8.
What is developmental journalism?
[The media] has no respect for our people … It has no time to tell people what really is going on. It ignores government programmes and focuses on scandals and issues that are private. This media, this media, this media … The media in this country want to insult us. They publish only points of view that they agree with, points of view that paint the ANC in a bad light. I’m angry. Angry because people who sacrificed their lives for this country are being treated with contempt. And I’m not the only angry one. The comrades are angry… [I want to] lead the charge to restrict the media in this country. The media needs to be controlled.1
This chapter focusses on how attempts were made by the ANC to hegemonise society through the construct of ‘developmental journalism’ in post-apartheid South Africa. The argument is that if you stitch the floating signifier ‘development’ to the transformation project as the ANC understood it, then developmental journalism takes on a fixed signification. This is a populist intervention, an unprogressive kind of hegemony, as in the quotation by the ANC member ‘Mthunzi’ who was ‘angry’ because the ANC was painted ‘in a bad light’ by the media, whereas it was ANC members who had sacrificed themselves for the country. In other words, because the ANC had led the liberation struggle, the media should support it in government. The dangerous implication is that the media must step out of its professional role. However, with this kind of ‘logic’ – and it is not an isolated view – the lines between party, state and the role of the media become blurred.2
The four sections of this chapter deploy the concepts of hegemony, point de capiton, excess, and surplus enjoyment. I first discuss how ‘developmental journalism’ is a floating signifier but how attempts at foreclosures are made. It must be emphasised, however, that the ANC does not hold a single unified view of the media or the idea that it must be controlled. There are more nuanced positions such as that of ANC NEC and SACP member, Jeremy Cronin, from 2009 the deputy minister of transport, and also a writer and poet and an anti-apartheid activist for many years. Second, I scrutinise how journalists understand developmental journalism, and how in their discourses it seems to be a floating signifier, unfixed, and untied to one particular meaning. Third, I discuss the significant developmental role played by journalists when they covered service delivery protests in Sakhile, Mpumalanga, in October 2009. Finally, I turn to the role of the media in the controversy surrounding President Zuma’s private life in 2010, which I have termed ‘Babygate’ (this entailed an examination of the public versus the private and the role journalism played), reflecting on whether the role of the media could be ‘developmental journalism’ or scandal-driven and sensationalist, perhaps even full of jouissance – and enjoyment of the juicy story.
Hegemony, developmental journalism and jouissance
‘Hegemony’, as discussed in a much earlier work by Laclau and Mouffe entitled Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985), was focussed on the dangers of totalising and essentialising class. However, they also pointed to the dangers of attempting to essentialise identities and meanings. I have adapted this argument in this chapter. A radical political project is irreducible to the demands of one particular issue, be this race, gender, environment or class. In this case, it is irreducible to the demands of the ANC’s understanding of developmental journalism. I have integrated this view of a radical pluralist democracy with how ‘developmental journalism’ has been used in an unprogressive hegemonic way against the media. The argument is that the ANC and the SACP seem to assert that they have the ultimate moral and political authority as to what should constitute developmental journalism and they tie this in with the transformation and democracy project as they understand it. Their aim is to assert and sustain control, and this desire for consensus constitutes an unprogressive hegemony via the ruling party’s ideological interpellation of journalists as ‘anti-transformation’ outsiders to democracy unless they express approval of ANC policies and actions. In its desire for common understandings of what development, democracy and transformation mean, the ruling party forecloses spaces for debate.
To assist in defining developmental journalism, I turn first to an international example. The following extract from an article by Craig LaMay (2004), shows how developmental journalism is related to the role of the media in civil society. In the article, LaMay argues that the embrace of civil society is now ubiquitous in the field of democracy promotion, and that no matter how one understands the role of the media in a democracy its primary purpose is to inform the public on issues of importance and thus to make civil society’s political participation meaningful. He notes that of the many challenges journalists face virtually everywhere, in developed and developing countries alike, one that they share is a political and social environment that they perceive to be, in one way or another, hostile to independent, professional journalism. Using the power of their voices, journalists potentially have the ability to change that environment through their engagement with, and support of, civil society associations. In short, the media and civil society are both forms of pressure from below that affect the decisions and activities of governments. LaMay wrote:
In democratic theory, civil society is also the essential element in mobilising opposition to authoritarian or totalitarian regimes. Civil society, in short, gives democracy what the law, with its rules and sanctions, cannot … Ultimately, how journalism fits into the mix of institutions that compose civil society depends on how one understands journalism’s core purpose in a democracy … civil society’s job is to ‘blow the whistle’ when the government acts in ways that are repressive or irresponsible … the Western ‘fourth estate’ or ‘liberal’ view of journalism … sees journalism as institutionalising the expressive freedoms that provide a moderating influence on sources of power … Put another way, in the fourth estate formulation, the journalist ‘blows the whistle’ and civil society acts on the information. Finally, civil society also fits with a conception of journalism that is essentially developmental, which understands its role as promoting socio-economic change through education, economic expansion, and growth.
Of significance in LaMay’s view was how theorising the issues of the media, democracy and development were similar in different countries. In South Africa too, the independent media and civil society act as ‘pressure from below’, and as whistle-blowers. LaMay concluded that nominally democratic governments continue to justify strict controls over the news media in the name of socioeconomic development and political stability. In South Africa, the difference was that while there was no strict control of news, there was a strong push from sections within the powerful ruling party that journalists should be ideologically more in tandem with it and be more loyal to the transformation project in the name of ‘developmental journalism.’ This was the fundamental basis for wanting a media appeals tribunal.
