Fight for Democracy. Glenda Daniels
or a process of deliberation between free and equal citizens. She argued that the so-called ‘new’ paradigm was a model of deliberative democracy that had come full circle, ‘the revival of an old theme, not the emergence of a new one’.
Antagonism, therefore, was ineradicable and pluralist democratic politics would never find a final solution. This was the democratic paradox. ‘What the deliberative democracy theory denied was the division of undecidability and ineradicability of antagonism which is constitutive of the political. A well-functioning democracy called for a vibrant clash of political positions’ Mouffe said in 2000. She argued that deliberative theorists negated the inherently conflictual nature of modern pluralism. She explained the meaning of ‘agonistic’ in her work: an agonistic approach acknowledges the real nature of democracy’s frontiers and the forms of exclusion entailed, instead of trying to disguise them under a veil of rationality or morality. Because there is the ever-present temptation in the deliberative model of democratic societies to essentialise identities, the radical democratic model is more receptive to the multiplicity of voices in contemporary pluralist societies. This argument is important in understanding the role of the media in South Africa’s democracy.
Antagonism takes place between enemies, or persons who have no common symbolic space. Agonism, on the other hand, involves a relationship not between enemies but between adversaries or friendly enemies. They share a common symbolic space but they are also enemies because they want to organise this space in a different way. Thus, according to Mouffe, the radical pluralist democracy model advocates a positive status to differences and questions homogeneity. So, then, applying this argument, the media and the ANC have a common symbolic space, democracy, and this must be accepted. Within this space there is no room for labelling such as ‘enemies of the people’. Mouffe’s argument with deliberative theorists such as the liberal democratic theorists Rawls and Habermas is that their approach, far from being conducive to their aim of a more reconciled society, ends up in jeopardy because the struggle between adversaries becomes, rather, a struggle between enemies.
The above distinction is pertinent to my analysis of the role of the media in democracy in South Africa, to show how the ANC seeks consensus with the media, how it attempts foreclosures, and how it exemplifies an unprogressive and narrow hegemony. There can be no rational consensus for a true democracy. However, for society to function there has to be some minimal consensus although, to avoid unnatural foreclosures, we should relinquish the very idea of rational consensus.
In this argument, then, homogeneity and political unity as a condition of possibility for democracy constitute an unprogressive hegemony which applies to the unravelling of the relationship between the media, the ANC and democracy in South Africa. This point will be highlighted when I discuss what various journalists and editors in South Africa argued in relation to whether the independence of the media was contingent on a particular historical context – in this case, early stages of democracy in South Africa, or a transitional democracy.
The argument for a radical democracy is helpful when I discuss the ANC’s use of ‘us and them’, as well as the ideological interpellations or labelling of the media as ‘enemies of the people’. Mouffe’s concept of an agonistic pluralist democratic project typifies this tension in South Africa where there is an inability to distinguish between adversaries and real enemies. Agonistic pluralism advocates viewing the ‘us and them’ in a different way, not as an enemy to be destroyed but as a legitimate opponent. Both Mouffe and Žižek would lean towards a Lacanian definition of democracy with a socio-political order in which ‘the people’ do not exist – certainly not as a unity. In this argument, which I incline towards and use in the forthcoming analyses, the radical differences in a democratic society are intrinsic. The opposite would be totalitarianism or the complete closing off of spaces. In this mode of thinking, totalitarianism, then, is an attempt to re-establish the unity of democracy. The argument for radical democracy, adapted from Mouffe and Žižek, is that because of the open character of society there will naturally be conflict and there cannot be a ‘unity of the people’.
As Mouffe notes, ‘democracy is something uncertain and improbable and must never be taken for granted. It is an always fragile conquest that needs to be defended as well as deepened’ (2006: 6). The empirical in the research leading to this book will show the fragile, contradictory and ambivalent nature of South Africa’s democracy – and, in fact, the fragile and ambivalent nature of the independence of the media. For example, even though a resolution was taken by the ANC to investigate a media appeals tribunal in December 2007, by 2010 there was still no certainty about it: whether it would indeed be implemented; and if it were to be, who would oversee it and what form would it take. But the threat remained, hanging over us like a black cloud of foreboding uncertainty. This remained the case in 2012.
Transformation of the media in post-apartheid South Africa
To the ANC and its alliance partners, transformation of the media after apartheid meant deracialisation and diversification of 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,