Interrogating the alternative, who defines mass media in South Africa?

(An address given to the "Alternative Media Forum", Community Hse, 26th July, 2006, while mostly symbolic, the event attracted a small gathering of interested people. Adam Haupt of UCT has invited me to address his students, and for those who missed it, I will probably be reading this text again.) David Robert Lewis

FOR those subjected to the interrogations of the past, the choice of words may cause offense. No offense is intended. Unfortunately, there is very little left of the alternative press to interrogate. Instead of an alternative, grassroots, community press, we are stuck with big brands, and mass media, and therefore one must first interrogate the mass media in order to find out where it is that we stand. What defines us as journalists, media workers, writers, musicians and poets.

Who defines the media, the mass media? Is it the bosses, the university professors, the workers?

To define media, the mass media as opposed to its alternative, is to risk setting oneself up as an O'Reilly, a Ton Vosloo, a Connie Molusi, a Sol Kerzner. The top three media houses are so entangled with gaming, business and entertainment, it is surprising that journalism in this country exists at all, at least in the form intended by the Oxford Gazette the worlds first regularly published newspaper, begun in 1665 to avoid the plague in London . It came out twice a week.

If journalism is really all about avoiding the plague, then alternative journalism is about avoiding journalists and media houses who end up catching it the plague and there are quite a few diseases going around, not least being the fumes of global war and smog of international terror. It has also been said by more than one or two commentators that the duty of the press is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. To do this in a balanced way, with objective reporting that is fair and accurate, and ideally, shows respect for all points of few, no matter how difficult this process of mediation may seem, (in the parliance of some in the Cape Jou Ma Se *&^% -- the media should carry the voices of all, Capetonians, no matter how bizarre or sinful). Our freedom is not something taken lightly, it has been hard-won, and fought for with the blood of countless children.

While mainstream journalism has often paid lip-service to fairness, (when last did the press ombudsman present us with something that wasnt in the interests of the bosses?) alternative journalism has to some degree endeavoured to live up to such goals, at least insofar as the alternative press can be defined as a separate institution, free of the mainstream, and parallel to, or set apart from the pressures of more established institutions.

Without the alternative press of the late eighties and early nineties, we would not be here, there would be no Peoples Power to speak of, no youth movement against the apartheid regime, no democratic change, no human rights to trouble us. In fact there would be very little to say. It is only a pity that this tradition seems to have died a brutal death at the hands of corporate capital. Having starved for most of the last century, journalists want to make money. I too would like to drive a decent car, and live in a house I can call my own.

Unfortunately, even though we have freedom of choice in this country today, freedom of speech, there is little to choose from at the newsstand. A Noseweek here, a Chimerenga there, but with a few exceptions, most publications are produced by the big three, INM, Naspers/Media24 and Johncom. Even muckracking progressive newspapers like the venerable Mail and Guardian have gone into business with large corporates and you will be either dismayed, or relieved to know that the M&G Online is jointly owned by internet service provider MWeb part of the, Multichoice group (owned by Media24/Naspers).

The media in South Africa has increasingly become an obloquy of power, money, lies and deception. If you own a daily newspaper or a weekly tabloid, you may sway public opinion, influence government decisions and set the tone for popular discourse.

If you own a radio, television or internet portal, you may literally set the environment around which truth itself, is based. There is no end to the slander, chiding, calumniation and criticism of this countrys media or is there? One could just as well criticize the alternative press for not being here, at this juncture in history as anything more than a shadow of itself, but this is the reality in which a forum like this one, must operate.

Having fought against the apartheid regime, surely it is not too late to regroup, to fight a new battle that needs to be fought against the large media corporations and press cartels of today?

Having set the stage for public opinion, and intellectual discourse, such a project is ever more urgent -- our large media houses, the mass media, want to clamp-down on criticism, arrest the naysayers, interrogate muckrackers, and interdict debates like this one.

Our national discourse has become to resemble a farce. Zacob Zuma sues Johnothan Shapiro aka Zapiro for defamation, and now Johnothan Shapiro, or at least his partners in the National Editors Forum, are sueing me, in my private capacity for publishing a pamphlet criticizing Naspers. Its a dog eat dog world. It has become impossible to write about the simple things in life, the Jazz in our own backyard, Art workshops in the very communities that once fought for freedom, democracy and human rights and exhibitions about slavery in those areas where we continue to struggle and to remember slavery.

