By: Lindiwe Sisulu
I am here in my capacity as Minister to Steve Motale, the editor of this brave initiative being launched today. My congratulations to him and his team for having achieved this milestone which opens up media to alternative voices, and hopefully honest voices.
The recent book by Anton Harber, “So for the Record”, covers how South Africa’s biggest newspaper ran on fabricated stories. It lays bare what happens in our media space. We fought the struggle to liberate this country, to liberate every facet that is necessary for a free and democratic society. In my time in exile as an underground activist in Swaziland, I was part of this tribe called journalists and I know what we fought for and what we have not achieved. We simply changed the goal post and we hold supreme the freedom of the press over and above the freedom of the individual and the people of South Africa. And therefore I am here as an insider and a victim of the media because at its best that is what it has made me. Notably, the Mail & Guardian, City Press – I have become their favourite billboard headlines and therefore I feel very well placed to make the comments I am making. I feel no less liberated now in the time of freedom than I did under Apartheid the way the media has slandered my name.
I welcome this alternative venture – it will bring out the necessary competition.
Globally, media outlets, in all their different forms, are struggling to survive. South Africa is no different. Our economy has taken a serious knock and the signs are that the downturn is not yet at its end. Many businesses, large and small, are in a survival mood, and some of them have already had to fold their tents. Consequently, media, for whom the income from advertising is so vital, have suffered hugely. When jobs are scarce, unemployment is rife, and under-employment is a daily, painful reality. Paying for news is a luxury most people cannot afford. For many South Africans, these are times of scarcity, and scarcity breeds discontent and discontent breeds frustration, anger, and tensions, the results of which we have seen in our country only a month ago, and the consequences of which we will live with for some time.
On top of all this, we are in the deadly grip of the coronavirus. South Africans are hard hit, battered, and conflicted, and we are not alone.
Yet, you have decided that this is the time for re-visioning, rebranding, and relaunching Africa News24/7. And specifically as an online service. Why? Because you are astute business persons. You know that studies tell us that South Africa’s internet penetration rate is fairly high, with 55% of the population having access to the Internet in 2020. Social media usage has also seen a sharp growth in recent years. In 2020, 22 million South Africans used social media, an increase of 3.5 million (or 19%) in the year past. Whatsapp is the major messenger app in the country. Mobile phone penetration in the country is very high, with 176% of the population having a mobile connection in 2020, a 3.1% year-on-year increase. This is an important figure, as 96% of all internet users access the internet through their mobile phones. So you know that online news, intelligently written and presented with respect for the political awareness and discernment of your audience is good ground to stand on. This is a sound business decision.
You know our country. In ordinary times, democracy and media are fiercely contested spaces. In times such as ours, that democracy is especially fragile, and so are the people that must make it work. The goals of democracy, that of creating a space for the politics of decency, dignity, integrity, and honesty; of building structures that truly serve the interests of the people, that keep in mind the legitimate expectations of the people, are easily marginalized, perhaps even forgotten, under the pressures of these challenges.
You know our country, but you also know our people. In times such as these, media persons must not only navigate economic challenges. They must also navigate social and political challenges. They know that proper analysis of events in the country is crucial, that news is not just a matter of reporting, but how we report; with which audience, and with what goals in mind.
In 1988, two of America’s most respected intellectuals, Herman Edwards and Noam (pronounced NOME) Chomsky, wrote a study that still today stands as an undisputed classic, Manufactured Consent. In it, they dissected the role of mass media in America’s political economy.
Far from serving as instruments of information and furthering open, democratic, and informed public debate on vital issues, Herman and Chomsky argue, the media offer us “a propaganda model.” Edwards and Chomsky write, “The media serve, and propagandize on behalf of the powerful societal interests that control and finance them.” In other words, the real role of the media, through the projection of dominant narratives, is to further, protect, and justify, the hegemony of the ruling elites. During Apartheid South Africa, that was certainly the case. But as recent studies show, democratic South Africa is not free from those dangers.
Under apartheid, the South African media’s ability to report was significantly hampered by an array of repressive laws, including a prohibition on quoting ‘banned persons’ such as Nelson Mandela or even publishing their pictures. The mainstream, commercial media either displayed varied levels of support for the apartheid regime (in the case of the Afrikaans-language media) or provided a limited criticism of the regime’s human rights abuses while benefiting from an association with mining capital that prevented them from being entirely honest about the situation in this country.
