Spit & Polish : 03 July 2011

This government is doing what the apartheid regime did - hounding the media for telling the truth

A couple of times a year I need to clear my head and I usually start by re-reading Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Alice Through the Looking Glass.

They have both been relegated to the realm of children's fantasy literature but, as intelligent readers of these works have learnt, beneath the apparent nonsense of these tales there is a subliminal truth that can pop up and confound the careful reader.

One of my favourites is: "If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there." It's the sort of glorious non-logic that we frequently see revealed in situations such as Libya under Gaddafi, or Zimbabwe under Mugabe, who retains some perception of himself as an intelligent, respected, credible leader.

Leadership has also become an issue here in South Africa. We get endless pompous declarations, promises and schemes that are launched by local and national government departments. Ask yourself how many of them have used up their budgets for the project by going on costly fact-finding tours and when they return to South Africa, they have great ideas but empty coffers.

This year alone, there have been allegations that R30-million of the Joburg licensing department's revenue has gone missing and that announcement, startling as it may seem, is not the only one of its kind.

We get to see the truth only when some brave whistle-blower comes out into the open. But now government officials are condemning the media or, to be more accurate, the media over which they have no political control.

Watching the SABC news has, once again, become what it was in the days of BJ Vorster and PW Botha. Back then, the best way to watch the news was to stretch out on a see-saw plank that sometimes went up and sometimes went down, but was always slanted.

Now we can see evidence of that same slant, this one going left rather than right, as it did in the past. That is a challenge for the press, which emerged battered but unbroken from the apartheid years.

The media played a key role at that time by revealing the shifts that were altering the political sphere; and their reports revealed the immense changes in South Africa. Now, suddenly the media is being seen as a hostile entity, not because they have abandoned their principles and commitment, but because they have continued to do exactly what they did in the apartheid years to tell stories that show the reality of our social and political life.

From front-page headlines to back-page sports, they tell it as they see it and the eerie thing is that the current political disposition is doing exactly what the apartheid politicians of the past did - which is covertly and overtly to threaten the media and to accuse them of some kind of underhand conspiracy.

There are many people still living in this country who lived through that apartheid crackdown on the media and the memories of it are vivid. If you want to see what it was really like, take yourself to one of the best films yet made about South Africa, The Bang-Bang Club. It's the true story of four photo-journalists working for major newspapers who went to the front lines of the struggle, risking their lives just to get those pictures and stories on the front pages. In fact, their pictures went on front pages around the world.

Their work was a part of the legacy of a free press, once endorsed by presidents Mandela and Mbeki. But now we seem to have hit a rocky patch.

It is becoming obvious that this government is doing what the old apartheid government did - cracking down on the media, not because their reporting is incorrect, but because it is accurate.

At the centre of it all, we have government spokesman Jimmy Manyi, the man who offended Trevor Manuel with his careless allusions to the coloured communities in Cape Town. He made a hasty apology to Manuel, because he knew he was boxing out of his league. Now he is punting his real league - the ANC Youth League. Backed by Julius Malema, he has started what could become a media war that will leave only one casualty in its wake - the truth.

In a debate with John Robbie, morning radio host for 702, Manyi accused the South African National Editors' Forum (Sanef) of having "cartel-like tendencies", suggesting that editors of SA newspapers are gathering in smoky rooms behind closed doors, as they plot the overthrow of the ANC.

It is a ludicrous suggestion, in spite of which, Manyi insists that the media houses are conspiring against the government. But to what end? Is there some rogue editor out there who wants to lead a coup d'état?

There are also convoluted theories that the centralised media-buying strategy could penalise any publication that is critical of the ANC government. The penalty could be a shutdown of state advertising, which would mean a loss of revenue.

So what does it all mean? How much of this is smoke and mirrors and how much of it is a real intention by firebrands such as Malema and Manyi, as they position themselves on the power-grid, watching keenly as the old-guard ANC stalwarts pass away?

If you didn't live in South Africa, this drama could be as interesting as a great espionage novel, but I do live in this country. It's my birth place, and as I watch the alliances that are being formed, and the aspirant leaders waiting to take power, it adds up to serious viewing.

Who knows where it might lead? It's very much, as Alice said: "If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there."