South Africa

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.

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.

Is there hope for real progress in Liberia? Ever since Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf took office, there have been signs of progress. In Today’s Boston Globe Carolyn Norris, West Africa Project director and Mark L. Schneider, senior vice president of the International Crisis Group, indicate that while there is much yet to be accomplished the small steps continue apace. This would, naturally, be fantastic news for on eof West Africa’s most beleaguered states.

The Mail & Guardian has several stories (see here, here, here, and here) about Steve Biko’s life, death, legacy, and his meaning for South Africans today on a whole host of issues, including crime and politics. 

Meanwhile mysterious rumors are beginning to swirl about a “counter-revolution” against the ANC. ANC paranoia? Politics as usual in a still young state? Opposition party fantasy? Media dream story? Probably a combination of all of these, truth be told.  Stay tuned . . .

NPR has a feature on how Zimbabwe represents inhospitable terrain for journalists. One journalist explores why:

In Zimbabwe, practicing journalism is forbidden. Reporters caught working without government permission face beatings, long prison sentences, or worse. The job becomes especially perilous when the story about the local police force, focusing on police brutality

So why do reporters like myself take the risk? Some do it for the thrill, others for the fame. Others do it because they knew Zimbabwe before it became the police state dictatorship it is today and they feel morally obligated. I do it because I know a lot of Zimbabweans. They are wonderful people, who don’t have a voice to tell their stories. I also do it because I can.

I certainly wonder what will happen the next time I am in Zimbabwe. Of course there is an element of self-aggrandizement in the speculation — the odds, after all, are that nothing will happen. At the same time, it would not take more than a few seconds of snooping and all of my identities would strip away — professor, American, etc. — and I’d be marked down into one category, however much I denied it: Journalist, and a hostile one at that.

Hostile, of course, meaning to Robert Mugabe and his regime, and not to Zimbabwe and its people.  But in any authoritarian state, opposing the leader is tantamount to opposing the state. Oppressive states always silence journalists and other potential critics, especially outsiders, if it is at all possible to do so. Information is dangerous for people like Mugabe, who accuse his critics of trafficking in untruths. The stronger the accusation the more likely it is that the targets of his ire have identified real truths, which are the most damning.

One does not usually look to Vanity Fair for gravitas, much less for edifying coverage of Africa. Nonetheless, the July issue, including the VF website, invited U2’s Bono to be guest editor of a special issue devoted to Africa.

There is more than enough pop ephemera contained within this special edition, to be sure, but there are also several worthwhile articles, interviews, features, sidebars, and the like. Specialists won’t find much new, but finding something new for specialists shouldn’t really be the point, right? Contributors include Bill Clinton, Christopher Hitchens, William Langewiesche, Binyavanga Wainaina, Sebastian Junger, Chris Rock, and many, many others.

On the newsstand you’ll find that the issue has been produced with many different cover options. Annie Liebovitz contributed twenty different cover shots, all of which are available on newstands and online (mine has Don Cheadle on the front, but you can see a slide show of all of the covers here) and she also contributes photographs to Brad Pitt’s (yes, that Brad Pitt — as I said — the magazine does not move too far from its ambit)  interview with Archbishop Desmond Tutu.  Naturally the magazine cannot help itself — the issue concludes with an unrelated feature on HRH Diana, Princess of Walesv– but that jarringly inapt juxtaposition aside, the issue is an engaging and important one. 

I was, to be honest, prepared to be defensive about  a recent Mail & Guardian article titled “Can ‘Someone in a Hotel Room’ Report on All of Africa.” After all, I think it is perfectly possible for someone to engage in commentary if they have the background and intelligence and understanding even if they are not on the scene. “Reporting” per se may be difficult, but certainly writing ought to stand on its own merits. If I write something on this blog I’m not certain if it becomes more valid if written from Johannesburg rather than in Odessa, Texas, though obviously anyone committed to Africa wants to get there as often as possible.

The piece is instead about a rather disturbing phenomenon — the tendency of even the largest newspapers to have a single correspondent for the entire African continent. As the M&G article argues, “When one considers that Africa is the world’s second-largest and second-most-populous continent, taking up 20% of the Earth’s land area and accounting for 14% of the world’s population, the question of whether it can be covered by one person should be ludicrous.” Compounding the problem is the fact that many of those correespondents do not enter the job with any particular background on or experience in Africa. So not only do most newspapers, if they have anyone in Africa at all, only send one person, but that person may not even have any serious African bona fides. These tendencies once again reveal the ways in which “the West” marginalizes Africa.

Just as an FYI: For access to the BBC’s weekly program “South Africa Direct,” with links and other information, go here.