It must’ve been a hellish story to cover. If one were on a tight deadline, grasping for that thread all readable stories hang upon, one might’ve written that it was a gun-slinging affair—two angry factions come riding into a gamblers’ retreat, a relic built on the charitable Bantustan bylaws of the recently disgraced political system, to slug it out for the title ‘Guardian of Freedom’.
If one could’ve appealed to the over-simplifications demanded by journalism’s production schedules, the salvos and counter-salvos that flew between Cabinet and the South African National Editors Forum (SANEF) at Sun City in June 2001 might have comfortably found expression in the metaphor of the spaghetti western. But on this piece it would have been difficult to depend on anything as inevitable as journalism’s modus operandi. On this piece there was a hitch: local media’s affinity for over-simplification, and its close cousin sensationalism, were a major part of the government’s gripe.
For the hack unlucky enough to be assigned the story of the Cabinet-SANEF Indaba, it would’ve been shoddy journalistic form to ignore Deputy President Jacob Zuma’s opening address (just its contentiousness would’ve rendered it unavoidable). As the hack would not have been invited to the gathering – it was strictly and exclusively for big-wigs – he would’ve had to hunt down a copy of the address transcript. Halfway down he would’ve read: ‘In addition, there are also certain prevailing perceptions about the reporting and editorial problems that the media face. These include, amongst others: inexperienced journalists; stories that contain factual mistakes and [are] lacking in focus and purpose; poor research stories lacking depth and analysis; poor judgement of story selection; and lack of balance in the treatment of stories. This then tends to give credence to the view that the media is not really an integral part of the transformation process and the unfolding African Renaissance.”
So assuming – contrary to what government expected of him – our hack had been inspired by Zuma’s rhetoric to conduct some background research, he might’ve noticed that Cabinet’s view of the media was psychologically informed by President Mbeki’s 2000 State of the Nation address, in which, referring to the upcoming International Conference on Racism, it was famously quoted (from Berthold Brecht’s play Arturo Ui): ‘the bitch is in heat again!” That idea then could’ve given our hack the context for Cabinet’s assertion at Sun City that the media routinely presuppose the corruption of government and its members; or their claim that the media is the unmediated representative of the old guard; or the view that while a few of the white editors are ungrateful ex ANC liberals, the rest are simply ideologically unconscious.
Having come this far, the hack would’ve finally reached the more familiar territory embodied by the editors’ counter-claims. Here, although the debates were off-the-record and he wouldn’t have been able to name names, he would’ve heard the gossip at the newsroom water cooler and read the SANEF briefing document. He might’ve had a fine old time paraphrasing the editors’ grievance that the government tends towards authoritarianism, its attitude verging on the thuggish. He probably would’ve chuckled to himself conspiratorially when quoting one unidentified (black) editor’s view that government had become hell-bent on silencing the media in the ‘black planet the country is turning into.” And he would’ve likely lent towards a sombre haughtiness when citing the position that since there is no credible opposition, it is a moral imperative for the media to act as a watchdog.
Given the rancorous hostility of the antagonists, our hack would’ve by now been wondering how it was that Sun City didn’t go up in flames. He might’ve even been considering reverting to the gun-slinging angle, convinced that there’d be nothing simplistic or purposeless in the device. But then he would’ve been faced with the outcome of the Indaba: a classically pragmatic post-1990 South African solution a la Madiba, where both sides accept some of the blame and gain a deeper appreciation for the other’s perspective. Would our hack dare devalue such a thing, even if it meant running the risk of creating an impression that the media had become government’s lapdog?
It is against the background of this journalistic quandary that we approach Joel Netshitenzhe, the erudite CEO of the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS), and a key intellectual driving force behind the so-called ‘consensus’ that was achieved at Sun City. Fittingly, he is as difficult to do justice to as the 2001 Indaba.
Born in 1956 in what is now the Limpopo province, at age twenty Netshitenzhe dropped out of the University of Natal’s medical school to join the ANC in exile and undergo military training in Angola. When his training was completed in 1978 he began working as an ANC journalist for Radio Freedom, later moving onto print journalism as editor of the party journal under the nom de guerre Peter Mayibuye. In the early ’80s he read for a diploma at the Institute of Social Sciences in Moscow, and after 1994 continued his formal education with the London University (School of Oriental and African Studies) where he completed a post-graduate diploma in economic principles in 1996 and a Master of Science degree in financial economics in 1999.
