6.
Social fantasy: the ANC’s gaze and the media appeals tribunal
We are aware that every Thursday night a group of journalists … decide what stories they will go into. This is very clear when we do our analysis. What we see is a pack approach with a story that breaks in the Saturday Star; then is repeated in Business Day with a slightly different angle, and then in The Citizen with a … slightly new perspective.1
‘The gaze’ is part of the ‘social fantasy’, ‘a point at which the very frame (of my view) is already inscribed in the “content” of the picture viewed’ (Žižek 1989: 105-127). Fantasy is the way antagonistic fissure is masked. Psychoanalytical Žižekean ontology is used in this chapter to deconstruct the ANC’s gaze on the media.
In 2008, Jessie Duarte was one of the most hostile people in the ANC towards the media. The quotation here, opening this chapter, highlights her ‘gaze’ – inaccurate and fantasmic – on journalists and how she perceived the profession to operate. This chapter will elucidate the concepts of ideology and social fantasy, then the concept of the gaze, before it deconstructs the ANC’s discourse through the words of the first three post-apartheid presidents, Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma; the ANC ‘Letters from the President’; ANC online contributions to the public about the media; and the national spokespeople for the ruling party, Duarte in 2008 and Jackson Mthembu in 2010. This chapter focuses strongly on Mandela, and in the next two chapters there are specific case studies featuring Mbeki and Zuma respectively. The chapter discusses the proposal, put forward at the ANC’s policy conference in Polokwane in December 2007, to investigate the possibility of a media appeals tribunal, the ostensible reasons for which were a lack of transformation and diversity in the media, that the self-regulatory mechanism was inadequate to curb ‘the excesses’ of the media that was a law unto itself, and there were many mistakes in the shabby journalism produced in the country. But I believe there was more to this than meets the eye.
In psychoanalysis, individuals are always split subjects (Lacan 2008; Laclau 1996; Žižek 1989). There is a split between what they consciously know and do, and what they unconsciously know and do. Fantasy is unconscious as in ‘for they know not what they do’, but Žižek suggests a more conscious position and goes further to say ‘they know but they are doing it anyway’ (2004).2 I argue that the ANC is aware of what it is doing.3 We do not live in a post-ideological world, where there is no longer a left or right, and Mouffe argues this too (2005: 1-16). Everything – language, text, and action – is ideological. Fantasy does not mean something that is opposed to reality. Quite the reverse. Fantasy is what structures what we call reality. It is the means whereby the psyche fixes its relation to enjoyment (Kay 2003: 163). The subject is already caught by some secret supposed to be in ‘the other’ and this is fantasy: Duarte is caught in her fantasy of the media as ‘the big other’ intent on plotting and planning against the ANC. In this sense, then, ideology and fantasy work together. Fantasy is the support that gives consistency to what we call reality. It is not an illusion, nor is it an escape from reality. It supports reality. So, for Duarte the media really is conspiring to undermine the ANC. She is creating a social fantasy of the media and, in so doing, is merely reaffirming the ANC’s beliefs that require a particular expression of, or essence of, society that reflects its position on political unity. Its dogmatism on unity requires that the media postulates a similar dogmatic position or else suffers the consequences of being constructed as the antagonistic other. This is legitimised by the ANC’s fantasy of a media conspiracy.
From what perspective was Duarte gazing at the world of journalists when she construed them as a unitary group, sitting together and collaborating on their next stories, despite coming from various newspapers? (From personal experience as a journalist, I know that groups do indeed often socialise over drinks but they are very cautious about letting on what stories they are working on, let alone collaborating on different angles with others from different newspapers – it is quite unheard of for journalists to share stories and let slip what they are working on. In fact, it’s quite a comical thought.) However, where Duarte is correct is that when a story is broken in a newspaper, other newspapers try to get new perspectives on the same story and so keep it ‘alive’ – or ‘run with it’, to use the industry jargon. In other words, news makes news, although you can’t merely repeat another newspaper’s story, you have to find something new to say about the same thing or ‘dig deeper’. Still, if you had to ask any journalist in South Africa whether they all get together to discuss what stories they will break in the week to come, and to share ideas and angles, they would be both bemused and amused. What we witness is Duarte’s social fantasy, a fantasy that alters and influences perceptions of reality. Žižek describes this fostering of the delusion that there is always something out there pulling the strings, a conspiracy theory, in The Ticklish Subject (2000a: 362).
The value of a conspiracy theory is that it can account for all sorts of things, weapons of mass destruction or terrorists, all fostering the delusion of something ‘out there’. In using the term ‘pack approach’, Duarte was seeing the media as a monolithic bloc. There is an indivisible remainder in her discourse, an excess and a paranoid construction of the media as a conspiracy. It could be argued that her words represent the extreme, the worst possible case put forward for the ANC’s argument against the media. Is this so? My answer to this is ‘yes and no’. In its stupid vulgarity, perhaps, this is an extreme example of how to understand the ANC’s gaze on the media, but if one compares Duarte’s views to those of Mandela, Mbeki and Zuma, we see versions of the same thing, articulated with varying degrees of elegance. Mandela wagged his finger at the editors saying he was unhappy with their lack of support for the transformation project; Mbeki was more vitriolic but did not attempt any interference in its independence. Motlanthe, whose brief stewardship as interim president was treated the most unfairly by the media, was the least confrontational. It was Zuma who took legal action against the media, and under whose leadership the ANC has been most threatening. In Zuma’s discourse, as we will see, his words can be ambiguous but it is in terms of his legal and legislative actions, including his support for a media appeals tribunal in 2010, that the ANC has wreaked greater damage to media freedom and the idea of an open democracy. However, the ANC itself is not a unified subject. There are in effect many different ‘ANCs’. There was the ANC pre-Polokwane and post-Polokwane. The ANC headed by Thabo Mbeki before December 2007 was the ANC of the patriotic bourgeoisie. The faction of the ANC which ousted Mbeki could be called the left-leaning faction headed by Cosatu, the SACP and the ANC Youth League. It is said that the ANC is now de-centred with no fixed point ideologically or in its programmatic action. In Chapter Two, the shifts in ANC media policy were discussed using the arguments of Ruth Tomaselli (1994) about the ‘militants’ and ‘pragmatists’. In Zuma’s ANC-led government of 2010 there were fundamental splits and fights over economic direction between the economic development minister, Ebrahim Patel, who hails from a trade union background, and the finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, who was the former South African Revenue Service commissioner (see Sunday Independent: ‘Ministers fight over economic direction’: 25 July 2010).
There was the ANC of Mandela, the era of the rainbow nation and national reconciliation; there was the ANC of Mbeki, the era of secrecy and fear where all enemies were banished from the political mainstream; then there is the era of Zuma, where the ANC is at its most fractious. Among others, the division in 2012 was over ‘the second transition’.
The gaze of the three presidents on the media
Nelson Mandela
At an address to the International Press Institute congress on 14 February 1994, Mandela said:
A critical, independent and investigative press is the lifeblood of any democracy. The press must be free from state interference. It must have the economic strength to stand up to the blandishments of government officials. It must have sufficient independence from vested interests to be bold and inquiring without fear or favour. It must enjoy the protection of the constitution, so that it can protect our rights as citizens. It is only such a free press that can temper the appetite of any government to amass power at the expense of the citizen. It is only such a free press that can be the vigilant watchdog of the public interest against the temptation on the part of those who wield it to abuse that power. It is only such a free press that can have the capacity to relentlessly expose excesses and corruption on the part of government, state officials and other institutions that hold power in society. I have often said that the media are a mirror through which we can see ourselves as others perceive us, warts, blemishes and all. The African National Congress has nothing to fear from criticism. I can promise you, we will not wilt under close scrutiny. It is our considered view that such criticism can only help us to grow, by calling attention to those of our actions and omissions which do not measure up to our people’s expectations and the democratic values to which we subscribe (Mandela 1994).