The quilting point, the point de capiton, or the nodal point or knot, in Žižek’s political philosophy, are the terms used to describe how a given field takes on a fixed identity from the operation of naming. In other words, naming is like an upholstery button which ties meaning in a knot, to prevent slipping and sliding. Mthunzi’s view of the media was a hostile one, embedded in populist rhetoric, and fixing the meaning of transformation to loyalty to the ANC. He drew an antagonistic frontier showing totalisation, which included exclusion: that is, of the media, in an ‘us’ and ‘them’ formulation. ‘Our people’, in other words, belonged to the ANC, and the ‘other’ was the media. This was a discursive totalisation because of the exclusion. As Laclau asserted, ‘Populism requires the dichotomic division of society into two camps: one presenting itself as a part which claims to be the whole’, and that, ‘this dichotomy involves the antagonistic division of the social field’ (2005: 83). Žižek’s approach to the question of popular identities (in this case ‘our people’ and ‘this media’) was grounded, according to Laclau, in the performative dimension of naming in which Mthunzi created totalisation through exclusion of the media within society – and he went further, to say that he would like to lead the charge to restrict the media in the country. He said it in 2007; by 2010 it was no longer an isolated charge for there were many in the ruling alliance who wanted to restrict the freedom of the media. We see it in the desire for a media appeals tribunal by the leader of the ANC and president of the country, Jacob Zuma; by the SACP general secretary, Blade Nzimande; and by the ANC Youth League leader, Julius Malema. We have also seen it in the form of those in the cabinet – for example, the minister of state security, Siyabonga Cwele, who wished to push through the Protection of State Information Bill despite submissions from civil society and the media’s protest that without a public interest defence it would create a society of secrets and would hinder the work of investigative journalism.3
The voices of Cronin, Sokuto and Mthunzi
To examine what developmental journalism means from the point of view of the ruling bloc, three positions will be analysed: those of Mthunzi, Cronin, and ANC spokesperson Brian Sokutu. I have chosen these three views because they expound differences in the same concept of development.
Compared to the hysteria from Nzimande and Malema, there were more nuanced views on the media’s ‘developmental’ role from Cronin and Sokutu. Cronin explained in an interview in October 2009 that there was a section within the ruling alliance that viewed the media as the enemy, but he did not view it that way. To understand ‘developmental journalism’, he commented, the notion of the ‘developmental state’ was a ‘useful reference or starting point’:
The developmental state was introduced into the South African discourse from the left part of the alliance. Cosatu and the SACP during the 90s challenged GEAR’s neoliberal perspective of things. What we wanted was a different path from the Asian tigers and contrary to what was being pushed down our throats. We wanted a strong state role for coordination rather than just being driven by market forces. It is a swing to put the state back into the picture.
For Cronin, developmental journalism ‘existed in the 1980s, with a proliferation of newspapers, such as Grassroots in Cape Town and New Nation in Johannesburg, which enabled communities to achieve identity, debate, discuss issues and learn from each other, and for anti-apartheid organisations to popularise boycotts’. He continued:
Then in the 90s, talk radio played a role in discussions of the stories emanating from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. National conversations were happening. My father-in-law, who was in denial about what happened during apartheid, had the scales fall from his eyes. By the end of that year, he said how could we have lied to ourselves? Media like this created a space for victims in our society. Today, journalism is shallow, sensationalist and personalised a lot of the time. It’s scandal-driven. I’m not saying scandals should not be covered but journalism should not be driven by them. That’s not ‘developmental journalism’. Scandal-driven journalism makes people spectators in a spectacle, for instance, watching a spectacle of youth league leaders prancing around doing ridiculous things. The reaction to this journalism is that you are picking on us. Journalists as watchdogs have located themselves or positioned themselves in the same way as the opposition party, the DA. The opposition’s take on things is that the country is going to the dogs, about to become Zimbabwe. Many politicians see this as ‘Afro-pessimism’. So you’ve had the ANC always talking about starting its own newspaper. We don’t want a tame media but we want a media that contributes to nation-building. We do want a diversity of views but it is necessary to achieve a set of common understandings, focusing on the developmental challenges. It requires introspection on both sides – maybe more on the side of the ANC but also on the side of the media.
Several issues emerge from Cronin’s understanding of developmental journalism. It could be encapsulated in the term ‘common understanding’ within which different ideas and disparate beliefs were foreclosed. It was in essence a tying into a knot, a tying of a variety of meanings into one, to prevent slippages and sliding. It was the work of a point de capiton. Cronin is suggesting a desire for unity in society, within which there is consensus rather than dissensus. The rationale for equating the media with the opposition seems to be that the media was critical of the ruling alliance. This conflation is a misunderstanding of the role of disagreement, critique and deliberation – and indeed the role of the media in deepening democracy.
Cronin’s perspective focused on the idea that the media was shallow, superficial and driven by scandal-mongering that personalised politics rather than adopting an approach that assisted in nation-building. It is ironic that at approximately the same time as Cronin was interviewed, his comrade, Nzimande, made headlines in September 2009 for purchasing a luxury vehicle at state expense (Mail & Guardian Online: 13 July 2007). The press pointed to the gross materialism and elitism of political leadership purportedly fighting the capitalist system. It could be the focus on these contradictions that offends Cronin and so he labels journalism in South Africa as ‘scandal-driven’ and ‘personalised’. To say that ‘scandal-driven journalism makes people spectators in a spectacle’ turns the issue around from the reality, which is that journalism was not actually the creator of the spectacle, but was merely reporting on the spectacle itself, so the real issue here is whether this kind of scandal – buying luxury cars at state expense – should be reported.
