Media ‘capture’? Remove your head from the sand, John Steenhuisen

I have never, actually, seen an ostrich with its head in the sand, but let us, for the sake of argument, assume that it actually does put its head in the sand and has no idea of what is going on in the world.  If so, here’s a question: when the proverbial ostrich has its head in the sand, can it simultaneously drop manure?I wondered about this (isolation from humans during a pandemic will do that to you) when I read John Steenhuisen complaining that certain journalists had been “captured” by the ANC. In Steenhuisen’s case, he specifically referred to Carol Paton. I won’t dig around in Steenhuisen’s manure. I am sure Paton can defend herself.

What I will say, is that when we do find life on any planet in the multiverse, and invite one of its inhabitants to South Africa, the creature would see at least two things related to Steenhuisen’s claim. The first is that poverty almost always and everywhere has a skin colour, and that inequality, too, can be gauged by skin colour. In both cases, the faces are almost always black. Forget the results of the last census, which affirmed this. Those are just facts. 

The second thing that the creature – from, say, OGLE-TR-56b, which is an estimated 5,000 light-years from Earth – would recognise is that the ruling alliance led by the ANC is chronically, probably terminally, corrupt and that South Africa would be a better place, ethically, if the alliance exploded in a massive supernova. 

The myth of a captured media

How did I reach the conclusions about the governing alliance of the past 25 years – including some of those individuals who have now scampered to make themselves look innocent? In the media. Here, I will allow myself the privilege of patronising Steenhuisen, or speaking to him as if he were Jacob Zuma. The media of the past 25 years is filled with stories of ANC corruption, maladministration, criminality among its members, and very serious lapses in ethics. I’m not sure what Steenhuisen is wanging on about. Let’s take a superficial tour.

In 1996, the Sarafina scandal broke – read the Mail & Guardian report here. In 1997, The Star ran a long read about massive corruption in the police force, written by Tom Lodge. Over the next two decades, the media (supposedly captured by the governing alliance), exposed the following (select) cases of corruption, almost every one of which involved the ANC.

In 1999, there was the notorious arms deal in which it was alleged that individuals in the ANC had benefited from bribery relating to defence contracts worth billions of rands. Also, under a revealing headline, “Three Damning Reports Expose Zuma’s Sinking Ship of Corruption”, The Times reported, in 2013, that Dina Pule had laundered a R6-million gift of taxpayers’ money to her boyfriend, Phosane Mngqibisa, by providing an unasked-for R10-million departmental sponsorship for the ICT Indaba in Cape Town the previous year. Pule reportedly admitted to then Public Protector Thuli Madonsela that Mngqibisa was her lover, while lying publicly about it; and had her department pick up Mngqibisa’s tab for lavish overseas trips, in the full knowledge that he was not entitled to such perks. Pule’s bio on the International Telecommunication Union website explains that she is a “Member of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the African National Congress (ANC) since 2007 [and] Member of the National Working Committee (NWC) of the ANC”. The media covered the allegations of Pule’s corruption quite extensively. So much for the media being “captured” by the ANC.

The media also reported that Zuma’s nephew, Khulubuse, and Nelson Mandela’s grandchild, Zondwa, were allegedly at the forefront of the Aurora scandal. This was amid a desperate situation where creditors reportedly owed more than R100-million, and workers who had not been paid for two years, while Khulubuse reportedly bought his fiancée a Maserati – which at the time, cost between R1-million and R1.6-million. See here, and here for a flavour of media reports on the ANC and its kin. Even the World Socialist Web media reported on the Aurora scandal.

On 6 September 2013, the Mail & Guardian reported that a New York law firm, commissioned by Gold Fields, found that the South African mining house had (allegedly) hugely increased ANC chairperson Baleka Mbete’s cut in a contentious empowerment deal in response to an alleged threat by her representative.

And then there was the way Daily Maverick and amaBhungane blew State Capture wide open, and recorded, often in the most granular detail, how the ANC and its allies and friends have hollowed out the state and effectively sold the country to a band of brothers… The litany is lengthy. 

