To mark this auspicious day in the fight for media freedom, senior member of the ANC, Dr Pallo Jordan, subtly reinforced a new, less confrontational party line on media freedom in South Africa at a colloquium held at Rhodes University this weekend.
To mark this auspicious day in the fight for media freedom, senior member of the ANC, Dr Pallo Jordan, subtly reinforced a new, less confrontational party line on media freedom in South Africa at a colloquium held at Rhodes University this weekend.
In synch with ANC Deputy President, Kgalema Mothlanthe’s bridge-building exercise at a meeting with editors in Magaliesberg on Saturday, Jordan emphasised the ANC’s understanding of just how important media freedom is by highlighting the way his party had effectively used the media in the struggle years.
Jordan recalled how in his youth, he and his comrades had made use of unconventional media such as graffiti to draw attention to their cause by scribbling the letters VJM on walls around Cape Town. They eventually scrapped the campaign because they felt that the letters representing the words “Verwoerd Jou Moer” lowered the tone of public discourse. He reminded the audience that while in exile, the ANC successfully used international media to use the name of Nelson Mandela so that he became the best known political prisoner in the world.
The previous speaker at the colloquium, Prof Colin Sparks from Westminster University in the United Kingdom presented a paper describing what has typically happened to the media in countries that have renounced dictatorships as a form of government over the last 30 years or so.
He said that not all countries that throw off a dictatorship naturally become democracies and cited the example of Belarus, where one form of dictatorship has replaced another. Sparks said that the world has seen many different kinds of change in recent decades. He cited the example of China where there have been many remarkable changes in the economy while the political system is still as centralised and repressive as it ever was.
On the other hand, and at the other end of the scale, South Africa has experienced sweeping political changes while the economy is changing quite gradually. He argued that in some respects, South Africa does fall within the parameters of a society in transition, but the country does have some unique characteristics.
For example, he noted that only in South Africa and Poland were the changes driven by workers “semi-insurrectionary workers”, but that while the movement fizzled out in Poland, in South Africa “a strong working class combativity survived the transition”. Sparks argued that most countries in transition have found themselves with multiple parties contending for power, South Africa is effectively a one party democracy where political struggles over elite renewal have mostly been internalised to the ANC.
Jordan was quick to respond that “South Africa is a one party democracy it is true, but that is not the ANC’s fault – it means that the other parties are not doing their jobs.” He then quoted Sir Winston Churchill who reportedly said of democracy: “It is the worst system except for all the others.
Well known political commentator, Aubrey Matshiqi, responding to various papers presented during the course of the colloquium, said he was encouraged by the tone and views expressed at the meeting because he had been despondent before he arrived.
He said he was quite worried about the levels of hysteria in the media that predicted a race war soon after the murder of Eugene Terreblanche and then described the country as a racial paradise when the Blue Bulls went to play rugby in Soweto.
He urged the media to be more reflective before putting articles out into the public domain, saying that “It is much better to strike when the iron is cold, because if you can’t wait, then you don’t have cold analysis.” Most speakers in the two-day event appeared to heed calls for both sides in the debate to be less confrontational and to take time to listen to the other side. The chairperson of Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Communications, Ismail Vadi, said he expected an ad hoc committee to be set up in Parliament next year to hear arguments and comments concerning the role of the media and a Media Appeals Tribunal.
19 October – a special day in the fight for media freedom
This day is marked annually on the anniversary of the day in 1977 when the apartheid regime cracked down on the media, banning The World, Weekend World and other titles and detaining a number of journalists. The event has particular relevance this year as it comes amid intense discussion about media freedom issues, sparked by the Protection of Information Bill, the proposal for a Media Appeals Tribunal and other developments.