Mandela adopts here an outstandingly progressive view of the role of the media in a democracy. Within a relatively short time, however, his passionate attachment to the ANC blinds him to the democratic values he expressed in 1994. Mandela displayed ambivalence about the media when he addressed editors of newspapers a mere twenty-four months after this speech. But the ANC’s view of the media did not begin with Mandela in 1994. The ANC established a Media Charter as early as 1991 and, it must be noted, there was no unitary view to start with (Tomaselli 1994). The ‘militants’ argued for more control of the media, while the ‘pragmatists’ advocated independent control for broadcast media and self-regulation for the newspaper industry. It appears as though, in the context of global media liberalisation the pragmatists won the day.
Mandela’s social fantasy: black journalists are puppets
Notwithstanding Mandela’s words of February 1994, which show exemplary notions of press independence in the new South Africa, in November 1996 he sought a more loyal contingent of journalists and accused the media of having a hidden agenda and being part of a conspiracy. During the apartheid era, the ANC’s view of the media had been equally critical: that because the media did not adequately challenge the status quo it essentially supported apartheid. That this view did not change after the inception of the new democratic order is clear from meetings that Mandela held with Sanef. The first meeting took place on 1 November 1996 and was attended by Brian Pottinger (editor, Sunday Times), Anton Harber (editor, Mail & Guardian), Thami Mazwai (Sanef chairperson), Raymond Louw (editor, Southern Africa Report), Moegsien Williams (editor, Cape Times), Judy Sandison (editor, Radio News, KwaZulu-Natal) and Shaun Johnson (editor, Cape Argus). The discussions were reported in Rhodes Journalism Review No.13, 1996 and No.15, 1997. The following is an extract from an article: ‘Media on the Menu’ which showed Mandela’s ambivalence about media freedom.
We would like an independent … press which can criticise freely and without fear – and be prepared if we criticise it. The press … (and) the government … have a joint responsibility to address the problems in the country …There is a perception among the population that the mass media is controlled by a minority section of the population… Even those who have committed themselves to democratic values … cannot accurately portray the aspirations of the majority because they do not live among them … There is an attempt from traditionally white organisations … to resist transformation. Some of the newspapers that used to support the apartheid regime … give unqualified support for transformation. Generally speaking, though, I seem to feel that the conservative press is trying to preserve … the status quo … Because of this some senior black journalists are not writing for their audiences, but … believe the only way to get ahead is to join a campaign against transformation (Mandela, cited in Rhodes Journalism Review 1996).
There are three points to note here. The first point is that while there appeared to be an air of openness in his support for a free press, he criticised the press for not supporting transformation in the way he understood it. And, while criticism goes both ways, the press was not reflecting the views of the majority. It was also clear, from the sweeping statement he made that he felt there was a ‘campaign against transformation’, and that he desired unity with the press. The way in which he described the role of the press must also be highlighted: he saw a ‘joint responsibility’ of the press and the government to address the problems in the country, although how the press was meant to solve problems of housing delivery, crime, unemployment and corruption was not clear. Mia Swart, an associate professor at the Wits Law Clinic, understood this when she wrote: ‘The current levels of poverty and the widening gap between the haves and the have nots in this country has nothing to do with the media. The responsibility for the current high levels of poverty and unemployment can be placed squarely on the shoulders of the ruling elite’ (Mail & Guardian: 20-26 August 2010).
The second point is that Mandela asserted that the press was controlled by a minority which ‘was unacceptable in our vision’. What this reflects is an illogical assumption that if the press were controlled by the majority, this would necessarily solve the problem as the ANC experienced it. The third point, and arguably the most disturbing, was his reference to black journalists writing not for their audiences but to ‘get ahead’ (meaning to gain promotion), and the implication was that they were kowtowing to their white bosses. Race was essentialised in Mandela’s discourse. At that first meeting between Sanef and Mandela, none of the editors present challenged Mandela on his views and understanding of the role of the media in a democracy.
At the next meeting, in June 1997, there was an outright vitriolic attack on the media. Writing in 2010, the group political editor of Independent Newspapers, Moshoeshoe Monare reflected on the second meeting in 1997, suggesting that the ANC had never trusted the mainstream press. He pointed out that the first ANC leader to articulate the view that the media had set itself up as a fierce opponent to the ANC was Nelson Mandela (Sunday Independent: 22 August 2010). In his opening speech to the ruling party’s 50th National Conference in Mafikeng, Mandela said:
In a manner akin to what the National Party is doing in its sphere, this media exploits the dominant positions it achieved as a result of the apartheid’s system, to campaign against both real change and the real agents of change, as represented by our movement, led by the ANC … When it speaks against us, this represents freedom of thought, speech and the press – which the world must applaud … When we exercise our own right to freedom of thought and speech to criticise it for its failings, this represents an attempt to suppress the freedom of the press – for which the world would punish us.
The second meeting between Mandela and Sanef, in June 1997, was tense. In an article entitled ‘Tough Talk from the President’ (Rhodes Journalism Review 1997), Mandela suggested that black journalists were beholden to white editors, they had to ‘earn a living’ and thus were unable to reflect the aspirations of the majority. In this instance, Brian Pottinger did not hold back, and responded that this ‘was insulting’ to his black colleagues. The direct challenge to Mandela’s racialised interpellation was a hopeful moment for democracy. Others, however, made half turns towards the voice of power, and some made full turns. An extract of the interchange in the Rhodes Journalism Review between Mandela and Pottinger follows:
Mandela: There is no point in beating about the bush with problems. Whatever measures have been taken, the truth is that the media is still in control of whites, conservative whites, who are unable to reflect the aspirations of the majority … I was asked in Harare why black journalists are so hostile, especially to Zimbabwe and President Mugabe. … We do not have black journalists saying what they would like to say. They have to earn a living. While there are a few exceptional journalists, many like to please their white editors.
Pottinger responded: It is insulting to my black colleagues to suggest that they kowtow to me …
Mandela: The last time we met, I said how you had not behaved in the manner I expect of you. I invited you and gave you information. You thanked me. In the next editorial you made a statement accusing the ANC of dishonesty. If a journalist and a paper like the Sunday Times can accuse an organisation like ours of dishonesty, you destroy a relationship … We are dealing with a trend. The real problem is not black journalists, but conservative white journalists who are able to instruct their colleagues under them …You don’t publish our articles. You don’t want us to reply to your campaign.
