/ 7 January 2004

Uncovering two nations

“The free and unrestricted flow of information is vital to democracy, and a free and representative media is an essential component of a democratic society.

‘The right to receive full and accurate information and opinion is essential in ensuring the democratic functioning of society.

‘The right to publish, broadcast or otherwise distribute information and opinion is similarly an essential right.”

So declared a Media Charter adopted by the African National Congress (ANC) two yeas before South Africa’s first democratic elections. Many will raise the question: how committed is the ANC of today to these fundamental principles, and if it is, how long will it continue to defend them?

These questions are provoked not so much by anything the ANC has said or done, but seem to be informed by deep-seated visceral doubts that any governing party can be trusted to defend the freedom of the media. The experience of increasing media repression, regrettably too often abetted by the media owners themselves, during the second half of the twentieth century has made the average South African editor jittery about the governing party’s intentions.

But the challenge of recasting South African media so that it becomes more representative, freer and more informative has racial, class and gender dimensions which tend to go unrecognised in the ongoing debate about the role and place of the media. The ANC, like other political parties, has made its views on these matters public and has, quite correctly, insisted that these three dimensions not be excluded from public discourse.

Not surprisingly, those parties who feel comfortable with the media environment as it is try to construe this as state interference. But the decibel level at which they screech their protestations does not make them any more convincing.

The birth of South African democracy has been characterised by a number of ironies, among them, the changing face of its media. During the last decade of mass struggles that culminated in the democratic elections of April 1994, a host of publications, journals and newspapers had come into existence. Funded in the main from sources outside South Africa, these alternative media lent a diversity that has since radically declined.

In February 1990, there were at least four major alternative weeklies – Weekly Mail, New Nation, South, and UmAfrika – in addition to a number of smaller community newspapers published in Cape Town, Oudtshoorn, Namaqualand, the Free State and Natal. The ANC augmented these with its own media – the monthly magazine Mayibuye, irregularly published tabloid news-sheets, and regional newsletters, of which there were 11 by the time of the 1994 elections.

External funding has since dried up and many of these publications have closed down. The new-found willingness of the mainstream media to employ, with highly remunerative salary packages, the talents of those whom it had considered “controversial” journalists during the latter days of apartheid also played havoc with their ability to survive. Today only the Weekly Mail survives as the Mail & Guardian, while UmAfrika limps along. Mayibuye no longer exists and ANC regional newsletters appear only at election time.

The collapse of the alternative media has consolidated the mainstream media corporations’ dominance over the dissemination of printed news. The print media corporations complain about declining sales and some have responded by resorting to the practice of minimalisation – the reduction of virtually all news items into what would correspond to a television sound byte. This has impoverished what were in many instances very informative papers.

The second great irony is that it is the democratic state and its institutions that have contributed most to the emancipation of South Africa’s airwaves, giving the lie to the much-touted dogma that it is the private sector, left to its own devices, that can best bring about such transformation. One has often encountered the argument that free market principles should apply in the field of broadcasting. During a visit to the USA in 1995 I visited both the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the State Department. On both occasions I was lectured in the most dogmatic fashion about the eternal virtues of free market principles. Had South Africa followed such prescriptions, we would be telling a very different story today.

While the transformation of the SABC is proceeding, the influence of the culture of the ancien regime is readily evident in both the quality and content of programming. This is most evident in news coverage. As someone who speaks and understands three of the languages used by the SABC newsroom, I am often struck by what is included in “Xhosa News” (rather than News in Xhosa) but omitted from “English News”. It suggests remnants of a Bantustan mindset that assumes that matters of interest to Xhosa-speakers could not possibly interest English-speakers and vice-versa.

