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Fight for Democracy
The ANC and the Media in South Africa
By Glenda Daniels, Monica Seeber Wits University Press
Copyright © 2012 Glenda Daniels
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-86814-788-5
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
The ANC and the media post-apartheid
Gratitude for liberation should not mean unending gratitude to the leading movement in that process. It is very human to be caught in the seductive embrace of one's liberators, but it is irresponsible and shirking one's duty to continue to entrust the future of one's society solely to a party or parties associated with the liberation struggle.
The role of the news media in South Africa's democracy presents a paradox, a historically created conundrum: the South African media finds itself subjected to the ruling party's desire for more unity and consensus in the country's fractured society. The desire of the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC) would be met if there was a more supportive and loyal press but the press finds compliance with this desire out of kilter with its professional code of ethics, its role of holding power to account, loyalty to the citizenry, exposing abuses of power and being a 'watchdog' in the unfolding democracy. The historically created conundrum consists of the 'logic' that because the ANC led the liberation struggle and was democratically elected it deserves a more sympathetic press. But as Mamphela Ramphele has noted in the opening quotation to this chapter, it would be irresponsible to be 'caught in the embrace of one's liberators', and then arguably in support of a media independent from political control she averred that 'we must guard against the closing of the mind and inward turning of the gaze that leads to tyranny ... We need to know how open our society is so that we have a yardstick against which to measure South Africa's progress in creating an open society.' Since 1994, prominent members of the ANC have, to varying degrees, conceptualised the media as an 'us and them', or in a matrix which positions the media as outside democracy. Yet the tensions are internal to, and inherent in, democracy itself.
This opening chapter provides an introduction which is thematically grounded in political philosophy. In their 1985 work Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe argued that democracy is secured precisely through its resistance to realisation, a foundational point which has been accepted by the key political philosophical works of the three authors whose perspectives have guided this book: Slavoj Zizek, Judith Butler and Chantal Mouffe. Laclau and Mouffe stated that the different political spaces, and the plurality of such spaces, are part and parcel of the deepening of a democratic order. Within this multiplicity of open spaces there are contestations, changing meanings and constant flux. Difference, rather than unity of opinion, is therefore necessary in any democratic transition. Dissension should be accepted, and those who criticise should be viewed as legitimate adversaries rather than as enemies. This is how a radical democracy is generated, according to Mouffe in The Democratic Paradox. One of my central arguments is that the media is one such space or platform for a diversity of views but, even more importantly, it is a medium for the questioning of meaning in politics. Running through this book is the thread that journalists are not 'enemies of the people' or outsiders in a democracy. On the contrary, they play a critical and essential role in the deepening of democracy. Democracy, in this book, is a floating signifier, which denotes that it does not have full meaning (a 'signifier' is more than a mere sign but stands for, or represents, the subject – and a floating signifier, then, is a signifier with no fixed meaning).
The intersection between the independent media (that is, the news media – journalism, news reporting, analysis and political commentary) and democracy in an unrealised democracy is under scrutiny, the aim of which is to preserve the ideal of democracy, to ward off dissolution, and also hopefully to inform action or activism to halt the whittling away of the 'free' space of the media (by 'free', here, is meant relatively free, relatively autonomous and relatively independent, with the focus on relative freedom from political pressures and state interference).
The South African media professes to play a vital role in entrenching the articles of the Constitution, ensuring a transparent democracy which holds public officials accountable for their decisions and actions and exposes the abuse of power and corruption by ruling elites. The questions are to do with the concept of democracy and its realisation; the tension between the two constitutive dimensions of democracy; and the realisation of the popular will – particularly pressing in South Africa with its history of apartheid racism, class divisions, growing poverty, unemployment, and failures of service delivery, especially to poor people.
According to Mouffe (2006: 974), in a 'radical pluralist democracy' the media can be gate-openers rather than gate-closers. Her model of democracy not only allows for theorising the increase of pluralism within journalism, but also allows for the increase of pluralism through journalism. In South Africa, as in many other parts of the world, the media does not exist as a fixed, homogeneous entity. Although organisational forums and non-governmental and academic bodies (such as the South African National Editors Forum (Sanef), the Forum for Black Journalists (FBJ), the Media Institute of Southern Africa (Misa), the Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI), Media Monitoring Africa, Institute for the Advancement of Journalism and Wits Journalism) enable representatives of the media to share ideas, debate professional issues and even outline codes of conduct, the media in South Africa does not share a collective or unitary identity.