Mandela’s assumptions were that there was a campaign by the media against the ANC. The problem was the ‘conservative white journalists’ rather than the black journalists, who were seen as subjects without agency. Mandela’s outlook could not envisage a more open critical journalism in a democracy. Instead, he caricatured the relationship of black to white journalists in apartheid-like terms. Moreover, in a predictable social fantasy tied to the logic of nationalist ideology, any criticism by the media of ‘the liberation movement’ was intolerable, as they were controlled by white bosses whereas the media should be reflecting the aspirations of the majority. As leader of the former liberation movement, he had the authority to interpellate in terms of the social fantasy that the ANC was the moral barometer, while the press was stepping out of line by ‘accusing an organisation like ours of dishonesty’. In this social fantasy the ANC cannot be dishonest. The legitimate interpellating voice of moral authority speaks: ‘The last time we met, I said how you had not behaved in the manner I expect of you’. This is a social injunction, in the Althusserian sense, and the aim is to bring the subject into line through a social demand. Hegemony in democratic politics is formed through exclusions (as seen in Mandela’s exclusion from the democratic project of white editors). These exclusions return to haunt the politics based upon their absence. This haunting, in South Africa, returned in the form of black editors, who were no less critical than white editors of the shenanigans of the powerful.
Half-turns to Mandela’s interpellation: the editors’ reactions
Subjection is paradoxical, according to Butler (1997), a point that is central to this book. The paradox that Butler refers to is a complex idea which signifies the dominance by a power external to oneself. Yet one’s formation as a subject is also dependent upon that very power. Butler’s theory is that the figure of the psyche ‘turns’ against itself. Deploying Foucault, Althusser, Hegel, Nietzsche and Freud, she discusses subjections and asks why it happens. Is it about guilt, is it conscience, is it recognition of the interpellating name, or is it a love of the shackles – as in passionate attachments – to norms of the past which oppress? The following extracts showed the editors’ reactions to the social injunctions that came from the ANC leaders (Rhodes Journalism Review 1997). Their views were diverse and did not show unity on the basis of race or on the basis of their profession. Some turned fully towards the voice of power, some made half turns and some made no turns at all, turning their backs on the injunctions, preferring to misrecognise the ideological hailing.
If you as president speak about senior black journalists being under the command of white editors, this has a demoralising effect on these journalists, and on the whole community (John Battersby).
To suggest malevolence is not a fair reflection (Jim Jones).
As far as the press is concerned, it is sad to see that there is generally a negative tone … So when Mandela gets impatient in dealing with editors of newspapers that reflect this negativity, I strongly identify with him (Mike Tissong, night editor of the Sowetan).
Right now, black journalists are being questioned about their commitment to press freedom simply because the word patriotism features in their vocabulary. Because whites do not feel the same degree of loyalty to the new order, our bona fides are being questioned (Thami Mazwai).
Much of the disagreement reduced things to race in an almost simplistic way. It is not as if when you resolve the racial issue you resolve the problem of the press and its relation to government (Mike Siluma, editor of the Sowetan).
I was amazed at the anger and venom with which he raised his criticism … By reacting the way he did, he also opens himself up to criticism that he is trying to manipulate the media through intimidation (and I challenge any editor who attended the meeting to tell me they did not feel intimidated) (Ryland Fisher, editor of the Cape Times).
I was surprised. Never did I expect President Mandela to react the way he did. I would have thought that we’d moved away from the old days when press bashing was a must for the National Party heads of state (Dennis Cruywagen).
Antagonism towards the media is certainly not restricted to the president. His views are shared by others in the cabinet, notably Deputy President Thabo Mbeki … What about the question of black journalists wanting to please their white bosses? I have certainly not encountered this at Independent Newspapers KZN (Dennis Pather).
Battersby’s response, that it had a ‘demoralising effect on journalists’, does not constitute any turn at all, as it does not respond directly to the issue at hand. Jones’s comment that Mandela’s implying ‘malevolence’ was unfair was also not a turn either way, but it was a criticism of Mandela. Tissong’s reaction to the hailing was to ‘strongly identify’ with Mandela – a complete turning against one’s profession and towards the ideological interpellation. Mazwai’s comment is one of the most interesting, where he reflects passionate attachment to an atavistic idea of race as the Master-Signifier, even under the new democratic order. His comment that ‘we as black journalists are suffering because whites in the profession do not have the same amount of patriotism to the country’ is a complete 360 degree turn towards the voice of power. Siluma, on the other hand, saw Mandela’s interjection as ideological when he said that this was about essentialising race, and it was ‘simplistic’. Fisher made no turn and, while admitting to being intimidated, he pointed out the obvious: that Mandela could be accused of trying to ‘manipulate’ the media. Cruywagen did not make a turn, but he too pointed out the obvious: that this had echoes of the National Party’s interpellations of the media. Pather’s statement that he had not encountered black journalists wanting to please their white bosses at Independent Newspapers corroborates my own experience, having worked at the same group, at The Star newspaper as a features writer in the mid to late 1990s. In fact, having worked at most of the newspaper houses in the country since 1990, I have not encountered any black journalist, including myself, wanting to please white bosses. It had never entered my mind to do so either.
Incidentally, Fisher, Tissong, Mazwai, Cruywagen and Pather are all black. They all differed in their reactions to Mandela’s interpellation. Three out of five did not accept the hailings and did not turn towards the voice of power, or turn against themselves or their profession. Both Tissong and Mazwai, however, did make that turn. Siluma hit the nail on the head when he commented that the views about race were simplistic.
They were particularly so in 2008, when Duarte made her comments about a conspiracy in the media. By then, the colour of editors and owners had changed, and more than fifty per cent were black; the press remained critical and the ANC remained unhappy about the media’s criticisms. As Fisher had pointed out, the ANCs response to criticism was ‘manipulation’ and ‘intimidation’. For Butler, this would amount to subjectivisation. The outcome was a process of establishing the media as ‘other’, and signalled that if you were not with ‘us’(the ANC), then you were not only the ‘other’, but an enemy rather than a legitimate adversary. As Raymond Louw, editor of the Southern Africa Report, observed about Mandela’s interjections: ‘There is an air of the schoolmaster bringing pupils to heel in the manner in which he uses the term “to correct” them’.
For Mandela ‘the people’ existed as one united whole, and the people’s unique representative was the ANC. There are four points to be made here. First, Mandela desired more unity with the media, meaning an uncritical and more favourable press. Second, he conflated the ANC’s transformation project with the project of the media, shown in his words that ‘we have a joint responsibility to address the problems in the country’ (a serious misunderstanding of the role of the media). Third, there was a surplus attached to the media, meaning that there were extra qualities attached to it, for example that there was an agenda or conspiracy against transformation and the ANC. Fourth, the ANC believed that the media was one entity with a ‘pack approach’ to the ANC.
Thabo Mbeki’s gaze on the media (1999-2009)
President Thabo Mbeki ‘enjoyed’ a particularly acrimonious relationship with the media and, like Mandela, would have preferred a more sycophantic press, one that was in unity with the ANC. In the biography of Mbeki by Mark Gevisser it was particularly enlightening to track the second democratic president’s relationship with the media. ‘There was but the slimmest folder of negative references to Mbeki prior to 1994’, was how Gevisser described the media’s view of Mbeki (2007: 643). In fact, he observed, that when Mbeki came to power in 1994, it was with the Mail & Guardian’s goodwill – and the Mail & Guardian, one of the fiercest critics of the apartheid regime, had kept up its fierce watchdog role over public figures after 1994. The then editor of the paper, Anton Harber, wrote that Mbeki was a ‘suave and experienced diplomat’ and a ‘moderator and conciliator’. The same newspaper was later to become Mbeki’s strongest detractor when, in April 2001, a headline screamed: ‘Is this man fit to rule?’ Gevisser cited Mbeki’s ‘first volley against the press’ at the Cape Town Press Club when he accused the media of ‘harbouring a tendency to look for crises and to look for faults and mistakes’. By 1995, Gevisser observed, Mbeki was branding any criticism of the ANC as racist.
