The South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) turned 10 last week — on October 19, a noteworthy date that is also the anniversary of the banning of two national newspapers in 1977.
What makes this significant is that Sanef is an amazing, even perplexing, phenomenon. Like the proverbial bumblebee, the body ought not to be aloft. It’s fractious, flung-together, under-resourced and over-demanded.
It includes strong-minded media leaders as diverse as Mathatha Tsedu, Raymond Louw and Snuki Zikalala. Among its 200 or so members, you’ll find the editors of the tabloid Sunday World, the highbrow Sunday Independent, the semi-academic Agenda and the Reader’s Digest.
There are editorial executives from companies that are bitter rivals, the South African Broadcasting Corporation and its broadcast competitors, upstart internet editors … even some journalism professors. It’s a veritable zoo of sorts — but incredibly it hangs together.
Some editor members hardly show their faces — notably from the Star, Business Day, the Financial Mail and Beeld. But most Sanef-ites somehow make time to chip in, even though all are over-committed in full-time media-related jobs.
What’s also interesting about Sanef longevity is that it arises from a media industry where race can still wreak havoc on human relations.
SABC editor-in-chief Dali Mpofu (not a Sanef member) only last week blasted other media as ”black-haters” assisted by ”black surrogates”. This is certainly wrong if it refers to Sanef people such as Sowetan‘s Thabo Leshilo and the Mail & Guardian‘s Ferial Haffajee (critics of Mpofu’s stand on the ”blacklisting” report).
But indeed Sanef over the years has had to deal with sensitive racial dynamics. When the body was formed in 1996, it was a fragile marriage of the mainly white Conference of Editors and the Black Editors’ Forum. Almost immediately, the new chairperson, Thami Mazwai, resigned in protest against what he said was white inertia in the organisation.
Sanef kept going, but race recurred with a near-fatal vengeance during the Human Rights Commission hearings into racism in the media. There, African editors felt driven to speak separately from Sanef about their continuing frustrations.
That the forum survived was due primarily to the role of two leaders — Mathatha Tsedu (then at the Star) and Joe Thloloe (then at e.tv).
Ironically, Tsedu (from a black consciousness outlook) and Thloloe (from a Pan Africanist Congress background) were the people who built Sanef as a non-racial editors’ body. They educated and opened up many white counterparts along the way.
Thloloe’s style was patient persuasion borne of years of organisational experience in the Union of Black Journalists (banned in 1977), and the subsequent Writers’ Association of South Africa.
By contrast, Tsedu pulled no punches. I recall him once hammering a white member for pronouncing Mbeki as ”Mabeki”. He also became famous in Sanef for head-to-heads with white editor Raymond Louw, an inveterate white liberal with views shaped on the Rand Daily Mail about 40 years ago.
Symbolising its non-racial success, Sanef at its birthday last week recognised Louw’s contribution with an award to him in the name of late member Steve Wrottesley (Thloloe was an earlier winner).
At the heart of most Sanef’s rifts over the years has been the question of priorities. Should it focus primarily on media freedom (the most pressing issue in the eyes of most white members), or also on transformation (including training, racism, black and female advancement and post-apartheid journalism paradigms)?
The trick that Tsedu taught members is that Sanef is a forum for discussion and debate — not a political party with a chief whip and a detailed manifesto. Accordingly, a basic premise in Sanef has been respect for the independence of each editor to run his or her own operation as seen fit.
One consequence is that Sanef is very cautious about condemning any of its members, even though the debates about peer performance are often fierce. Yet, more than being a parliament of diverse media leaders, the association has also located points for common action and collective achievements:
- the Nat Nakasa Award for integrity and courage in journalism (1997);
- an accord with justice authorities limiting their use of section 205 to compel journalists to give evidence (1999);
- an audit into skill levels in newsrooms (2000, 2003) and research into ”glass ceilings” that block women advancement in the media (2006);
- Media Freedom Day commemorations every October 19, and regular protests against media repression (including around the continent), as well as a public campaign titled ”Media Freedom is Your Freedom” (2006);
- training workshops on HIV/Aids reporting and on media law, plus an ethics conference (2001-2002);
- guidelines on confidential briefings (2005) and a handbook on court reporting (2006);
- national dialogue with the Cabinet on media-government relations (2001);
- convening the All Africa Editors’ Conference, and helping launch the Southern African Editors’ Forum (2003) and the African Editors’ Forum (2005); and
- scores of representations to Parliament and the government on problematic media legislation.
But perhaps Sanef’s greatest achievement is less tangible than its record on media freedom and transformation. Above all, it has upheld a spirit of journalistic idealism — in contrast to a time when morality increasingly equates to money.
The beneficiaries of Sanef’s work have been not just those editors disinclined to take part. More importantly, it has been the broader public with an intrinsic interest in a free and relevant media.
Happy birthday, Sanef!