Different forces drive editorial content, from the diverse theoretical platforms from which journalists operate to the different economic and political agendas of the media owners and managers. The South African media is fractured, open-ended and undecided in its nature. It is for this reason that I have chosen to use a radical democratic perspective, coupled with a blend of Zizekean psychoanalysis, which goes beyond the liberal democratic paradigm. In Zizek's conceptual analysis, especially in his 1989 work The Sublime Object of Ideology, a postmodern twist is that of the Master-Signifier. The Master-Signifier could be described as a 'quasi transcendental big other'. Through imaginary and symbolic identification we see ourselves in how we are seen by that 'big other'. But as there is no 'big other', the Master-Signifier is empty, a signifier that puts an end to the chain of meaning. As Kay (2003: 159) has stated, the idea that there is an other of the other is psychotic; this is why we need to discover that the big other does not exist, that it is 'merely an imposter ... lacking or inconsistent as a result of its deficient relation to the real.'
The question is, if the media is not independent and free to criticise, what is the intersection between democracy and an independent press? A critical question is, first, how the ANC 'sees' the media vis-à-vis democracy. (I refer here to the ANC's 'gaze', the lens of which one is part and which therefore prevents one from seeing from an objective distance – one's own view is subscribed in the content of one's gaze.) To use a personal example, my gaze, having worked all my adult life as a journalist, is inscribed in this book's gaze on the media.
A second question, pointed out by Mondli Makhanya, then editor of the Sunday Times, in a 2008 interview, is how, in contrast to the ANC's view, journalists view their role and seek not to be 'ideologically in tandem' with the ruling party. A third question follows, then, as to how attempts are made by the ruling bloc to unify society via foreclosures, and whether the media succumbs to the ideological interpellations or 'turns' from the attempt at subjugation. Are the attempts to quilt or unify society via a point de capiton, a tight knot of meanings (Zizek, 1989: 95-100) succeeding through the interpellations of the media? These are the key questions. While the book's focus is on the relationship of the ANC and the media vis-à-vis democracy in post-apartheid South Africa, I also discuss and trace the ANC's stance on the media prior to its becoming the ruling party. In 2010 three significant events took place which, it could be argued, highlighted the greatest tension in the democratic dispensation between the media and the ANC. The three events in 2010 that related to threatened closure of spaces for media freedom were: first, the desire of the ANC for a statutory media appeals tribunal became quite intense; second, the Protection of State Information Bill (dubbed the Secrecy Bill) which, in its 2010 form, would have created a secretive society and criminalised investigative journalism and whistle-blowers was on the table; and third, the arrest of the journalist Mzilikazi wa Afrika of the Sunday Times on 4 August 2010 for 'fraud and defeating the ends of justice' which raised concerns about state bullying (The Times: 5 August 2010). These events signified the unprogressive hegemonising of society by the ANC. The reaction of the media, according to the ANC, was 'hysterical' (used as a psychoanalytical concept signifying paranoia and obession). In October 2010, the country dropped five places in the Reporters without Borders annual Press Freedom Index (Mail & Guardian: 22-28 October 2010), largely because of the behaviour of senior members of the ANC towards the press.
Let us turn to some of the main events in 2010 which signalled that press freedom was under serious threat from the ruling party and the state.
First, in July 2010 the ANC decided to revive the resolution from its 52nd National Policy Conference in Polokwane in December 2007 to investigate the establishment of a statutory media appeals tribunal to curb the excesses of a media that was, in the words of Julius Malema, leader of the ANC Youth League (ANCYL), 'a law unto itself '. In a discussion document, Media Transformation, Ownership and Diversity, produced in preparation for its National General Council in September 2010, the ANC argued that the self-regulatory system of the media (the Press Council, the ombudsman and the Press Appeals Panel, with the press code governing the system) had become self-serving. The media appeals tribunal could be constituted by members of parliament, nearly two-thirds of whom are ANC members, or could be chosen by MPs, and could be an appeals structure, probably with strong punitive powers. In support of the media appeals tribunal, Jacob Zuma said that human rights were trampled on by the media, that the media invaded people's privacy, and that the media 'must behave like everybody else'. He declared that '... this media that says it is the watchdog for democracy was not democratically elected' (The Times: 12 August 2010).
