The dismissal of Mathatha Tsedu as editor of the Sunday Times raises questions not just about transformation of the media, but about transformation of South African society. The two are interlinked, because the media is its own social institution as much as it has an institutional role which impacts on all other social institutions. While it often appears that the media is outside or above society, it is in fact subject to a range of social forces, including political and economic forces, which shape it (and which it shapes).
Policy and regulation often account for media’s impact on a society’s political, cultural and economic institutions. The relationship between media and society is a complex dynamic that manifests itself at the level of individual media houses, advertising agencies, managers, editors, journalists and audiences. This dynamic is particularly pronounced in changing or transforming societies like South Africa.
In 2004 South Africa will mark ten years of a process of intense transformation of all institutions, including the media. While several sectors are currently engaged in producing charters – in essence blueprints on ownership restructuring and employment equity – the media is not working to such a framework, partly because there is a general belief that it has already made significant progress.
It is often pointed out that major media players like Johncom, Nail, Kagiso, HCI and Primedia have significant black ownership, and that the media landscape is thus markedly different from the pre-1994 era. It is also often argued that many media houses in both the print and broadcast sectors are managed and edited by blacks, and that blacks now form a large part of the affluent audiences demanded by advertisers. All this is true, but it is not the whole story.
What seems to be ignored is the fact that South Africa’s transformation to democracy occurred in a global context, where global media shifted from its old three-dimensional role as a political, cultural and economic institution to a new emphasis on the economic. As such, media have become ever more sensitive to interests of advertisers – especially as advertisers are now more demanding about audiences. Media owners and managers have consequently gained an upper hand over editors and journalists.
This has clearly complicated matters in South Africa, where the systematic redress of a long history of race and class oppression can be undermined by purely commercial imperatives. It is in this context that the Media Development and Diversity Agency (MDDA) operates as an alternative (i.e., a public-private partnership). Whether such an approach can succeed remains to be seen.
The Tsedu issue should be viewed in this context. A black owned publication sought commercial success and editorial excellence as a political and cultural institution shaping and safeguarding the new multi-racial and democratic South Africa. From this perspective, Tsedu’s dismissal was inevitable. Both Johncom CEO Connie Molusi and Tsedu gave plausible explanations about what happened, but both were only part of the larger picture. Equally plausible were the analyses by commentators who either dismissed or used race or class as the starting point. But again, these were partial analyses.
The issues of media transformation, and transformation of South African society, are an intricate matrix of race, class and gender. It is not just about Tsedu allegedly ‘dumbing down”, or his African agenda. Media have ‘dumbed down” globally and cost-cutting has left many international newsrooms understaffed and under-resourced. It is neither new nor unique to the Sunday Times. And what is an ‘African agenda” in a South Africa increasingly influenced by globalisation?
All these issues need to be debated in 2004 as part of the 10-year reflection on media and transformation in the post-apartheid era.
Prof. Tawana Kupe is head of media studies at Wits University’s School of Literature and Language Studies.