Hat’s off to a job well done by our journos. They brought us the buzz about the local elections and gave us good insight into the significance of the event across the entire nation.
Pity that one can’t say the same about the political parties who insulted voters with rhetorical generalities that took us not an inch deeper in our democracy.
It’s thanks to our media’s proactiveness, not the parties, that the election doesn’t belong to these would-be professionals who purport to represent our interests (in exchange for a pretty good salary).
For example, in the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s live-broadcast ”town hall” meetings, it was clear that ordinary people were calling the shots. Many politicians dodged and weaved; others let loose a barrage of bravado. But they were all on the defensive.
The parties also disappointed in terms of being a credible check against each other. But it was to the media’s credit that comprehensive coverage of grassroots views, combined with reader panels such as that of The Star, meant that the salesmen had to account.
By legitimising — and emboldening — public complaints against the ruling party, the general news coverage also presented politicians in their ”proper” places. All over were reports of pissed-off poor people, the generally little-noticed masses.
So it was that we heard loud and clear from the millions whose lives have yet to be touched by water-borne sewerage or a Reconstruction and Development Programme house (let alone a black economic empowerment deal).
Not that the media picture is of helpless objects of charity. On the contrary, the mood conveyed was one of the grassroots’ continued sense of historic entitlement and their justified expectation that the authorities should have achieved more to improve their lives.
Without the kind of coverage we got, the picture would have been rather different. For example, if our journalists had have been political cynics or sycophants, rather different stories and spins would have emerged.
Even municipalities with some record of delivery would have learnt from looking at the media that resting on laurels is not sustainable politics. Popular gratitude for things done previously can easily pall in the shadow of what has still to be done.
We should commend the coverage for its clarity in underlining that:
- Councils, and parties, are accountable only to voters — thereby pushing aside any acceptability of cronyism or woolly ideas that municipalities are apolitical entities that act out of a sense of pure benevolence.
- Local politics is about performance and service, and thence political programme and implementation capacity, and that this is the appropriate benchmark for electoral assessment.
If there was one theme thus mirrored back to South Africa by the quality of the coverage, it was that the politicians are being judged less and less on their old struggle history, and rather on their more recent performance on ”delivery”.
The reports showed that there was little place for sentimentalism in this poll — it was about the naked material interests of voters. And it is precisely on this issue, however, that the media can also be found lacking in how they told the election story.
In particular, coverage uncritically kept to a very narrow focus on the government’s responsibility to ”deliver”, without interrogating any role for communities themselves, either as individuals or as civil bodies. The question of business’s responsibility was even further off the radar.
Thus, a limited paradigm of politics was underlined. It assumed that the role of citizens is to pick from a political supermarket of pre-given (and narrowly defined) options, on the basis of broad promises, and then wait five years for a chance to choose again. That’s a pretty impoverished rendition of democracy.
What would have been welcome would have been coverage that incorporated a broader perspective on local governance:
- For example, stories about ongoing involvement by the public in the decision-making affairs of their councils in between elections. There were many reports of people asking why politicians have only been visiting them now; no reports challenging the same citizens as to why they themselves hadn’t mobilised to demand such attention.
- Coverage that raises the possibilities — for example — of church groups partnering with a council to actually fix the roads in Transkei area, instead of the issue being presented as an exclusive affair of the (hopelessly undercapacitated) council and vain hopes that distant Pretoria might wave a wand.
- Articles about case studies of success stories in delivery: What strategies have actually worked? And stories about the single-issue IT entrepreneurs who can make an enormous boost to municipalities by promoting citywide Wi-Fi and free local telephony networks?
These gaps in the coverage show a limited political imagination in the media. Journalists understood the fundamental rationale of a poll, but forgot that elections, while necessary, are also insufficient condition of democracy.
Compounding these shortcomings, there has also been too little forward focus in the coverage.
Of course, it would have been obvious to read that the African National Congress will make political capital of its victories. Likewise, any pundit can predict that there will be reaffirmations of good intentions, some shuffling of personalities, some new blood and new enthusiasm.
But what otherwise will be different after the poll? Mostly, the general problems in our towns will persist and, generally, the same, slow solutions will be applied.
Isn’t there, then, a role that the media could have played in pointing to the post-election period? Something that would continue the election momentum in a meaningful way?
For example, what about announcing a platform for really creative thinking about solutions for our cities? And alerting the new incumbents that the public eye will continue watching them through a media microscope. These are ideal opportunities for post-poll focus.
But will the media take forward the spirit of the elections, stimulating local debates and keeping councils on their toes?
Or does the ”good shot” of coverage to date amount to being the same as our ”best”, and with the election over it’ll be back to business as usual?