Public faces, public spaces and grilled prawns

It was a fine rebuff delivered in polite but unmistakably clipped tones.

‘I don’t do the press. Sorry.”

And with that clincher, the well-published Wits University political scientist, Shireen Hassim, turned on her heels to return to her circle of fellow intellectuals to enjoy the last few minutes of her tea break.

It was a shooing away ill-suited to a gathering dedicated to fostering public debate. And it affirms all popular assumptions and stereotypes about ‘the intellectual”: namely, that the very notion of ‘a public discourse” is dominated by individuals with gargantuan self-regard, holed up in ivory towers and who couldn’t be bothered with the concerns, aspirations and voices of the masses. And who couldn’t be bothered with institutions such as ‘the press”.

This brief exchange — which threw into sharp focus the way in which the so-called marketplace of ideas is filtered through society — could be said to sum up the raison d’être of the gathering.

A conference titled South African Democracy at the Crossroads was held this week at the University of the Witwatersrand. Convened by the university’s public intellectual life research project, its aim was to examine the state of public debate in the country.

It brought together a wide selection of speakers and participants ranging from civil society activists to journalists and academics.

It was billed by organisers as a forum for examining the role and definition of ‘the public intellectual”, which the conference brochure defines as ‘Thinking hard, speaking straight”, in South Africa today.

According to Carolyn Hamilton, one of the conference organisers, the state of public debate and dialogue in South Africa needs such a forum.

Despite the new South African political order bringing with it all the freedoms of association and speech, ‘there have been chilling signs across the past decade of substantial silencing, self-silencing and evasion rather than confrontation of the fetters of the convened public sphere”, writes Hamilton in the conference brochure.

Referring to what she terms ‘the state capturing its citizens through officialising public debate”, Hamilton says that the conference should be viewed within the context of the repressions of the past and the ways in which public debate was stifled and repressed.

The role of the journalist and media commentator as active public intellectual was one of the major talking points around which the conference was structured.

Monday’s opening session, for example, focused on the media as mediators of public debate, and the ways in which the country’s ruling party has sought to define and determine the direction of debate. Panelists used last year’s ‘blacklisting” saga as a reference point, when the SABC was accused of banning certain commentators from its AM Live radio show.

In the same session panelists raised the question of access to the media and how it is determined. Conference organisers say the issue is all the more topical in the light of recent comments and statements from prominent politicians alleging ‘media elitism” — and call for the media to be regulated through a media appeals tribunal.

The hot topic of ‘journalists under fire” was also what was undoubtedly the biggest crowd-puller of the conference. The Night of the Columnists session was packed. The drawcard: a chance for the public to hear and rub shoulders with ‘South Africa’s boldest commentators”.

There was hardly standing room in the ground floor of the Origins Centre on the university campus on Monday night. The Sunday Times’s David Bullard, the Financial Mail’s Justice Malala, political analyst Sipho Seepe and gender activist Pregs Govender spoke on their personal experiences of ‘speaking truth to power” and how they saw their roles as public intellectuals in today’s South Africa.

Bullard veered off the serious path governing the proceedings, saying the best part of his job was the acclaim, and being ‘recognised” at bars. When asked to offer his concluding remarks, he warned the audience that lingering too long on debate would delay their path to the buffet table.

As the audience and intellectuals drifted off to the veranda to enjoy the spicy marinated prawns and the cool strains of jazz from the Marcus Wyatt Trio, one wondered if the conference, in its carefully chosen panelists and topics, had not perhaps affirmed the very thing it sought to question. Who was not on the guest list spoke as loudly as who was included.

With a complete absence of the so-called ‘Yes Men” — the voices beating the national interest drum — there could be little chance for real debate. One had almost hoped to see and hear from the brains behind outfits such as the Native Club. But, as is the spirit of all gatherings of the intelligentsia, at least the wine flowed.