Like Mandela before him,4 Mbeki also made it clear what he expected of black journalists at an address to the FBJ when he told them to ‘roll up your sleeves and stop whinging like a whitey.’ From this point onwards, Gevisser commented, journalists accused Mbeki of wanting a sweetheart press, adding that even Mbeki admirers such as The Star newspaper’s political editor at the time, Kaiser Nyatsumba, noted that Mbeki’s views were a sign of ‘over-arching … paranoia’. The trend to paranoia, attempted subjectivisation and interpellation of the media continued throughout Mbeki’s presidency. To counteract the effects of the hostile media, in 2001 Mbeki began something new in the ANC – writing online letters to the public. The rationale for this was that the organisation felt it did not have a voice. The following extract from the very first letter, ‘Welcome to ANC Today’, makes clear that the main reason for this online discourse with the public was that the ANC had ‘no representation whatsoever in the mass media’.
First of all I would like to congratulate the Communications Unit on its decision to publish ANC Today. It is of critical importance that the ANC develop its own vehicles to communicate news, information and views to as many people as possible, at home and abroad. Clearly, the Internet provides an added possibility to achieve this objective … Historically, the national and political constituency represented by the ANC has had very few and limited mass media throughout the 90 years of its existence. During this period, the commercial newspaper and magazine press representing the views, values and interests of the white minority has dominated the field of the mass media. This situation has changed only marginally in the period since we obtained our liberation in 1994 … We are faced with the virtually unique situation that, among the democracies, the overwhelming dominant tendency in South African politics, represented by the ANC, has no representation whatsoever in the mass media … With no access to its own media, this majority has had to depend on other means to equip itself with information and views to enable it to reach its own conclusions about important national and international matters … The world of ideas is also a world of struggle. ANC Today must be a combatant for the truth, for the liberation of the minds of our people, for the eradication of the colonial and apartheid legacy, for democracy, non-racism, non-sexism, prosperity and progress (ANC Today: 26 January-1 February 2001).
For Mbeki, as for Mandela, the mass media reflected white minority views and was unsupportive of the ANC; therefore he had a duty to communicate with everyone so that the majority’s views could be heard. The logic appeared to be that if you were not supportive of the party, you were unsupportive of the national transformation project. It seemed that Mbeki regarded the airing of different ideas on transformation as a threat.
The following sentence from the online letter, on how unity of the nation can be achieved, implied that there was only one view of transformation and all of society had to have the same opinion on change: ‘The only way this will happen is if we proceed from common positions about the nature of the problems our country faces’. It was a dogmatic position that placed political unity above all. This idea was also what Mouffe argued against in her analysis of Schmitt (1999: 5). In placing political unity above all else, she said, the space for pluralism, and therefore more tolerance in a democracy, was closed off. In this book, I argue that democracy is a floating signifier, in which identity should never be essentialised, and that ‘common positions’ are not possible in a democracy which supports pluralism. Mbeki’s pattern of discourse on the media followed the same trajectory throughout the decade of his presidency, but it started in his deputy presidency.
The ANC, during Mbeki’s presidency, also vilified the media as the following extracts show.
An article that appeared in the local media this week, originating from the Agence France Presse (AFP) news agency and distributed by the South African Press Association (SAPA), revives the wearily familiar theme of the supposed decline of popular support for the ANC … With its former chief whip in prison, his successor accused of sexual harassment and deputy president under a cloud after his financial advisor was jailed, the party which has dominated power since the end of apartheid appears intent on dragging itself through the mud on a weekly basis … where do so many media institutions get their stories about South Africans’ attitudes to the ANC? (ANC Today: 24-30 November 2006).
Here, the ANC constructs the media as one that imagines stories: ‘Where do these media institutions get their views from?’ The extracts below clearly spell out what the ANC’s expectations of the press were.
In this regard the opponents of our democratic revolution, who lack a significant political base among the masses of our people, have sought to use the domestic and international media as one of their principal offensive instruments, to turn it into an organised formation opposed to the national democratic revolution and its vanguard movement. Because of this objective reality, which is not of our making, this short series will, in part, rely on what some in the media say … Whatever the intentions of the authors of these articles, which we do not know and on which we cannot comment, obviously what the journal would achieve, first because of its cover page, would be to tell the story that once again, and as expected, yet another African country, South Africa, was sliding towards the dismal failure that necessarily characterises the African continent! (ANC Today: 24-30 August 2007).
Here the media is spoken of in war-like terminology, as an ‘organised formation’ that was an ‘offensive’ against the National Democratic Revolution. The central question for the media, according to the ANC, was whether ‘our democracy will survive’. One way to describe this response from the ANC was that it was paranoid and defensive. Its hysteria was beginning to build. The media, the letter said, thrived on the negative and downplayed the positive. This was a theme, trend and pattern that persisted and dominated the nature of the ruling party’s discourse. The ANC during the Mbeki administration was extremely disappointed in the media and how it portrayed the country. During Mbeki’s era the African Renaissance was a theme around which he portrayed his administration. It was meant to be an era of hope for post-colonialism, and so for this reason criticisms of the media seemed to be deeply embedded in his attachment to race oppression. Mbeki was ‘recalled’ as president of the ANC by the party’s National Executive Council on 19 September 2008, in an ‘effort to heal and unite the ANC’ according to the ANC general secretary, Gwede Mantashe (The Weekender: 20-21 September 2008). The recall occurred directly after Pietermaritzburg high court judge Chris Nicholson’s ruling which implicated Mbeki in a probable conspiracy against Zuma. By the time of the recall, and the next day’s announcement by Mbeki (20 September 2008) that he had resigned, Zuma had the support of the ANC Youth League, Cosatu and the SACP, while ANC branch and regional structures were split in their support between Mbeki and Zuma. Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe served the country as an interim president until Zuma was officially inaugurated as president in April 2009.
Motlanthe: held back
Motlanthe hardly commented on the media, save for on one occasion (known to me). In a panel discussion at the International Media Forum South Africa in May 2008, held in Johannesburg, he told international and local journalists that the ANC was as committed to press freedom as it had been sixteen years previously. He then quoted the ANC’s policy before it assumed power:
South Africa has been a closed society, with many restrictions on the flow of information. Legislation … the structure of media ownership, of media resources, skills … have undermined the access of information for the majority of the population. The ANC believes that the transition to democracy in South Africa entails a movement from a closed society into one based on a free flow of information and a culture of open debate.
Motlanthe’s discourse did not have the same ring to it as Mandela’s or Mbeki’s. Nor was he against the media in any injunction or ideological interpellation. That there was no conspiracy theory or vitriol from Motlanthe is ironic because, in fact, he himself was a victim of the media either collaborating with sections of the ANC who wanted Motlanthe discredited or more likely, being careless about not checking sources when the Sunday Independent published a story under the headline ‘All the President’s Women’ about Motlanthe’s many lovers, one of whom was supposed to have been pregnant with his child (Sunday Independent: 25 January 2009). The source, the pregnant woman, later retracted the story in February 2009, and was found to be a liar. The newspaper group apologised to the interim president and he graciously accepted the apology without suing. In fact the newspaper’s apology was small and tucked away compared to the front splash that the front-page untrue story was given. Motlanthe downplayed the disgraceful newspaper saga and said it was a matter for the Press Council and Sanef to pursue.
