Tell Our Story. Julie Reid
Figure 6.2
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We are grateful to the Open Society Foundation of South Africa, and the Women in Research Fund, awarded by the University of South Africa (UNISA), for providing the funding that made the research for this book possible.
This research was conducted under the auspices of the Media Policy and Democracy Project (MPDP). We are additionally grateful for the guidance and advice provided by fellow MPDP researchers, in particular the project leaders, Professor Jane Duncan (University of Johannesburg) and Professor Viola Milton (UNISA), who were extremely helpful in fundraising for this project.
Our thanks extend to Taryn Isaacs De Vega (Rhodes University) for assisting us with the media content analysis, which is reported on in this book, and to Dr Vanessa Malila (Rhodes University) who transcribed the in-depth interviews.
But most especially, our sincere thanks is extended to the courageous and determined activists and residents of Glebelands, Thembelihle and Xolobeni/Amadiba,1 who warmly welcomed us into their communities, fully supported and actively participated in this project, and without whom this book would not have been possible.
This book is dedicated to them.
ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS
| ACC | Amadiba Crisis Committee |
| ANC | African National Congress |
| ANN7 | African News Network 7 |
| BCCSA | Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa |
| COPE | Congress of the People |
| CSO | civil society organisation |
| EWN | Eyewitness News |
| GHCVV | Glebelands Hostel Community Violence Victims |
| IFP | Inkatha Freedom Party |
| MPDP | Media Policy and Democracy Project |
| MRC | Mineral Resource Commodities |
| PCSA | Press Council of South Africa |
| SABC | South African Broadcasting Corporation |
| SANRAL | South African National Roads Agency Limited |
| SAPS | South African Police Service |
| TCC | Thembelihle Crisis Committee |
| UK | United Kingdom |
| UNESCO | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization |
| UNISA XOLCO | University of South Africa Xolobeni Empowerment Company |
CHAPTER
1
The Importance of Voice and the Myth of the ‘Voiceless’
Julie Reid
Voice as a process – giving account of oneself and what affects one’s life – is an irreducible part of what it means to be human; effective voice (the effective opportunity to have one’s voice heard and taken into account) is a human good.
— Nick Couldry, Why Voice Matters
As social animals, all human beings instinctively and naturally yearn to give an account of themselves and to tell their own stories. But, to operate as if certain peoples lack this desire or ability is to behave towards them as if they are not human (Couldry 2010). In recent years, philosophers and social scientists have pondered the notion of ‘voice’ as a type of catch-all phrase that infers more than the literal meaning of the word, that is, the sounds and words one makes when speaking. Jim Macnamara (2012) conceptualises ‘voice’ as more than the verbal act of speaking since it includes human communication of all types, such as voting, protesting, online participation and artistic production. More broadly, voice, or rather the ability to practise voice, relies on inclusion and participation in political, economic and social expression and processes, and involves affording people the space to actively contribute to decisions that affect their lives. Jo Tacchi (2008: 1) calls the denial of the right of peoples to participate in such activity, ‘voice poverty’.
Voice today is theoretically understood to encompass a broad spectrum of communicative activity, which includes: iterating one’s view, story and position in the world; having that story or position listened to by others; having one’s story recognised as something that matters; and, further, having it mediated or carried via a means of communication (such as the news media) to the broader collective or society. Admittedly, that is putting things rather simply because there are complex and multilayered problems and conditions relevant to each one of these steps. A number of writers examine the intricacies of this process, the notion of ‘voice’, its definition, its theorisation, its associated processes and, crucially, the characteristic challenges prevalent in the disablement of the effective practice of voice. Particularly notable among these is work done by Susan Bickford (1996), the research collective called the Listening Project (O’Donnell, Lloyd and Dreher 2009) and Nick Couldry (2009, 2010). Bickford (1996) offers a landmark and detailed examination of voice and associated listening in her book, The Dissonance of Democracy: Listening, Conflict, and Citizenship, in which she explores ‘pathbuilding’ communicative practices. Here, citizens engage with one another’s perspectives through an ongoing process of speaking and listening, though not necessarily with the goal of social coherence. Instead, the discord, which naturally arises during these interactions, encourages participants to re-evaluate their own speaking practices (Bickford 1996).
Charles Husband (1996, 2008) amplifies the ethical importance of listening by advocating the ‘right to be understood’ as a fundamental communication right. Lisbeth Lipari (2010) proposes a paradigm shift that places listening at the centre of communication rather than speaking, and she defines a perspective on listening, which she calls ‘listening being’. While the largest body of literature