one which would reconcile conflicting interests towards national consensus. In July 2010 it was announced that the Gupta Group, which was closely linked to President Zuma, would fund a daily national newspaper, The New Age, which was due to launch in mid-September 2010 (Business Day: 6 July 2010). By mid September 2010 the paper had not launched, citing technical difficulties with the new technological systems from India, and a new date for the end of October 2010 was set. The paper launched on 6 December 2010 after a few shaky starts.
Although the main player behind the paper, Essop Pahad, denied that the paper would be affiliated to the ANC, it was clear that it would in fact be more than sympathetic. For example, the editor, Vuyo Mvoko, in an interview on Radio 702 on 23 July 2010, said: ‘We will show the positive side of government; it cannot be that our nation is just about crime and corruption’.
The struggle for freedom of the press from state control was a continuous one during the apartheid years, which culminated with press freedom becoming firmly entrenched and encapsulated in the 1996 Constitution. In 2005, South Africa received a favourable rating on a renowned international free press scale from Reporters without Borders, and was ranked thirty-first in the worldwide Press Freedom Index. But by October 2007 it was ranked forty-third on the same index, lower than Mauritius (twenty-fifth), Namibia (twenty-sixth) and Ghana (twenty-ninth).
In October 2007, editors gathered through Sanef to hold the third Media and Society Conference at which the independence of the media from political control was discussed. This took place thirty years after Black Wednesday, 19 October 1977, the day the apartheid government banned The World and The Weekend World newspapers, together with nineteen black organisations, and detained journalists, editors and anti-apartheid activists.
During the apartheid years there were three distinct streams of media. The mainstream media was made up, first, of the national broadcaster, and, second, of the English and Afrikaans language newspaper blocs (Jacobs 1999), a duopoly split between the Afrikaans conglomerates Naspers and Perskor and the English conglomerates South African Associated Newspapers and Argus Holdings. A third stream existed too, an independent or alternative press, consisting of smaller print publications such as the Weekly Mail, Vrye Weekblad, South and New Nation.2 The first two streams had very different approaches to reporting on the government of the day. The mainstream media tended either to toe the government line ideologically or to support the then whites-only opposition party (Berger 1999; Tomaselli and Muller 1989; Steenveld 2007; Hadland 2007b). Any criticism of the government was in the context of accepting the status quo and voiced from within the confines of that status quo. The English language newspapers tended to take a liberal perspective that criticised certain aspects of the apartheid policies, but in a way that did not challenge the status quo outright. The role of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and Afrikaans language newspapers was much more obvious – to support the National Party government and its policies. During this time the voices of the majority, the oppressed, were seldom heard via the mainstream media, and outright dissent was rare. Although there were newspapers and radio stations aimed at black South Africans, these tended to have little impact on the perceptions of those in power. Except for the ‘alternative or independent press’, the net effect was that the bulk of the media did little to challenge apartheid. In essence, the South African mainstream media promoted apartheid and the government supported the mainstream commercially driven media.
Nonetheless, the role the media played during apartheid is an uneven one. There were also instances of exposures of corruption of the ruling class and brutality from police and prisons. Over and above the prohibition of information that came from the banning of political opponents and the general milieu of repression, the National Party government also introduced a host of legislative acts at various times during its rule that affected the media either directly or indirectly, creating an environment that controlled the information reaching the public and violated freedom of the press. Between 1950 and 1990 over a hundred laws were introduced to regulate the activities of the South African media. The most prominent was the Publications Act of 1974 (Durrheim et al 2005), outlining the rules and regulations imposed by the state on the media. According to Steenveld (2007), three acts ensured the political climate of media repression: the Internal Security Act of 1982 which prohibited the circulation and debate of ideas relating to alternative social and political policies for South Africa; the Protection of Information Act of 1982 which prohibited the obtaining of forbidden information and its disclosure to any foreign state or hostile organisation; and the Registration of Newspapers Act of 1982, which gave the press the option of falling under the Directorate of Publications (the state censorship machinery) or subjecting themselves to self-regulation under the Media Council.
In addition to the constraints imposed on the media by the political climate, economic imperatives and ownership of the media also affected its role and independence. Until 1990 the concentration of print media ownership in the hands of one or two conglomerates also acted as a threat to media independence. William Gumede (2005: 3-4) was one of the academics arguing that it was necessary to include financial independence, not just political independence, in any discussion of democracy and media freedom. For him, although there has been a proliferation of new newspapers and radio stations throughout South Africa since the inception of democracy, often as a result of the interplay between old and new technology, the real danger in the media being free to report as it sees fit is that content is increasingly shaped by economic imperatives. His argument is that the pressure to remain profitable can result increasingly in urban, consumer-focused media with a declining concern for the voiceless who cannot pay and the race for profits.
To understand the ANC and the media, it is necessary to sketch the ANC media policy and note its shifts over the years. The question I pose is why the ANC, given its stated commitment to the democratic objectives of the Constitution, should be so ambivalent, if not downright opposed to, the freedom of the media. The negotiated settlement that led to the compromise of a liberal constitutionalism (albeit with critical social democratic elements) reflected the triumph of one ideological strand, the liberal one. It was a far cry from socialism or what was called ‘democratic centralism’.
The shifts in ANC media policy
It could be argued that not all members of the ANC supported a negotiated settlement. There was disagreement and ambivalence between the hawks and doves in the ANC, some arguing for an armed insurrection via Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the military wing of the ANC, as a means to end apartheid, while others were in favour of peaceful negotiations. These differences were also reflected in media policy. Ruth Tomaselli (1994) pointed to the distinction between these two positions as reflecting, on the one side, a more militant position and, on the other, the more pragmatic approach of the doves. The ANC first discussed media policy in November 1991. There is a small clause in the Draft Workers Charter, also of 1991, which states: ‘Big business and the state must ensure effective workers’ access to all sections of the media’ (ANC, 1991). Prior to this date, ‘media’ policy or issues were like a ‘second cousin’ to the ANC, Tomaselli observed, noting that there were more pressing concerns for the ANC at the time, concerns such as housing, social welfare and education – but also the South African Broadcasting Corporation. The discussions on media in November 1991 were then drafted and adopted in January 1992. The Media Charter stipulated basic rights and freedom, democratisation of the media, public media, media workers and society, education and training, and promotional mechanisms. Tomaselli noted that the focus was on the broadcast media and the SABC, but she also observed that the charter was framed in ‘idealistic terms’ and should be seen as a philosophical statement of intent. The document did not specify how a future ANC-led government would fulfill such terms. However, what was happening politically at the time also had a bearing on how media policy was viewed by the ANC. Tomaselli wrote: ‘In media policy, as in other policy debates, ANC pragmatists came to realise, by late 1992, that the traditional hardline assumption that the liberation movement would ascend to government in the form of a “people’s assembly” following a seizure of power though “mass insurrection”3 was an unlikely scenario’.
The reality, Tomaselli pointed out, was a standoff situation in which the National Party and the ANC had to negotiate at every level of policy planning. Having researched ANC media policy, Jane Duncan (2009)