9.
Concluding reflections: where is democracy headed?
Perfect democracy would indeed destroy itself. This is why it should be conceived as a good that exists as good only as long as it cannot be reached.1
Torfing said that we must accept a world of politics full of antagonism. Once we accept this, we need to then envisage how it is possible under those conditions to create or maintain a pluralistic democratic order, with a distinction between ‘enemy’ and ‘adversary’ (1999: 121). One of my main premises is that ‘democracy’ is secured precisely through its resistance to perfect or final realisation, and it is characterised ultimately by indeterminacy. My conceptual starting point, then, is that the tension between the media and the ANC is internal to democracy itself. One of my conclusions is that, through populist interventions such as ideological labelling, disparate antagonisms are condensed into one figure, ‘the media’. Antagonistic interpellations against the media include that it is a body which is anti-transformation, that it lacks diversity, is profit-driven, is an enemy of the people, lacks ubuntu and is hysterical. In trying to control the media in South Africa, the ANC and some of its alliance partners have not accepted that a fractured society cannot exist without contestations or that there is a distinction between enemy and adversary in a pluralistic democratic order. The ideological labelling is a case of obfuscation.
My argument throughout this book is that the independent media is an agonistic, adversarial space and journalists are legitimate adversaries who have a significant role to play in the creation of, and the deepening of, a pluralistic democratic order. It is therefore inappropriate, but also unfair, to gaze on them as enemies, anti-transformation and unpatriotic. To constitute the media as an ‘us and them’ is to make it an outsider to the democratic space. Through the use of psychoanalytical concepts of ideological interpellation, Master-Signifiers and floating signifiers, social fantasy, and the gaze, I suggest that the ANC is unmasked as having regressive tendencies, and through its paranoia and hysteria is itself, rather than the media, blocking transformation. The ANC has turned the issue around to brand the media as the regressive force, indulging in ideological interpellation of critical voices in the media, hailing them through the performative of naming. It has summoned the intervention of a media appeals tribunal as a means of control.
One of my concluding reflections is that unity in society is not possible (not within the ANC nor between the ANC and the media) and attempts at unity suggest foreclosures of democratic spaces. Voices in the ANC and its alliance partners have, to different degrees, attempted to close these open spaces through ideological interpellations, lawsuits, interdicts against publishing, the Protection of State Information Bill and the proposed media appeals tribunal.
Butler’s concepts of passionate attachments, misrecognition and refused identification, witnessed particularly in ‘turns’ away from – and sometimes towards – the ideologically interpellating voices, were useful in providing an understanding of the multiple subjectivities of journalists in South Africa. By the stories they published and the opinions they voiced, the editors showed that they turned their backs on the interpellating voices of power, misrecognising the labels. Those editors who were interviewed did not, for example, attach to race as a Master-Signifier, and nor was loyalty to the party of liberation a Master-Signifier. It is possible then that there was little conscious ideology at work in the disparate worlds of journalists, contrary to the suggestion by Jessie Duarte and others that there was an anti-ANC conspiracy in the media. While a few journalists made reflexive turns to the voice of power when they heeded a call for more loyalty and attempted to re-launch the FBJ, reiterating norms of the past, the majority did not.
The ANC threw the signifiers race and capitalism into the equation, assuming that the media is one big bloc controlled by ‘white capitalists’. In my experience as a journalist in South Africa since 1990, I have not once been told that I could not cover a story or write from a particular angle because it would upset the advertisers, or that the ‘white capitalists’ would not be happy with this or that story (other journalists may have had other experiences, so I cannot speak for them). The point is that the nuance of what is reported and debated, and the diversity of voices that do indeed exist, is missing from this kind of knee-jerk generalisation.
Notwithstanding the ANC’s, ANC Youth League’s and SACP’s diatribe against the ‘capitalist media’, the capitalist system itself (while of course deeply embroiled in the spoils of capitalism) has in fact wreaked havoc on traditional media globally, as seen in the global economic recession of 2008-2010 coupled with the growing dependence of the wealthy on the Internet for news. This is how the intersection of commercial interests and capitalism entered into the fray of democracy and the media in this book, but it was not the focus.
For all her criticisms of the media in general, an important point that Mouffe made was that, even though the media were not all that powerful, there should be more pluralism in the media, and while journalists were not there to tell people what to think, they should be providing different views. ‘Ideally, the role of the media should precisely be to contribute to the creation of these agonistic public spaces in which there is possibility for dissensus to be expressed or alternatives to be put forward’ (Mouffe 2006: 974). In my discussion of the independent media in South Africa I have shown that journalists have been guided by this same vision. Mouffe theorised journalists as legitimate adversaries in a democracy, and I have done this for the case of South African journalists in particular.
