of radical democracy and psychoanalysis my argument is that the trend of the interpellations against the media was based in ideology which is meant to mask antagonism within the ruling party itself: it deflects attention away from its own shortcomings by focusing on the media’s shortcomings. Evidence will be provided in the case studies to follow. These interpellations began with Nelson Mandela and became quite intense during Thabo Mbeki’s time as president. During Jacob Zuma’s presidency we see legal interpellations in the form of law suits against media groups and individuals, for example the cartoonist Zapiro, and we see the Protection of State Information Bill (which would impede the work of investigative journalists) and the proposed media appeals tribunal.
The interpellations began with Mandela and it is noteworthy that, while the first democratic president was not paranoid about the media, he too showed misunderstanding of the media’s role in democracy and assumed that because you were a black journalist you would necessarily be soft on the ANC and its flaws. To a group of Sanef editors, he said, in 1997: ‘While there are a few exceptional journalists, many like to please their white editors’ (cited in Rhodes Journalism Review 1997). It could be said that Mandela desired unity with the press, and expected it of black journalists. I argue that this kind of unity suggests foreclosures which are not ideal in a radical democracy characterised by heterogeneity, open spaces, and fluidity. Mandela’s statement appears to be an attempt to create hegemonic unity out of irreducible heterogeneity, and an attempt to hermetically seal off the multiplicity of space, but using race.
Mbeki’s first interpellations against the media were recorded by the journalist Mark Gevisser in his 2007 book, The Dream Deferred. He recalled how the ‘first volley’ by Mbeki against the press took place in 1994 just after his appointment as deputy president. In an address to the Cape Town Press Club he mounted a critical assessment of the media, accusing it of ‘harbouring a tendency to look for crises and to look for faults and mistakes’, an allegation that became his pattern, and then that of the ANC. Gevisser wrote that by September 1995 Mbeki was branding any media criticism of the ANC as racist.
The interpellation took place on two levels, one against black journalists and another against Anton Harber, former editor of the Weekly Mail. Looking at Harber, Mbeki said: ‘Now criticism and complaining is what I expect from him. This forum, on the other hand, has to see itself as change agent, and not just criticise. The message to black journalists, I wrote at the time, was clear: Roll up your sleeves and stop whingeing like a whitey. Get with the programme’ (Gevisser 2007: 644). In Mbeki’s understanding, or misunderstanding, of the media’s role in a democracy, he fails completely to recognise that the media is a relatively independent agent, independent from the ruling party and his rationale is that if you are black you will automatically heed the ideological interpellations of the ruling party. In other words, you will recognise that you are indeed an enemy of the people if you do not and you will begin to toe the line ideologically rather than report critically.
I would also argue, drawing on Mouffe, that Mbeki did not make a distinction between a legitimate adversary such as Harber and an antagonist; he viewed the editor as an antagonist, in the sense of not being supportive of the ANC’s programme of transformation as the ANC saw it. Mouffe disagrees with Carl Schmitt whose argument did not permit a differential treatment of conflict but could only manifest as antagonism, ‘where two sides are in complete opposition and no common ground exists between them. According to Schmitt, there is no possibility for pluralism – that is, legitimate dissent among friends’ (Mouffe 1999: 5). In this sense, Mbeki’s interpellation of Harber was Schmittean.
A further misunderstanding, or even deliberate misrecognition, of the role of the media in a democracy can be witnessed from the discourse of the president of the ANC, Jacob Zuma, when he said on the ANC website:
We are faced with the virtually unique situation that, among the democracies, the overwhelmingly dominant tendency in South African politics, represented by the ANC, has no representation whatsoever in the mass media. We therefore have to contend with the situation that what masquerades, as ‘public opinion’, as reflected in the bulk of our media, is in fact minority opinion informed by the historic social and political position occupied by this minority. There are many examples we can cite to illustrate this point. Every day brings fresh instances of a media that, in general terms, is politically and ideologically out of sync with the society in which it exists (ANC Today: 18-24 January 2008).
In Zuma’s gaze the media should be ‘ideologically in sync’ with society. How does he know this? How does he know what the whole of society thinks? It seems to be a conflation: society equals ANC. It is within this discourse that we can see what Torfing meant, in New Theories of Discourse: Laclau, Mouffe and Žižek, when he described the difference between discourse and the discursive (1999: 92). There is always something that escapes processes of signification within discourse, and the partial fixing of meaning produces a surplus. In other words, a surplus of meaning (what is not said, but is implied or read into meaning) is illogical and leads to an indefinable surplus, a meandering discussion which is off the point. There is surplus attached to the media in all three discursive interventions by Mandela, Mbeki and Zuma. Their expectations are in excess of the role of the media. Both the former presidents of the ANC and the current president appear to be obsessed by the media.
Their words show an attempt to create a hegemonic unity out of irreducible heterogeneity. But a radical democracy is exemplified by the acceptance of the multiplicity of spaces (and the media would be one such space): all open and not hermetically sealed, with fierce contestations and engagements all in flux. The call for too much unity, and consensus about everything, limits the free speech and criticism that are good for democracy. From the ANC presidents’ words and their interpellations on the media, it can be seen that they would prefer a media that is at unity with the ANC, but this is not the role of the media in a democracy. This brings us back to the topic at hand: what is the role of the media in a democracy? It is not to be in sync ideologically, or to curry favour with politicians, and it is not – contrary to what the ANC desires – a media which should be involved in ‘nation-building’.
On the one hand, there is support in the ANC for an independent media (in theory) while on the other it appears as though the ANC find the media goes too far in its criticisms. Take, for instance, Zuma’s lawsuits against Zapiro, totalling R7 million for defamation (this amount was reduced to R5 million in 2011). Zuma says that he supports the free press, and yet he persists with the lawsuits, saying this is his right as a citizen (The Weekender: 15-16 August 2009).
The media’s responsibility is to report news truthfully, accurately and fairly, according to the South African Press Code (see Appendix 1), and to keep public spaces open for debate and dissension, according to the democratic theory visited in this chapter. ‘Truth’ here, is to be understood in journalistic terms rather than in any transcendental philosophical way: that is, reporting the facts, and giving the citizenry as many different voices as possible. By playing the role of watchdog and holding power to account and by exposing corruption, the media plays a critical role in civil society. But is it that easy and is it that simple? It is worth pausing here to turn to three journal articles in Social Dynamics on public spheres, by Cowling and Hamilton (2010), Cowling (2010) and Serino (2010). The article by Serino discusses how topics for debate enter the South African public sphere, using the Sunday Times as an example. This takes place, research showed, through professional journalistic norms (for example what is newsworthy) but also through the Sunday Times’ notion of what is in the public interest, in the context of its role in transformation and democracy. Through the selection or non-selection of stories and use of expert opinion, the Sunday Times sees itself as an agenda-setter; and therefore there is some orchestration of debate (Serino 2010). Serino also noted that there was a level of ‘self importance’ attached to the way in which this was done and conveyed. Cowling and Hamilton (2010) agreed with Serino on the ‘orchestration’ question, arguing that while it is an accepted practice in journalism there is not enough responsibility attached to it. ‘The idea of public interest is thus a fuzzy but critical concept at