The aim of the media appeals tribunal, according to ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu, was to halt journalists' 'excesses and waywardness'. 'If you have to go to prison, let it be. If you pay millions for defamation, let it be. If journalists have to be fired because they don't contribute to the South Africa we want, let it be' (Mail & Guardian: 23-29 July 2010). Blade Nzimande, the general secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP) who became the minister of higher education in 2009, supported the media appeals tribunal because 'if there is one serious threat to our democracy, it is a media that is accountable to itself ... we have no opposition other than the bourgeois media' (The Times: 2 August 2010). Siphiwe Nyanda, a former general in the South African National Defence Force who was to become minister of communications (although he was fired in 2010), also supported the media appeals tribunal after he had endured criticism in the press for 'high living': 'I do not understand how the purchase of cars and hotel stays amount to corruption. The media trivialises the matter by tagging as 'corruption' things done by politicians that they do not like' (Sunday Times: 1 August 2010). Julius Malema said: 'It is important that we need to fight this media which is ruling itself, the media which is now a law unto itself. These people, they can destroy the revolution. They think they are untouchable and they can write about anything they like ... that time has come to an end ... these people are dangerous' (Sunday Times: 8 August 2010).
The above rhetoric has several implications. First, it is argued in this book that all those quoted above – Mthembu, Nyanda, Zuma, Nzimande and Malema – use ideological interpellations against an independent media, labelling and positioning the media as outsiders to democracy. The discourse suggests closures in society, and the proposed interventions – a media appeals tribunal and the Protection of State Information Bill – signalled an ideological social fantasy of the ANC: that, through political control of the media, it could cover up its own inadequacies, its own fractious nature and the disunity of society itself. Here, 'fantasy' refers to the way antagonism is masked; in Zizekean philosophical discourse, ideology is used to mask antagonism, and a social fantasy refers to disguising antagonism by altering perceptions and interpretations of reality.
The second implication of the ANC's rhetoric is the attempted subjugation of the media via the Protection of State Information Bill. If enacted, in its present form its impact on the world of journalism would be severe: penalties for offences range from between three to twenty-five years in jail. Many stories would not be publishable. The Bill is draconian, a violation of media freedom and freedom of expression, one which would have had a chilling effect on the publication of matters of public interest and, further, one that would kill the free flow of information and transparency and finally, one which would not stand the test of constitutionality. For the state law advisor, Enver Daniels, however, the Protection of State Information Bill was meant to 'balance' the Promotion of Access to Information Act of 2000. He argued that the reactions by the press and civil society groupings (including Sanef, Print Media SA, FXI), the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa), South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) and the ANC's own alliance partner, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu)) which had made submissions to Parliament, were 'emotional and hysterical' (The Star: 28 July 2010).
A third implication of this increasing intimidation of the free press arises from the arrest on 4 August 2010 of a Sunday Times investigative journalist, Mzilikazi wa Afrika, outside his newspaper offices in Rosebank, Johannesburg. While Sanef was engaged in a meeting with journalists (of whom I was one) to discuss the attempts at muzzling the media, the chairperson, Mondli Makhanya, asked what the commotion was outside. A few of us ran out and witnessed Wa Afrika being roughly handled by seven plain-clothes policeman who were escorting him to an awaiting police vehicle. The police said he was being arrested for 'fraud' and 'defeating the ends of justice' (Mail & Guardian: 13-19 August). It subsequently emerged that the ANC was unhappy about the exposures of divisions and fractures in the party's leadership in Mpumalanga and the arrest was part of a strategy to stop Wa Afrika from his investigative reporting. The incident had a surreal quality about it, reminiscent of the dark old days of apartheid.
The deepening of South Africa's democracy will depend upon acceptance and tolerance by the ANC and the government of media scrutiny of its performance. Pallo Jordan, who is a member of the ANC National Executive Committee (NEC) and chairperson of the NEC subcommittee on communication, and has always been regarded as one of the organisation's intellectuals, made this point too. He wrote that in the spirit of the Constitution the value we place on a free independent and outspoken press in democratic South Africa cannot be overstated, and he asserted that: 'The ANC has not and shall not wilt under criticism or close scrutiny' (The Times: 20 August 2010). He also wrote that his argument was within the tradition of the ANC itself: 'The ANC has a long track record of commitment to media freedom. In defending a free media, we are defending the ANC's own rich heritage ...' (ANC Today: 20-26 August 2010). However, a mere month later, Jordan did an about-turn. He announced at a press conference after the ANC's National General Council (NGC) on 24 September 2010 that the media appeals tribunal, which the organisation had resolved to take forward, was an indication of the 'ANC's commitment to press freedom' (Sunday Independent: 24 October 2010), and that the media did not reflect the transition to democracy. 'When you read our print media you never get a sense that this country is moving from an authoritarian state to democracy.' He became even less a champion of an independent press and an open society when he later stated that 'there is no country that has no secrets. The purpose of the Bill is to protect the secrets of this country' (Mail & Guardian: 29 October - 4 November 2010).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Fight for Democracy by Glenda Daniels, Monica Seeber. Copyright © 2012 Glenda Daniels. Excerpted by permission of Wits University Press.
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