The media caught in a deep slumber
I started this work on the media’s role in a democracy, and the fight between the ANC and the media, with a particular view, an optimistic one, of how the media fight for democracy and independence, using English-language newspapers as examples. I have ended with a rather more open-ended view. The continued relative independence of the media is undecided. It was clear by 2010, when I conducted my research, that the media would challenge repressive legislative proposals in the Constitutional Court. In South Africa, prior to 2010, there was reliance on recourse to the parliamentary process in the form of ‘submissions’, rather than activism, among journalists. The deputy chief justice, Dikgang Moseneke, made reference to this speaking of South African politics in general: ‘“Lawfare” occurs,’ he said in 2010, ‘when politics is played out in the court. The layman’s understanding is that this is political warfare that converts into legal warfare. In the past twenty-four months ‘our society has had a fair share of political contestations that have played themselves out in our courts and in the Constitutional Court in particular’ (Mail & Guardian: 29 January-4 February 2010).
Journalists did not always make use of the opportunities available to them, such as that on Media Freedom Day in October 2009, to use their own spaces, newspapers, to expose that their freedoms were being whittled away. It could be argued that the media, in particular the traditional media, had been caught in a ‘deep slumber’, to use the phrase of Stefaans Brümmer at the M&G Centre for Investigative Journalism. The resolution to investigate the establishment of a media appeals tribunal took place at the ANC’s policy conference in Polokwane in December 2007, and was reinforced at the ANC’s NGC in Durban in September 2010. It was clear that the independent media world was faced with intense pressure from the ruling party to toe the ideological line. The proposed regulatory instruments suggested closures which are not in tandem with an open society. What possibilities for action or agency existed? Brümmer has said, in an interview, that ‘unless we engage and make ourselves heard, these consequences may well become part of the legal arsenal available to public figures who do not like the media’s probing attention’. He thought that if these repressive measures had taken place during the apartheid era there would have been more of an outcry.
The democratic space was being shut down and journalists had been ‘caught in a deep slumber’. I agree that there seemed to be far too much faith and trust in the new government because it was democratically elected. In the interviews with the editors on whether the media appeals tribunal might become a reality, most of them said it would not happen because the Constitution would ‘protect us’. But surely it depended on which judges were sitting in the Constitutional Court at a particular time, and how they interpreted the law. Franz Kruger concurred with this when he said that ‘one should be careful not to be absolute about the Constitutional Court. It could change in character and composition’, and he explained, in an interview, that ‘it is not impossible that a formulation could be found for this media tribunal. They would couch it in terms of transformation and development. The ANC has for a long time been unhappy about the media, and wants to prevent its “excesses” and “reactionary” behaviour.’
In 2010, it appeared that the media had awoken from its deep slumber when the Protection of State Information Bill was still on the table in Parliament and the media appeals tribunal was back for discussion at the ANC’s September 2010 NGC. Sanef held a meeting with journalists at the Sunday Times offices in Johannesburg on 4 August 2010 at which it was decided that ‘engagement’ would take place with the ANC over their actions to curtail media freedom. A campaign would be launched to protest the proposed media appeals tribunal and the Protection of State Information Bill. Finally, if all these civil society actions failed, there would be a constitutional challenge. Although the environment pointed to a closing in of the spaces, there was still a turning against the ANC by the media rather than a turning towards its interpellating calls, and this signalled an optimistic moment for democracy. Ironically, while this meeting was taking place seven plain-clothes policemen arrived at the Sunday Times offices in Rosebank and arrested investigative journalist Mzilikazi wa Afrika for ‘fraud’ and ‘defeating the ends of justice’ (Mail & Guardian: 13-19 August 2010). It subsequently emerged that the ANC was unhappy about the exposure of divisions and fractures in the party’s leadership in Mpumalanga and the arrest was part of a strategy to stop Wa Afrika from investigative reporting. Having been part of the meeting, I witnessed the arrest. It was a surreal experience as the rough manhandling of Wa Afrika by so many policemen was reminiscent of apartheid days. There were several cars lined up around Sunday Times offices, and when photographers tried to take pictures the police shoved their cameras away. When journalists asked questions about what the charges were and where they were taking Wa Afrika, just two words were offered in response: ‘fraud’ and ‘Nelspruit’. A month later the charges were dropped and Wa Afrika instituted charges against the police for wrongful arrest.
Optimistic moments for democracy
Although there was some inertia among journalists about media independence vis-à-vis the regulatory environment, other evidence suggested pockets of optimistic moments cross-cutting these pessimistic moments. First, the failure of the FBJ to re-launch showed that the attempt to make a Master-Signifier of race had failed and, instead, a new non-racial journalists’ body, Projourn, was launched at the end of 2009. Although this organisation has been pretty low profile 2010–2012. Race remained a floating signifier in the world of journalism. It had no fixed or full meaning and was not linked to another signifier.