The simple things in life that one would expect from a democracy, the right to freedom of thought, religion, opinion, the right to cover the Jazz Cape Jazz -- the Marabi, the Kwela, the Goema, -- to read about ones favourite musician, to cover poets, to speak about the daisys, the fynbos and the grass, ...

None of this is the least surprising. We live in a country where media departments can be bought, where large corporations and not the alternative press set the tone on nations campuses. It is the mass media that mediate the syllabuses and textbooks of the land; who sway big business and broker deals that cement the empires of the new Cecil John Rhodes for the coming 1000 years. If you listen to the big players, you will soon fall for the lie that the national democratic revolution is a done deal, all transformation, all progress and all development, is good for us, some are more equal than others, the middle class will save you. One has only to switch on DSTV or watch SABC Top Billing to sink into complacency and mind numbness.

You believe the hype or dont you? Our debates are cut by adverts, sanitized by soundbytes, monitored by talking heads and one has only reach out into the near and distant past to find a time when there was so much propaganda around us, such a high level of bullshit, that it has become impossible to say for certain, whether or not we have a free press, a viable alternative, a progressive movement, a muckracking tradition...freedom of choice.

Media24, a company that still practices racial profiling and subscribes to a racist demographic, and which is suing me for saying this, for instance owns City Varsity (Film, Television and Multimedia School ,) and publishes education text books. Industrial-strength journalists are being tailor-made for television, and molded especially for obedience training by our nations executives. The prevailing culture within many of this nations fine media institutions, is to not ask questions, to not question authority, to obey the bottom-line, to not follow in the footsteps of Shapiro.

It is no coincidence that the Chair of Media and Democracy at Rhodes University School of Journalism, is sponsored by SAB-Miller, (the same SAB Miller which attempted to suppress freedom of thought and commercial speech not so long ago, and which is still willing to fight to the bitter end to control people like Justin Nurse and media like Laugh It Off.)

INM, on the other hand, the so-called Independent Group are no less hypocritical. Not only are they in hock to the Bank of Ireland, whose Asset Management division owns 10.11% of the company, but they have been caught in bed with their pants down, and their hands in the pockets of the sponsor representatives of industry. How much of the front page of the Cape Argus or Cape Times is up for sale? Asides from controlling 67% of our daily press, ( that's more than two out of every three newspapers), INM's partnership with Clear Channel is exceedingly problematic in terms of objectivity, (Clear Channel is an international media organization accused of sponsoring pro-war events in the US; banning the Dixie Chicks and other pacifist musicians from its radio stations, presumably for making anti-war statements, and even silencing shock-jock Howard Stern). INMs relationship with Clear Channel has lead it to build alliances and partnerships with international advertising companies, public relations firms and the group has even been implicated in financial dealings with, and support for, George W Bush, Halliburton and the Republican Party.

As for Johncom, if you want to know why books in South Africa are so expensive, if you want to know why we are addicted to Hollywood blockbusters instead of films by independent producers and why local stories, with a few exceptions, never make it onto film? If you want to know why the music industry is a farce, then ask CEO Connie Molusi. Asides from the Sunday Times, the group owns Exclusive Books, Nu Metro and even Gallo Records.

Of these three, the company with the most problematic history is certainly Naspers. For years Nationale Pers was the voice of Afrikaner nationalism. The publisher of Die Volksblad and Oosterlig, the spokesperson for apartheid, the platform for right-wing conservatives and religious zealots. Then in 1984, it acquired Drum Publications consisting of City Press, Drum, True Love and Family, as well as a 50% interest in Jane Raphaely and Associates. What one might call reform occured, but it was really formented in the shadow of PW Bothas tricameral parliament, with a racist ideology still very much in evidence today. Despite attempts at transformation, Naspers remains a racist company with a board that reflects a black minority interest, and not the demographics of the country in which whites are a minority.

Naspers senior management is so dominated by "white" males, (white protestant males one should add) one can be forgiven for thinking its board could be the rugby team for the KKK. Even the Springboks have more players of colour. Then again only 25% women occupy management positions, forget about senior positions. What is more, what transformation there has been, has been peripheral. However let's at least grant them this, they have given away small bits of their South African operation through schemes like Welkom, some non-voting shares to a few black faces --- which, after an international boycott will become worthless pieces of paper. Why worry about shares, these investors have no rights whatsoever when it comes to decision-making, and do not benefit from the groups global expansion via MIH or its listing on NYSE that make it harder and harder to campaign for real transformation.

