Abstract
Nelson Mandela at an ANC rally in 1994. In the same year, Mandela addressed the International Press Institute Congress in Cape Town and said: “A critical, independent and investigative press is the lifeblood of any democracy”
Credit: Ian Berry/Magnum
As pressure on the South African media grows,
It was a dangerous time for journalists whose media organisations opposed the apartheid regime. Harvey Tyson, a former editor of The Star, suggested that it was a bit like trying to navigate a minefield wearing a blindfold. He was referring to a glut of restrictive laws made even tougher during the state of emergency.
For instance, there was a clause in the Police Act that made it an offence to publish “untrue” information about police or police operations. Lawyers warned that journalists and their editors could be prosecuted for publishing “untrue” information and, as a safeguard, needed to seek police comment before publication. But police inevitably dismissed most stories as untrue, leading to a Catch-22 situation. Stories were often spiked, or only ran after major surgery with crucial facts omitted.
Press photos from Ray Joseph’s decades as a journalist in South Africa
Credit: Ray Joseph
One experience, just a few days after the Soweto uprisings of June 1976, is telling. I climbed a tree to peer over the walls of the fortress-like police station in the black township of Alexandra, Johannesburg. To my horror, I saw at least a dozen bodies – people who had died in clashes with police that day, laid out in a courtyard. My newspaper’s lawyers said I had to take the information to the police, who denied what I had seen. My story never ran and the official toll declared by police for that brutal and bloody day was far lower than the number of dead I saw with my own eyes.
When the African National Congress swept to power in 1994, many of us hoped this heralded a new era in government and media relations. Our optimism grew after an address to the International Press Institute Congress in Cape Town in 1994 by the ANC leader, Nelson Mandela, who a few months later would become president of the new, democratic South Africa.
Mandela told the gathering: “A critical, independent and investigative press is the lifeblood of any democracy. The press must be free from state interference … It is only such a free press that can have the capacity to relentlessly expose excesses and corruption on the part of the government, state officials and other institutions that hold power in society.”
But under the current president, Jacob Zuma, the relationship between the media and the governing ANC is steadily worsening. The party persistently pursues the idea of a media-appeals tribunal, deriving from a resolution at its 2007 national conference in Polokwane. This gained further traction when a 2010 ANC discussion document argued that freedom of the press was not an absolute right and needed to be “balanced against individual rights to privacy and human dignity”.
Legal experts have warned that such a tribunal may not pass constitutional muster, but the ANC wields it as a sword of Damocles. Even sweeping changes to the Press Council have not assuaged party leaders’ periodic rants against the media.
In July the ANC treasurer general, Zweli Mkhize, said that, while his party believed in a free press, South Africa’s media were far too critical. The ANC often felt that criticism from the media was “unwarranted” and “unfair”, he told the annual general meeting of the SA National Editors Forum. He highlighted among other things the reporting of the secret departure from South Africa of the Sudanese president, Omar Al Bashir, in defiance of a court order banning him from leaving the country until an application calling for his arrest had been heard. He is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Just a day later it was reported that the “triple alliance” – the old anti-apartheid bloc of the ANC, the trade-union federation COSATU and the South African Communist Party – would renew the push for a media tribunal. “It cannot be that everybody is subject to independent checks and balances and then you have a section of the society which is so influential … but only intends to do self-regulation,” said Blade Nzimande, secretary-general of the SACP.
These attacks are not unrelated to the reporting of government corruption and in particular the scandal of more than ZAR250 million (over $20 million) of taxpayers’ money being spent on President Zuma’s private estate in Nkandla.
Despite all this, South Africa still has one of the freest presses on the continent, with no real restrictions on reporting, often robust and fearless, and investigative reporting enjoying a golden age. But amber lights are flashing as the press gears itself up once again to see off any new attempts to restrict its hard-won freedoms – which could take it back to the dark days when journalists had to constantly look over their shoulders and be careful of what they reported.
© Raymond Joseph