Nonetheless, Cronin’s discourse was more nuanced than that of Mthunzi whose words ‘this media, this media, this media’, represented a rather hysterical position akin to Lacan’s jouissance. While ‘jouissance’ means enjoyment, ecstasy, sexual excitation, it also implies its opposite: suffering, persecution, and paranoia. In How to Read Lacan, Žižek explained Lacan’s best-known formula, that the unconscious is structured as a language, and is thus not the preserve of wild drives that have to be tamed by the ego, but the site where a traumatic truth speaks out (2006b: 3). The discourse of Mthunzi showed this traumatic ‘truth’. For Mthunzi there is a big other (the media) pulling the strings. Žižek explains this ‘big other’ in Lacan to be ‘God’ or ‘communism’ watching, as, in this case, for Mthunzi, the big other, the media, is watching over the ANC. The important point here is that the big other ‘exists only insofar as subjects act as if it exists’. While Žižek discussed the subjection to communism and God, in the case of Mthunzi subjection refers to the media on behalf of his organisation. It is not that the media does not exist, but the question whether it exists in the way that Mthunzi says it does, with such excess and surplus enjoyment attached.
While there was no evidence of hysteria in the voices of Cronin and Sokutu, it could be argued that all three voices – Cronin’s, Sokutu’s and Mthunzi’s – displayed an attempt to close off spaces for dissension, albeit to different degrees, by trying to pin meaning down to one thing or to bring the meaning to a halt via the point de capiton – in other words, to prevent the floating meanings of development and transformation from sliding away from loyalty to the ANC. Mthunzi’s views could not, and do not, reflect those of the whole organisation, widely known to hold a variety of positions and opinions. Spokesperson, Sokuto, for instance, explained in an interview in October 2009 how he saw the situation:
Journalists have to understand where we came from, and where we are going. We don’t expect them to take our statements and write them as is. Of course, journalists have to expose corruption; after all we are talking about taxpayers’ money. But the development agenda needs to be looked at; this means you can’t just write the negative stuff. There is lots of good news and the positives are not highlighted.
Sokutu’s views could be juxtaposed with Mthunzi’s surplus excitation within which the ideology was encapsulated. His statement that, ‘journalists have to understand where we come from’ shows contingency. Because we have come from a repressive apartheid past, and we now have a progressive government leading us, we must therefore be a bit softer on the ruling political elite. In addition, he voiced one of the commonly held views in the ANC, that the good news was not told. Reporting on the good news would be part of the developmental role journalists could and should be playing.
These voices in the ruling bloc try to mask antagonism in society by attempting to create more unity, but this can only work if there is a harmonious society. As in the Mouffian theory, borrowing from Derrida’s ‘democracy to come’, this unity and harmony does not exist. Cronin said that there should be a ‘common understanding’, but in reality there can never be a fixed ‘common understanding’ in a radical plural democracy because identities are always ‘becoming’ and are not a priori fixed. How unfixed and how untotalised the nature of journalism is in the country is a sign of the open, unfixed nature of the fluid, undecided post-apartheid society itself.
The word ‘freedom’ in Žižekean political philosophy holds different meanings depending on the context, but what pins it down is the ideological field of left wing or right wing. In South Africa, ‘development’ exists in one field, the ‘democracy’ field, but the meaning still remains contested. The attempts to pin it down by journalists on the one hand and the ruling party on the other did not succeed in rigidifying its meaning. The above conceptual analysis was supported by the journalist, Issa Sikithi Da Silva:
Some observers urge the media to not only concentrate on profit-making, but also embrace a reconciliatory, humanitarian and developmental approach and to stop acting as a ‘prosecutor’ and ‘witch-hunter’. On one or more occasions, some influential members of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) wary of the media’s historical loyalties – have accused the media of ignoring issues of social development and focusing instead on the government’s shortcomings, all as they put it, in the aim of undermining the democratically-elected black government and boosting circulation (Da Silva 2009).
Openness and fluidity: the voices from civil society and journalism
The media disrupts the meaning of developmental journalism in the way the ruling alliance understands it. I asked respondents from NGOs and editors what their understanding of ‘developmental journalism’ was, and my analysis now turns to voices within civil society and the discourse of journalists, which are a stark contrast to the views of some within the ruling alliance. The interviews show how developmental journalism is not tied to the project of liberation or loyalty to the ruling party. The fluidity of the views encapsulated in civil society, I suggest, is an example of how a deepening of democracy could take place. Tendayi Sithole, then a researcher from FXI, expressed how he perceived the ANC’s gaze on developmental journalism. For the ANC, he reflected, media reports should include only ‘the good’ of the government. He said:
According to this framework the media is supposed to be the agent of development; then coverage of issues like police brutality, corruption, accountability are regarded as anti-developmental. This means they should not be reported since they are not on the national developmental agenda. The watchdog role of the media is curtailed.