Apartheid was universally condemned as a brutal and undemocratic system of minority domination. What is too often left unsaid is that it was also a system of totalitarian political control and repression that blighted every facet of the lives of our people. Systems like apartheid have invariably sought to employ modern communications as an instrument of manipulation and control over the citizen, while denying ordinary people both the right and the means of communicating with each other independently of the institutions of the state.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings and the current media spat around spies who infiltrated the democratric movement have made the South African public aware of the systematic and widespread interception of the private communications of South African citizens and institutions during the days of the apartheid regime. What is more is that such abuse was not a temporary aberration but was intrinsic to that system. The corollary of this intrusion into the private lives of our people was the scandalous denial of access to modern communications to millions of our people in the rural areas, the so-called homelands and in the urban townships.

The majority of the world’s population are not yet citizens of Marshall McLuhan’s ‘global village’. They live in common and garden villages that have been familiar throughout the world for the greater part of the history of humanity. That is specifically true of the people of Africa; it is true of the overwhelming majority of South Africans too.

The poor of Africa only make news when some terrible disaster – famine, floods, pestilence or war – befalls them. The same, regrettably, also applies to the black poor of our country, who tend to be projected solely as victims of misgovernment, the HIV/Aids pandemic, or as starvelings waiting for food parcels in unending queues. Consequently, the rest of South Africa has a view of the rural poor as distorted as those in developed societies have of the third world.

These vast disparities between our various provinces and communities are not a matter that can complacently be accepted as a given. They are not differences ordained by the natural order, let alone by some supernatural power. They are rather the results of deliberate policies pursued with a fanatical determination over a number of decades, precisely to produce a society based on institutionalised inequality and discrimination.

But thanks to the arrival of democracy, we are beginning to see the emergence of new patterns of ownership. The airwaves, once the monopoly of state-owned broadcasters, can now truly be said to be a national asset to which all South Africans enjoy greater access. The privately owned free-to-air television channel was a welcome devolutionary step. The proliferation of private sector and community radio stations has totally changed the broadcast environment.

Print media has also undergone interesting changes of ownership since 1994. Whereas no blacks controlled a major media corporation before then, today Times Media Ltd is controlled by Johnnic Communications, a black-led corporation with interests in publishing and distribution. The unbundling of the former Argus group has also resulted in black control of the Sowetan.

The devolution we have seen in broadcasting has had the salutary effect of diversifying our electronic media and thus empowering many communities and people who have hitherto been voiceless. Though less impressive, the diversity in the ownership of the print media has created opportunities where none existed before.

But are we in a position to say that South Africa is now better served by the media? Can we say that our public is now better informed? The answer to these question is ‘yes’ and ‘no’.

Today our media does not feel constrained to project the viewpoint of the party in government. There are no statutory prohibitions against what it may or may not publish, other than the provisions of the Official Secrets Act. The media has been given free access to all law-making bodies, to the committees and commissions of parliament and every provincial legislature. Exclusion is the exception, no longer the rule.

Yet, as mentioned, the racial, gender, class and regional biases remain. With an alarming complacency and often baseless sense of self-righteousness, the mainstream media flatly refused to participate in the critical examination of the role they played during the apartheid years when invited to do so by the TRC. Shielding behind the honourable role played by a minority of editors and journalists, the media adopted the collective stance that they were faultless and in the face of facts to the contrary, claimed they had always opposed apartheid.

Moreover, the tardiness that has attended the creation of the Media Development and Diversity Agency (MDDA) should be cause for embarrassment and is probably rooted in such attitudes. Worse yet, the MDDA has yet to assist a single media enterprise to its feet!

The imperatives of change in South African media are not nourished by the rhetoric of political correctness, but more importantly by the change’s intrinsic value. If South Africa is to become a success story, then it is imperative that our people are well informed and can communicate easily among themselves and with the rest of the world.

South Africa is a country of paradox, which contains a developed and an underdeveloped nation within its borders. This is one of the severest legacies of apartheid and constitutes the specific challenge that we must rise to.

In trying to elaborate a new vision for South African media, I want to introduce the concept of the ‘public interest” into our discourse. By invoking this concept I think we can better explore whether and how free market competition can enhance the delivery of quality media to all our people.