LAST year I attended an ANC press conference in Parliament as part of keeping my provincial hand on the pulse.
Afterwards, I was a little bothered by how lacklustre the event had been and decided to pull aside a few of my journalist friends for a brief conversation.
“You guys are too soft on the ANC,” I opened our conversation, to puzzled stares from journalists who have gotten used to different kinds of accusations.
“Of the 15 questions asked here, only one really pushed the ANC,” I charged on with my journalistic rebuke.
“Media is not a platform for politicians to rant, and when they do, call them up on the rants. Your inability to ask the hard questions is the reason why every Tom, Dick and Harry is calling for press conferences these days,” I continued.
“You have as a result lowered the journalistic standards.”
It was here that I seemed to hit the nail, and my journalists friends began to mumble and give me that uneasy smile. I sensed, though, that they felt I was telling the truth.
But I was on a roll and felt I needed to hit my point home a few times.
“Look at Julius Malema,” I continued, “he calls press conferences and rants about everything under the sun. You almost get confused regarding what his conferences are about. It should not take the courts to question Malema's rants on, say, land grabs, while the media was there when he made those statements and simply laughed like they were at a comedy show.
“Ask the questions, ask the hard questions – push the politicians until those who mock the political landscape are ejected. Yes, the last BBC journalist to call Malema up on his rants, questioning how a men who lives in a R16m house in Sunninghill could claim to be the voice of the poor, was harassed, called demeaning names and risked never to be called again to ANCYL conferences.
“But the ANC had its constitution and its values to protect, and when Malema trampled on too many of those he effectively ejected himself out of the ANC family.”
One of the ANC's constitutional and resolution commitments is the championing of the "Freedom of the Press."
The question of whether the media is independent or unbiased is as old as democracy itself. The question of whether media owners and their hand-picked editors are not being used by their political friends or their own ideological leanings to push certain narratives will forever be with us. The role of media in a democracy is an everlasting debate.
None of these concerns, however, have ever been good enough to question that core democratic principle, "Freedom of the Press."
Over the last few years, some ANC leaders have grown frustrated with some media houses, accusing them of "regime change agendas" and "anti-ANC posture" and downright wanting a "black government to fail."
I can state categorically that these accusations do not represent the ANC constitution, resolutions or commitments, they do not represent our values, but are simply expressions of frustration by individuals who may, rightly or wrongly, feel a sense of unfair reporting by media houses on ANC matters.
Here are the facts about the ANC. We believe that the media enriches democracy and stands as a great enabler for the project of democracy. We believe that "Freedom of the Press" is sacrosanct and as long as it's protected, along with journalists and editors, there will always be hope for democracy. We believe that no media should ever coddle government, because nobody owns government – we are all privileged to be chosen by the people to serve.
If the media sees any wrongdoing by government or the ANC, let them speak out. If the media sees hypocrisy, inconsistency or utter dishonesty on the part of the ANC or government, let them shout louder. As Amica Cabral said: “Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories. Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone’s head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children.”
If government is not providing services to the people that are paid for by their own taxes, without any good reason, government must be exposed.
Most important, however, is that as the ANC we need to accept the reality that neo-liberalism and laissez-faire ideologies are presented everywhere else, at universities, in corporate South Africa, in social gatherings, in entertainment and global culture, neo-liberalism and laissez-faire are presented as the divine ideologies, the commonsense ones if not the natural ones, and the National Democratic Revolution (NDR), or Democratic Developmental State or even socialism only exist within the ANC and its alliance partners, creating this sense of ANC vs the rest of the country – or more often these days, ANC vs ANC.
If, therefore, the media comes across as neo-liberal and even promotes neo-liberalism and promotes those ANC leaders who seem to have neo-liberal leanings, it is irrational to then accuse the media of having a neo-liberal agenda when the rest of the country espouses neo-liberal values.
Neo-liberalism in South Africa, however, represents something completely different to its US or European counterpart. Not only has it curiously only been white, but it represented what is viewed as "soft apartheid." South African neo-liberals participated in apartheid and would occasionally argue for a less cruel treatment of blacks but, neo-liberal leaders like Helen Suzman would be the first to argue that South African blacks were not developed enough to qualify for the universal franchise of one man, one vote.
South African neo-liberals therefore have always hypocritically sought black sympathy to legitimise white dominance. It’s not unreasonable to think that the Helen Suzman Foundation and others continue this work.
Even progressive neo-liberals like Frederik van Zyl Slabbert (a man I grew to like) historically saw black people as terrorists in their own land, at least until Slabbert led other neo-liberals to meet Mbeki and other ANC leaders in Dakar in the late 1980s.
Even when Slabbert later became a Stellenbosch University chancellor, blacks in that university could still not count on him to make Stellenbosch less "black-hostile". So when Maimane can go around saying he is proudly neo-liberal, I hope he is fully aware of what South African neo-liberals have historically represented.
This is why South Africa has always endorsed the ANC’s aspirational NDR by putting them in power after elections despite an overwhelming neo-liberal world. NDR is superior because it not only makes moral sense, but economic sense too. Yet like all ideologies, they need a Colossus, like a Mao Zedong, or a Lenin, to uproot the old thinking and take over a nation and NDR, since the passing of OR Tambo – a towering maestro who could go to the cauldron of neo-liberalism, places like Georgetown University, and sell the NDR and win hearts.
Since then the NDR has lacked a global champion. I would argue, however, that recent global leaders like Obama – who have championed the importance of communities over individualism, of rising together as better than "you are on your own", accused of socialism at some point – have come close to representing some of these values we share.
So if the media, private sector and society are to espouse the NDR values, ANC leaders must set the highest possible example of leadership, in order for people to want to be us; for people to want to also champion NDR.
If the press today does not espouse NDR values, it is our fault – and this in itself is not a reason for the ANC to not always champion "Freedom of the Press". The ANC must always be that one source of protection that journalists and editors can count on for protection. As the ANC, we believe that media enriches democracy – and we believe that to be an incontrovertible truth that has remained true since the dawn of democracy.