Zuma’s discourse on the media
Zuma was elected president of the ANC at the 52nd ANC policy conference in Polokwane in December 2007, at which Mbeki was axed in what could be called a bloodless coup. The debate on the possibility of a media appeals tribunal to regulate the independent media culminated at the ANC’s NGC meeting in September 2010 when there were more strident calls for a tribunal and a resolution was passed that Parliament should investigate its implementation (see Appendix 2 for the wording of the resolution). However, the following statement by the ANC, issued a month after the Polokwane conference in December 2007, already contains references to a media appeals tribunal.
The Lekgotla confirmed that the ANC must intensify its engagement with all sectors to promote the transformation of the media to reflect the diversity, interests and perspectives of South African society; and to facilitate the free flow of ideas and information, with due respect to the rights and dignity of all South Africans … Particular attention needs to be paid to the growth and development of a sustainable media sector. The meeting called for the development of a broad-based black economic empowerment charter for the print media industry … The NEC Communications sub-committee will soon set up a task team to investigate the establishment of a media appeals tribunal, which would strengthen and complement and support existing institutions (ANC NEC: 20 January 2008).
This extract elucidates a somewhat vague rationale for more regulation, including a tribunal, but no details were spelled out as to what the specific mandate of the task team to ‘investigate’ the setting up of a tribunal would be, or how it would be constituted. Then, there were contradictions in the ANC’s statements. In one letter it stated that free flow of ideas and information would be facilitated, while at the same time it proposed further regulation in the form of a charter and a tribunal. Both these kinds of regulations, constitutional law experts were quick to point out, would restrict a free flow of information and could be unconstitutional. For instance, the chief justice of the Constitutional Court, Pius Langa, stated in a speech at the Durban University of Technology: ‘The courts do not want a media that is uncritical and overly respectful’ (The Star: 31 March 2008). Both the judiciary and the media are of critical importance to the country because they play a central role in keeping our government in check and holding it accountable for the exercise of its mighty powers: ‘The independence of the judiciary and freedom of expression are two pillars of an open and democratic society’.
The following is an extract from a long January 2008 letter from President Jacob Zuma, ‘The Voice of the ANC Must be Heard’:
… Every day brings fresh instances of a media that, in general terms, is politically and ideologically out of sync with the society in which it exists … The media, viewed in its totality, should be as diverse as the society which it serves and reflects. This is clearly not the case in South Africa today. At times, the media functions as if they are an opposition party … The freedom of the South African media is today undermined not by the state, but by various tendencies that arise from the commercial imperatives that drive the media. The concentration of ownership, particularly in the print sector, has a particularly restrictive effect on the freedom of the media. The process of consolidation and the drive to cut costs through, among other things, rationalisation of newsgathering operations, leads to homogenisation of content (ANC Today: 18-24 January 2008).
Zuma’s view is that the media is not diverse and that the threat to press freedom is not from the political arena and the state but from commercial imperatives. However, it is argued here – analysing his discourse from a postmodernist, radical democracy and psychoanalytical framework – that Zuma, like Mandela and Mbeki, clearly dreams of unity or reconciliation with the media, although unlike Mandela and Mbeki he has not essentialised the floating signifier, race. How could the media be ‘ideologically out of sync with a society’, as though society was one? This was precisely what Mouffe developed in her thesis: there can be no unified society as such because of society’s fractured, plural and diverse nature. Hence, ‘the social’ rather than ‘society’. You can have a media, however, which reflects many diverse voices, and this is what the media should be striving towards. But the hidden text here is that Zuma seemed to be arguing for a media ideologically in sync with the ANC as the true representatives of ‘the people’. Quite the reverse of diversity, ironically. After all, if the ANC is the true and only representative of ‘the People’ and ‘the People’ support the ANC, and the media is critical of the ANC, therefore the media is out of sync with ‘the People’. It is a social fantasy. ‘At times, the media function as if they are an opposition party.’ Here, Zuma was referring to the media as a totality. In effect, this inaccuracy reflected the social fantasy, as neither the media as a whole, nor society ‘as a whole’ exist. Both are diverse, fluid and non-fixed.
In the end, Zuma’s conclusion was that the ‘commercial interests’ of the media were to blame for homogenisation of content, and in the end newspapers were out of sync ideologically with ‘the people’. The discourses of Mandela, Mbeki and Zuma were distinctive examples of how attempts are made to stabilise the ruling party’s identity by creating ‘the other’, that is ‘the media’, as outsiders in a democracy and as antagonists rather than legitimate adversaries. Zuma was the first ANC president to call for a media appeals tribunal. Such a measure would signify the most repressive measure ever taken against the media, either during apartheid or in the democratic era in South Africa.
The media appeals tribunal
A new set of journalists and editors in 2008 were acutely aware of the ideological social fantasy of the ANC in wanting more regulation. In much the same vein as Žižek the media seek ‘Che Vuoi’, translated not so much as ‘what do you want’ but rather as ‘what’s really bugging you?’ (1989: 87-128). What the interviews below reveal is that the journalists saw that a series of floating signifiers were quilted into the one Master-Signifier, ‘transformation’, which in the quilting signification meant loyalty to the ruling party. Žižek wrote of democracy:
In the last resort, the only way to describe ‘democracy’ is to say that it contains all political movements and organisations which legitimise themselves, designate themselves ‘democratic’: the only way to define ‘Marxism’ is to say that this term designates all movements and theories which legitimise themselves through reference to Marx, and so on.
What the interviews with editors suggest is that the ANC expects the media, in its reporting, to consign democracy and its legitimacy to the signifier ‘ANC’. The editors consider this to be at odds with their profession and with democracy itself. This is what is really ‘bugging’ the ANC.
Reflecting on regulation and press freedom, the then Sunday Times columnist and opinion page editor, Fred Khumalo, observed that Duarte’s comments regarding more regulation were reminiscent of the old regime in South Africa. The commemoration of Black Wednesday in 2008, he wrote, brought into sharp relief the reality that freedom of the press is a contested terrain, even under a democratic dispensation.
Indeed it is true that with freedom comes responsibility. Media practitioners do need to ... publish with due consideration for ordinary citizens’ right to privacy and dignity. At the same time, the South African public deserves the right to information. Duarte … said unequivocally that she was not comfortable with the current situation in which the media is self regulatory … one has to conclude that the ANC wants a government tribunal vetting and passing judgment on media conduct … It is indeed reminiscent of the 80s when, during the state of emergency, media organisations had to submit stories on violence to the then department of information for approval ... Once you interfere with the media’s voice, you are effectively curtailing a necessary conversation between various sectors of our society. You are muzzling us. And that is the antithesis of the democratic values that lie at the heart of a nation we are building’ (Sunday Times: 18 October 2008).
Drawing on the similarities between the new government and the old, Khumalo suggested that both had a vested interest in protecting themselves from stories that an independent media could and would tell.
