/ 18 February 2004

Media manufacturing the ‘democracy decade’

The media play a major part in constructing the meaning of 2004 as ”10 years of freedom”. They take what in many respects is an arbitrary figure, and canonise the period into a decimalised sacred cow of intrinsic significance.

If media representation of the occasion is a given, the forms this takes are not. Thus, the 10-year motif invites comparisons — but with what? Is it most meaningful to compare 2004 to 1994 — that is, for us to take stock of what has happened over these 10 years — or ought this whole decade be compared to the ”eina” of the Eighties?

Alternatively, it may make more sense to measure the post-apartheid period against apartheid as a whole — or indeed against several centuries of white domination.

Another dimension to consider is whether to assess the present not only against the past, but in regard to where we want to be 10 years hence. On what kind of trajectory has the past put us? Where will the ”no-change” in policies, as enunciated recently by President Thabo Mbeki, deposit us in 2014?

From a media point of view, it is fascinating to tackle all these questions.

The long view: Comparing the past decade with its prehistory

The mega-difference is in media freedom. We have it now; no one ever had it before. This is no small change, because the pattern of suppression goes back a long way.

Our first media workers — story-tellers using rock face — were rudely interrupted, routed and eradicated. Fast forward to Thomas Pringle and friends, seeing their newspaper summarily shut down by Lord Charles Somerset in the 1820s.

Jump another century to the valiant attempts by Sol Plaatje and HDD Tyamzashe, struggling against all the odds to publish the voices of the beleaguered black middle and working classes respectively.

Add another 50 years, and the suppression intensifies. Gone are The Guardian newspaper and its successors; in the ensuing generation, The Voice, The World and The Post will also be silenced. Drum magazine feels the toll and its famous writers disperse.

Not content with eliminating the media of dissent, the government embarks on a multimillion-rand disinformation campaign and secretly sets up The Citizen. Photojournalist Peter Magubane gets detained for 586 days; a decade later, editor Zwelakhe Sisulu sits in prison for 251 days.

Press freedom is described in 1979 by Sunday Times editor Joel Merwis as having ”its left leg in plaster, its right arm in a sling, a patch over the left eye, deafness in the right ear, a sprained ankle and a number of teeth knocked out”.

Come the 1980s, the badly maimed media are brutally raped and left for dead. In their place, PW Botha wags his fingers on the screen of his private fiefdom, the South African Broadcast Corporation (SABC).

But there is a counter-movement. Courageous white editors such as Alistair Sparks, Donald Woods and Tony Heard refuse to be cowed. The resistance media grow alongside the United Democratic Front. The Weekly Mail, New Nation, Vrye Weekblad and South expose the truth about death squads and Inkatha-police collaboration in political violence.

The targets of the alternative media include not only the government, but the pusillanimous media mainstream. Their journalism is a risky business, reserved for the brave.

And finally, it is 1994 and freedom for the media. The point of this long view of history? It’s this: we can only really appreciate today if we recall how media freedom was trampled in the past.

Transitions: Comparing 2004 with 1994

In early 1994, the papers are full of panic stories about whites stockpiling provisions ahead of the elections. There is scant media support for the African National Congress. But a deal between the ANC and the National Party (NP) means the SABC is not to be a tool of political abuse. If the NP agrees to loose its hold before elections, the ANC promises not to control the broadcaster after. The stakes are high because of the SABC’s reach. There are just three non-SABC stations: 702, Bop and Radio Ciskei.

Newspaper editors are white, except for those on the ”black media” — Sowetan‘s Aggrey Klaaste and City Press‘s Khulu Sibiya. Media owners are white men linked to mining or financial capital. Journalists of all colours and confessions are routinely threatened by police and political activists.

The alternative press continues to stand for non-racialism and ”the struggle”, not knowing that its foreign funding is about to run fatally dry, readers will flee from politics, and that most titles will fold. It hopes the new government will come to its financial rescue, enabling it to continue as part of the tide that becomes the new mainstream.

As the democracy years roll on, the media scene turns upside down. Media freedom has been specifically enshrined in the Constitution, as has the right to information. After some years, new laws give access to official and corporate information.

Mainstream newspapers are hauled over the coals before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for their generally feeble record under apartheid. Together with the SABC, they are found to have contributed to the climate in which gross violations of human rights could occur.