In a similar vein, Paula Fray, head of the Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS), a global developmental journalism institute with a focus on Africa, commented that non-governmental organisations such as the FXI, as well as IPS, play important roles in promoting developmental journalism and bridging the gap between media and civil society:
The IPS trains journalists, is involved in good governance issues, informing and educating the citizenry, bringing more women into the profession while performing a watchdog role. For me, a great concern is to build the relationship between the general media and the consumers of media. We also call on our reporters to ask questions they don’t normally ask, across the continent. South Africa has a good media environment; we tend to take this for granted.
Through her organisation, Fray plays a developmental role in society and in journalism by, for example, the dissemination of information and involvement in good governance. Part of this developmental role is being conscious of gender imbalance. The voices of Fray and Sithole emanated from civil society. Sithole highlighted the terms of reference applied by the ruling party in respect of ‘developmental journalism’. Fray emphasised the watchdog role and the need to ask questions. This section shows the intersection, or cross fertilisation, between civil society and the media. It explores how ideology works, and why Althusser’s theory of interpellation still has relevance in explaining relationships in the context of South African transitional democracy. Althusser’s thesis is reflected in Žižek’s The Sublime Object of Ideology, in his insistence that ‘a certain cleft, a certain fissure, or misrecognition characterises the human condition’ and that the subject is constituted through misrecognition in the process of ideological interpellation, which happens through language. But this did not add up to closure. Rather, through the concept of misrecognition, there were possibilities for resistance, or in Butlerian terms, ‘resignifications’.
Ideologically in tandem, or the more dissension the better?
The reflections below from journalists on how they understand developmental journalism elucidate a rather Mouffian concept of radical democracy: in essence the more dissension, the less consensus, the better for the deepening of democracy. There appears to be an understanding that society is fractured and that an irreducible heterogeneity exists, and that reconciliation between the ANC and an independent media is impossible. The way in which journalists understand developmental journalism is at odds with the way in which it is understood by the alliance. All of them state, in a variety of ways, that the ANC’s discourse shows an unfortunate conflation: that patriotism means loyalty to the ANC and not to the country. The editors understand developmental journalism to mean playing an educative, informative role and holding power to account through the exercise of their profession, but they are also loyal to the Constitution and to democracy. They do not believe that being soft on the ANC because South Africa is still in a transitional stage of democracy is in the best interests of the country or the democratic project. The Avusa magazine publisher and The Times columnist, Justice Malala, supported a particular view of developmental journalism which is tied to education:
Developmental journalism means empowering readers, for example, with basic information on finance. You get this in the Sowetan. It includes exposing corruption. The ANC would like us not to show up its deficiencies. They conflate patriotism with being loyal to the ANC. I love my country, that’s why I write critically. There is a total disjuncture between the ANC and the ideals of the Constitution. Many of us feel betrayed by what the ANC wants today. It is so different from the ANC that we fought for. The SABC, for the ANC, is what transformation of the media and development journalism is about. The ANC feels that because it has been elected by the majority of South Africans, its deficiencies must not be shown up. Because it has a two-thirds majority support it thinks we should kow-tow to its understanding of what developmental journalism means. This is rubbish, for me. The ANC can’t make certain distinctions; they feel development means being soft on the elected ones, and they conflate patriotism with being loyal to the ANC, a conflation of party and country.
Mondli Makhanya concurred with Malala:
They [the ANC] want us to focus on the positives, what they have done for the country, delivered houses etc. We must be a conduit for this information. Yes, there is a place for that, but we also need to be critical. They would like us to be there when a minister cuts a ribbon. They would like us to be ideologically in tandem.
Makhanya’s frustration lay with the ANC’s inability to ‘see’ that it is not the role of the media to be ‘ideologically in tandem’ with the ruling party. For him, society consisted of a plurality of struggles, a plurality of demands and a decided lack of unity. He felt that the media should indeed cover the positives aspects of government, but there should also be criticism.
Rehana Rossouw struck at a critical issue when she said she was no longer sure what the developmental project of the ANC was:
The ANC is trying to say we must be part of the developmental project but right now I’m not sure what their development programme is any more. They want us to be supportive of government’s role; the problem is the ANC doesn’t see the difference between ANC and government. My understanding of development journalism is what I learnt in community newspapers. Journalists could and should educate people, could politicise, educate and mobilise. When South Africa became a democracy we had to ask what democracy meant. We take up issues, for instance, the importance of Eskom providing electricity. Even newspapers such as Business Day, aimed at an elite readership, have debates on its Opinion pages which are educational, for example, we ran for six weeks what it is to be a developmental state.
Similarly, Hopewell Radebe pointed to the wide chasm in understanding, between independent journalists and the ANC, on the role of the media in development and transformation:
To me it’s about looking at all the different issues that affect society and how the government responds: rural issues, access to markets, roads, lack of infrastructure. But the ANC wants us to look at what has been done and feel we are not clapping our hands enough. The Fourth Estate acts as a watchdog. There will always be debate between governments and the media. But they say why should we listen to you? Who elected you; we are elected by ‘the People’. Civil society is important for democracy so if you take Treatment Action Campaign or rates and services issues, who brings all these together and makes public the issues? It’s the media. And it’s not only about the bad stuff that’s happening; it’s also about the good. The government wants us to just talk about the good that’s happening but we have to bring all aspects together, the positive and the negative.
Radebe’s comment honed in on the ANC’s unprogressive hegemonic stance when it asks the media: ‘Who elected you?’4 The reflections of Malala, Makhanya, Rossouw and Radebe showed that they were aware of an ‘us’ and ‘them’ formulation that had developed in post apartheid South Africa.