This peripheral, and piecemeal transformation-under-siege, within the borders of South Africa , has failed to translate into the global arena. If one looks at the new Media24, with its operations in Sub-Saharan Africa, Greece, Cyprus, the Netherlands, the United States, Thailand and China, the BEE componant is so negligible that one really has to remark on the fancy footwork and window-dressing being done on behalf of wealthy investors in New York who want to feel-good about their ethical investment in one of the worlds great marketing deceptions. While the company may subscribe to the King Report on Corporate Governance for South Africa 2002, it should be remembered that this is not the Martin Luther King report, or the Code developed by the Anti-Apartheid movement, but rather the laissez faire neoliberal guidelines put out by our own Mervyn King SC.

With the exception of Johncom, whose board reflects the demographics of this country, South Africa s mass media is characterized by inequality, prejudice and a nascent form of discrimination that becomes ever more apparent on a community level. INMs board is no better than Naspers and while progressive in its outlook, the big secret is that its 2001 Merafe share scheme is so much fluff and window-dressing to disguise a deal made with Clear Channel -- crumbs compared to the much larger pie of a global company that owns 165 newspapers world-wide.

If the alternative press were in good shape, we probably would not be having this debate. But the truth, is South Africa doesnt have an alternative. In fact magazines that one associates with teenage rebellion, like Blunt and Zig Zag and Saltwater Girl are owned and operated by big corporates like Media24. Could Loslyf be next? What about Hei Voetsek and Uhuru Spirit Journal, will they also be bought up one day?

If one looks at many of this countrys publications one could be forgiven for thinking that the Group Areas Act is still in force. Newspapers like City Press and magazines like True Love, are narrow targeted specifically at the black middle class, not because of love but because of profit, while papers like Die Burger, continue to preach a form of Boerestaat for the deracinated Afrikaner, willing to accept a few people of colour into the fold, but doing everything he can to keep the natives out of the laager.

They want our money but they are not willing to accept responsibility for progress, real transformation as opposed to piecemeal change. In short, the mass media doesnt have the balls to tackle the kind of transformation already set by benchmarks of the alternative press, titles like Grassroots, South or New Nation, all defunct and which grace my CV like relics of a distant, and more-ennued age. There are many reasons for this and perhaps one should say as Albie Sachs once did, that at the end of the day, it is not the revolution one takes to bed, but rather the poetry, the words, and the songs of struggle.

But we can thank Naspers for holding onto a particular affliction, our racial predicament and semantic condition, without which we would be what? Satisfied, complacent and probably cured of the charge of being white of being Jewish.

Unfortunately, the charges are serious, some local musicians have also been shafted, an hysterical editor has even gone so far as accusing me of plagerism, for covering a black musician. Cheap shot and preprosterous considering the circumstances. As much as I would like to, I am prevented from writing about the Jazz maestro and Sama award winner, Jimmy Dludlu in a community newspaper targeted at Coloureds. I am also embargoed and prevented from interviewing Jazz legend, Robbie Jansen, simply because in doing so I am implicated in the culture of this place, a non-white place, made to carry the scars of resistance, for the history of our land, the rebelliousness and revolt of the Jazz which was banned, while the boers murdered our people, the music of Sabenza and Bazil Manenburg Coetzee for instance which was implicated in the struggle, at so many illegal gatherings and underground protests and thank G-D they never succeeded . Instead of celebrating this history, I have been interrogated for simply attending a music concert at the West End , for listening to Robbie play the saxophone. It is impossible to practice non-racialism and earn a living.

When, our communities are subjected to a new form of punitive sanctions, racially-motivated sanctions at the behest of corporate capital. When journalists are embedded in Iraq and Grassy Park , and in the same breath as saying I work for Naspers or belong to the right-wing Poynter Institute or have a Diploma in Journalism from a Media24 approved collage, they tell you they work for the CIA (One journalist at People's Post is quite proud of the fact that she was embedded at Halliburten). When there is no possibility of objectivity in a climate of racism, ant-semitism and prejudice.