Second, the protests of a poor rural community in Mpumalanga received a wave of media attention daily for a whole month in 2009, resulting in the firing of the mayor and executive committee for stealing the funds in a local municipality. This was an example of the media’s exercising its professional role as watchdog, checking the abuse of power and attempting to hold power to account. It could not then be so easily dismissed as the ‘bourgeoisie press’. However, the media fell down in not revisiting the issue once the fire of the burning tyres had died down.
Third, the ANC’s efforts to interpellate Zapiro ideologically failed as he refused identification as ‘right winger’, ‘racist’ and ‘enemy of the people’. He preferred to misrecognise the calling, or hailing, and continued with hard-hitting and irreverent cartoons of the powerful – and in 2009 he won the Vodacom journalist of the year award.
Fourth, the discourse of editors Rossouw, Radebe, Makhanya, Malala and Milazi on what ‘developmental journalism’ meant to them showed that they were committed to professional roles and would not succumb to the ideologically interpellating voice of the ANC or the injunctions to toe the line and show more loyalty. They recognised and saw the conflation and frequent elision between state and party, and resisted.
Fifth, the subjectivisation of the Sunday Times through the ideological interpellations of the paper’s journalists as ‘enemies of the people’ who were lacking ubuntu failed in the sense that the newspaper did not turn towards becoming a sweetheart press.
An optimistic moment: attempts to make race the Master-Signifier in the world of journalists failed
The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) ruled against the FBJ in 2008, declaring that blacks-only gatherings of journalists were unconstitutional. The forum then dwindled into ‘nothing’, according to several black journalists contacted. Some of them had joined the forum. Many more said they were ‘not interested’, that this was ‘a backward move’, ‘behind the times’, ‘unprogressive’, and that it was just ‘crude racism’ and not appropriate to the new South Africa. Were there issues that could affect black journalists only? Does one write ‘black’ stories and were newsrooms so full of whites that blacks did not get their chance to ‘develop’? The majority of journalists interviewed commented that this was not the case and those who believed it to be so were operating in a social fantasy of what the media was, as there were very few white editors in the country by 2010 and the majority of reporters in newsrooms were black. Phylicia Oppelt noted: ‘Most newspapers across this country are edited by black South Africans; senior positions across the different media platforms are occupied by black journalists’ (Daily Dispatch: 31 August 2009). Race was tied to the transformation project in the discourse of successive presidents in the democratic era, but for many journalists race was a floating signifier without full meaning.
The failure of the FBJ to re-launch signalled an optimistic moment for democracy as it attested to the fact that there was no one view, nor a single unified identity, on the part of journalists, and certainly not on the basis of race. It showed that the attempt to rigidify the signifier, race, and turn it into a Master-Signifier, failed – meaning simply that race was not the be all and end all. The second optimistic moment was the formation in 2010 of a new non-racial organisation, Projourn, with the aim of addressing both political and non-political issues faced by journalists in South Africa. The third optimistic moment was that, even though the majority of journalists in newsrooms today are black they are not essentialising race or identifying purely on race terms, and they are not kowtowing to the ruling party’s desire for a more loyal media. The floating signifier, race, was not fixed, not the main signifier to which all other meanings were attached or linked. The FBJ attempted to convert race, or ‘black’, into a Master-Signifier and it was a testament to most black journalists – in not identifying with one thing, in this case, race – that the call from authority failed. This then raises the question whether journalists have political identities. They do, but these identities are multiple and free floating, characterised, in Lacanian parlance, by ‘a lack’.
A further optimistic moment: Zapiro’s ideological interpellation failed
Signalling both optimistic and pessimistic moments, but mainly the former, was the furore over Zapiro’s cartooning. The optimistic moment resided in the fact that Zapiro was not intimidated to the extent that he stopped drawing irreverent cartoons. His cartoons, he stated in an interview, were intended to ‘knock the high and mighty off their pedestals’, and they have not ‘softened’ since the law suit.
The pessimistic moment for democracy existed in the fact that a cartoonist could be subjected to a lawsuit at all, given a constitution which protects freedom of expression. Even more disturbing is the fact that it is the president of the country, Jacob Zuma who maintains this lawsuit against him. The action was an attempt to intimidate Zapiro into becoming a more loyal subject, to be more ideologically in tandem with the ANC, to be less critical. It was an illogical attempt to creat unity with the media through intimidatory tactics and a way of foreclosing the existing space for highly political and irreverent cartooning.
While I have argued that the ideological interpellation of Zapiro by the ANC failed in the sense that he did not heed the calling by accepting the label, he did, however, make a ‘turn’ when he suspended the showerhead. This could be interpreted as ambivalence, although he could also have merely been acting in a spirt of generosity or fairness, giving Zuma another chance. In balancing these ‘turns’, however, ultimately Zapiro ‘talked back’ with his cartoons, he did not embrace the injurious terms meant to subjugate and he remains a legitimate adversary in the unrealised democracy. ‘Talking back’ is a rejection of the injurious term, and Zapiro’s cartoon after Babygate exemplifies talking back.