Two years later, the Human Rights Commission gets stuck into residual racism in media content and staffing. The process polarises journalists, but also provokes a pick-up the pace of transformation.

Journalists resist siren calls to be ”patriotic” and hold fast to a watchdog stance against the first democratically elected government. Reporters push back the boundaries of defamation cases, but some start to ignore minor laws and, in time, others take to trashing major journalistic ethics.

Although the ANC doesn’t acknowledge it, most print media become broadly sympathetic to the party’s overall project — especially the economic policies. The SABC is similarly sympathetic, but is still far from being an ANC organ. In fact, the broadcaster’s biggest problem is not political control, but how to provide equitably for all language groups on a budget that depends on attracting advertisers.

There are an almost unimagined number of new broadcasters — including more than 100 community and campus stations. Privatised and greenfields commercial radio broadcasters appeal to wide audiences and give the SABC a real run for its money. As does e.tv.

An independent regulator survives some scandals to administer successfully licences and enforce local content quotas. There is the advent of the web and its many media outlets. Some of us are getting spoilt for choice, even if the quality of information could be a lot better.

The alternative press is dead, but there finally is in place a statutory funding agency for grassroots voices — the Media Development and Diversity Agency. Many former ”alternative journalists” are movers in the mainstream. Newspaper ownership now incorporates foreign capital, most prominently in the form of Sir Anthony O’Reilly’s Independent Newspapers, but also Trevor Ncube’s Mail & Guardian and Nduka Obaigbena’s ThisDay.

A mix of narrow- and broad-based black proprietors has come into being, owning Johncom (publishers of the Sunday Times and Business Day) and much of the commercial broadcasting sector. Wealth remains, however, largely among whites and advertising is still placed by white-staffed agencies. As a result, most media institutions stick with upmarket audiences, although some strides are belatedly made with tailored newspapers at the working-class level.

Editors remain mainly white men, but Africans and coloured males head up influential titles. Formerly banned journalists such as Joe Thloloe and Mathatha Tsedu are respected leaders. A non-racial body, the South African National Editors Forum, plays an important role.

Media freedom is now taken for granted, notwithstanding regular government-editor spats about subpoenas requiring journalists to testify in courts and before commissions. The big issue is not state-media relations, however, but how business imperatives impact on content, staffing, cross-ownership and foreign ownership.

Summing up the decade, it’s plausible to state that the media have been one of the most irreversibly changed sectors of society since the end of apartheid. More may have been expected at the outset, perhaps, but no one should underestimate the profound difference over the period.

Looking forward 10 years

We have, indeed, ”come a long way, baby”. The retrospective gaze just covered explains why there is no going back.

For the future, there are ”no policy changes”. And even if there were, would this fractious society ever surrender media freedom to state subservience? But ”no policy changes” also signals, however, the persistence of an economic set-up that keeps most media aiming at the upper markets, and most poor communities ill-served.

Notwithstanding political and economic continuities, however, there will be other changes.

As Seattle journalist Pete Rinearson has remarked: ”We tend to overestimate what will happen in two years, but underestimate the changes in 10.” This observation allows me to predict the firm rule of King Convergence by 2014.

In the emerging global information economy, media will be increasingly important to everyone’s lives. There will be millions more messages being made and mass-distributed via wires and airwaves, papers and plastics.

Satellites, cellphones, interactive TV decoders and encoders will power the proliferation. Internet protocols will see telephony and media come together as both services and industries. The total linked network could also extend to houses, cars and clothing. Who knows — will a Korean construction consortium own South Africa’s traditional media businesses?

Underlying technological convergence will add impetus to media freedom and growth, and make possible a diversity of journalism in many languages and life experiences. On the other hand, more media could overshadow journalism with massive increases in entertainment and commercial content.

And on their own, the anticipated technological changes will not necessarily translate into further transformation of the class, gender, race and urban dimensions of South Africa’s media.

Yet, the next decade also offers an opportunity to reconstruct predictions about its shape and meaning. And just as we’re now served up representations of the past 10 years, so the significance of what’s to come will be manufactured by the media as we make the history happen. Just as long as we’re aware of it…

E-mail Guy Berger directly if you have a question about this article.

Guy Berger is head of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University and deputy chair of the South African National Editors Forum (Sanef). He was recently nominated for the World Technology Awards.