Fortunately, there were exceptions. They were not too plentiful, but they were precious. I am thinking of two examples. One is Anthony Heard, the brave editor of the Cape Times newspaper in the 1980s. At that time the ANC was a banned organization, and no one could speak on its behalf because all such speech was forbidden by the apartheid regime. ANC persons and leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, or Oliver Tambo could not even be quoted. South Africans knew about the ANC only what the regime wanted them to know: that it was banned because it was a terrorist organization, completely run by communists, dictated to by Russia. Among whites, the very name conjured up fears and anxieties of the worst kind. Amongst our people, there was a whole generation growing up who knew nothing about the people’s organization, except what they heard from their elders who remembered the ANC, its history, what it stood for, why it fought apartheid. That it was banned, not because it was a terrorist organization, but because it fought for our freedom.
Then, in 1988, Tony Heard, against all legal advice, and despite heavy and consistent pressure from the owners of the paper, and political anxiety from colleagues, decided to go to London, sat down with Oliver Tambo, and spoke to him for hours. The result was one of the most fascinating interviews to ever have appeared in that paper. On the front page, under the catchy headline, “Let Tambo Be Heard,” the nation could, for the first time in decades, hear the voice of the ANC itself. And Tambo was heard. Point by point, he spelled out the policies of the ANC, its rationale for existence, the reasons for its struggle, the legitimacy of its fight, its vision for the future. It was groundbreaking journalism, and it was a brilliant interview. There was an uproar. Many whites understood many things for the first time, and our people were delighted. Tony Heard was charged under the security laws and faced a fine and imprisonment, but the waves of new awareness in the public made the regime drop the charges.
Why did Anthony Heard do that though? Because he understood the role of the media, and he understood the role of responsible media. Against the wishes of the owners of the Cape Times, and disregarding the dangers, he decided that serving the truth was serving the people, and he asked Tambo to speak that truth to the powers that be and to the nation. And he knew that even when one has to stand alone, that truth was worth the risks. So he said, and I quote,
“I acted on my own, representing my newspaper and profession. It had to do with journalism. No one in South Africa, up to that point, had been able to know what the ANC stood for. That was the job of journalism, to put right, to shed light in dark corners.” Now that the people knew the truth, they could decide for themselves. And they did.
Let me take another example, that of that courageous, unstoppable truth-teller, and rightly acclaimed hero of the struggle, Percy Qoboza, editor of both The World and Sunday World. As editor of a mass-circulation newspaper aimed at black readers, the famed Nieman Report wrote about him, he could have taken the easy way out, dished out the marketable diet of sex, sensation, and sport, and reaped the financial rewards (as well as a paternalistic pat on the back from his employers).
Concept of Free Media
Media is defined as a channel of communication, a medium, a vehicle, a conduit, or a platform that is used to inform a diversity of audiences. The purpose of media is to inform, educate and entertain. Known scholar, Mathias A Fardigh defines free media in his book “What is the Use of Free Media” as a prerequisite for an open society. The freer media, the greater the transparency, the more informed and involved the citizens, the more responsiveness, accountability, and by its extension, the more democracy, the less corruption and abuse of power, and higher “quality of government”.
Free media or media freedom happens in countries where they are formally permitted. In such countries, media freedom is constitutionally entrenched or legislated with dedicated institutions and practices permitted to advance it. Media freedom goes in tandem with freedom of expression and constitutes the heart of a thriving democracy. Media freedom creates the conditions that allow people and communities to flourish in a democracy. A fully functioning democracy requires free, fair, and transparent elections, free media, and independent judiciaries.
Our Constitution provides the regime within which free media operates in South Africa. Article 16 (1) of the Bill of Rights states that “everyone has the right to freedom of expression, which includes freedom of the press and other media, and freedom to receive or impart information or ideas”. Article 32 (1) goes further to state that everyone has the right of access to any information held by the state and any information that is held by another person and that is required for the exercise or protection of any rights”.
Apart from the Constitution, South Africa is also a signatory of international instruments that seeks to advance the freedom of the media such as the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. There was a time during President Mbeki’s tenure when the ANC and Government made strenuous efforts to have a rapour with the media. We held a number of sessions with the Editors Forum where they shared their frustrations with us and we shared our complaints about their abuse of the media. There was hope then that we could co-exist both claiming our democratic spaces. That didn’t last. But we continued to hope.
