andersen-ottaway lecture

1993 Andersen Lecture
Richard Steyn
Editor-in-Chief, The Star, Johannesburg

South Africa's Transition: Testing The Pieties

Today is a momentous day for South Africa. Three hundred and fifty years of white domination came to an end when members of the multi-racial Transitional Executive Council took their seats in Cape Town this morning.

Mr. Andersen, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen: You have done South African journalism an honor by inviting me to deliver the 1993 Harold W. Andersen Lecture. I accepted your invitation knowing that there are many journalists in South Africa more deserving than I, but hopeful that my vantage as the editor of one of South Africa’s largest newspapers might enable me to give you an informed account of the challenges and the difficulties that lie ahead for the media, and the press in particular.

May I also say, presumptuously, that I think it is appropriate that South Africa should be singled out for special attention at this time. For as long as I can remember, the world has lectured the white minority government on the evils of apartheid. Now that the object of so much condemnation, and so much pious advice, has confounded the pundits by preparing to share power, and ultimately to concede it, its supporters are entitled to the assurance that a future majority government will be kept under the same critical scrutiny by the international community.

Those who have campaigned so hard to bring apartheid to an end have at least a moral obligation to ensure that whatever system replaces it is capable of meeting the aspirations of all South Africans whatever their race, creed or political persuasion.

I should also like to take this opportunity of paying tribute, a personal tribute to the World Press Freedom Committee and other international organizations that supported us so staunchly during the long apartheid years, when all that stood between State control of the newspapers and a press that was shackled, but nonetheless retained some ability to inform and criticize, was the united opposition of editors and publishers inside the country, and sustained protest from abroad.

Without the aid of organizations such as the World Press Freedom Committee, the International Press Institute, the Committee to Protect Journalists and others, South African journalism would be in much poorer shape than it is today.

The title of my address, ladies and gentlemen, comes from half-remembered remarks of a visiting American academic seeking to explain South Africa’s uniqueness to his countrymen. South Africa is not a nation, he said, but a collection of tribes struggling to find a common destiny. It is a country where every conflict of the post-war world may be encountered: colonialism versus anti-colonialism; first world versus third world; capitalist versus socialist; "haves" versus "have-nots"; black versus white; industrial versus rural.

It is a place to stir the soul, he said, not to test the pieties.

That was written several years ago when apartheid was still in its pomp and the National Party government, which had ruled with an iron fist since 1948, seemed pretty nigh impregnable. Since then, as you know, a variety of factors including economic sanctions, international suasion, internal dissent, the end of the Cold War, in particular, and...that rarity in my country...imaginative political leadership have caused South Africans at last to choose the path of negotiation in preference to perpetual conflict.

Collectively, we are stumbling along the road to democracy, and the country has become a place not only to stir the soul, but also to test the pieties.

Chief among the pieties is our commitment to genuine multi-party democracy, in which free elections, free political activity, free media and the protection of individual rights are entrenched and respected. Because on the ground, things are very different. Despite their honeyed words on the hustings, most of the major parties betray strongly authoritarian tendencies; each is intolerant of opposition and would much prefer to monopolize power rather than share it. There is a huge gulf between what leaders say and what their followers actually do.

Many of our leaders, unfortunately, project a public image of being tolerant, peace-seeking democrats, while behind their backs their supporters assault and kill and silence followers of other parties. Very rarely is anybody disciplined for anti-democratic behavior, and then the punishment is only a slap on the wrist. Not long ago The Star published a telling cartoon of our leaders at a peace rally, their right hands raised to pledge peace and their left hands stuck behind their backs with fingers crossed.

The United Nations representative in a recent speech observed forthrightly that no one in South Africa is blameless. The Government is culpable for its half-hearted efforts to reduce the number of weapons in circulation, while the African National Congress, led by Nelson Mandela, and the Inkatha Freedom party, led by Chief Buthelezi, have made no attempt to put into effect an agreement to respect the right to recruit and mobilize in each other’s territory.

Outside the negotiating chamber the prevailing climate is one of acute intolerance, in which a younger generation in particular has grown up to believe that if their views could be silenced by the State, then they too are entitled to suppress views that they disagree with.

If Francis Fukuyama is correct in his assertion that a strong sense of national unity is a precondition for the emergence of stable democracy, then the prospects for a peaceful outcome, I must tell you, are not good. And if a highly unequal social structure, and all the habits of mind that go with it, are an additional constraint, then the outlook is even bleaker.

But South Africa has confounded the experts before, and may yet do so again. What has been achieved in the almost four years since Nelson Mandela came out of prison and the ANC and other organizations were unbanned is quite remarkable. Some 30 parties, many of whom regarded others with the utmost fear and loathing, have been involved in protracted conversation, for which no precedent seems to exist anywhere.