The failed subjectivisation of the Sunday Times
The case study of the Sunday Times versus the former health minister is an optimistic instance of the role of the media in a democracy. Three kinds of subjects and subjectivisations were examined. In the first, we saw the loyal and unquestioning subject of the former president Thabo Mbeki in the former health minister, Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, nicknamed Dr Beetroot for advocating garlic, beetroot, onions and potatoes as a diet to cure AIDS. The second was the questioning, non-conforming subject, the deputy health minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, who was fired for not toeing the party line. The third subjectivisation was against the Sunday Times, through the threatened arrest of the editor and one of his senior journalists, the threat from the government to withdraw its advertising and the attempted buyout by Koni.
Those who wanted to protect the former health minister used race as the Master-Signifier while those in support of the story being published argued in the name of the public interest and of democracy. Those against the story being published also argued in the name of democracy. This rendered ‘democracy’ a floating signifier: meaning completely different things to different parties as it was not fixed to any one full meaning. The chain of illogic was: if you expose corruption but you are exposing ‘one of our own’ then you are anti-transformation, and therefore you are anti-black, you are an outsider to democracy, and therefore you are an enemy of the people – or you are ‘that colonial creature’, as Robert Suresh Roberts called Makhanya.
We also witnessed the ambivalent effect of power, in the form of the psyche that turned against itself, which could be a turn of conscience, or consciousness, or the split psyche. The reaction to subjection by Makhanya could be viewed in a similar way to that of Zapiro. Both made half turns, showing ambivalence. In Makhanya’s case, he said he would hand himself over to the police, even though he felt he had done nothing wrong. He said he would do this to hasten the process of getting to the truth, but as he had indeed done nothing wrong there was no need for such an action. In the theory of this book, he could be viewed as the typical postmodern split subject, partially subjecting himself to interpellation when he said he would hand himself over to the police. Or else it could have just been a tactical move, and it was only a half turn in the sense that he did not succumb completely to the voice of power. His newspaper continued in critical mode, and has continued to experience attempted subjectivisation and intimidation. In July 2010, Makhanya was elected chairperson of Sanef and was in August 2010 an important leader against the impending media repressions.
The subject formation of Madlala-Routledge was different. She was embedded within the ranks of the ANC-led government, yet broke these ranks and made a turn away from the voice of power, for which she was interpellated as a ‘non team player’ who was ‘courting the international media’ and she was fired from her job. It would also seem that she ‘lost’, but this was not so. The subsequent political events showed how democracy in South Africa is a constantly negotiated, fluid, open-ended space, indeterminate and ambiguous in character. At the ANC’s Polokwane conference in December 2007, Mbeki was axed and Jacob Zuma became president. Madlala-Routledge, who had backed Zuma, was then brought back into the political space.
More optimistic moments: the discourse of editors
The discourse of the editors showed little or no ‘turning’ to the ideological hailing or to norms of the past. In reply to questions about the nature of democracy and the independence of the media, all the editors stated that an independent media was needed in South Africa’s democracy because it served as a check on the abuse of power that could hold the powerful to account for their actions. The editors held varied opinions on development journalism but all referred to its significance in playing an educative role so that informed decisions could be made by the country’s citizenry. The editors said that the independence of the media was a universal principle and intrinsic to a democracy. Most of the editors dismissed the possibility of a media appeals tribunal, some citing the Constitution that protected media freedom.
If the editors had said that they felt the publication of the stories about the health minister ought not to have been published, it would have shown that they were still attached to the ANC as a liberation party, but they did not reiterate the norms of the past and said that independence of the media was not contingent upon what stage of democracy the county was in. The relevance of this point is that in the logic of the ANC, because the country is a ‘transitional’ democracy, it must be protected from scandal. So if corruption was uncovered and spread across the newspapers it showed the ANC in a negative light, whereas in a young democracy the media should be giving the new government a chance and not be so hard on the new leaders. Mondli Makhanya aptly explained the view of the ANC on the media to me: ‘We are now enemies of the people. Most of the people in the ANC were used to being on the right side of history. They then didn’t expect to be taken on by the media. They wanted a honeymoon period.’ He didn’t add ‘but for how long can a honeymoon last?’, and he remarked that ‘they would like us to attend more ribbon cutting events’. Also in an interview, Hopewell Radebe said that the ANC ‘would like us to clap our hands more often’. There was no compulsion from among the editors to be loyal to the ANC although there is a sense of disquiet, when the interviews are analysed, in that the majority felt that the media appeals tribunal would probably not happen because the Constitution would protect them. Radebe warned that the tribunal could happen. He thought that the journalist profession was unorganised and that ‘maybe we need something to bring us together; maybe it will be this issue’. And Abdul Milazi observed: ‘It will all depend on the media itself, whether it lies down and plays dead or whether it stands up to fight the proposed controls’. The editors were all conscious of a growing unprogressive hegemony in the attempt at creating social consensus with the press. They were aware of the ideological interpellation of ‘enemy’ rather than legitimate adversary, and chose to misrecognise the hailing.
