Our media are in a muddle. Like Thabo Mbeki, they missed the groundswell ANC support for Jacob Zuma. Yet the focus on the split in the party has been more than verified.
Those ostriches in the ruling party who pilloried the press for ”inventing divisions” have been shown up as having been in denial. But the journalists who shared a dreamland that excluded Zuma ought now to recognise the dangers of over-reliance on elite and official sources.
So, looking ahead, how should the media report the new political landscape?
Like we should learn from the popularity of the tabloid press, there are probably millions of people out there who don’t share the mainstream media concern with Zuma.
These are people who don’t know, don’t believe or don’t worry about the Zuma camp’s high level of intolerance. No problem for them with suing cartoonists, calls to ”burn the bitch” at their man’s rape trial, or disrupting proceedings in Polokwane.
This is not to say that from the mainstream media’s point of view, the Mbeki people have been democratically ideal. The ousted leadership treated their man as beyond debate, constricted criticism on HIV/Aids issues and stand accused of manipulating levers of state for factional ends.
That the Zuma camp has resisted Mbeki’s authoritarianism does not make its members champions of future democracy (or even of the poor). Some media seem to miss this point, however, and have been romanticising the rebellion as the triumph of torch-bearers for a more open and less elitist political style and agenda.
What’s more likely, though, is that the Zuma people will seek to replicate the Mbeki style. Expect sycophancy about the new ”chief” and the deployment of the state to political advantage and a younger black economic empowerment (BEE) set.
Already on Wednesday’s SAfm After 8 debate, a supporter challenged the legitimacy of the topic about whether Zuma was the best choice for the job. His argument was that ANC members decided on their president, and he dismissed the view of host Jeremy Maggs that the wider public had a right to an opinion on this.
In monitoring this kind of intolerance, media people need to recognise that democracy is not only for democrats. But it is a system that recognises the right of forces out of office (representing whatever interests) to push their claims to wield or resist power.
With the Zuma victory, the ranks of the outsiders may include some of the Mbeki minority plus a displaced older generation of BEE people. Along with some of the trade unions, students, opposition parties, investors, NGOs and others, the inherent fractiousness of this democracy will persist.
The Zuma people will need to operate with, and within, this context, just as Mbeki for instance had to compromise on the matter of antiretrovirals.
But to help safeguard this pluralism, and to avoid an over-concentration of power, the mass media have an important role to play. What’s critical now is how journalists utilise the existing space — before any consolidation of a new intolerance.
That means avoiding a rolling bandwagon of Mbeki-bashing, on the one hand, and a scare-mongering hype about Zuma on the other. It means grasping a window of opportunity for journalism to assert itself in the interregnum between the old and new powers.
For the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) in particular, it is imperative that it now boldly demonstrates its independence of whoever occupies power. While being scrupulously fair, the country’s biggest media player needs to become a fully fledged and pro-active journalistic actor in its own right.
The broadcaster has a major role in reflecting all our shades of opinion, and in holding politicians of all hues to account. It also needs to convince those coming into power that it is in no one’s interests for the SABC to be tarnished towards one side or another.
For the print media, the challenge will be to respect the rationality of those who rejected Mbeki, while challenging the emotionality of supporting Zuma.
Those in the newly successful camp will have an interest in blind backing for their man. Like Mbeki (and most of us), they would prefer a chorus of yes-men and -women to critique by outsiders. Yet if journalists are to do everyone a service, they will have to speak truths to the new power and to everyone else as well.
The mark the media need to make is to ensure that Zuma and his people do not forget that despite their winning the ANC, democracy here is not about a winner-takes-all approach.
This calls for a journalism that reflects, robustly, that there are many South Africans with highly differing views — and which encourages us to engage with this difference in a way that builds, rather than buries, tolerance and co-existence.