Similarly, Abdul Milazi said:
Developmental journalism to me means the media must get involved in the promotion of delivery with the same vigilance it tackles corruption. When the government fails to deliver on the people’s mandate, the media should raise the alarm. In the same vein we must report on the positives. The media should shine the spotlight on the plight of the voiceless and never relent until something is done about it.
The journalists chose to misrecognise the interpellation of the ANC, refusing to accept the negative labelling terms. When Malala said: ‘They conflate patriotism with being loyal to the ANC. I love my country, that’s why I write critically’, he was refusing to accept that his critical writing meant he was anti-democratic or anti-transformation. He saw his critical perspective as quite the reverse, as his developmental role.
An interpellation: journalism is ‘shallow’, ‘sensational’ and ‘scandal-driven’
From the ANC and the SACP’s point of view, journalism in the country is shallow, scandal-driven and sensational, as we saw in the Cronin interview. The question is: is it journalism that is shallow, sensational and scandal-driven or is it the characters and the behaviour from within the ruling elite that are shallow, sensational and scandalous? My point is that it is difficult to have sober or reflective headlines when some of the stories and characters about the political elite are so sensational and scandalous.
For many in the ruling alliance, when the media uncovers fraud and corruption in ‘sensational’ stories it functions as an opposition party and their reaction is ‘you are picking on us’, but to say that the media picks on the ruling alliance and functions as an opposition party does not pass the test of logic. When the media highlights the plight of the poor, or uncovers corruption, it is not functioning as an opposition party, it is just doing its job, even though in a sometimes imperfect way.
Sakhile in Mpumalanga
Let us turn to an example of the media highlighting service delivery. The media in all its main forms (radio, television and newspapers) covered service delivery protests in the township of Sakhile in Mpumalanga in October 2009. The protests garnered headlines nearly every day for three weeks. In this poor community, people who had little access to basic sanitation, water and housing, were shown on television and in pictures and stories in newspapers, burning tyres, stoning police vehicles and toyi-toying in protest against their local municipality for the lack of basic services. The story must surely have embarrassed the ANC, locally and internationally, for it reflected administrative failure. Some might have regarded this coverage as ‘sensational’. There was an interesting outcome. After three weeks of protests and three weeks of headline-making, on 21 October 2009 Mayor Juliette Radebe-Khumalo and her executive committee were fired by the Zuma government. Besides the lack of service delivery, the residents were protesting against a municipal finance report which showed that R30 million in municipal funds could not be accounted for (The Times: 22 October 2009). After the firing, a resident, Thabo Selepe, was reported to have said: ‘We are so happy and delighted that democracy has won. It showed that community structures work’. It might be argued that, besides the protest action taken by the Sakhile community, it was indeed also the media’s covering of the protests which brought pressure on the government to take action against the corrupt and inefficient mayor and her committee. If the protests had not made headlines, sensational though they might have been, without them action might not have been taken. It was ironic that the media were not regarded as heroes for highlighting the plight of the service-less residents of Sakhile. The day on which the firing took place, it was the leader of the ANC Youth League, Julius Malema, who was hailed as a hero. He visited the township and was carried high on the shoulders of the residents, while people sang freedom songs in his honour.
I am not suggesting that the media should have been regarded as heroes for merely doing their job, but the Youth League’s leader being hailed as the hero could be read in two ways: that ‘the people’ were duped into believing that Malema had rescued them; or that their frustration was relieved by the presence of someone in power who thought their plight was serious enough for a visit to the township. The main point, however, is that the media was performing its role in a democracy by highlighting the struggle of residents in Sakhile. This concurs with the view of LaMay (2004) that in the fourth estate formulation the journalist ‘blows the whistle’ and civil society acts on the information. Finally, civil society also agrees with a conception of journalism that is essentially developmental, which understands its role as promoting socio-economic change through education, economic expansion, and growth, according to LaMay.
In this situation, it was the ANC itself which acted to fire the mayor. A set of forces came together to make a difference to the plight of the people of Sakhile: the community structures, the whistle-blower who gave information to the media about the missing municipal funds, the violent protests, and the month-long coverage by different forms of media. In October 2009 the ANC announced a plan to place the township under the provincial government administration for a year, while the fraud, corruption and mismanagement of the local council were addressed (News24.com: 22 October 2009).
However, while the media played a developmental role, it did not follow through. A year later, in October 2010, I looked through media reports to find answers to questions: have the residents received basic services, such as water and sanitation? Is the new system which placed the municipality under the administration of the Mpumalanga provincial government effective? Is there more transparency over municipal funds? Are there consultations between the provincial government and the residents about the needs of the community? There were no answers. This leads one to reflect that although the media plays its role in deepening democracy through developmental journalism it often does so inadequately. In November 2010, more than a year later, there were no reports in the newspapers, radio or television about what was happening in the township of Sakhile. Is this just carelessness on the part of the media, or callousness, or perhaps insufficient commitment to development? As a journalist myself I can only be candid enough to say that I think it’s a case of there being so many stories to cover that one is always working towards a deadline for the next story and one forgets far too quickly what happened last year. But there is also a bit of each of those things – including carelessness. Radical democracy emphasised a vibrant, dynamic conception of politics that ensured that the object of analysis was never settled, uncontested or essentialised (Little and Lloyd 2009: 199). If journalists are to be radical actors in a democracy, or even actors in deepening democracy, they have to ensure follow-ups on stories such as that of Sakhile as issues are never settled and uncontested in a democracy and struggles are ongoing.