Pessimistic moments: the social fantasy of the ANC
I have drawn several patterns and conclusions from the ANC’s gaze on the media. There was an over-investment by the ANC, and a surplus attached, in its discourse on the media. In other words, it attached more to the media than was necessary. The ANC’s ideological social fantasy was that the media was a single, unified entity rather than an amorphous, fluid and undecided one. It desired unity and consensus with the media and when it could not get this it proposed controlling measures. It viewed the media as the enemy rather than a legitimate adversary. Its ideological interpellations were aimed at subjection and it rigidly fixed certain concepts such as development journalism to mean loyalty. I have called this hegemony in the guise of development. It forecloses spaces for openness.
Let us now return to Lacan’s jouissance to understand the ANC’s gaze. Jouissance is surplus excitation. It may imply enjoyment as we understand it, but ninety-nine percent of the time it is experienced as pain or suffering, as paranoia or persecution, according to Leader and Groves (1995: 128). They also explained that fantasy is a sort of magnet which will attract those memories to itself which suit it: ‘If you have only a few memories from your childhood, you could ask yourself why you remember only those elements and not others’. The simple answer to this question is because it best suits your fantasy.
The social and ideological fantasy of the ANC about the media resided precisely in the excess attached to it, seen for example in the Letters from the President and the online contributions from presidents Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. The ANC and its alliance partners do not know how the media works but imagine and fantasise that they do, conferring certain identities and properties to it. For example, the ANC imagined that white editors were telling black reporters what to write, that commercial imperatives completely control what stories go into newspapers, and that black journalists and editors who were critical were ‘coconuts’, black on the outside and white inside, among other ideological interpellations and injurious gazes. This is Lacanian jouissance in operation.
The ANC’s ideological interpellation of Zapiro as racist, enemy and right-winger, showed that it saw no distinction between enemy and legitimate adversary. Exposures of corruption and abuse of power, in the ANC’s gaze, were plots hatched against it by the media. Duarte’s statement: ‘We are aware that every Thursday night a group of journalists … decide what stories they will go into’ is the ultimate example of this phantasmic gaze. The ANC’s construction of the media has been a singularly paranoid one, a fantasy based on projection. In a typical Lacanian inversion, then, I’ve argued that the ANC must recognise, in the excesses attributed to the media, the truth about itself. Believing as it does, or says it does, in pluralism and social democracy, the ANC ought to make this move towards viewing the media as legitimate adversaries or friendly enemies, rather than enemies with whom it is at war, and with whom it has nothing in common.
Floating signifiers and Master-Signifiers
The ANC has converted floating signifiers into Master-Signifiers. For instance, in its understanding of developmental journalism we saw some artful ideological manipulation and obfuscation at work, rigidifying a floating signifier by means of a point de capiton. In other words, in order to halt the many rich and varied meanings of ‘development’ the ANC instead conferred on it one totalised and fixed meaning – loyalty to the ruling party. Editors understood the term developmental journalism to mean playing an educative role, being a provider of reliable information, but also being a powerful watchdog: exposing lack of service delivery and corruption and holding power to account. Radebe described the ‘othering’ of the media thus: ‘They think of us as the enemies of the people. That’s taking the media as not being part of the people, yet we come out of this society. But they think we are not enemies when we are praise singers. We are enemies when we criticise.’
The unpredictable and undecidable future turns for democracy
One of the important psychoanalytical contributions in this work is the deployment of the concepts of ‘subjectivisation’ and how the figure of the psyche can turn against itself, showing how subjection is paradoxical. ‘Resignifications’ are about how one can detach from norms of the past – for some liberation – as norms of the past, when repeated, can oppress. I have shown that the media world was under subjection in different ways. The focus was on political subjection, as in interpellations. A further arena of subjectivisation took place through conflation of state and party in the form of legislation, for example the ANC’s support for the Protection of State Information Bill, which would hinder the free flow of information and therefore injure democracy. The absence of public interest defence means that journalists cannot argue that they possessed a classified document and published it in the public interest. The Bill trumps the Promotion of Access to Information Act, so that if there is a conflict between the promotion of access to information and the protection of information, the latter wins. The Bill includes almost unlimited power for the ministry of state security, which ensures that South Africa moves backwards to days of old – a security state.
