South Africa

Recent shakeups at the South African Broadcasting Corporation have revived what seem to have become perpetual controversies over perceived government encroachments on the SABC’s independence and pressure to adhere to a party line. Perhaps the question should be what role the government should play in the media at all. After all, every government tries to shape and twist and spin and control its image in the media. And other than the ubiquitous concerns over the attempts to control the news at SABC, South Africa has a free and vibrant and boisterous media culture. Even SABC has tremendous press freedom compared to most other state broadcasting arms in the region (admittedly this may not be the most edifying framework of comparison).

At the same time, SABC provides a vital service to South Africans, especially those masses without access to satellite television or M-Net, or who rely on the radio, and one wonders if simple privatization is not too facile an answer to the dilemma. Obviously in an ideal world SABC could operate as a parastatal organization with no interference. And hopefully that will be the end result once some of these latest issues blow over and once the ANC truly realizes that the cost of a free country is a free media. But it does seem to be a mistake to conflate interference, real and perceived, in the operation of the various outlets of the SABC with something more dire in South Africa.

Should a government have any role whatsoever in regulating journalism? That is the central question in the emerging debate about the African National Congress’ prospective establishment of a “Media Appeals Tribunal.” 

My initial reaction is that government is best removed from the business of regulating or challenging or facilitating its critics. This is especially the case when the state supports a substantial arm of the media, in this case the SABC and its extensive radio and television empire. Indeed, to go further, in the long run if anything maybe the ANC and the South African government generally, should be thinking of removing itself as fully from media involvement generally. Even if the SABC continues to thrive, perhaps it should receive only state funding, and not other state input.

Apparently media criticism, fair and unfair, comes from without as well as from within. The BBC has been taking the attack to both South Africa and Jacob Zuma, and while I’ve been a critic of Jacob Zuma in particular in the past, at least some of the Beeb’s coverage appears to couch sensationalism in the guise of its traditionally staid mien.

A controversial recent documentary on South Africa breathes deeply the fumes of Afropessimism without bothering to look beyond the surface and past some of the admittedly controversial stories of late. It seems remarkably one-sided and not especially nuanced, and naturally South African defenders have lashed back.  An example of the more sensationalistic elements of the show come with an interview with Zuma in which the interviewer goes for shock tactics rather than earnest engagement.

Part of the problem, for me, is that the jaundiced view not only from the BBC but from so many of South Africa’s critics is cartoonish. But more than that, it also smacks of condescension. And perhaps the Brits in particular ought to be wary of being patronizing toward the South Africans, all things considered.

Jacob Zuma’s day in court has come. Well, not the big day that everyone anticipates, but the ANC’s president and South Africa’s presumed successor to Thabo Mbeki has appeared before the Constitutional Court to determine which documents might be able to be used against Zuma (and the French arms company, Thint) and which may be excluded. The question swings on whether the Scorpions search and seizure that secured the documents in 2005 was legitimate. The final decision will inevitably play a huge  role in Zuma’s corruption case. Exclusion would represent a major victory for Zuma and a defeat for the state. But if the court allows the documents to be included, Zuma’s defense might be in trouble.

In the meantime, Zuma recently gave an extensive and wide-ranging interview to the Financial Times last week in which one of the central issues was the seemingly contested nature of internal ANC politics. The tone of the interview (or at least the interviewer) and a story that accompanied it  raised the ire of the ANC and its spokesman Jessie Duartie, who felt the need to write in to the Financial Times with a rejoinder. Zuma and his people seem to have had to clarify comments to the media quite regularly of late, which brings about the question of the kind of relationship Zuma and the ANC will have with the press during a Zuma presidency. Naturally much depends on the outcome of his trial, but even Thabo Mbeki had a honeymoon period with the media, however short it must have seemed from Mbeki’s perspective.

As Kenya entered the New Year much of the country was on the brink of the very chaos so many hoped that it would avoid as the country continues its tentative but measurable transition to liberal democracy. Even as President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner over challenger Raila Odinga, despite the incumbent having been behind in the polls by most estimations, allegations of vote rigging grew and violence expanded. The death toll  continues  to  rise. 

 Meanwhile, in some of the most irresponsible Africa coverage I have seen in some time, The New York Times fell back on hoary old Dark Continent tropes to address the Kenya crisis. The Times’ Jeffrey Gettleman chose to depict what is in reality a confluence of divisions – regional, ethnic, rural/urban, and of course above all political, among others – as the result of age-old “tribalism” marked by “atavism.”:

With the president, Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu and Mr. Odinga a Luo, the election seems to have tapped into an atavistic vein of tribal tension that always lay beneath the surface in Kenya but until now had not provoked widespread mayhem. 

 This story grossly warps the realities on the ground in the service of fueling stereotypes that Africanists have been fighting for more than a generation. “Veins of tribal tension that always lay beneath the surface in Kenya”? Please. That this nonsense comes from the Old Gray Lady, the “Paper of Record,” makes it all the more galling.  