When the media plays a developmental role it is also, by the nature of its job, reflecting agonisms, dislocation and dissensus in society. To try to enforce homogeneity on these polyphonic voices for as long as there is no political control of the media would be impossible. There was no privileged element to developmental journalism for the media. There was a privileged element to developmental journalism for the ruling alliance and that was loyalty to the party which had liberated South Africa.
The final section of this chapter attests to this irreducible heterogeneity, to the fractured society, to the undecided democracy, and finally to developmental journalism in action. In February 2010, just before Zuma’s state of the nation address, the press broke a story that Zuma, a polygamist who already had three wives and a fiancée, had fathered another child, but out of wedlock with a woman who was the daughter of a prominent public figure, and purportedly one of his friends, Irwin Khoza. Sections of the public who had previously been sympathetic to the president and his polygamous practices turned against him in this instance. The situation raised several concerns: public versus private; that the private was political; the chasms within the ANC; the liberal western constitution and customary marriage; not using a condom during the scourge of HIV/AIDS while preaching the practice; and sexism, patriarchy and gender equality. He did not use a condom, yet he had already suffered embarrassment previously, in 2006, during his rape trial, when it was revealed that he had not used one then either. The debates raged in the country through the press. It could be argued that this was ultimately what developmental journalism was supposed to be. The section that follows scrutinises the judgments that were made, not only from civil society, but also from the leaders within the alliance itself who eventually pressured Zuma into apologising to South Africa. My argument is that the covering of the scandal, rather than the covering up of the story, was a good example of developmental journalism in action.
Babygate: developmental journalism and a bit of jouissance
On 31 January 2010, the Sunday Times broke a story under the headline: ‘Zuma fathers baby with Irwin Khoza’s daughter’. The article revealed that a woman, Sonono Khoza, gave birth to a baby girl in October 2009, fathered by Zuma. This was three months before the polygamist president married for the fifth time and it brought the number of children Zuma had fathered to twenty. The revelation highlighted to the public that, yet again, Zuma had had unprotected sex with a woman who was not one of his wives. The first time that Zuma’s philandering had been exposed was in December 2005, when he was charged with rape. He was then acquitted in the Johannesburg High Court in May 2006 and subsequently apologised to South Africans: ‘I wish to state categorically and place on record that I erred in having unprotected sex … I should have known better and I should have acted with greater responsibility … I unconditionally apologise to all South Africans’ (ANC Media statement: 9 May 2006). Yet, four years later, this scandal broke attesting to Zuma’s risky sexual behaviour and lack of fidelity to his wives, in the age of AIDS.
The revelation of the birth of Zuma’s twentieth child took place in the same week as the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. While all other leaders were questioned about serious issues such as world poverty, climate change and how to reduce inequality, Zuma was forced to answer questions about his private life and his polygamy. The report in the paper (Sunday Times: 31 January 2010) under a headline ‘Zuma’s child no 20’ was sensational for an appropriately sensational story. It informed the newspaper-reading public that each of Zuma’s wives was entitled to a personal assistant, a post worth R145 920 a year, and that medical expenses, air travel and security costs of the spouses were borne by the state. This, of course, raised questions among taxpayers about how public money was being spent.
The media’s interpellation of Zuma enabled the public to subject its president to deep scrutiny: was this man morally fit to be leading the nation? What example was the president setting for the citizenry when his government was campaigning for monogamy or one partner at a time, and the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS? Was he adhering to his own government policies? In addition, the public was reminded through the press that Zuma, as deputy president of the country, headed the ‘Moral Regeneration’ campaign in 2003, which was meant to stamp onto the consciousness of citizens the values and mores of living with integrity, not being promiscuous and having one partner at a time. The obvious contradictions in the conduct of the president were pointed out. There were two responses from the ANC to the story. The initial reaction of the ANC to Zuma’s fathering his twentieth child out of wedlock was that this was a private matter and not of public interest. On 1 February 2010, ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu issued a statement declaring that the president had done nothing wrong and that this was a private matter between two consenting adults.
The African National Congress (ANC) would like to set records straight that the matter between the ANC President and his personal relationship with anyone remains a personal matter … Our view is that the matter between any two consenting adults remains their own personal affair, not in the interest of anyone. That goes for some individuals and some media institutions. For the record, President Zuma has gone on record sharing his belief in polygamy and has demonstrated his responsibilities and his responsiveness that comes with any of the relationships. As the ANC, we have always made a distinction between people’s personal affairs and their public responsibilities. In so far as we are concerned, the alleged relationship of the President and anyone should be treated as such. We do not see the correlation between the ANC policies on HIV and Aids and the President’s personal relationships … Why should a relationship between two adults be made an issue? Why should it make headlines? Why is it characterised by some media as a ‘Shame to the nation’? … We are of the view that the media and some political commentators are making a mountain out of nothing … This unjustified attack to the President is disingenuous. There is nothing wrong that the President had done. There is nothing ‘shameful’ when two adults have a relationship. How does a relationship between two adults become ‘shameful’ to the people? Such headlines are alarmist and create unnecessary tensions and confusion … (ANC Media Statement: 1 February 2010).
