South Africa: In South Africa, media endangered [opinion]

IN WELCOMING the world to the World Cup in June, South African President Jacob Zuma boasted that the tournament exemplified his country’s leading role for all of Africa. Sixteen years after a multiracial democracy emerged from the oppressive apartheid system, South Africa has a constitution that, as Zuma put it, “enshrines human rights to ensure that this nation never returns to that painful past.’’ The nation, he said, “would never be the same again.’’

Yet now, just a month removed from soccer’s glitz, Zuma is threatening to return to grimmer days by clamping down on news organizations that criticize his government. This misguided effort threatens the foundations of the new South Africa, which up to now has set an inspiring example for all young democracies.

 

Embarrassed by media coverage of scandals in Zuma’s family and of profiteering by public officials even as millions struggle in poverty, the government has proposed a “Protection of Information Bill.’’ His party, the African National Congress, is calling for tribunals to regulate the media. Earlier this month, a journalist was arrested after reporting that the national police commissioner may have may questionable business dealings.

 

Under the bill, the government could define so-called “sensitive information’’ as anything deemed in “the national interest.’’ It has aroused vigorous opposition, and not only from media organizations. Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu last week spoke out against the measures as “something that virtually everybody rejects.’’

 

When guided by leaders such as Tutu and Nelson Mandela, South Africa developed a rare moral authority that would be tragic to waste. If the country fritters away freedom of the press, it would almost assuredly embolden less democratic nations to clamp down even harder.

 

Zuma and the ANC should look to Mandela himself. During long years in jail on Robben Island, Mandela and other prisoners protested for access to the news. In his 1994 autobiography, Mandela wrote, “In 1978, after we had spent almost 15 years agitating for the right to receive news, the authorities offered us a compromise. Instead of permitting us to receive newspapers or listen to radio, they started their own radio news service, which consisted of a daily canned summary of the news read over the prison’s intercom system. The broadcasts were far from objective or comprehensive. . .

 

“The broadcasts consisted of good news for the government and bad news for all its opponents. . . Despite the slanted nature of the news, we were glad to have it, and prided ourselves on reading between the lines and making educated guesses based on the obvious omissions. . . we had learned what the authorities did not want us to know.’’

 

South Africans should not have to guess at anything. And the danger is not to them alone. Last week, in a speech in Johannesburg, American Ambassador Donald Gips put South Africa on the spot for the new restrictions. “We believe South Africa serves as the role model for the continent and the world,’’ Gips said.

 

“South Africa has shown the way as a peacekeeper for the continent, in Burundi and Sudan.’’ He noted the South African press’s history in exposing the acts of the apartheid regime and urged, “South Africa must not turn away from that history now.’’

 

Zuma and the ANC would be much better off cleaning up corruption than corralling the press. All that a canned press will do is make people more angry when they successfully read between the lines. Earlier this summer, Tutu endorsed a general call to African heads of state to eliminate press restrictions, calling the media “one of the most powerful instruments in helping our societies to value the truth.’’

 

South Africa is arriving at a moment of truth. The World Cup elevated the country to a privileged place on the world map. That was only a game for young men. The government now has to show that it is mature enough to let media tell the truth.

 

-August 24, 2010 by Derrick Z. Jackson

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Source:www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/08/24/in_south_africa_media_endangered/ (accessed on 24.08.10)