Most constitutional negotiations are conducted under the watchful eye of the former colonial power, or one of the superpowers, or the United Nations. In South Africa, we are going it alone, trying to negotiate a revolution.

For those living through it, I must tell you that the process is hugely unsettling. Whites are uncertain about the future, fearful and deeply cynical. Blacks are excited, expectant, but fearful too. The atmosphere is one of ferment as we design a non-racial constitution, create new national symbols, restructure the army and police forces, dismantle the homelands and reshape the entire country, on the run, so to speak.

It is always difficult for those who live through cataclysmic change to retain perspective and take the long-term view. We have constantly to remind ourselves that we are in the process of changing a system that has operated for some three and a half centuries, trying to turn an undemocratic racist society into an inclusive non-racial one in the space of a few short years, and without the benefit of an incoming economic tide.

Yet, although the negotiations have been between leaders rather than their followers, there is a grudging recognition that our various groups are doomed to get along with one another, rather than split along racial and ethnic lines.

Surveys show that while blacks may not have much affection for whites, they realize that whites are needed if the new society is to prosper. The vast majority of whites realize that they have no option but to seek an accommodation with the black majority.

The constitutional settlement just reached is not an arrangement that will satisfy the purists. It is very much a second-best solution based on reluctant compromise, but it is a formula nonetheless upon which a non-racial society might, with luck, be built.

To those watching from afar, the negotiations must have seemed drawn out and mystifying. As Churchill said of Ireland many years ago, if you are not confused, you don’t understand the situation properly.

But, as the commentator Steven Friedman points out, one factor has made our transition more difficult than any other; and that is that the negotiating table has not had two sides only. Apartheid has spawned a black elite in the homelands with distinct interests that will not be protected after the transition to majority rule. This group has had no desire for a quick settlement.

No sooner have the two major parties, the government and the ANC, agreed on something than numbers three and four have found fault with it, though it must be said, in fairness, that some of the reservations have been justified. Add in the ethnic element, ethnic fears, so skillfully exploited by the white right, and you will understand why this process has been so drawn out.

Now that the horse trading is over, the critical question is whether the forces that bind the moderate black and white center together in this uneasy alliance are greater than those on the fringes who are determined to keep our races apart.

Now the length and the complexity of the transition process present a huge challenge to the South African media, ourselves debilitated by the apartheid years in many ways, and also the long-lasting economic downturn in which only the fittest of the subsidized have survived.

Although our media are more sophisticated, perhaps, and more independent than their counterparts in most African countries, decades of minority rule have bequeathed us a lopsided media structure unsuited to the exacting demands that are now being placed upon it. Until recently, the broadcast media, radio and television, with one or two exceptions, were owned or controlled by the government; the newspapers are still in the hands, by and large, of four white-owned press groups with broadly similar interests. The result has been a lack of access, by most of the population to radio and television and a press that is over-representative of one section of the population.

Belated efforts are now being made to rectify this situation, to widen the gateway through which news and opinions are presented to the public. But I think a fair and effective communications system capable of nourishing a healthy democracy will take many years to bring about in South Africa.

Another inhibiting factor is the climate of intolerance that I referred to earlier. There are any number of recorded instances of journalists being threatened, roughed up and in some cases severely assaulted or killed by political hotheads with axes to grind. When complaints are lodged with political organizations, there is much tut-tutting and promises of action, but little ever comes of it.

The situation is particularly difficult for black reporters living in urban townships. For them to file stories critical of the prevailing political orthodoxy requires courage of the highest order. Not surprisingly, few are prepared to put their lives at stake by being politically incorrect, while some of the bravest opponents of apartheid have become steadily more disillusioned at the lip-service paid to democracy by many of the political parties. I think it was my colleague Edward Claster who remarked only recently that the threat to the press now comes much more from the grass roots than it does from the government.

Given the deficiencies and the shortcomings and the problems that I have mentioned, it would be unreasonable to expect too much of the media in the transition to democracy. Our immediate task, in simple terms, is twofold. First, to explain to a largely unsophisticated electorate the rudiments of transition politics and multi-party democracy, and second, our more traditional role of reporting, describing and commenting upon the activities of the competing parties.

Now the explanatory role, the educative role, falls primarily but not entirely upon radio, because studies show that while large parts of South Africa are beyond the reach of newspapers and television, virtually everyone in the country has access to a transistor radio. Television will be extremely influential in the urban areas. But newspapers remain the medium best suited to detailed reporting and careful analysis of political events, hence their continuing importance to politicians and policymakers.

Although enjoying more latitude than the publicly owned media, newspapers too are having difficulty living up to their own pious promises of fairness to a wide range of political parties. We all have our own encrusted prejudices, built up during the apartheid years.