Mthembu’s statement was a classic example of the tricks of ideological deflection or displacement. The questions raised by the statement were significant. In the context of a country riven by risky sexual behaviour that increases the incidence of HIV infection, how could personal behaviour of politicians meant to set an example not be of significance? Thus there is the pertinent question of whether the press was prying beyond the mandate of watchdog. Was the matter a private one, considering that Zuma was not only a public figure but also the president? What kind of example was Zuma, as the head of state and of the ANC, setting to South African citizens in the context of the high prevalence of HIV/AIDS related to sexual promiscuity? Were such headlines alarmist, creating unnecessary tensions and confusions, or were they directly in the public interest? These were the questions the story raised, yet Mthembu asked: ‘Why should this make headlines?’ While he placed the blame on the media for being disingenuous, one could argue that he himself was being disingenuous. In principle, there was indeed nothing shameful about having a private, consensual sexual relationship. But the context of a married man having unprotected sex outside of wedlock (and the president had three wives and a fiancée already) appeared to fly in the face of the norms of fidelity that marriage entails – even in a polygamous household. There was also something deeply disingenuous, dishonest and hypocritical about preaching to young people about condom usage to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and then not using one yourself. This was one of the reasons that the story should have made headlines, however scandalous and sensational those headlines appeared to be.
The newspapers did not drop the issue in spite of the set-down from the ANC. The sensational headlines fulfilled a role by informing the public about the various tangents and implications of the Zuma ‘Babygate’ crisis. For example, the then Business Times editor, Phylicia Oppelt, wrote the following in her column ‘My Day’, in a piece entitled ‘The error of Zuma’s ways’:
If this was anyone but the president of the Republic of South Africa, I would have just shrugged my shoulders and written him off as a dirty old man who has more sperm than brain cells … It certainly makes me ask what lessons he has learnt from the disgrace of testifying in 2006 that he had unprotected sex with a woman who was HIV-positive and that he had thought a shower might lessen the chances of contracting the disease … So what happened to Zuma’s role as a moral regeneration agent? Does our president think about the message he sends out to young people across this country about unprotected sex? Or is he so filled with a sense of invincibility that he has no cause to fear what the rest of us mortals do – unwanted pregnancies, sexual diseases and HIV/AIDS? As a woman and a South African, I am outraged (The Times: 2 February 2010).
In the act of writing such a piece Oppelt was an example of how the press performs a critical and independent role in a democracy, the developmental role of journalism in action. The ‘Babygate’ scandal provided some platform for open public debate but also provided the ANC with the space to air its side of the story and the space to Zuma to defend himself or apologise. Given Mthembu’s statement that this was a private matter, the ANC then made a self-reflexive turn, when sections of the party pressured Zuma to ‘come clean’, to talk about it and to apologise to the nation (The Star: 3 February 2010).
Twenty babies in a mass Zuma baby shower (printed in the Mail & Guardian: 5-11 February 2010)
© 2010 Zapiro. Printed with permission from www.zapiro.com
On 7 February 2010, Zuma, subjected to pressure from some ANC leaders and probably also through the press coverage and letters from the public in newspapers, made an apology to the nation for his behaviour. A Sunday Times headline told us ‘Zuma: I’m sorry for the pain I’ve caused you’ (7 February 2010).
Dissensus: in civil society, within the ANC itself and in the alliance
It was not only journalists such as Oppelt and Zapiro voicing their opinion on the matter and showing the cracks and dislocation in society. The matter raised dissensus within the Zuma administration and within the ruling alliance. And then there were voices from civil society. A cacophony of voices expressed themselves through the media. From a feminist perspective, the director of the NGO Gender Links, Colleen Lowe Morna, wrote a newspaper article entitled: ‘This sets us back decades: Zuma’s behaviour insults the ANC’s progressive policies’ (The Times: 9 February 2010). She argued that 2010 opened with a frenzy of reports about Zuma’s third wife – his fifth marriage – peppered with letters and opinion pieces justifying polygamy on the grounds that it was not illegal or unconstitutional; that it was better to be transparent about relationships than have concubines hidden away; and that liberalism demanded tolerance of all lifestyles. ‘The love child shattered this sycophantic barrage. It showed that contrary to Zuma’s own claims about openness within his polygamous circle, the president philanders at will outside this circle’. Lowe Morna had identified the turning point against Zuma. Besides newspapers, letters to the editors, views from civil society organisations, and the official opposition’s protests, other parties, for instance the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP), the Congress of the People (Cope) and the Independent Democrats, called for Zuma’s resignation on the basis that he was not morally fit to run the country.
On the eve of his state of the nation address, there was another sensational headline: ‘More Zuma Kids!’ (The Star: 11 February 2010).5 Zuma delivered his address on the same day, and it seemed as though he had lost confidence, evidenced in an eighty-minute, dull and lacklustre address which did not meet expectations – and it was not only newspapers that said Zuma fell short of expectations. Zuma’s ally, Cosatu’s Zwelinzima Vavi, was also disappointed. Within a week of the state of the nation address, the finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, delivered the budget speech on 17 February 2010. It was hailed by the business sector as a good one. The inflation-targeting monetary strategy was, however, maintained. Cosatu was dissatisfied and felt betrayed: ‘There’s not even an attempt to meet us half way’ (Times Live: 22 February 2010). Vavi said he would not put faith in individuals again, referring to Zuma, whom he had backed before the December 2007 National Policy Conference in Polokwane. In 2006-2007, Vavi called the bid for Zuma’s presidency an ‘unstoppable tsunami’. In 2010, he did an about turn and said that in future the federation would focus on policy rather than personalities (Mail & Guardian: 19-25 February 2010). Zuma’s response was lame: Cosatu should have read the finance minister’s speech more closely.