Editors’ gaze on a media appeals tribunal
I conducted the following interviews with editors, all of whom are black, over thirty-five years old, experienced, and have traversed the transition from apartheid. The interviews explore what ‘turns’ journalists made in the light of the ANC’s desire to investigate a media appeals tribunal. The research question was: what is your view of the future independence of the media given the ANC’s proposals for a media appeals tribunal? The most striking points to emerge from these interviews when they were conducted in 2008 were that most of the journalists felt that the ANC did not know how to implement a tribunal and therefore it was unlikely to happen; that should such a tribunal be instituted they would fight it at the Constitutional Court; and that the ANC was attempting closures of open spaces.
There is a media boom here which is great; there is competition for readers and competition is good. The M&G today is more financially viable than it’s ever been; that’s because people are reading it. Today the Sunday Times has more black readers than white … But the call for a tribunal is ominous and is an example of something the ANC has badly thought out. … I don’t think it will work; it will flounder, the same way that Essop Pahad said ‘Let’s pull advertising’; then didn’t do it. The ANC is so divided; the new leadership itself is divided (Justice Malala: 23 January 2008).5
For Malala the future was unpredictable, showing indeterminacy in the unfolding democracy. Although he felt that the ANC had not thought through the media appeals tribunal enough and noted that the ANC was a divided organisation on this issue (as with many others), his discourse nevertheless shows concern about the possibility of a tribunal.
Rehana Rossouw also had doubts that such a tribunal could become a reality because it had not been thought through properly. Her doubts hinged on constitutional guarantees of press freedom.
I don’t think it will come to this. It is something that needs to be thought through to be established and they, the ANC, have not given it proper thought. … I’m sceptical that such a thing as a tribunal can go through, given our Constitution that guarantees press freedom. The courts have consistently ruled within our legal framework that stipulates freedom of expression (Rehana Rossouw: 24 January 2008).6
Mondli Makhanya offered another reason as to why he believed that the Media appeals tribunal would not happen.
I don’t think that the tribunal will happen. It will present a terrible image of them. And if they try to do this, we will oppose them. We will go to the Constitutional Court with the matter (Mondli Makhanya: 24 January 2008).7
Hopewell Radebe went further than Malala, Rossouw and Makhanya in the sense that whether or not the issue was thought through, statutory regulation of the media was possible.
Tribunals could happen. This will be fought by the editors’ forum [Sanef]. Unfortunately journalists are not organised as they used to be. SAUJ does not exist any more, and Mwasa is almost non-existent. This, the tribunal issue, could be the thing that will bring journalists together. [Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court] Pius Langa has said that journalists must not wait for something to become a law before they fight it (Hopewell Radebe: 25 January 2008).8
Radebe made two salient points. He could see there was a possibility that it would happen and he had little faith in the profession’s readiness for action. He speculated, optimistically, that should the media tribunal become more of a reality, it could be an impetus for a better-united journalist profession and more action (this action, to some degree, took place in 2010 when Sanef became actively involved in the Right2Know campaign which saw over 400 organisations and over 9 000 individuals sign up to oppose the Secrecy Bill). But by 2012, apathy ruled the day.
Similarly, Abdul Milazi, in the next interview, felt that agency on the part of journalists was the critical issue.
It will all depend on the media itself, whether it lies down and plays dead or whether it stands up and fights the proposed controls. Embedded journalism has no future in any democracy. Freedoms need to be protected and governments cannot be trusted with that role. So the media will have to take up that role. But again the media also needs to be policed, but not by the government. An unchecked media can have similar outcomes as an unchecked government. The media also has stakeholders … who have … personal interests to promote. And that’s the truth we cannot run away from (Abdul Milazi: 8 February 2008).9
For Milazi it would all depend on the media itself. He went further than the other journalists to observe and concede that the media industry should also gaze at itself and examine what interests it wished to promote.
The common thread in these responses was that the Constitution would protect the freedom to report without intimidation and that regulation in the form of a tribunal should be, and would be, fought. It should be noted however – and this was alluded to by Radebe – that organised once-active media lobby bodies were now dormant. Milazi’s comments were salutary from two points of view. One was that the media should not believe it was a law unto itself, completely free to do as it pleased. The other was that it would depend on journalists’ actions, or absence thereof. Milazi was arguing for a media that showed it was an important part of civil society and could and should exercise its agency. Butler’s theory that subject formation takes place through a subject’s turning towards the voice of authority, or making unpredictable turns, could be married with Milazi’s view that what happened was contingent upon actors as agents of their own destinies.
Media experts, analysts and NGO players were, in 2008, less ambivalent than the editors about a media appeals tribunal. In fact, from the interviews below, it could be argued that they felt the tribunal could indeed happen. For the Mail & Guardian ombudsman, Franz Kruger, who has researched media tribunals across the world; for the media trainer and gender development activist in the media, Paula Fray; and for Tendayi Sithole of the FXI, a media appeals tribunal was far from unlikely in South Africa.10 Kruger observed that while media appeals tribunals ‘existed only at Polokwane’, the ANC had not accepted what it meant to have a free and independent media and that ‘it was not impossible tribunals could be instituted, and the ANC would couch it in terms of “development and transformation”’. Paula Fray concurred: ‘The possibility of a media appeals tribunal exists. The warning signs are there. We should not be complacent about our democracy’. Tendayi Sithole, commented:
If the media becomes accountable to Parliament, that will compromise the independence of the media. The tribunal will be subject to executive abuse since Parliament is largely dominated by the ANC. Many events bear testimony to this – the arms deal, the SABC sagas, disbanding of the Scorpions. Not forgetting the fact that the print media and the ANC government are often at loggerheads in terms of their role in society and there are things that the government does not want the media to report on. The rhetoric of the ANC towards the media is often harsh and clearly shows intolerance as the media is also referred to as a ‘liberal media’ which is betraying the revolution. As such, the ANC would like a situation where the media is a mere lapdog that should blindly support the ‘revolution’. Since there is no clear separation of the legislature and the executive, it is clear that the executive will bypass the legislature as in Mbeki’s era. In sum, the institution of a media tribunal is hogwash, since the ANC is not clear how the body will work, but signs are clear that it wants to control the media.
In 2009 there was no evidence of the ANC’s taking its December 2007 Polokwane conference proposal seriously. The idea seemed to have been in abeyance until preparation began for the ANC’s NGC, which took place on 20-24 September 2010 in Durban. At the NGC the idea was reaffirmed.
The ANC’s reasons for a media appeals tribunal: 2010 The ANC’s main reasons for a media appeals tribunal include:
• the present self-regulation system does not work as it skews the decisions of the Press Council in favour of the media;
• there is insufficient protection given to those whose rights have been violated by the press;
• the Press Council is ‘toothless’ as it cannot levy fines and merely asks for apologies to be made; and when these are made they are insufficient in size and stature compared to the damaging article.
The ANC has also argued that independent regulation exists in broadcasting but has not resulted in censorship. Then, the retractions after mistakes have been hugely out of proportion to the mistake, and in less significant sections of the newspapers.
In its discussion paper Media Transformation, Ownership and Diversity (2010) the ANC provided the background to its renewed call for a tribunal. The paper said that at its 51st conference at Stellenbosch on 16-20 December 2002, the ANC had called for ‘transformation’ of the media: ‘the ANC reaffirmed the importance of a free and diverse media to the democratic process and to the task of fundamental transformation’. The paper made the following points:
• It stated that its objective was ‘to vigorously communicate the ANC’s outlook and values (developmental state, collective rights, values of caring and sharing community, solidarity, ubuntu, non-sexism, working together) versus the current mainstream media’s ideological outlook (neoliberalism, a weak and passive state, overemphasis on individual rights, market fundamentalism)’.