This image of the writer and thinker is mirrored in the various leadership positions Netshitenzhe has held in the ANC organisational structure over the last two decades. He has been a member of the Politico-Military Council, deputy head of the Department of Information and Publicity, a member of the negotiating team at the Codesa talks, and head of communications in President Mandela’s office. Currently, in addition to his portfolio as CEO of GCIS, he is also head of the Policy Co-ordination and Advisory Services in The Presidency.
As the ANC’s chief ideologue, it goes without saying that Netshitenzhe is close to President Mbeki, whom (along with Pallo Jordan) he names as his greatest influence.
There is no coincidence in the commonly crafted neo-liberalist worldviews of the two. Older than Netshitenzhe by some fourteen years, Mbeki was the first to be educated in the developmental economic tradition at schools in Russia and the United Kingdom, having gained an undergraduate qualification at the Lenin International School in Moscow in the early ’70s and a Masters in Economics at the Centre for Development Studies at Sussex University in the ’80s. Tellingly, Mark Gevisser wrote of Mbeki in a six-part profile published in the Sunday Times in 1999: ‘He mentored his own protégé – Joel Netshitenzhe – in much the way [Oliver] Tambo had developed him.”
So – bearing in mind that the position as articulated by Netshitenzhe is the official position of the deeply contemplative inner circle – how have the antagonisms of Sun City 2001 been overcome? How does the media fit into Netshitenzhe’s carefully shaped vision for South Africa’s development?
‘Our view is that there would be consensus between government and the media that we should be guided by the ideals of our Constitution,” says Netshitenzhe, ‘which not only talks about the many first-generation freedoms and rights that we would all agree any democracy should provide, but also matters of development – the right to all kinds of social services such as health, education, housing, water, electricity and so on.”
Standing alone it’s an uncomplicated enough answer to the first question, but while the news chiefs and cabinet ministers may very well agree on broad constitutional principles, there’s an inconsistency – albeit conscious and anticipated – when Netshitenzhe delves into the evidence in the media products themselves. Leading onto the second question in his typically circuitous and multi-levelled style, he states that the media need to find the correct balance between pursuit of commercial interests and performance of the ‘natural public service that any platform that deals with matters of communication would need to provide.” He is adamant that selection of news items should take into account the inequities in South African society.
‘If you were to ask me my impression of what is reflected in our media today, and generally this might vary from one media house to another and from one journalist to another, I would say there is a tendency to concentrate on the immediate sensational and exciting issues that are meant to constitute news, and to define that news mainly from the perspective of the middle and upper classes. There’s a tendency to treat the poor mainly as objects of curiosity, to assume a priori that the stories about how their lives are improving, or the difficulties that they face, are boring.
‘My own view, as well stated in the debate on the public interest and national interest, is that those stories are not necessarily boring. It depends on whether we have media that is interested intimately in the conditions of the poorest of the poor, and therefore finds interesting angles for treating those issues.”
Challenged on the contradiction, Netshitenzhe remains firm on shaping the apparent termination of hostilities between the media and government as a consensus. He is confident that both parties are agreed on the role the media can play in South Africa’s development, even though they approach the problem from different angles.
Unmistakably, for this veritable ‘black pope’ of national reconciliation, reality is a matter of perspectives. Netshitenzhe revels in consensus politics because the political and economic elites and power blocs in the country, antagonistic as they are, orchestrate a top down consensual approach. Hence his Jesuitical deference: divergent and conflicting interests can be charted and ‘rainbowed’ to give new dynamism to the growth of all sectors of South African society. Reminiscent of the Codesa talks at which he was a key player, his approach is decidedly utilitarian – although, on a purely literal level, he ultimately fails to substantiate his consensus-isms.
Looking at the world from the seventh floor of the GCIS offices in downtown Pretoria, it certainly wouldn’t serve any purpose to admit to the depth of the ideological clash between the government’s conception of development communications and the private media’s commercial imperatives – or, for that matter, the latter’s institutional commitment to watchdog journalism. One might assume that this second dichotomy would be exposed in its harshest light on the issue of corruption (along with AIDS and Zimbabwe, a primary definer of South Africa’s news agenda), but here again Netshitenzhe recasts the conflict in the mould of a common national agenda.
In terms of GCIS’s mandate, Netshitenzhe refers to his litany of ‘ten commandments’ which decree, amongst others, the following: government work is essentially a public activity; political principals are the main communicators; everyone in government is a communicator; communication structures do not determine policy; direct communication is the most effective form of communication. Inherent in these directives is the CEO’s categorical imperative that politicians should ‘always tell the truth or just keep quiet.”
And what if they don’t? What if a government member is shown by the media not to have ‘told the truth’, revealing in the event his or her shortsightedness at not having ‘kept quiet’?