In subject formation, power at first appears to be external, ‘pressed upon the subject, pressing the subject into subordination that constitutes a subject’s self-identity’ (Butler 1997: 3). That was internal subjection. The subjections in the Protection of State Information Bill were external subjection, which is power from the outside of oneself. That you ought to have reasonably known that the document you possessed was a danger to national security, is an external subjection. But power also takes other forms, as I have described in the chapter on the Forum for Black Journalists. What about the figure of turning, a turning back on oneself or turning on oneself, a form of twisting so to speak? In 2010, journalists made many twists and turns. Editors did not know how to react to the ANC’s call to discuss the media appeals tribunal. Should they engage? Should they ignore the call? Business Day’s editor, Peter Bruce said he would not participate in the call for a discussion on the tribunal. This could be viewed as a turn against the voice of power:
I am just not prepared to give any credibility or comfort to the kind of Star Chamber that the ANC and its allies appear to have in mind … I recognise fully that my absence will have no effect whatsoever in the decision that the ruling alliance finally makes. It simply disgusts me and I want no part of it (The Times: 6 August 2010).
For the others in Sanef, there was ambivalence. However, it must be said that not all the editors and journalists present at the Sanef meeting on 4 August 2010 at the Sunday Times office were ‘ambivalent’. Some had already resigned from their newspapers and had joined the new ANC-supporting newspaper, The New Age.
So it is also clear that the twists and turns did not emanate from the government, the ANC ruling alliance and the state alone. In the media industry itself there was evidence of reflexivity and fluidity. The New Age, owned by the Gupta Group, which was due to be launched on 20 October 2010, failed to appear. Five key editorial staffers made an awkward turn by moving to The New Age, and then made another reflexive turn and resigned on 19 October 2010, Black Wednesday, on the eve of the launch. The launch did not take place. The journalists did not provide reasons for their resignations but, reading between the lines, it appeared to be because they were subjected to or bullied by the Guptas into launching the newspaper when they were not ready. There were reports that the newspaper was understaffed and under-resourced (The Times: 21 October 2010; The Star: 20 October 2010; Mail & Guardian: 29 October-4 November 2010). This was probably not the full story, and by 2012 we had still not heard the full story, except that one journalist who had left the The New Age in 2011 told me that they had not expected ‘so much management interference’ in their editorial work. In a further twist, it was announced on 29 October 2010 that Henry Jeffreys, a former editor of Die Burger, who had only weeks earlier criticised The New Age, had taken over the editorship of the paper (The Times: 29 October 2010). He was once deputy chairperson of Sanef during the period 2007 to 2008. After a few false starts The New Age was launched on 6 December 2010. Jeffreys said in his first editorial that the paper ‘held no brief for any political party’, but ‘we will generally support the government of the day, at all levels’ (The New Age: 6 December 2010). This was obviously a contradiction.
The ANC’s ideological labellings are all part of its naming trajectory, self-serving and intended to deflect from the ANC’s own problems. I have highlighted a rich pluralist tradition that had developed in South Africa’s democracy, where ‘the people’ are not one, but multiple and divided, as is ‘the media’. I have also highlighted how the ANC turned against the media for shining the torch on failings which affect the poor of the country most of all.
Given the evidence and these reflections, I am led to conclude that the democratic path is open and undecided in a very typical postmodern fluid state, but free spaces such as that of the media are closing down. I have used the terms ‘democracy’ ‘the media’, and ‘independence’, in an affirmative deconstructive way: that is, I have used and interrogated them at the same time. The optimistic and pessimistic moments for democracy do not lie parallel to each other but intersect in a continually contesting way. This book has, I hope, reflected the postmodern condition of South Africa. It is undecided. The future path looks uncertain and politics keep changing. The world of the media itself is undecided, open, and split, lacking a unified identity, but the ANC desires unity with it, as though it was one entity whereas pluralistic and agonistic spaces can only flourish in a lack of unity and a radical ambiguity, intrinsic to the deepening of democracy, the final realisation of which is imperfect and unending.
Political hyenas or paranoia
We’re headed for a full-blown predator state where a powerful, corrupt and demagogic elite of political hyenas is increasing controlling the state as a vehicle for accumulation.2
Even though the independent media understood its role as that of a watchdog, holding power to account to prevent the graphic and dramatic scenario that Vavi painted of a corrupt predator state full of political hyenas; and even though the media understood it should remain separate from the ruling party, the state, and the government, it nevertheless, under the auspices of Sanef, believed in engagement with the ANC-led government. It gave the ANC the benefit of the doubt. On 15 and 16 October 2010, government representatives and Sanef met at the Mount Grace hotel, in the Magaliesberg hills, to discuss problems with the media and how to defuse hostilities. After this two-day summit, the deputy president, Kgalema Motlanthe, announced that the ANC would give the media a chance to review and strengthen its self-regulatory mechanism before forging ahead – if it did at all – with a state regulated media appeals tribunal. This seemed to go directly against the ANC’s NGC resolution of September 2010, less than a month earlier, which tasked Parliament with an investigation into setting up the tribunal. According to the deputy president, the government would also make submissions to the South African Press Council’s review process about the functioning of the press ombudsman’s office. Motlanthe said that ‘a lot’ depended on how the government’s concerns would be addressed. The concerns he raised were the turnaround time for printing corrections and the commensurate importance of the prominence given to apologies. If these were put right it could remove the basis for disquiet (Sunday Times: 17 October 2010).