• ‘The media needs to contribute towards the building of a new society and be accountable for its actions. Transformation in the media needs to target the entire value chain and investigate anti-competitive behaviour if any.’
• ‘A cursory scan on the print media reveals an astonishing degree of dishonesty, lack of professional integrity and lack of independence. Editorials distancing the paper from these acts and apologies which are never given due prominence and mostly which has to be forced through the press ombudsman are not sufficient in dealing with this ill..
• ‘The abuse of positions of power, authority and public trust to promote narrow, selfish interests and political agendas inimical to our democracy’ and ‘this points to the fact that the problem of what is called ‘brown envelope’ journalism. This type of rot is a much more serious problem than the media is willing to admit.’
• ‘Freedom of expression needs to be defended but freedom of expression can also be a refuge for journalist scoundrels, to hide mediocrity and glorify truly unprofessional conduct. Freedom of expression means that there should be objective reporting and analysis which is not coloured by prejudice and self interest.’
• ‘The creation of a MAT would strengthen, complement and support the current self-regulatory institutions (Press Ombudsman/Press Council) in the public interest. Currently, citizens are subject to the decisions of the Press Ombudsman or taking the matter to courts if s/he is not satisfied with the ruling of the Press Ombudsman. As a result, matters take long to clear the names of the alleged wrongdoers by the media. Further, this is an expensive exercise for an ordinary citizen.’
• ‘The 52nd National Conference Resolution tasked the ANC to investigate the desirability of setting up an independent statutory institution, established through an open, public and transparent process, and be made accountable to the parliament of South Africa.’
Before turning to the protests against statutory regulation from editors, civil society groupings and members of the public, as well as business, international media organisations, and a law society, I want to note a few points in the ANC’s rationale for a media appeals tribunal.
First, the ANC’s ideological social fantasy seems to be that there should be only one outlook in a democracy. The conception that the ANC has of democracy is of unity and consensus, hence the party finds it difficult to accept the different perspectives present in the media. Nor does the ANC substantiate its views that the media reflects a single oppositional perspective. Its social fantasy of a unitary ‘outlook’ means that it is unable to deal with criticism. Equating journalists’ stories with the interests of owners of the media houses is a reductionist conflation of the relationships of relative autonomy enjoyed by journalists.
Second, that the media needs to be accountable for its actions to certain norms and values of professional conduct and to members of the public has never been in dispute within the media industry, but that it needs to be accountable to parliament – the majority of whose members are ANC – is what constitutes political control and an unprogressive hegemony. The ANC was not impressed with the self-regulatory mechanism of the media in which the veteran and well respected journalist, Joe Thloloe, hears disputes with a representative of the public and a media representative. Appeals are heard by a retired judge, Ralph Zulman, who sits with a media and a public representative. The ombudsman has issued a number of judgments against the media, often requiring the publication of prominent, and sometimes front page, apologies. As Mondli Makhanya said, ‘The ombudsman has given some very harsh rulings against the media which, even though respective editors may not agree with, we abide by without fail’ (The Star: 16 August 2010).
Third, the issue of ‘dishonesty’ in the profession arose recently only when the ANC attempted to tarnish the whole industry after an incident of bribery when journalist Ashley Smith of the Cape Argus accepted a bribe from the former Western Cape premier, Ebrahim Rasool. The ANC could not show how this was rife throughout the profession, nor did it have any argument to those who pointed out that Smith was widely condemned in his own industry and was fired from his job, while Rasool, who made the bribes, was promoted to ambassador to the United States after it was discovered that he had bribed a journalist. The bribery issue was used as a stick with which to beat the journalist profession, but the ANC did not examine its own actions when it promoted Rasool.
Fourth, the fact that apologies for inaccuracies in reporting were not always printed on the front page of the newspaper could have been discussed with the media industry, rather than the idea of imposing a draconian measure such as a tribunal. As the then executive director of FXI, Ayesha Kajee, observed in a press statement at the time, ‘neither journalists nor politicians are above the law’. However, she also pointed out in the press statement that the FXI was ‘gravely concerned that political interference in the South African media landscape seems to be increasing’. The call for a media appeals tribunal, she argued, arose from the ruling party’s perception that major media companies in the country were ‘hostile’ towards it. Others shared the view that the proposal for a tribunal was based on a desire for political control over freedom of expression and over ownership of the media, and that the tribunal was aimed at intimidating journalists to stop them publishing embarrassing stories about government corruption (see, for example, Haffajee, quoted in Business Day: 19 August 2010).
Moreover, the planned legislation went against the various treaties to which South Africa was signatory, both ‘internally recognised mechanisms of selfregulation, as well as other international tools’ (The Star: 18 August 2010) including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, the Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression in Africa, and the Windhoek Declaration (a 1991 statement written in South Africa and endorsed by editors, journalists and publishers from South Africa). A media appeals tribunal would be a serious restriction on the right to freedom of expression enshrined in section 16 of the Constitution and would be a step backwards for accountability and transparency in the affairs of the public and private sectors.
Concluding reflections: ‘You media are just hysterical’
Hysteria is one of the forms of neurosis, the other being obsession, according to Kay (2003: 164).11 The media seemed to be united in its chorus around a common understanding of the stipulation in the Constitution in support of freedom of speech, a discourse that signals openings rather than closures. By contrast, the ideological interpellation of the media by the ANC and the ANC Youth League and the SACP, shows a ‘surplus’ and ‘excess’, which can be called rather hysterical. The idea of surplus and excess is indicative of ideology in operation. This raises the question Žižek (1989: 107) alluded to: what if evil resides in the very eyes of those perceiving evil? He gave the example of how children were portrayed in Charlie Chaplin films – teased and mocked, laughed at for their failures. The question to ask then is from which point or gaze must we look at children so that they appear to us as objects of bullying and teasing, not as gentle creatures in need of protection? Žižek answers that it should be from the point of view of children themselves. In an interview on 13 August 2010, Jackson Mthembu referred to the media as hysterical: ‘You media are just hysterical. Why can’t you just listen to what we are saying?’ But one must turn the question around, as in the gaze, to ask whether he is the hysterical one. It was, after all, within his discourse in the run-up to the NGC that the surplus and excess is contained: ‘If you have to go to prison let it be. If you have to pay millions for defamation, let it be. If journalists have to be fired because they don’t contribute to the South Africa we want, let it be’ (Mail & Guardian: 23-29 July 2010). The ideological fantasy of the nation and the role of the media in its creation are evident in this statement. There is an excess and surplus attached to the discourse that presupposes a particular kind of ‘South Africa’. This, then, raises the question of what this might be and for whom? For the ANC there is clearly a conscious fantasy that South Africa should take the form of its own vision, which, though unsaid, is that which was articulated not so much in its own founding documents as in the 1955 Freedom Charter which grew out of the Congress alliance of that time. The vision was appropriated by the ruling party once it obtained hegemonic power after the failure of the Government of National Unity. The ANC then developed a conscious fantasy that the whole of ‘the People’ supports the party and therefore the whole of the media should support it as well – as is evident in the words of the secretary general of the ANC (elected to the position in 2007), Gwede Mantashe:
A media tribunal is required to deal with the so-called ‘dearth of media ethics’ in South Africa. [It would] help to ‘correct’ the anti-ANC bias in the media. The media is driven by a dark conspiracy to discredit the National Democratic Revolution (Biz Community: 30 July 2010).
