If history is the future of our past, one wonders how the textbooks of tomorrow will reflect the government and politics of 2001.
Who will write our history? Who will claim ownership of it? Too many questions, the answers to which will become available only to our children. The learners of tomorrow will get the chance to decide whose accounts of the goings-on are fact or fiction.
Seven years after the demise of apart-heid, it appears that the liberators have replaced the oppressors as the new villains.
The liberal flow of information and relaxed media laws, in an era where transparency is the new buzzword, allow for the democratically elected government to be placed under constant scrutiny. That is the way it should be.
Draconian media laws helped the previous government to cover up its brutal past until after 1994, when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission began listening to the shocking confessions of apartheid killers and their masters.
It can be accepted that this newfound openness and, perhaps, largely liberal media, in a contemporary context, allows for a skewed, often harsh analysis of government and politics. Still the populace expect higher moral qualities from its leaders than its predecessors who fought to perpetuate an immoral system.
God forbid that the rewritten chapters of history record moral bankruptcy, myopic vision and corruption from the young lions.
Today, apartheid atrocities have been consigned to the scrapheap, not even making it into the syllabi in textbooks and curricula. Why?
Unsurprisingly, it is not the good – and there is a sufficient amount of this – that the government has done that has made headlines.
Not to its credit as well, it has become the norm for the government to hurl labels of racism at its accusers, be they in the media or any other part of society. Such charges are denied vehemently by publishers and the public alike.
Take the missiles hurled at President Thabo Mbeki, who must rank as one of the most vilified heads of state in the world. Only Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe receives worse treatment in the media. Mbeki’s dubious remarks on HIV/Aids, his wimpish behaviour toward Mugabe and defiant attitude in the face of the arms deal and Tony Yengeni’s alleged complicity in it make him the perfect target for criticism.
The poorly managed controversies which have dominated the fabric of South African politics since Mbeki assumed office have often blighted the key education, poverty and racism issues that affect the country. Seven years after the transition from racist to democratic rule, the legacies of apartheid are ingrained in society.
Blacks have been welcomed into corporate South Africa as minority partners. Some have made it into the big league, but the “better life for all” promised by Nelson Mandela, Mbeki and their canvassing comrades prior to the 1994 election ring out in 2001 as jaded slogans.
Despite widespread protests by the media over the Human Rights Commission’s attempts at unearthing racism in the profession, racism is alive and permeates all sectors of society.
Can one expect racism to be eradicated in less than a decade? The media has not been immune from the apartheid legacy, and transformation is painfully slow.
Print media publishers may be swift to point out the black trophy editors they have in their stable. What is not revealed is that white men and women control the layer of middle management in most media houses. A glance at the major print media houses in South Africa would easily support this claim.
Government claims that the media is liberal in orientation and racist needs to be reassessed, especially since the HRC media probe ended up being a damp squib.
Just as one would struggle to find anyone who supported the National Party in the old days, one would also struggle to find a journalist who was an advocate of apartheid.
One wonders what our history textbooks of the future will make of the Mbeki plot allegations and the president’s complex dossier of problems, and his relationship with the media. Indeed, the textbooks in 2010 will go a long way towards revealing how much of today’s politics was reality and how much fable.
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– The Teacher/M&G Media, Johannesburg, June 2001.