In one sense, it was almost easier in the bad old days. Because most of us in the English-language press were firmly opposed to apartheid, we knew what we were against. We knew exactly where we stood. But now the choice for everyone is a lot less clear-cut. We are having to decide what we actually stand for. And that is not quite so easy when some of our most cherished values are no longer the preserve of any one political party.

Both in philosophical and practical terms, the forthcoming transition presents South African editors and journalists with a number of headaches.

For instance: How does one do justice to a political movement like the ANC, which has suffered from an enforced silence for so long? The ANC, as you know, is a broad church, a liberation movement rather than a political party, with members ranging from capitalists to communists. Does one make allowances for its obvious inconsistencies and organizational shortcomings? Should it be judged by different criteria than its opponents?

How does one assess the South African Communist Party, one of the most active in the world at the moment, and some of its soul-mates, when some of our communists are the most ardent of negotiators? Is theirs a genuine change of heart or is this the classic first stage of a two-stage revolution? How tolerant should one be of unrepentant supporters of a failed ideology that virtually the entire world has turned its back on?

How does one counter, and indeed discount, the intimidation that is so rife in rural and urban areas? Intimidation is already making voter education difficult and informed coverage and reasoned debate impossible in certain parts of the country.

How does one strike a balance, in one’s daily news coverage, between the plethora of reports on violence and mayhem and the many positive things that are happening? One could fill an entire paper, if one wished, with news of doom and gloom.

Indeed, the question I am most frequently asked is, why do you put so much bad news in the newspaper? When ours is by no means the only society caught up in the good-news-versus-bad-news debate. I have been following the Martin Lewis case, speech, in England with some interest, but we have the problem in its most acute form in South Africa.

How does one explain to one’s readers, in understandable and unpatronizing language, the ins and outs of a complex and confusing political process? The problem was brought home to me by the complaints of our own cadet reporters that despite having a reasonable education they still didn’t understand such basic terms as a constitution, transitional executive, power-sharing, and so on. I guess that over 90 percent of our population do not have the foggiest idea of what has been negotiated on their behalf or what they can expect from the new constitution.

How, at this critical time in our history, does one balance news, information, education and entertainment within the narrow confines of one newspaper, when space is at a premium and the average reader after four years is bored stiff with politics? Should one give people an overdose of politics, so to speak, at this important time, or should one not?

How does one resolve the tensions among one’s own politically charged staff as the election approaches and which party to vote for becomes a matter of hot dispute?

Finally, how do we editors unite a community of journalists which still betrays the mindset and the practices of the apartheid years? We lack a common philosophy, a common set of values behind which to come together in order to ward off the attacks on press freedom that are inevitable in the new society.

I want to return briefly to the good-news-versus-bad-news issue because it has relevance beyond our borders. There seems to be an impression, even in educated circles in my country, that the media are partially responsible for the climate of violence, that if only we wouldn’t report so much about it, peace-making would be a lot easier. But I reject that argument. It is the task of the media, as you are well aware, to hold up a mirror to society, not to cry peace where there is no peace. Reduce the level of violence in South Africa and the media will be quick to reflect the change.

I do believe, however, that the media have to guard against a short-term view of the historical process and not allow ourselves to be unduly distracted by the many setbacks and disappointments that occur along the way. Though newspapers should always try to tell it as it is, in our presentation and interpretation of news we often have the choice of being constructive, or deliberately or even thoughtlessly destructive.

We can choose to emphasize the values, the ideals that bind us together as a nation or we can harp on and exploit the differences, cultural, ethnic and other, and there are many of them, that keep us apart.

Tolerance and compromise are the essence of democracy and the media are an important factor in creating a climate sympathetic to give and take. I think if the politics of democracy are presented in South Africa as a zero-sum game in which one side wins all at the expense of the others, then the chances of a successful transition will be reduced and the country’s future put in jeopardy. That is why at The Star, we have been strongly supportive of the transition process itself, even if critical of leaders and parties from time to time.

Much of what I have said about the functioning of the press during the transition assumes an appreciation on the part of the public of the value of free media and a willingness to tolerate their occasional inaccuracies and provocations, on the basis that if you want a watchdog, you have got to put up with some fleas.

Such understanding does not really exist in South Africa. A probing competent press is regarded by politicians and the public alike as more of a nuisance than a benefit. There is insufficient understanding of the protection afforded by a free press. Or the fact that no tyranny, no injustice, no infringement of personal rights can be sustained indefinitely if the media are truly free.

Although the provisions in the new interim Bill of Rights to protect free speech and the freedom of the press are a considerable improvement on what there was before, the right of an individual to have access to official information does not go nearly far enough in my view.

