in urban, consumer-focused media with a declining concern for the voiceless who cannot pay and the race for profits.
To understand the ANC and the media, it is necessary to sketch the ANC media policy and note its shifts over the years. The question I pose is why the ANC, given its stated commitment to the democratic objectives of the Constitution, should be so ambivalent, if not downright opposed to, the freedom of the media. The negotiated settlement that led to the compromise of a liberal constitutionalism (albeit with critical social democratic elements) reflected the triumph of one ideological strand, the liberal one. It was a far cry from socialism or what was called ‘democratic centralism’.
The shifts in ANC media policy
It could be argued that not all members of the ANC supported a negotiated settlement. There was disagreement and ambivalence between the hawks and doves in the ANC, some arguing for an armed insurrection via Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the military wing of the ANC, as a means to end apartheid, while others were in favour of peaceful negotiations. These differences were also reflected in media policy. Ruth Tomaselli (1994) pointed to the distinction between these two positions as reflecting, on the one side, a more militant position and, on the other, the more pragmatic approach of the doves. The ANC first discussed media policy in November 1991. There is a small clause in the Draft Workers Charter, also of 1991, which states: ‘Big business and the state must ensure effective workers’ access to all sections of the media’ (ANC, 1991). Prior to this date, ‘media’ policy or issues were like a ‘second cousin’ to the ANC, Tomaselli observed, noting that there were more pressing concerns for the ANC at the time, concerns such as housing, social welfare and education – but also the South African Broadcasting Corporation. The discussions on media in November 1991 were then drafted and adopted in January 1992. The Media Charter stipulated basic rights and freedom, democratisation of the media, public media, media workers and society, education and training, and promotional mechanisms. Tomaselli noted that the focus was on the broadcast media and the SABC, but she also observed that the charter was framed in ‘idealistic terms’ and should be seen as a philosophical statement of intent. The document did not specify how a future ANC-led government would fulfill such terms. However, what was happening politically at the time also had a bearing on how media policy was viewed by the ANC. Tomaselli wrote: ‘In media policy, as in other policy debates, ANC pragmatists came to realise, by late 1992, that the traditional hardline assumption that the liberation movement would ascend to government in the form of a “people’s assembly” following a seizure of power though “mass insurrection”3 was an unlikely scenario’.
The reality, Tomaselli pointed out, was a standoff situation in which the National Party and the ANC had to negotiate at every level of policy planning. Having researched ANC media policy, Jane Duncan (2009) also pointed to the shifts from the broad guidelines of the Media Charter, adopted in 1992, to the changes in the 2000s. Upon a careful reading, one senses that the shifts are not for more liberalisation, nor for more democracy. Some of what has taken place between the media and the ANC signals a definite shift for tighter state control over the media. Duncan noted that the evolution of the ANC’s media policy was closely linked to the transformation of South Africa’s apartheid media and in the run-up to the 1994 elections the ANC ‘focused on the need to establish independent media institutions rather than to exert its own control over the media’. This culminated in the Media Charter. She pointed out that the ANC’s 49th and 50th conferences in 1994 and 1997 did not focus on media policy, suggesting that it was not a serious issue at the time.
A decade and a half after the ANC first discussed media policy, Duncan noted that there seemed in fact to be a swing back, from a focus on diversification to the desire for more state control.
Ambivalence
In its renewed call for a statutory media appeals tribunal in 2010, Point 58 of the ANC’s discussion document ‘Media transformation, ownership and diversity’, drafted in preparation for its National General Council (NGC) on 20-24 September 2010, stated that a ‘cursory scan of the print media reveals an astonishing degree of dishonesty, lack of professional integrity and lack of independence’. Yet research by Media Monitoring Africa (MMA), in a paper ‘The state of South Africa’s media’, presented to Sanef ’s Media Summit on 30 August 2010, showed that it would require a significant study involving a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods carried out across a substantial sample of media to prove the statement made by the ANC. William Bird, director of MMA, observed: ‘To then be able to make an informed claim to the extreme of, an “astonishing degree” would require a comprehensive study and not a “cursory glance”. To our knowledge a comprehensive study of this nature has not been carried out in South Africa. No evidence for these claims is presented in the document’ (MMA 2010). The MMA’s research found in its survey of election coverage, for instance, that eighty-four per cent of stories were fair, without any bias towards any political party, while the media’s role during the 2010 World Cup was to encourage social cohesiveness and was overwhelmingly positive. The ANC’s arguments that the media needed control because of its ‘false reporting’, ‘irresponsible reporting’ and ‘consistent anti-ANC bias’ was belied by the small number of complaints to the ombudsman by the ANC and government officials in the previous year (ending August 2010) about stories published – twenty-four out of tens of thousands.
On the other hand, according to the ombudsman, four stories about the ANC or ANC Youth League were found to be unfair or inaccurate in the past three years, from eight complaints lodged (Sunday Times: 29 August 2010). That is a fifty per cent success rate for articles taken to the ombudsman by the ANCYL.
The ANC and the SACP’s calls for a media appeals tribunal did not remain static before the September 2010 NGC. Blade Nzimande, the SACP general secretary and minister of higher education, and one of the main proponents within the alliance calling for curbs on the print media’s excesses, did an about-turn after the party’s Central Committee meeting in Johannesburg on 30 August 2010. He announced that a media appeals tribunal should not be used for pre-publication censorship, and should not be appointed by parliament, but from a range of representative structures from society, to guard against political manipulation (Nzimande 2010b). Cosatu’s general secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, announced the week before the SACP’s about-turn that the media appeals tribunal would be a refuge for the corrupt and the federation would not support it (Mail & Guardian: 27 August-2 September 2010). While Cosatu’s view on an independent media could be seen to be consistent, as there was no history or evidence of the workers federation hailing the media as ‘enemies of the people’, the SACP’s about-turn showed ambivalence. For example, just three weeks earlier, Nzimande had stated that the media was a threat to democracy: ‘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). In another, more glaring, example Pallo Jordan wrote that ‘the value we place on a free media, independent and outspoken press in democratic South Africa cannot be overstated … I cannot imagine an ANC government that is fearful of criticism’ (The Times: 20 August 2010) yet announced in a press conference on 24 September that the ANC had adopted a resolution to forge ahead with the media appeals tribunal and said it was an example of the ANC’s ‘commitment to press freedom’ (see Appendix 2 for the resolution adopted). And in October he told the Pan African Parliament that the media was not reflecting the transition to democracy (Sunday Independent: 24 October 2010). There most certainly is ambivalence, but is there a fetishistic split too? Kay explained the fetishistic split in Žižek’s theorising, using his example of Tony Blair: ‘We voted for Tony Blair in Britain because he is deceitful and a master of spin, even though we also believe he is sincere’ (2003). The fetishistic split that ensured his success ran something like this: ‘We believe he is upright and moral, but all the same, we know he is scheming and underhand and thus can be relied upon not to change things much, though he may make the status quo work a bit better’. How can we apply this to the media and the ANC in South Africa? We can do so simply by suggesting that the ANC believes in media freedom and supports it,