South Africa holds in high regard media freedom and has done everything in its power to entrench this which, in its rightful place and rightful obligations is the bastion of democracy. This position is informed largely by apartheid experience where media was used as a very effective instrument of oppression. The former apartheid regime manipulated press freedom through entrenching it in legislation to ensure that it perpetuated National Party rule and the inferiority of the black man. Together with education and religion, media served as an important instrument of sustaining the hegemony of the Afrikaner state. It was brutal in its implementation. Many journalists were detained without trial, prosecuted and those unlucky disappeared without a trace. Others were killed with the state claiming suicide. Black political organizations were silenced, their leaders jailed and their publications banned. The media that survived were those spewing state propaganda.
It was in this concerted effort to open media space for black people that our people resorted to alternative media to resist and attack the dominant media discourse. Alternative media, in particular print, during apartheid included publications such as Grassroots, Era, New Nation, Vula, Izwe, Weekly Mail, Vrye Weekblad, Kagenna, South, and a number of anti-apartheid and progressive books including other diverse literature.
The emergence of alternative media formed part of the battle of ideas, the contestation of the ideological hegemony between the oppressors and the oppressed. It was a struggle by the oppressed to challenge and regain their media space in order to dictate their own discourse.
However, decades after this system has been in operation, South Africans still find themselves at the mercy of journalists and media outlets that have made the vilification of certain people their own business. A large degree of injustice continues to be perpetrated against individuals who are targeted for slander and smear campaigns. Sensational reports with no factual bases are published most often with no right of a reply being given to the person whose integrity is being impugned. We are living in the age of Guerilla journalism, where writers request replies to their stories while they are walking to print, just for their victims to lend legitimacy to what they have already cooked.
The opening of the media space for alternative voices did not come cheap. Like activists that were waging the struggle against apartheid those activists that fought to open and diversify the media space also faced extreme repression from the apartheid state. Books and publications were banned. Radio stations and television could not air certain content which was deemed offensive. Freedom fighters were called terrorists, thus justifying their attack include attacks in the frontline states. So when media freedom was finally achieved with the advent of democracy in 1994, it was not because it was handed over the plate. People sacrificed their lives to ensure that this is realized. So when we talk about media freedom, we talk about a matter that is dear in our hearts, a matter that our brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers have laid down their lives for us to enjoy its fruition. It is this history that makes us feel pain when we see people abuse media freedom for their own political or personal gain.
When we gained our freedom in 1994, we capitulated to the reasoning by the owners of the media industry that Government should not be involved in the media business as this fourth estate was fine with self-regulation. The Ombudsman system was instituted in 1996 after the previous Press Council which had been set up by the then Newspaper Press Union (now Newspaper Association of SA) to avoid the Government imposing a statutory structure which would have incorporated the registration of journalists. The code of conduct applying to the Press Council was considered and one of the founding principles was self-regulation, whereby the press took on the onus of setting up its own mechanism to adjudicate breaches of the code which emphasized the requirements of accuracy, fairness, and ethical conduct. Another important decision was to base the structure on the adjudication of complaints by an Ombudsman who would be subject to an Appeals Panel headed by a retired High Court judge. The concept underlying the Ombudsman system was that it would speed up the process of adjudication, enabling complainants to achieve a speedier outcome than would have been possible if they had taken their complaints to the courts and to save money for all concerned.
I am speaking here as not as a media analyst nor a media historian, but as a victim of the media – the same victim of the media that I was under Apartheid. This indicates beyond doubt that the media freedom that we fought for is still the preserve of those who hold the purse. This is put across in more acidic language by Clyde Ramalaine who writes that “the ANC has become a brothel where everyone and anyone is for sale”. And those of us with no purse are permanently subjected to this transaction in the guise of press freedom.
For society to function optimally we need to unleash all the freedoms that are enshrined in the Constitution – the freedom of speech, the freedom of people to express themselves freely, the freedom of association, the freedom of right to complain, and be heard. We created a Constitution that guaranteed freedom and among them the freedom of the press. We will all thrive better in a free press, free society, and everybody’s democratic rights upheld. We have had in post-apartheid state excellent journalists, we have also had very good coverage of all the matters that concerns society, but we have also had our very bad patch, which is why today I am happy that we are opening up to all forms of communications and invite even more engagement through other forms within the space of journalism.
* Lindiwe Sisulu is the Minister of Tourism. This speech was delivered at the launch of Africa News Global in Sandton on Thursday 26 August