At first glance this appeared to be an about-turn from the NGC decision, but it is not necessarily the case. An about-turn would be a superficial interpretation. It should rather be seen as a classic example of the ANC alliance showing its many ideological strands, as well as its fractious and split nature. Some within the cabinet, such as Motlanthe, had stronger democratic tendencies, as did some within the alliance such as Vavi of Cosatu, who had spoken out against a media appeals tribunal and the Protection of State Information Bill. This stood in stark contrast to the Stalinist tendencies of Nzimande of the SACP, Malema of the ANC Youth League and Mthembu of the ANC. Sanef released a statement agreeing that ‘improved relations between the government and the media were critical to the achievement of South Africa envisaged in the country’s constitution’ (Sanef 2010a). This agreement gave the independent print media some breathing space from possible foreclosures. But it remained to be seen which ideological tendency would win in the end. Ultimately, based on the fact that the government did not stipulate any timeframe for the review process of the self-regulatory mechanism of the media, it would seem that the ANC’s 2012 policy conference would decide.
Two days after the government-Sanef summit, on 19 October 2010, campaigners from the Right2Know engaged in a silent march to Constitution Hill in Braamfontein to mark Black Wednesday. A further commemoration, on the same day, took the form of a seminar entitled ‘Freedom of expression is every citizen’s business’, held jointly by Sanef, Wits University’s Faculty of Humanities and the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism. It was held at Wits University and chaired by the faculty’s dean, Professor Tawana Kupe. Professor Kader Asmal, the former minister of education in the Mbeki cabinet, was a keynote speaker on ‘Free speech is life itself ’. He openly declared himself a persona non grata in the ANC at this time because of his critical and dissenting voice on many issues – the latest was the Protection of State Information Bill.
Some striking issues emerged from the 2010 Black Wednesday commemoration.
First, some Sanef members who negotiated with government about the freedom of the press were enthusiastic afterwards (for example, Thabo Leshilo, who chaired the session said ‘I left the meeting largely enthused. We seem to be going in the right direction’, more than hinting that he believed the good faith of the meeting).
Second, the editor of the Financial Mail, Barney Mthombothi, felt that whether or not the media appeals tribunal was instituted ‘the damage is done’ and that some leaders in Africa were now saying ‘look at what is happening in South Africa, yet you are complaining’. The proposed repressive measures to curb the media’s freedom in South Africa were being used in other African states to justify their own lack of media freedom – if curbs on media freedom were happening in South Africa, a shining beacon of democracy and freedom of expression, how could citizens elsewhere protest? Kupe noted the same point in his opening remarks, when he observed that media freedom in South Africa had been an example to the rest of Africa, but if this changed to a repressive media environment it would ‘negatively affect’ the continent.
Third, one of the panellists, a former editor of the Sowetan and in 2012 Avusa ombudsman, Joe Latakgomo, drew on his experience from apartheid days to sketch parallels about press freedom in the democratic era. He remembered how his newspaper The World was closed down in 1977 and how, prior to this, journalists were not allowed to tell the truth. He made direct links with the ANC’s attempted subjections of 2010. He asked: should Sanef be meeting with the government about media freedom? Would it really make a difference? Latakgomo felt the government and the ANC would, in the end, simply do what they wanted to do. He considered that the proposals for the enactment of the Protection of State Information Bill and for instituting the media appeals tribunal were intended to intimidate journalists and to make them feel guilty about their legitimate work. This raised the following questions: would journalists start to turn towards the voice of power? Would they begin to self-censor? Would they feel that they were doing something wrong by reporting corruption and the abuse of power? Latakgomo hinted that this stepping backwards could already be happening, given the numerous advertisements in the newspapers calling for the review of self-regulation. Latakgomo thought that the self-regulation system worked well as it was. He was convinced that these repressive moves by the ANC and the ruling alliance were repeated patterns of the past, that this was a case of an insecure government shutting down the dissenting voices of civil society. En passant, after a civil society conference organised by Cosatu (for representatives of sixty-six organisations, ranging from trade unions, churches and communities to street traders, traditional leaders and taxi associations) on 27 and 28 October 2010 in Boksburg, to discuss poverty, service delivery, corruption and nepotism, and to which the ANC, the government and the SACP were not invited, the ANC’s secretary general, Gwede Mantashe, accused the union federation of being ‘oppositionist’ and wanting to unseat the ruling party. Vavi’s response was apposite: ‘The ANC is paranoid’ (The Times: 3 November 2010).3 What this showed, then, was that the ANC’s anti-media stance was part of a wider and broader antipathy related to any criticism and dissension which highlighted the ruling party’s own insecurity. It was an insecurity bordering on hysteria in the last few months of 2010.