The conspiracy theory reflects a repetitive pattern in ANC leaders’ discourse. The projection of its own inadequacies can also be seen in the following statement by the SACP leader and minister for higher education, Blade Nzimande, who said he ‘would like to see a media tribunal used to stop the corruption in the media’ (Nzimande 2010).
Mthembu reiterated:
We strongly condemn the practice and promotion of the freedom of expression and freedom of the arts which knows no bounds and only sees itself as the most supreme freedom that supersedes and tramples other people’s constitutional rights to dignity and privacy, and undermines our values. We therefore remain resolute and unmoved in our call for an independent arbiter in the form of a media appeals tribunal to monitor, regulate and chastise the kind of gutter, soulless and disrespectful journalism (Biz Community: 30 July 2010).
I argue that Mantashe, Nzimande and Mthembu showed significant hysteria. The split, Žižek wrote, between demand and desire is what defines the position of the hysterical subject (1989: 113). The ruling alliance, in the form of the ANC, the ANCYL and the SACP (but not Cosatu) have called the protests against the media appeals tribunal ‘hysterical’, but I argue that it is probably a projection of the ANC’s own hysteria about what was being uncovered in the media. That the media reflects ‘gutter, soulless, and disrespectful journalism’ and that it is corrupt is, in itself, hysterical. Nzimande took the point further to suggest that the media was simply a reflection of its owners. Writing in Umsebenzi Online in June 2010, Nzimande said: ‘I can hear some of my comrades saying ‘It’s the capitalist media bastard! What else do you expect of it!’ So then, what is the ANC’s hysterical discourse on the media really aiming at? Is it an attempt to deflect attention from itself? According to Ferial Haffajee, in an interview in August 2010, ‘This is hegemonic control. Why do we have control over everyone else? We can regulate everything, but not you. This is more about the SACP losing power and the ANC worrying about its own power, rather than the media itself ’.
Ideological social fantasy and enemies of the people
If the ideological interpellations, or labelling, such as ‘capitalist media bastard’, are considered, the media was ‘the big other’ with a surplus attached to it, in exactly the same way that Žižek described the anti-Semitic syndrome in Germany (1989). The media is labelled as hysterical, yet this hysteria was really a projection of a party in crisis, at odds with itself and its own power, its own splits and divisions. The ideological nature of the discourse could be seen in the ‘surplus’ that it produced and the tricks of displacement and obfuscation were part of a social ideological fantasy.
The media was the symptom for the ANC of all that was wrong with society. When confronted with its own shortcomings, reflected in the media, the ANC displaced – or projected onto the media – its own failures. In a classical displacement process the media becomes the cause of society’s malaise. What was the ‘surplus’ in the discourse that made this super-ideology? Žižek cites Coca Cola (Coke) as not just a can of water and sugar but with a whole range of connotations around it, symbolising the ‘freedom’ of America and ‘liberation’ among other floating signifiers. There was something in Coke more than the object itself, more than sugar and water. In the ideological interpellations emanating from the ANC’s hegemonic discourse, the media comprised the social fantasy of what was in the media – its journalistic role of telling the truth and being loyal to the public not the party – but in this displaced version, what it included was so much more: a conspiracy, an agenda, a capitalist plot, which was anti-transformation and hysterical. Underneath this tension there was a contest over the meanings of democracy.
But democracy can be saved. The only way to save democracy is to recognise the plurality of public spaces, the necessary antagonism in society, its incomplete nature and its fissures. To save democracy means taking into account its impossibility, its irreconcilable nature, that social division is constitutive, that antagonism is ineradicable and pluralist democratic politics will never find a final solution. There should, then, be no dreams of an impossible reconciliation between the ANC and the media for as long as the media remains independent from state control. From the comments of journalists interviewed in the latter part of this chapter – Makhanya, Malala, Rossouw, Milazi, and Radebe – there were no ‘turns’ against themselves, nor was there any heeding or succumbing to the powerful interpellations of the ANC.
This chapter has shown that the ANC did not regard the media as gate-openers and as a space which deepened democracy but, rather, as a conspiracy, with an agenda, the constitutive outsider or other, ‘ideologically out of sync with the society in which it exists’, to use Zuma’s words. Journalists have, in the democratic transition in South Africa, kept the gate open, albeit in an imperfect way, as will be shown in the next chapter where I explore issues of ideology, excess, surplus and subjectivisation through the prism of the case of the Sunday Times versus the former health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
NOTES
1Jessie Duarte was quoted by Mandy de Waal in Moneyweb (3 September 2008). She resigned as the chief operating officer in the Presidency in April 2010 citing a smear campaign against her, rumour-mongering and gossip. Prior to this, she was spokesperson for the ANC, ambassador to Mozambique and, safety and security MEC in Gauteng in 1997 (when she was found guilty of driving a state vehicle without a licence and was fined R300).
2See Žižek (2004) on Tony Blair in Iraq: the Borrowed Kettle. Blair knew there were no weapons of mass destruction but he nonetheless went through the social fantasy of believing that there were.
3It became more apparent in 2010 that this was a conscious fantasy to rein in the media. See, for example, spokesperson of the ANC, Jackson Mthembu: ‘If you have to go to prison, let it be. If you have to pay millions for defamation, let it be. If journalists have to be fired because they don’t contribute to the South Africa we want, let it be’ (Mail & Guardian: Big stick to beat ‘errant’ journalists: 23-29 July 2010).
4It must, however, be said that Mandela’s discourse here is only one of several other approaches to the media. For instance, Heidi Holland’s analysis of Mandela and the media: ‘Nelson Mandela has a soft spot for journalists … When facing the death penalty he asked British journalist Anthony Sampson to write the speech he delivered from the dock. Thirty years on, at a private lunch … he raised a glass to John Carlin to honour his journalistic excellence … when asked by journalist David Beresford why he would serve only one term as president, he replied ‘because the Mail & Guardian told me to.’ She concluded: ‘Sadly, today’s rulers risk squandering the Mandela legacy of embracing journalists in the interests of a healthy democracy’ (The Star: 8 February 2010).
5In 2008, Malala was magazine publisher for Avusa, political commentator at ETV and columnist at The Times.
6At the time of the interview, Rossouw was editor of The Weekender.
7In 2008, Makhanya was editor of the Sunday Times (in 2010 he became Avusa editor-in-chief).
8Radebe in 2008 was foreign editor at Business Day.
9At the time of the interview Milazi was a senior journalist at the Business Times/Sunday Times. In 2010 he was news editor at The Times.
10Franz Kruger was interviewed on 13 July 2009, Paula Fray on 21 July 2009, and Tendayi Sithole on 25 July 2009.
11Of all the psychiatric disorders hysteria has the longest and most checkered history. It was until relatively recently assumed to be solely a dysfunction of women and caused by a ‘wandering’ uterus … The symptoms most cited are: hallucinations, somnambulism, functional anesthesia, functional paralysis and dissociation, according to the Penguin Dictionary of Psychology (Reber 1985). See also Lacan: My Teaching (2008) on the obsessional, neurosis in its purest form, and hysteria. See also Kay: Žižek A critical introduction: ‘Hysteria is one of the two forms of neurosis (the other being obsession) in which a subject resists integration into the symbolic order (2003: 164).