We should not be surprised to find that those who we have empowered with our gestures of reconcilation, those who we have taken into our confidence and trust, have the upper hand. The foreign banks and media cartels, the self-same companies which once profited off Apartheid, and which now have striven to capitalize on the Rainbow Nation, whilst interdicting and suppressing stories about Jimmy Dludlu and Robbie Jansen, there are others.

A new racist demographic has evolved. Instead of reflecting our hopes and dreams, those LSMs reflect a different world, a different picture, the reality of apartheid, the fact that despite reconciliation, we still live in an unequal society, a world which discriminates according to the colour of ones skin, that denies freedom of religion, clamps down on freedom of speech, that censors and suppresses and then calls HR, to write it all down to accounting or a tax write-off.

The mere fact, that I am an anti-apartheid activist, counts against me. I am considered, a bad-egg, an uncomfortable blast from the past, somebody to ignore in the race towards profit as the struggle devolves into nothing less than worthless pieces of paper.

The picture that I have outlined is symptomatic of a deeper malaise at the heart of South Africa s media. The alternative press of the late eighties and early nineties has, for most of us, withered away and died. People move on. While we were getting to grips with our new Bill of Rights, and building democracy, corporate media took the upper hand and flourished, and it has done so by being all pervasive, shutting out its critics, and claiming to speak for everybody. Does the mass media really speak for the masses?

We have lost a thriving community press because of simple neglect and lack of funding. We are at the mercy of foreign cartels, bosses, and online digital monopolies, the spew of electronic media which for the most part is undigested chewing gum for the mind, leaves nothing to the imagination and is easily manipulated. Who hasnt seen a picture touched up in photoshop, or an image being edited so it tells a completely different story from the reality depicted? With technological advances such as CGi, the time is rapidly approaching when we will not be able to tell the difference between what is real and what is not.

It is far harder to trick the mind with the written word. The printing press is still a liberating technology that enlightens instead of dulling the mind.

However in the face of an onslaught of electronic chit-chat, SMSing and Playstation, is there any wonder the MWASA, the media workers association, is impotent, or the SAUJ no longer exists?

Where are the media critics, the dissenting voices, dissident views? Where are the urban weeklies, the alternative broadsheets, the Xeroxed manifestoes? Unfortunately they are few and far between. There is simply nothing to replace the gap left by Grassroots, South, Vrye Weekblad, New Era and the New Nation. In fact it would not be appropriate to mention the alternative press without bringing up the fact that Vrye Weekblad was shut down by a defamation case brought by General Magnus Malan, before the TRC hearings, that would have vindicated instead of bankrupting the publisher Max du Preez.

As a publisher, I have had my fair share of body-blows. If there was anywhere near the kind of funding and money available to the kids today, I would probably still be plugging Kagenna, one of the first periodicals to link apartheid and the environment and to publish people like Albie Sachs, not from the posh office of a trendy penthouse apartment, but from a dingy flat in Yeoville. I am one of the first people in the country to champion the cause of sustainable development and also one of the first critics of a buzz-phrase that has become meaningless in the face of eco-imperialism, global war and environmental destruction. I have always believed that the struggle is more than mere activism, and is meaningless without arts and culture.

In truth South Africa s supposed free press is not so free. It has marginalized, blacklisted and suppressed those voices which it does not tolerate or agree with. In my case, I have been interdicted by Media24 for exposing racism within the company and blacklisted by INM for criticizing its coverage of HIV and the war in Iraq . Perhaps this is really a compliment, since nobody talks about being white-listed? Neither company wants my contribution to community journalism, In any event, the direction community journalism seems to be heading towards today, is the Daily Voice style of, tick and telly.

There is no reason why we should not see our lives reflected by the media -- local print media especially has a role to play. Community journalism, I believe, should be about real people, not pop-stars or idols, or television scandal. It need not be dry, tainted by ideology or filled with agony aunties and tales of woe. It need not be dull and mundane. Unfortunately, the radical left are as much to blame for the demise of alternative journalism as the corporates are, and I leave it to the forum to decide what the term alternative media may mean for the next generation.

I call upon this forum, to boycott the big bosses of big media.
To bring pressure to bear against the media monopolies,
to stop the dumbing down of South Africas media,
to end racial profiling and the racist demographics of the past,
and to sign the Petition against Prejudice in SA publishing.
Let the grassroots, alternative press prevail.
May a thousand community papers rain down upon us,
bringing us the truth and light and culture that we need.

Good night.