, the powers that be resort to labelling and name- calling. In subtle, and not so subtle, terms those holding different views are portrayed as opposing progress because, we are told, the government is progressive and that it is advancing a national democratic revolution (a Stalinist term) and, therefore, anti-state. Indeed we have had numerous occasions where labels like “reactionary”, “post-1994 revolutionary” and “alarmist” are hurled at those who advocate positions that are opposed to the ones advocated by the agents of power. Going further, Mokobi commits an analytical error by accusing the media of depoliticising the populace. Perhaps we need to remind all and sundry that it is this government that set up the National Youth Commission whose major achievement has been to dilute important dates like June 16 by replacing their commemorative significance with kwaito bashes and all the trappings of joyous celebrations.
It is also important to understand the media within the context of a changing political and economic environment. It is true that the most overarching interests that now control the media are those of the market. But it is also true that the market is regulated and given legitimacy by the agency of the state.
May I be counted among those who refute the theory of the powerless state that operates according to the dictates of the markets.
The ANC’s growth, employment and redistribution strategy is a conscious and well-crafted pro-market policy pursued by the party. The case of the media is, however, different. The media have been forced to obey the imperatives of the market.
Do we blame the media for adapting to an existing macro-economic environment (and the dictatorship of the market)? Or do we point our finger at those who have actively facilitated market dominance in South Africa?
The very government that Mokobi defends with his life is responsible for the hostile market environment in which we live. If we have to follow his logic, the government is also to blame for creating a commercialised media that is at the forefront of depoliticisation. It is nonsensical to argue that commercial media is closing down rational debate when there are outpourings of vitriol whenever sections of the media host robust political debate. Perhaps what emerges between the lines of Mokobi’s arguments is that debate, for it to be acceptable to the powers that be, should be conducted within prescribed frameworks that will not necessarily challenge conventional wisdoms but only seek to modify and endorse them. Will that still qualify as debate? No. Respectable debate cannot and should not be conducted according to the dictates of those in power. The duty of intellectuals is to engage every idea generated, whether it emanates from within the sphere of intellectual practice or from the corridors of power. No idea, no matter how good it sounds, should be treated as sacrosanct, lest the society cease to develop and remain captive to the whims of those wielding power. Ideas cannot be left unchallenged simply because they are expressed by popular figures who draw credence from the endorsement that they get at election time.
Popular endorsement should not be equated to possessing a carte blanche to act and say anything without expecting to be challenged. Let me conclude by saying that I hold no brief for people like Seepe.
Instead I have on several occasions expressed my disagreements with him. But being in the sphere of intellectual engagement myself I wish to be counted among those who will protect Seepe’s right to be heard without being called names. Perhaps if people like Mokobi can understand this basic tenet of intellectual engagement we will have no fear that “The democrats are reverting to undemocratic practices”.
Until then we may be justified in harbouring such a fear.
Console Tleane is an independent education analyst and freelance journalist