SA politicians, officials set tone for public animosity

The free media in South Africa is at a bad juncture in its history, being attacked from all sides. Regardless of whether the day’s top billing goes to tenderpreneurs, corrupt officials and politicians’ attempts to sweep all that under a legally protected carpet, political power struggles, or to the inefficiencies of government, the play  lately is always the same: shoot the messenger.

In the past two weeks alone, the media has been at the receiving end in respect of –

• The ANC having effectively reneged on its earlier indications that it was willing to revise vital aspects of its draconian Protection of Information Bill (known as the Secrecy Bill), a revision that would allow whistleblowers and journalists to continue exposing corruption and other ills;
• Journalists coming under hostile and open attack from stone and bottle throwing youths in the streets of Johannesburg where they were protesting the disciplinary hearing of their leader, ANC Youth League president Julius Malema; and
• The ANC rejecting, without providing sound arguments, attempts by the media to improve its self-regulation as it had been challenged to do by the very same ANC to avoid the creation of a media appeals tribunal that would allow politicians to control the media.

Despite the growing pressures on South Africa’s media, the country still scored relatively high last year on the annual World Press Freedom Index compiled and published by Reporters Without Borders, coming 38^th out of 178 countries, yet down from 33rd place the year before.  At the same time last year, however, Reporters Without Borders wrote to President Jacob Zuma, urging the South African government “to abandon two projects, one to create a media tribunal and one to pass a bill protecting information involving ‘national security’”.  A year later both are still pretty high on the ANC and government’s agenda.

It is not the first time in its history that the South African media’s freedom to do its work is being threatened. From the very outset the early press pioneers came under immense pressure from the British colonial authorities. Later the media was subjected to harassment, a variety of laws, closures and banning by the apartheid government. But arguably the onslaught against it of late is simultaneously both more sophisticated and more crude than ever before.

At the more sophisticated level is the government attempts to reduce the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of the media with restrictive, self-serving legislation in the form of the Secrecy Bill. The bill, revived from an earlier attempt, was criticised heavily from within the ANC itself and by the ruling party’s allies, the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the SA Communist Party (SACP).

When the bill was initially introduced it led to a public and media outcry as it was seen, in its original format, to be gagging the media and shrouding all state activities under a veil of secrecy which could lead to hefty fines and prison sentences for transgressors, especially journalists and whistleblowers.

Such was the pressure that ANC MP Llewellyn Landers in July introduced new provisions to be written into the bill at a meeting of the parliamentary ad hoc committee dealing with it. These new provisions were to radically soften and improve the bill and were welcomed by opposition parties and the Right2Know campaign. Landers said at the time the ANC wanted to prevent the new law being used to hide corruption and other crimes. Landers’ proposal to incorporate section 46 of the Promotion of Access to Information Act into the bill was welcomed by the opposition parties.

At the time we, and many others, viewed the ANC’s apparent change of heart as giving a powerful message that constitutional democracy in South Africa is working; that it struck a blow against future corruption in the public sector; and that it reaffirmed the role of the media to report without fear and to expose corruption and other ills wherever they are found. It seems we were all wrong.

On Friday Landers and the ANC reneged on the promise of revision by arrogantly using the muscle of the ANC’s majority in the ad hoc committee to block proposed amendments to protect whistleblowers and the media among others in order to ensure that corruption and other ills cannot simply be swept under the carpet.

Earlier opposition legislators had won a minor concession from the ANC in that it agreed to limit the power to classify information to the intelligence and security services, while other departments would need special permission to keep secret files. In a public service run entirely by the ANC that should not be too difficult.

Allowing bona fide whistleblowers and journalists some protection if their exposures later proved to have been in the public interest, would however have been the only true guarantee that the law would not be abused by government and officials. Now the bill is most likely headed for the Constitutional Court as several organisations have indicated they will challenge its legality.

Meanwhile, however, the ANC continues to seek to subject the media to government control through the proposed establishment of a media appeals tribunal. After having been challenged by the ANC to do so, the Press Council of South Africa in August published the findings of its probe into media regulation, saying it continued to endorse media self-regulation, but also proposed sweeping changes to the South African Press Code and the functioning of the office of the Press Ombudsman. However, the ANC rejected this as not going far enough, thus signaling its intention to continue with the planned establishment of a restrictive tribunal.

The more crude level of antagonism towards the media was evident in the spectacle a week ago of ANC Youth League members and supporters of Julius Malema throwing stones and bottles at journalists in the streets of Johannesburg, indecently assaulting female journalists, and damaging equipment and vehicles of journalists who were covering the protest against Malema’s disciplinary hearing.

It was no good for Malema to later appeal to them to treat journalists as their friends: after all, he and the likes of his chief spokesman, Floyd Shivambu, have long set the example of rubbishing journalists and treating the media with absolute disrespect. Examples are many, such as the bad-mouthing and chasing away of a BBC journalist at an ANCYL press conference; or Shivambu’s smear campaign against certain journalists and their sources of income; or referring to a Muslim journalist as a drunkard, among many other such incidents.

Equally so it is mischievous of the police to say they had identified the culprits and to invite journalists who had been attacked or injured by ANCYL supporters during the Malema protest to come and lay charges against them, when on so many other recent occasions the police had simply ignored journalists’ complaints when they were attacked, assaulted or manhandled by police or by members of the ANC. The only explanation for this sudden change of stance by the police is that this time the laying of charges by the journalists could become a tool in the internal politics of the ANC.

There have been many other recent incidents of animosity towards the media by the ANC, officials, government and the police, such as the anti-media statements by government spokesman Jimmy Manyi.

It is little wonder one news photographer this past week said “the media have become the enemy” as he recalled a time when the media were welcome in the townships and were supported by the ANC for their role in exposing the worst of apartheid. All that has changed, with ANC and government members and officials setting the tone for what is increasingly becoming broader public animosity towards the media.