The populist alliance between Zuma and Cosatu seemed to be falling apart. As Laclau argued in On Populist Reason (2005: 180), the dimensions of populism consist of an aggregation of heterogeneous forces and demands. After the ‘enemy’ Mbeki was defeated at Polokwane in December 2007, new populist demands were crystallised in a new force or figure: Zuma. The hopes from the left were slowly falling apart. On 23 February 2010, Zuma dashed Cosatu’s hopes again when he said that the lifestyle audit, which the federation was demanding to investigate corruption, would not take place. Zuma said those who thought that the budget speech was a declaration of war on the ANC’s left-wing allies, had not read the document well enough to recognise that it was ‘unapologetically pro-poor’ (The Times: 23 February 2010). Cosatu was beginning to see that putting all its eggs in the ‘Zuma basket’ was dangerous. The populist alliance was unravelling, indicative of the open, fractured social in the undecided democracy. If firm and undying unity and loyalty were not possible between Vavi and Zuma, how could they be between the media and the ANC?
The media’s role: developmental or sensationalist?
In this chapter I have argued that attempts were made to hegemonise society, as in trying to create more consensuses between the media and the ANC through the construct of ‘development journalism’. But the term ‘developmental journalism’ was, for the ANC, tied into a rigid knot of meaning that limited it to loyalty to the ANC’s perspectives and the media was viewed as the constitutive outsider in this ‘democratic’ matrix. Surplus enjoyment characterised the discourse against the media by some in the ANC, for example Mthunzi, while for others like Cronin the desire for more unity was reflected in his statement that there needed to be more ‘common understandings’. It has been argued here that it was through journalists’ understanding of what developmental journalism meant, and through its educative and informative role, that the creation of the space for debate of controversial issues was made possible.
The issue of Babygate allowed people to debate monogamy versus polygamy, to question why there was no known incidence of polyandry in the country, to debate the HIV/AIDS issue, and to expose the hypocrisy of the president, who was preaching the use of condoms while not using them himself. This speaks directly to the media’s role of holding the powerful to account for their policies and their actions – and the chasms between them.
I have highlighted just how quickly a new administration, which came into power through populist demands, could be de-centred and split. Public opinion turned against Zuma but popularity within his own ranks began to dwindle too. There were cracks within the ANC’s new populist wing. It was indeed Laclau’s theory on populism in action: as quickly as popular demands become crystallised in a figure, so quickly can they disappear. Through the deployment of Butler’s thesis of reflexivity we saw that journalists turned their back on the ANC’s notions of development journalism, in active misappropriation of subjugating signifiers. We witnessed in the discourse of journalists that they saw the ideological interpellation to be a conflation of party, state and government. They asserted their independence, denying the interpellation and call to homogeneity. We also witnessed misappropriations of subjugating terms such as ‘enemies of the people’, as in Mthunzi’s hysteria and demonisation of the media. The journalists did not accept these terms. Finally, we saw resignifications taking place as Vavi detached himself from the figure, Zuma, within whom all their demands were crystallised. It was an important example of the contingency and radical ambiguity intrinsic to democracy. The media’s role was exceptionally developmental but it also enjoyed sensationalism, such as the baby-shower cartoon, where there was some jouissance attached – that is, this was a really ‘juicy’ story and there was excitement about it, just as it was with the Manto story in the Sunday Times.
NOTES
1ANC member ‘Mthunzi’, Daily News: 21 August 2007.
2In July 2010 this same view emanated from an ANC MP in a parliament hearing on submissions by civil society groupings, including the Mail & Guardian, against the broad clauses in the Protection of State Information Bill which could see journalists jailed for being in possession of classified information. ANC MP Cecil Burgess, chairperson of the parliamentary ad hoc committee heading the submissions, asked Nic Dawes, editor of the Mail & Guardian, ‘As they would have said in the days of the struggle: are you with the struggle or are you against the struggle, Sir?’ (See Paul Hoffman, ‘Yes, we have trust issues’: The Times: 28 July 2010).
3It could be argued that this is an isolated view of the media, too random to be selected. However, by July 2010 the ANC had released a document for its NGC meeting: Media, Transformation, Ownership and Diversity, where a media appeals tribunal was to be discussed. Other voices against the media’s independence as a self-regulating institution emanated from Blade Nzimande (Business Day: 30 July 2010; Jackson Mthembu (Mail & Guardian: Big stick to beat errant journalists: 23-29 July 2010); the ANC MP, Cecil Burgess (The Times: 28 July 2010); and Siphiwe Nyanda (Sunday Times: 1 August 2010).
4Radebe was interviewed in 2008, but as late as 2010 President Zuma intimated that the media was not elected by the people. He also asked whether it has a role to play in nation-building, in the promotion of the country’s prosperity and the stability and wellbeing of its people. The media, he said, had put itself on the pedestal guardianship. ‘We therefore have the right to ask: who is guarding the guardian?’ (The Times: 16 August 2010).
5According to the story, it appeared that Zuma had two children, aged twelve and seven, with a prominent Pietermaritzburg businesswoman. However, as one read further into the story, it emerges that these children were among the twenty who had thus far been counted. Even though the headline was disingenuous, these children were not from one of the official wives. A presidential aide commented in the story that there was ‘nothing new’ about Nonkululeko Mhlongo and her children. When the press contacted Mhlongo she denied knowing Zuma and denied that he was the father (The Star: 11 February 2010).