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-07-21-guptaleaks-everything-you-ever-need-to-know-about-guptaleaks-in-one-place/

Steenhuisen is simply wrong to throw shade on the media, or accuse journalists of being captured by the ANC. In fact, the media has been on the ANC’s case since day one – as have I, since I returned from abroad a decade ago, in quite strident terms. But, when I first left journalism, to return to the London School of Economics in 1995, I was asked to give the Mandela administration two years of my life, before leaving for more than 15 years to complete that education in higher learning that had so eluded me for decades. Within a week or so of my joining the Mandela administration (I was not then, and never will be, a member of the ANC), I was accused of having joined “the gravy train” – even though I took a huge pay cut from being the Sowetan’s political correspondent, with outstanding perks and benefits, to being a public servant. 

So, how does one understand Steenhuisen’s conniption? Well, we can either say that he is a spoilt white man who has had his way for decades and is now complaining about being scrutinised. But that would be a racist cheap shot. We can say that he is genuinely hurt by the loss of white power, but that tjank belongs to the old National Party and Democratic Party – some of its members are in the DA ranks. We can say that he is lying, but that would be rude and probably litigious. We can say he is an idiot, but that, too, would be unfair (and cheap). What I will say is that he should pull his head out of the ground while dropping manure. Or, he should probably give his proctology homework a rest.

The DA as protector of white minorities

The DA is no better, or no worse, than the National Party, apart from the explicit apartheid bits. Let’s take one example. During the apartheid period, the Nats staffed almost all the top levels of the central state apparatus and the public corporations. A close tie existed between the Afrikaner community and the state. I was a journalist between 1980 and 1995. I don’t remember the DA or its progenitors complaining about cadre deployment then. And no, this is not an endorsement of cadre deployment. I am simply pointing out that when these privileges were handed to white people, the liberals were not that concerned – but I stand to be corrected (with facts). 

The other thing that the DA shares with the Nats is its concern for white minorities. I will raise two examples. And no, this is not a hatred of Afrikaners or Jewish people… In 1994, both Tony Leon and FW de Klerk urged white minorities to stop being obsequious. They went very quickly – within a matter of months – from being the beneficiaries of apartheid, serving in its military and police that enforced cruel and unjust policies, to being minority victims. 

In an address to a Jewish audience in about 1994, Leon pointed out that the security of the Jewish people was not a privilege granted by the government or governing party, but a constitutional right. He was correct. But the (white) Jewish community deserved no more special privileges than the (white) Afrikaners, or Catholics who propped up apartheid. Leon questioned the Jewish community’s assumption that they could do better than influence criticising the governing party by simply raising their voices in private, while praising the government in public. Leon remarked that there seemed to be a widening distance between what was told to the president and what the people actually feel. 

As DA leader, he advised a Jewish community (as a white community that benefited from apartheid and served in its security establishment, and not as a cultural or religious group) to stop being “a little nervous about giving offence to the new government. Stand up as citizens,” he told them, “and do not be apologetic.” Again, he was right – as citizens, they had every right to stand up and speak. Leon proposed that Jews followed the example of Elie Wiesel, who said that he was compelled by the Jewish tradition “to speak truth to power”. As a great admirer of Wiesel, I completely agree with this. The point being that Leon and De Klerk spoke only for minorities who went, almost overnight, from villains to victims – conveniently forgetting their role in the security establishment that enforced South Africa. 

Steenhuisen is no better than that. He cannot brush white privilege under the carpet by invoking special status – or suddenly hide behind a bushel of liberalism – and telling half-truths about journalists being “captured by the ANC”. Things don’t work that way. We have to protect minorities, whether they are Jewish, Afrikaner, coloured, Indian, Chinese, Shangaan or immigrants from around the world. What we can’t do is make up stories, create scapegoats or gaslight individuals or groups.

Much like the way that ANC cadres cannot overnight make themselves innocent of what went wrong and pose as victims, white people who benefited from apartheid – whatever their persuasion – cannot now claim persecution. We have to confront this issue of historical white privilege and not simply shore it up. As James Baldwin most eloquently put it: “You cannot fix what you will not face.” DM