It’s a delicate time for the media as the new people in power consolidate their position.
Now that the electoral dust has settled, African National Congress (ANC) lenses will move from seeing the media in terms of a terrain of debate, and towards perceiving it as a potential tool for governance and administration.
The immediate arena is South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), where a new CEO and a new head of news will be appointed — and possibly a new board as well. Several scenarios are possible:
- The current board continues to be seen as an Mbeki legacy, and the new Parliament turfs it out in favour of a hand-picked (probably pro-Zuma) interim board;
- The incumbents are ”forgiven” — in part because they are seen as having come ”on side” by refusing to renew the contract of news head Snuki Zikalala, who was unpalatable to the Zuma people;
- Empty places on the board are filled with new people who are pro-Zuma, and one of them made the chair;
- A fundamental (and public participatory) re-assessment is made of SABC governance, and new mechanisms are put in place to prevent re-politicisation of the public broadcaster.
The Department of Communications under the previous government had begun work on the last of these scenarios, with support from the ”Save the SABC” coalition.
But continuing this particular thrust now depends on the new Communications Minister Siphiwe Nyanda, and/or ANC headquarters, and/or ANC MPs.
The common denominator among these centres of power may be resistance to redesigning SABC, and instead a preference for the other scenarios to prevail. The effect would be that the new power elite then ”captures” SABC to one extent or another.
That prospect would cripple the public service role of the broadcaster as an independent factor for democracy and accountability in South Africa. Worse, if SABC was ”secured” to operate according to how the new power bloc sees things, political designs could then be freed up to focus on the press.
At stake is whether a clean sweep of the key power bases for SABC in coming weeks converts the public broadcaster into an unambiguously government mouthpiece.
However, what really irks people in power, here or elsewhere, is not so much whether they control broadcasting or not. What’s really crucial for them is the portion of journalism in any medium which is critical or hostile, rather than positive or neutral.
The reason is because this kind of journalism, even if a small part of the total, can undercut the PR value of all other coverage.
Accordingly, governments — everywhere — are usually loathe to regard critical journalism as a contribution to governance, or even as an inevitable feature of democracy.
Instead, there is a structural inclination to see negative coverage as hindering their interests — and as something that, ideally, should be halted.
South Africa’s new government is unlikely to be any different. In fact, instrumentalist thinking around the ”development state” reinforces the views of those now in power who want to annex the media to their agenda and minimise the circulation of contrary information.
Throw into this mix the current uncertainty around the future of Independent Newspapers in this country. The parent company internationally is deeply in debt and may chose to keep on its loss-making but prestigious UK title by selling off its South African operations.
In this event, the major city papers in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town will come up for grabs.
Industry rumours are that interested buyers have already been in touch with one of the main shareholders in Ireland.
Moeletsi Mbeki, brother of the former president, is being mentioned as one potentially interested buyer. Media24 and Caxton are two others.
Expect one or more consortia of pro-Zuma business people to also emerge if a sale by Independent does become a reality. And government might try to use its influence to try and dissuade Independent’s owners from selling to certain buyers.
The overall flux means that we could shortly see significant re-alignments in both SABC and some newspapers as regards their relations to the ruling party.
However, it is also the case that government cannot simply colonise SABC: there are limiting laws and procedures in existence. In addition, the new authorities cannot directly determine the successful bidder for Independent’s titles.
There’s also a third factor that may help shield media should the new government succumb to control-oriented temptations. This is public opinion and civil society activism which together can set the parameters of the possible as regards government’s stance towards media.
Central to this constraint on ruling power, will be whether the press and SABC can rise to the unfamiliar position of jointly holding the line, and together encouraging public mobilisation in support of media’s political independence of government.
Without such a development, we will have to count only on the benevolence of the new power bloc to keep the media safe.