Fight for Democracy. Glenda Daniels

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СКАЧАТЬ ownership of the media companies, of the newsroom (the journalist), and of content (who and what is written about).

      The changes in the media landscape of 2000, compared to 1994, were exponential. In a 2000 paper ‘Deracialisation, democracy and development: Transformation of the South African media 1994-2000’, Guy Berger plotted the changes in ownership and staffing by race, class and gender. He argued that the transformation contained new challenges, which were part of global changes and showed the growing global cross-ownership of media and telecoms, entertainment or computer software companies; the outsourcing and multiskilling of media workers; the internationalisation of supply and market-chains; technological convergence and the Internet; satellites and broadband networks; and the decline of classical journalism in the face of rising entertainment. He noted that the ‘media has emerged from apartheid significantly transformed from what it was before. Racism exists in South Africa, but it no longer rules in either politics or media. Democracy and development are part of the daily diet of a transforming society’.

      Berger did however point out that the end point of transformation was the doing-away with racial distinctions altogether. His paper examined transformation in the media, deploying the categories of race, democracy and development, and scrutinising ownership, staffing, conceptions of political role, content and audiences. The apposite point Berger made was that the final destination of the transformation was not meant to be re-racialisation. However, if you look at newsrooms today, you will see that the racial composition changed anyway, as the majority of reporters and editors are black.

      According to an ANC discussion document, Media in a Democratic South Africa (ANC National Conference, Stellenbosch, December 2002):

      Considerable progress has been made and some significant milestones achieved with regard to ownership patterns, licensing of new media, increasing of black and women journalists, repositioning of the SABC, a measure of diversity in ownership with black empowerment groups and union funds controlling some of the assets … These are putative first steps towards the transformation of the media industry.

      In an unpublished paper on the tabloid newspapers, presented to a politics and media discussion group in Johannesburg, May 2009, Anton Harber observed of the ANC’s comment above: ‘It is apparent that the ANC’s definition of transformation was based on three elements: diversity of ownership, particularly the need for black owners; more representative staffing and management; and content less hostile to the ANC-led transformation project’. (The argument that race in the media should be a Master-Signifier is deconstructed in Chapter Four in a discussion on the Forum for Black Journalists and its ultimate failure to re-launch.)

      In Berger’s 1999 critique of the changes and concentration in media ownership, ‘Towards an analysis of South African media. Transformation 1994-1999’, he suggests that there is some ambiguity in the effects on competition and democratic outcomes. On the one hand, plural democracy itself might be compromised by concentration, yet the competition prompted the launch of more diverse newspapers that added to the deliberative quality of the media. There were other changes that came in with the new democratic era: in 1994, the Irish businessman Tony O’Reilly bought thirty-five per cent of the Argus Company). The company name changed from Argus to Independent Newspapers, under whose umbrella reside The Star, Cape Times, Natal Mercury, Pretoria News and Sunday Independent. By 1999, O’Reilly had bought out the whole company. As Berger commented:

      Considered in terms of concentration, this foreign investment was not a positive development from the vantage point of pluralistic democracy, in that in Cape Town and Durban the same company now owns both morning and evening papers. However, at the same time, the entry of international capital saw a noticeable increase in competition in the newspaper industry – even if this was only at the higher end of the market. It took the form of more vigorous competition by Independent titles with those of other groups ...

      There were other changes regarding the trend in foreign ownership, he noted. The English company, Pearson PLC, bought half of Business Day and the Financial Mail from Times Media Limited (Times Media then became Avusa at the end of 2007). Partnerships with foreign investment also occurred in 1998, when The Guardian in London bought sixty-two per cent of the Mail & Guardian, which prevented the closure of the paper. Subsequently, in 2001, it sold most of these shares to the Zimbabwean newspaper mogul Trevor Ncube, still the majority owner and publisher. Another foreign ownership-cum-partnership occurred when Swedish group Dagens Industry bought twenty-four per cent of black-owned Mafube Publishing. Berger noted the irony that liberation in South Africa saw the death of the liberation movement’s media as funding dried up because donors felt the country was now ‘normal’. The small newspapers South, Vrye Weekblad and New Nation, met their demise in the early 1990s.

      In addition to the above foreign partnerships and ownership trends, there were significant racial changes in ownership, according to Berger. He noted five main developments. Dr Nthatho Motlana formed New Africa Publishing (owned thereafter by New African Investments Ltd or NAIL) and in 1993 he bought the Sowetan. This was then bought by NAIL, a black economic empowerment (BEE) company. Second, thirty-four per cent of the holding company of Times Media Ltd, Johnnic, was sold to a BEE group, with the ANC politician and subsequent businessman Cyril Ramaphosa spearheading the deal. This group, the National Empowerment Consortium, consisted of: NAIL, the National Union of Mineworkers (Num), and the SA Railway and Harbour Workers Union (Sarhwu), precursor to the Transport and General Workers Union (T&G) which became the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu). Third, Berger noted a partnership between Kagiso Media and Perskor in 1998 but this split in 1999. Subsequently, Caxton bought Perskor and took ownership of the Citizen. Then the Union Alliance Media (UAM), a subsidiary of Union Alliance Holdings representing the two major union federations, Cosatu and Nactu, each with over two million members at the time, acquired shares in media companies.

      These were major changes in media ownership. Owners included blacks and workers, and were a shift from the old patterns under apartheid, of white, male, capitalist owners. According to Jane Duncan, in an e-mail interview on 17 March 2008 for an article I wrote in Enterprise magazine, ‘The media’s political and economic landscape’, this period could be described as ‘the golden season of diversification’. She outlined the three main shifts. The first was between 1994 and1996 when transformation of the media ensued with attempts to unbundle the three major newspaper groups which were owned mainly by the mining and finance houses. Attempts were made to introduce some level of black ownership. The second, Duncan said, was the financial crisis of 1996 which led to the introduction of Gear (Growth Employment and Redistribution – the growth strategy of the ANC under Mbeki) when ‘credit became more costly’ and ‘black empowerment deals unwound’. This then led to the third, the ‘reconsolidation of media into three big groups once again, Johncom (now Avusa), Independent Newspapers and Media 24/Naspers’.

      The shifts that Duncan highlighted showed that as quickly as diversification took place the deals just as quickly unravelled. The government used the opportunity to call for measures to curb concentration while at the same time trying to muscle into the free space of the media. In the same interview, Duncan pointed to the ‘growing executive control’ of the media:

      Government advertising is also used as a means of exerting political pressure on media; recently the government threatened to withdraw advertising from the Sunday Times newspaper after it carried reports critical of the health minister … The ANC is also investigating the setting up of a media tribunal to address the ‘deficits’ in the self-regulatory system, which may well lead to greater statutory control of the print media, considered to be a thorn in the side of many in positions of power.

      As the story of the fight for democracy between the ANC and the media unfolds it becomes clearer how the ANC has used the concentration of media ownership as an excuse for its political subjections.

       Media and democracy in South Africa

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