Netshitenzhe’s response is Clintonian; he shifts the ground from which he launches his discursive missiles. Drawing on the objectives of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) and the goals of the developmental state, he insists that corruption is an enemy of development. He consequently emphasises that it is in the interests of the government that corruption is exposed, to which end it has established an anti-corruption forum and passed legislation. Significantly, it is only after these points are underscored that he addresses the media’s responsibilities.
Moving from the particular to the general, Netshitenzhe first suggests that the media has a tendency to conflate the politician’s involvement in business with the spouse’s role as an independent agent. He then questions the media’s grasp of the primacy of the presumption of innocence until guilt is proven, and interrogates the assumption that corruption is a uniquely government affair. Finally, he holds a pin to the fourth estate’s balloon by referring to the failure of government to capitalise on the fact that almost 80 percent of corruption cases are unearthed by the government and somehow leaked to the press (naturally, he would prefer that officialdom’s anti-corruption apparatus be allowed a chance to kick in before the public gets to know).
Treading the fine line between coming across as a hard-line anti-corruption activist and remaining faithful to his developmental thesis, Netshitenzhe concludes: ‘dealing with corruption requires a lot dexterity on our part.” The admission is a precursor to a shift back into the broad conceptual realm, an abode the communication chief manifestly favours. His explanation of the GCIS’s function at the highest levels is a supreme illustration of the sophistication of his thought:
‘The key to understanding the role of this agency is that its starting point is the spirit of South Africa’s constitution and Bill of Rights, which guarantees freedom of expression, freedom of association and the right of access of information. Without information there can be no popular participation, and consequently there can be no lasting legitimacy. Instead powerful interest groups will succeed in determining the national agenda, and real freedom will become a pipedream for the majority. It is fundamental, therefore, that the ANC-led government reaches the majority of South Africa’s populace through a closely coordinated strategy that takes as part of its burden the extension of the infrastructure to them.”
In overseeing this vision, Netshitenzhe maintains lifeblood links with the Cabinet and strives to remain close to the day-to-day communications that take place at the national departmental and provincial levels. He reports directly to Dr Essop Pahad, Minister in The Presidency, and perhaps has the further misfortune that he is totally reliant on the communicative abilities of his Cabinet colleagues. But while some visibly lack his refined intellect and rarefied education, Netshitenzhe rejects any insinuation that his burden is Sisyphean. For him the government communicative act is a collective responsibility, although he will concede that ‘yes, some fail to pay attention to simple things like calling back journalists.”
Netshitenzhe’s goal of ‘information for the needy’ has to adhere to government’s neo-liberal macroeconomics choices, and he cannot run against the rightist-leaning tendencies of the Growth Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy. In this mix, transformation of the media is proving to be an arduously slow process. There are a multitude of objectives to be achieved, including changing the composition of the newsrooms and a realignment of media ownership structures across the board – a challenge that throws up the equally thorny issue of empowerment and advancement of black middle class interests. Then there is the so-called lower level Media Development and Diversity Agency (MDDA) initiative, which is under increasing pressure to deliver on the promise of sustainable community media. (On the public broadcaster, Netshitenzhe adopts a sensibly silent line).
The holy grail of transformation will not happen, according to Netshitenzhe, within the narrow model of western consumerism. What he is after is a fundamental change in the material conditions of the majority, which cannot be achieved without knowledge workers recognising their responsibility to shift the mind-set of the nation. ‘If there were a possibility anywhere in the world to build a society that could combine the creation of wealth, drive, ambition, and all those things that capitalism implies, with alleviation of poverty and a correction of inequities, then that society is South Africa,” he says.
Netshitenzhe is not a bully; he is unlikely to use a stick and carrot approach to reconcile his ten commandments of development communication with watchdog journalism and media’s commercial imperative. He is a master of influence through disarming humility, rigorous analysis and strategic win-win nationalism. In the final analysis, Netshitenzhe is not simply the chief ‘spin doctor of the government’, as our newspapers so fondly label him. As the head of the policy unit in The Presidency, he is also the architect of South Africa’s macro-economic future. Mbeki has mandated him with developing a national vision for the year 2014, similar in conception to the intricate and far-reaching initiatives that launched the successful Scandinavian social democracies. In this context, some may say key cabinet ministers like Trevor Manuel, Jeff Radebe and Alec Irwin sing from Netshitenzhe’s songbook.
Co-author Lumumba Stanislavs-Kaw is a Sudanese exile. He is an ex McKinsey consultant, holds degrees in economics, law and journalism, and was Oxford Union Overseas Scholar at Merton College. He has written extensively for the Financial Times, is the author of The Future of Financial Markets in Africa, and is currently writing a book on Nepad.