The right of access in the new constitution vests in the individual, who has to show that he or she has a need for that information in order to exercise his or her other rights under the bill.

Now nobody is quite sure where this leaves the media. Despite last-minute representations from a wide range of media organizations, the legislators have dug in their heels and declined to clarify the situation, as if to say to us, so far and no further. A lot is going to depend on how the new constitutional court interprets the Bill of Rights.

And here those of us in the media have a duty to be more vigilant than ever if healthy precedents are to be established that will promote a free flow of information and open debate.

Even before the Bill of Rights comes into operation, there was a very disturbing judgment of our appellate division last week in which a judgment, an enlightened judgment of the Transvaal Provincial Division, which effectively applied the skeleton principles to media scrutiny of public officials in South Africa, was overturned. That, to me, was an extremely disappointing development on the eve of the new society.

Ladies and gentlemen, the degree of freedom allowed the press in South Africa has important implications for sub-Saharan Africa, where many countries are experimenting with multi-party democracy for the first time. Since independence 30 years ago, virtually all privately owned newspapers in Africa, outside South Africa, that is, have come under government control. Nationalist leaders who had used newspaper in their efforts to overthrow colonialism were not about to risk the same papers mobilizing opposition to their rule.

Well, three decades later, they and their successors are being made to realize the folly of their ways. In Zambia, in Zimbabwe, in Mozambique, and Malawi, opposition newspapers are making their presence felt for the first time in many years.

But the obstacles are fearsome, facilities are poor, newsprint is expensive, and the absence of a thriving market economy means little advertising revenue to keep cover prices down. As you well know, genuine freedom of the media means freedom from economic as much as political and legal constraints. And this, I am afraid, is just not attainable in most of Africa.

There have been encouraging developments, nonetheless, of which UNESCO’s "Declaration of Windhoek on Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press" and the formation of the Media Institute of Southern Africa are two. What has yet to be demonstrated convincingly, however, is whether this new-found commitment to democracy and pluralism on the part of African governments is genuine or simply cosmetic.

One test will be the degree of independence granted to radio and television. Because in many countries, the electronic media are part of the security system and the difference between a successful and an unsuccessful coup in most cases is who gets hold of the radio station.

How can the international community help to encourage the growth of democracy throughout the region of Southern Africa? You can do so in a variety of ways, of which assistance with resources, equipment and training is but one. You can do so by keeping your attention focused on the region at this critical time. You can do so by not applying an inverse racism and tolerating lower standards for democratic Africa.

But however much help you may give, ultimately it is governments and international financial organizations that wield the most influence. I would like to support the suggestion that financial aid to African countries be made contingent upon the existence of free media.

If the free exchange of information and ideas is essential to the successful functioning of an economy and more especially the rooting out of corruption, then international funders would be well advised to make the encouragement of free media a priority. Aid will run into the sand far less easily if newspapers are able to monitor its use and governments are held accountable to their citizens.

Where South Africa is concerned, I would urge you not to avert your gaze the moment the election is over and a black-led government has assumed its rightful share of power. There is an understandable inclination on the part of Western countries to be rid of the South African problem, to believe that majority rule means at last that justice has prevailed and one of the longest-running morality plays has come to its end. Well, as the century draws to its close, there are other, more intractable, more strategically significant disputes in Eastern Europe and in the Middle East to command your attention.

But if I can leave one thought with you, it is this: The election of April 27, 1994, is not the end of the transition to democracy in South Africa, only the end of the beginning.

Mr. Bullen mentioned the beginning of the end. I would rather put it the other way around, the end of the beginning. Our future as a nation will be determined not by what happens on election day only, but on developments over the next few years as former sworn enemies learn to govern together, and our courts set about applying a constitution that is the product of political trade-offs rather than the noblest democratic principles.

Despite protestations to the contrary by those who drafted it, the constitution gives us strong central government at the expense of regions, and favors the State over the rights of the individual. Liberty, to paraphrase Lloyd George, is a habit that we South Africans are going to take some time to acquire.

My colleague Shaun Johnson uses the colloquialism "a monkey’s wedding" to describe the state of South Africa at present. A monkey’s wedding is a South African phrase meaning when it rains and the sun shines at the same time. But the metaphor is apt because, while the tears flow freely in a country ravaged by violence, there is promise of a much brighter future ahead.

But if that future is to come about, the media, our media, in common with other organs of civil society, will have to live up to the highest traditions, prepared if necessary to carry the fight to a powerful interim government of national unity and its officials all over again, determined to keep open the market-place of ideas and ready always to challenge the pieties.

That is because, to echo the words of the Czech Jan Werich, the struggle against the stupidity of those who exercise power, and here I include the media, is the only human struggle that is always in vain, but can never be abandoned.