Journalists are, perhaps justifiably, notorious for over-estimating their own importance. Nonetheless, we believe that the meeting this weekend between editors and the Cabinet is of great significance to our attempts to develop a healthy and resilient democracy.
There are corrections that need to be made on both sides if the media and government are to coexist in the creative tension that characterises working democracies.
None of us should imagine whether we are journalists, politicians or government officials that we have a monopoly on the truth or on identifying what is in the best interests of South Africa and its people. We differ, sometimes basically yes and we can and should argue the relative merits of our views. To the extent that we freely attribute legitimacy to another person’s view that differs from our own, we are accepting that person’s independence from us and his or her right to that independence. That habit of mind and politics is a requirement of democracy.
But we enter dangerous territory when any of us claims his or her view as the only true or legitimate standpoint. Matters become more perilous when those given to claiming legitimacy for only their own views set about institutionalising their standpoints in hegemonic or immutable fashion on newspapers as much as in government.
Regrettably, the tradition in which many members of the Affrican National Congress learnt their politics holds that any views inconsistent with its circular logic are illegitimate. There are some in the ANC who have come to understand how dangerous that kind of thinking is for our democracy. But, unfortunately, there are at least as many in the ANC who have not and they are well-represented in government. These people and there will be some of them at Saturday’s meeting in the Pilanesberg need now to concede legitimacy to views that differ from their own. They need also to grant those holding different views the moral right to express them as loudly as the latter may wish. Moreover, the a-democratic tendency in the ANC and government should understand that disagreement is a measure of the independence of mind on which democracy depends; it is not a measure of malice.
But more than this will be at issue at the weekend indaba between editors and the Cabinet. All levels of the government’s communications system and of the media face huge skills deficits. The quality of information that government passes on is, as a result, often poor or outdated by the time it is made available. Likewise, the quality of the dissemination of this information by the media to the public is also very often wanting. Both face massive tasks upgrading skills within their own ranks.
A democratic flow of information and opinion in our society is likely to depend at least as much on improving skills levels in government communications and the media as on the absorption of democratic principles by those in power.
Good management
It is hard not to see this week’s UN General Assembly Special Session meeting as a particularly large and expensive gathering of middle management. The similarities are overwhelming: lots of people with long titles, much talk and self-congratulation; sensitive egos; and persistent turf wars. Not to mention an obsession with the smaller things concern over excessive use of toilet paper, say when the company faces a crisis that could bankrupt it. Or rather, in this case, a concern over whether homosexuals should be included in discussion on an epidemic which is wreaking havoc around the world.
The noise coming from New York also displays middle management habits, such as an overwhelming obsession with consensus and an aversion to standing out, and a horror of spelling out exactly how the problem can be remedied.
The spectacle of long-winded meetings is a depressing experience. But it is even worse when those attending are, in fact, the most senior management. For that is what the UN is a gathering of world leaders.
The behaviour of those at the UN meeting contrasts with the altogether more effective conduct of private enterprise in dealing with the Aids pandemic. Nowhere is this decisive response more evident than here in South Africa.
Coca-Cola, MTV Network International, Anglogold, De Beers and Eskom are among the companies taking proactive action on HIV. Many have introduced, or are planning to introduce, schemes to manage HIV among their workforces and to help control the epidemic among their customers. Such company schemes include the provision of anti-retroviral drugs those contentious, powerful and toxic cocktails that nonetheless can return people with full-blown Aids back to relative health.
But there also appears to be the tendency of management in a panic to throw money at a problem and hope that it will somehow engender a solution. To a degree it can, by providing the resources. But as aid programmes across the world have shown repeatedly, lack of focus combined with bad management can cause as much havoc as the problem that is being treated. Good intentions need good management to implement them.
The governments and leaders so busily discussing and negotiating in New York seem to have failed to remember that it is the shareholders their citizens to whom they are responsible.
Let us hope that some hard decision-making occurred behind the scenes. Otherwise, shareholder activism will rear its head again, as it has in the campaign for affordable access to medicines.
@Verbatim
“I find it also very mischievous that some circles are also trying to politicise an otherwise ordinary process of buying a vehicle.” Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota replying to questions during a Parliamentary Press Gallery Association meeting about media reports that defence force chief General Siphiwe Nyanda bought two new Mercedes-Benz cars at discounted rates via a company linked to the government’s arms deal
“Their only crime was to peacefully reoccupy land stolen from them by the apartheid regime. The community has been waiting patiently for five years for the restitution of land stolen from them in 1966.” Part of a joint statement issued by two National Land Committee affiliates (the Mpumalanga Labour Tenants’ Committee and the Free State Farming Community), commenting on the Vlakfontein crisis
“Everybody is impatient. Everybody is equal. We will not let opportunistic communities jump the queue. We are going to do this [the land-reform process] the right way.” Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Thoko Didiza’s spokesman Moses Mushi on the Vlakfontein crisis
“Remember, learnerships provide the opportunity for stone-throwers to become stone-cutters and jewellers, and for warmongers to become peace-brokers.” Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana at the launch of a “learnership programme” designed to replace apprenticeships
“I know that the allowances I am launching today are modest… You might not afford the three Cs right now (cash, cellphone and car) right now but when you do, you’ll know you’ve earned them.” Mdladlana
“People must look at what we’re doing in South Africa, not their perception of what they think we’re doing. I don’t think, on the basis of facts, that an accusation like that can be sustained.” President Thabo Mbeki, on a visit to the US, on allegations that he has not done enough to address the spread of Aids in South Africa