John Carlin, former South Africa correspondent for the London Independent attended the ANC’s Polokwane conference for South Africa’s Independent Newspapers. In a column in that capacity, Carlin brings up a recent article on Zuma in London’s Daily Mail. Carlin properly castigates the Daily Mail’s predictably retrograde tone:

The Daily Mail is a vibrantly successful London newspaper that makes its money from nourishing the vulgar appetites and narrow prejudices of Middle England.

This week it published an article about Jacob Zuma that began with a nudge-nudge, wink-wink redramatisation of the before, during and after of the famous shower scene; went on to make some jokes about all the wives and all the children, and generally portrayed the new ANC president as a machinegun-wielding, communist, Zulu warrior who would expropriate white farms and - horrors - set a-tremble the 220 000 British citizens who have bought second homes in South Africa.

Simplistic though well-enough-written crap, the story (headline: “Machinegun man takes over ANC God help the Rainbow Nation”) does Mail readers the service of confirming their dumb conviction that Africa is an irredeemably barbaric place and gives them a jolly good chuckle into the bargain.

And yet, Carlin notes:

Such tomfoolery could be brushed aside easily enough were it not for the fact that it offers an insight however caricaturishly extreme into a real and very serious problem that South Africa is going to have to confront, and soon, in terms of the way it is perceived in the rest of the world in these outrageously globalised, interdependent times.

Even a bind squirrel is lucky enough to stumble on an acorn now and then, and in the midst of perpetuating his newspaper’s blinkered views of Africa, Andrew Malone appears to have so stumbled. But it is alarming, though hardly surprising, that such views prevail even in London to the point where depicting Africa in such Dark Continent terms continues to have currency.

Carlin’s article, which starts with so much promise, somewhat sputters to an end. His ultimate conclusion is that Thabo Mbeki, in order to firm up South Africa’s standing in the world, “should take advantage of these turbulent political times finally to fire the health minister [Manto Tshabalala-Msimang] and the commissioner of police [Jackie Selebi].” Execrable as the performances of these two have been, and as salutary as firing them might be, as a climax for the column, his proposed solution doesn’t quite jibe. Yes, firing Tshabalala-Msimang and Jackie Selebi is overdue. But one would think that Carlin would have a larger vision for South Africa to present to counter the vacuous puffery of the Andrew malones of the world. As it stands, Carlin’s solutions fall into the category of necessary but not sufficient proposals.

You’ll probably want to bookmark IOL’s Polokwane coverage, which has frequently updated news stories, opinion pieces, and much more.

I tend to believe that The Mail & Guardian is the best newspaper in South Africa (and maybe in the entire region), both in print and online, and as my readers know, I refer to it often in my posts and commentary. But I was stricken by an example of sloppiness in this story on a poll of South Africans on the upcoming ANC confference.

Here is the lede:

The majority of South Africans prefer to have African National Congress (ANC) deputy president Jacob Zuma as their next national president, a recent TNS survey has found.

Conducted on 3 000 adults between September and October, the survey saw Zuma emerge as frontrunner to succeed Thabo Mbeki when he steps down in 2009.

Well, that seems compelling enough. Whatever my qualms with Zuma, and I have more than my share, I believe in democratic processes, and while there may be shenanigans in the process, I have seen no signs that South Africa’s democracy qua democracy is failing its people. (In other words, I expect the 2009 elections to go forward cleanly, without violence or corruption. Maybe I’m naive, but so far South Africa’s elections have been a model for the continent.)

But then we have the following paragraph:

Responding to the survey’s question on who they would want to become the country’s president when Mbeki’s term comes to an end, 36% of the participants felt that Zuma should be the country’s next president.

36% is not a majority. It represents a plurality. And given that the ongoing narrative in South African politics, a narrative that comes largely from the media, in which the race has long been presented as a battle between Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, 36% is hardly even an overwhelming plurality. Maybe I am nitpicking, but it seems to me that a poll of 3000 South Africans in which just over 1000 name Jacob Zuma as their first choice for the presidency hardly seems to indicate what the majority of South Africans really may feel. In part this may reflect the limitations of polling. But to a far larger degree it represents a fundamental failure on the part of SAPA and The Mail & Guardian accurately to convey what these poll results mean.

The ANC has often faced accusations that it has meddled — or worse — in the country’s media, particularly the state-owned but putatively independent South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). In turn the SABC has stood accused of acquiescing to the ANC, indeed of becoming a mouthpiece for the ruling party. Today’s news that the SABC is being granted exclusive filming rights of the long-anticipated December ANC conference in Polokwane will do little to assuage the accusers of the ANC and SABC. The ties between the ANC and SABC seem especially noisome to the country’s privately-owned media outlets, especially the country’s largest free independent broadcaster, e.tv, who feel they should also be allowed to have cameras inside the venue.  

This feature on Thabo Mbeki’s relationship with the media caught my eye this morning. Essentially the Mail & Guardian asked two prominent South African writers, William Gumede and Ronald Suresh Roberts, to assess that issue, and their independent conclusions are, I think, telling. Gumede believes that Mbeki brings most of his difficulties on himself. Roberts aims most of his criticisms at the media. Neither is exactly wrong. But the approach each takes perhaps inadvertently captures the divide in South African politics and within the African National Congress today.