Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit - South Africa: Is conformity of views the aim?

Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit - South Africa: Is conformity of views the aim? [Druckversion]

South Africa: Is conformity of views the aim?

Ms. Raenette Taljaard the director of the Helen Suzman Foundation (HSF), one the Foundation’s partners in South Africa, comments on the possible arrest of the Sunday Times editor for making documents available relevant to whether the Minister of Health is fit to hold public office. The notion of arrest has raised criticism among civil society groups and the opposition for the infringement on press freedom.

Open and free societies treasure the media, and the people who serve it and its objectives, as an independent institution that treasures and represents a multitude of views that contribute to the society's discourse, its values and its public conversation with itself.

Why is the spectre of continuous threats to the media or individuals within it of concern? Because, as Felix Frankfurter said in 1954: "Freedom of the press is not an end in itself, it is the means to the end of a free society."

It is this very essence of a passage to a free society which is at stake when editors and journalists are threatened with the possibility of arrest.

It is this very umbilical cord between the media and society in which it functions that seems to have been left out of the many events that have served to highlight an unhealthy animosity within the ANC ranks to the fourth estate and some ominous signals for press freedom in the country's second decade of freedom.

Nowhere in the world is the media industry perfect, as near-permanent controversies at the BBC have proven in the past few months and the New York Times's hasty apologies to General Petraues underscored a few weeks ago, but the sheer anger towards the media and the vindictiveness of some attacks on key individuals in South Africa is cause for concern.

The prospect of the arrest of the Sunday Times editor and one of his key senior reporters for making material information pertinent to whether the Minister of Health is fit to hold public office available have rightly rung alarm bells across the political opposition and civil society.

It has, however, been yet another of many persistent, distasteful and gratuitous attacks on Mondli Makhanya and the Sunday Times … though it has not been limited to the Sunday Times.

These have ranged from threats from the Minister in the Presidency to essentially cut-off government advertising from the paper, accusations that the editor is an Askari - perhaps the most vindictive and harmful innuendo - and the recent threats of possible arrest.

While this must be personally challenging to a man who is a robust consummate professional and human being, their true harm lie in their chilling consequences and the statements that they make across the board to the media: "You can be arrested".

The voices that have spoken out include that of the Nelson Mandela Foundation which released a carefully crafted statement recalling Black Wednesday and its aftermath in pursuance of its repositioned vision adopted on former President Mandela's birthday to work actively to further societal discourse, in this case, the role of a free media.

The Mandela Foundation's response and civil society's vociferous response, to which the voice of the Helen Suzman Foundation must be added, is a rally of support against these bleak events.

Columnist Xolela Mangcu's impassioned plea to Madiba in the Business Day was a powerful call.

While these events are dramatic in their own right, they all occur against the even more ominous backdrop of one of the ANC June Policy Conference Commission reports and resolutions on "communications and the battle of ideas" - a euphemistic title for what reads like a core assault on the fundamental precepts of the fourth estate.

Some key quotations from this document are necessary to illustrate the point.

The document seeks the discussion of:

The adequacy or otherwise of the self-regulatory dispensation within the media;

whatever remedial measures may be required to safeguard and promote the rights of all South Africans; and the need or otherwise for a media tribunal to address these matters.

The document also notes that the media industry lacks a clear sectoral BEE Charter and that the BEE deals that have been done have not "translated into a diversity of views" and that "Some of the factors that account for this include the fact that readership, advertising profiles, and key management positions remain largely the same".

One is tempted to comment that it is not so much a diversity of views that the document appears to wish to further, but a conformity of views.

Clearly, someone at ANC headquarters has limited exposure to the sheer diversity of views in the media.

What the ANC appears incapable of understanding and accepting is that its own growing pains in changing from a liberation movement to a political party have come with a new interaction with the media - individuals leak documents, confidential briefing discussions appear in print, individuals have used the media in proxy wars of succession and other smaller political skirmishes and many other natural events.

But the media has merely done its job - reporting these events and skirmishes and raising questions about the competence of key cabinet figures.

If the internal cohesion of the ANC starts to fail, and the transformation pains within itself and within the tripartite alliance continue to make for superb stories, should the media ignore it?

They are simply doing what they should: reporting what is happening in the significant political force in the country both within government and within the party space. South Africa already has a Media Development and Diversity Agency, which is a strange and arguably unique institutional creation in the world.

And too, the need for some bizarre and ill-defined "media tribunal" must raise additional concerns.

This prospect of a media tribunal is farcical and will make the fourth estate rightly suspicious of the motive for its creation.

The very essence of press freedom is at stake in such a proposed structure and the self-regulation of the industry is already under threat in the Film and Publications Amendment Bill.

Press freedom and the right to freedom of expression have already led to many precedents being laid down by the courts.

The fact that the government, more specifically the minister of health, did not have an outright victory in court against the Sunday Times led to an unprecedented attack on a judge by government department officials using state funds, potentially in contravention of the Public Finance Management Act in order to protect their boss' flimsy reputation.

This has seen the Johannesburg Bar calling on government to state categorically whether it respects the rule of law and the bench and its decisions.

These matters are of dramatic import. The very life-blood of press freedom, the rule of law - and therefore of democracy - is at stake in the discourse that will be had in Polokwane on communications and in the years ahead as the ANC evolves as a political party.

Raenette Taljaard is the director of the Helen Suzman Foundation and a part-time lecturer at the Wits Graduate School of Public Development.

The foundation in South Africa