Not a vuvuzela was to be heard at the public viewing area at Grahamstown’s Miki Yili field during the high-stakes Portugal-Spain game on Wednesday night.
The large screen flickered desolately as seven spectators sat silently on the benches. An equal number stayed in their parked cars as if at a drive-in cinema. There were more police and ambulance personnel present than viewers.
In contrast, the opening game of the Soccer World Cup attracted crowds of thousands to the same facility. Wednesday night’s weather was pretty mild for Grahamstown, so that wasn’t the reason for the no-show.
In the city centre, public viewership was slightly higher. Fifteen people watched the game from the High Street pavement — on a TV set in the shopfront window of Grocott’s Mail newspaper.
The infamous Rat and Parrot pub was packed with students — but then that’s the case even out of Fifa season.
It seems that contrary to expectations, South Africa is not being quite as football-ised and media-tised by the World Cup experience as you might think. The slogan “It is here” doesn’t apply to Bafana any longer. And the general novelty is wearing off as the lengthy schedule of games drags on.
Yet although this Eastern Cape village may be soccer-weary for now, next week it will become the media capital of Africa. It’s already the Festival capital, and now the energy of festinos (many escaping the football) is set to be boosted by the influx of 600 new people whose passion is journalism.
The newcomers are attracted by Highway Africa holding its 14th conference. Over the years, this event has grown to become the world’s biggest annual gathering of African journalists.
Another magnet is the 2nd World Congress on Journalism Education. There are 350 journalism trainers from across the globe coming for this — hailing from countries as diverse as India and Iraq, Moldova and Mexico.
Together, the two events — convened by Rhodes University’s School of Journalism and Media Studies — aim to improve journalism both continent-wide and worldwide, especially as regards the imaging of Africa.
Simplistic perspectives
It’s intentional that they are being held during the World Cup — the moment is ideal for analysing what the media make of the mega-event. And besides scrutinising the local impact of the coverage, there’s also the issue of how the global media are reporting the story.
For example: Is the Cup coverage reinforcing the negative stereotypes of South Africa and Africa more broadly? Is there still an overwhelming spin about savagery and basket-cases? How is coverage of the murder of Rwandan journalist Jean-Leonard Cherif Ruambage tallying up with admiration-laden reports of David Villa’s goal for Spain on Wednesday?
On the other hand, is there a different scenario at play — one with diametrically opposite coverage of the continent through rose-tinted imagery? Is the picture one of smiling tribal dancers and awesome wild animals? Of swish stadiums and Sandton?
If the options are only between these two simplistic perspectives, the only choice for media audiences is to switch understandings from one extreme to the other whenever something affects the plausibility of one side.
How the media can avoid caricatures and instead capture the complexities, and reflect both the good and bad, will be high among the debates in Grahamstown. Unesco will use the occasion to present a model syllabus for “Reporting Africa” that may address some of the challenges.
As the two conferences serve to engage media stakeholders, it follows that there will be a swathe of media output about the deliberations.
There’s a daily conference paper and the Highway Africa website will have a vibrant blog. SABC is co-host of the conference and will be covering it closely. For their part, the journalism educators’ website will have live video-streaming sessions between July 5 and 7, including of 11 parallel research paper presentations. There will also be continuous tweets at #wjec2.
Thanks to conference sponsors MTN, Telkom, Absa and the local organising committee, delegates to the conferences will also get a lot of exposure to the football — including big screen broadcasts where they can analyse the coverage in real-time.
It’s always interesting to hear how outsiders see South Africa. On this occasion, outsiders with media mindsets will be giving their views right from the belly of the South African beast.
Some visitors may even swell the ranks on the stands at the local public viewing area. Or have the retro-experience of attending a latter-day drive-in. At that stage, it’s the last stretch of the soccer, and local fever will likely revive.
In time, the conference delegates will leave, like the Cup itself. But having been part of a unique buzz will likely stay with them for a long time. One day, they’ll tell their grandchildren that in 2010 they were there — at the media capital of South Africa.
This column is made possible by support from fesmedia Africa, the Media Project of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Africa, www.fesmedia.org. The views expressed in it are those of the author. Disclosure: the author is head of the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University.
RSS feed for this column: http://www.mg.co.za/rss/guy-berger