So it was within this context, the all-pervasive fear, hysteria, insecurity and paranoia of the ruling party, that Latakgomo’s analysis made sense. He warned that the ruling bloc would continue to ‘swing the sword above the heads’ of journalists and editors, and it was not going to stop, even after the review process of the self-regulatory mechanism was completed. He predicted, at the Black Wednesday commemorative seminar, that ‘it is inevitable that we will get to a point when they will say this is not enough’.
Barely a week after Latakgomo’s predictions, a front page lead in The Times of 25 October 2010 broke the story that police had threatened to arrest two journalists from the Eastern Cape on 22 October in connection with an anonymous letter threatening the safety of a cabinet minister. The journalists said they felt threatened when police warned them that what had happened in Mpumalanga could happen in the Eastern Cape (in Mpumalanga there was a hit list of those who uncovered corruption and reported unfavourably about politicians, the newspaper report said, and the arrest on 4 August of the Sunday Times investigative journalist, Mzilikazi wa Afrika, who uncovered corruption in that province, had made international headlines). After the intimidation of the two Eastern Cape journalists, Sanef ’s chairperson, Mondli Makhanya, observed that the behaviour of the police appeared to violate the agreement reached between the government and the media that prior consultation between the government and Sanef was necessary before a subpoena was issued for a journalist to give evidence (The Times: 25 October 2010). It could be argued by a cynic that the incident vindicated the view that Sanef might have been naïve in putting so much faith in its negotiations with the government, or turning towards the voice of power. The damage was already done when the ANC first began its strident calls for the media appeals tribunal and when Wa Afrika was arrested. The arrest seemed to have given the green light to the police to clamp down on journalists.
Had the green light also been given to the courts that secrecy was already the order of the day, even though the enactment of the Protection of State Information Bill had not yet occurred? In a further incident, after the government-media summit, a North Gauteng High Court judge, Judge Ephraim Makgoba, granted an interdict to the SAPS to stop the publication of details of corruption in the police’s crime intelligence unit in the Sunday Independent of 31 October 2010. The court backed the police to interdict Independent Newspapers from publishing the full story of nepotism and corruption by keeping names secret (Saturday Star: 30 October 2010; Sunday Times and Sunday Independent: 31 October 2010). If the independent media continued to pursue openness, the codes of the profession, and remained loyal to their task of holding power to account, as in the case of the Sunday Independent, whose editor, Makhadu Sefara, stated that he intended fighting the gagging in the Constitutional Court, it would be unlikely that the ANC alliance or the government would accept the self-regulation review process by the media. It was more likely that they would continue to be unhappy with the uncovering of corruption, using ideological labels and obfuscation that this was ‘anti-transformation’
Two more turns took place after the Sanef-government summit. First, Zuma announced during a rally to mark the 66th anniversary of the ANC Youth League on 30 October 2010 in Stellenbosch that he was still committed to the media appeals tribunal, and this emerged a mere two weeks after the government-Sanef summit at which his deputy president had announced that the tribunal was on ice until the self-regulatory review process had taken place. Second, the government announced a plan to channel advertising to ‘patriotic media’ (Mail & Guardian: 29 October-4 November 2010) and aimed to allocate sixty per cent of spending to the SABC and thirty per cent to The New Age.
Vavi, on corruption and political hyenas, captured some of the issues in the then sixteen year-old democracy: the need to fight patronage, corruption and greed. Implicit in this is the need for an independent, robust media which should be steadfast in holding power to account. The fight between the ANC and the media for democracy, a fight internal to democracy itself, was characterised by contradictions and unpredictable twists and turns. Foucault’s famous reflection said, ‘Don’t ask me who I am, I am constantly changing’. So it is with South Africa’s zeitgeist. It changes day by day.
NOTES
1Mouffe C (2005) The Return of the Political. London: Verso; 137.
2Zwelinzima Vavi, at a Cosatu press conference held in Johannesburg in 26 August 2010, cited in The Times: 26 August 2010.
3Gwede Mantashe said Cosatu should convince the ANC that it had no intention of forming an alternative party, adding that the ANC-led government had been prosecuted and found guilty in absentia at the conference, to which Vavi responded: ‘I honestly don’t know what informs this paranoia … ’ (The Times: 3 November 2010).