14 Dec 12 | South Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa
The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) promised to change its ways in an out-of-court settlement over a blacklisting scandal but hope of real change has been engulfed by a wave of censorship at the public broadcaster since the start of November.
Management at South Africa’s public broadcaster have pulled an interview with a cartoonist, cancelled a talk show discussion, arbitrarily dismissed a senior political journalist, centralised control over talk shows, issued directives about words deemed offensive to President Jacob Zuma and banned an advertisement featuring Zuma.
Staff members this week sent out a letter, written anonymously in fear of retribution, bemoaning an atmosphere of paranoia, fear and uncertainty at the public broadcaster.
Cartoonist Zapiro also found out this week that a pre-recorded interview with him would no longer be flighted on SABC 3’s Interface, a political debate show televised on Sundays. Zuma has recently dropped a defamation suit against Zapiro, who has riled him with his critical cartoons.
Senior political reporter for television news, Sophie Mokoena, was last week summarily removed from her post without reason. She was due to coordinate the SABC reporting team at the upcoming conference of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) but has attracted unfavourable attention from Zuma’s faction in the party.
During last week, the plug was also pulled at the last minute on a talk show discussion on Metro FM, South Africa’s largest commercial radio station with 6 million listeners, owned by the SABC. Three political journalists, from privately owned newspapers, were due to discuss the media’s coverage of the ANC conference.
The three journalists were already at the SABC offices in Auckland Park, Johannesburg, when they were informed that “higher powers” had ordered that the discussion be pulled.
SABC acting chief operating officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng afterwards explained that “fairness” required that the ANC be represented at the talk show discussion, as the party would have been discussed.
Motsoeneng is alleged to be close to Zuma and has been called “Zuma’s enforcer” at the SABC and the “de facto SABC CEO”.
He was also involved in banning an advertisement in November showing a cartoon of Zuma eating fish and chips. The SABC gave a variety of explanations for the decision, ranging from that it suggested that the president endorsed the product, to it damaging his dignity, to it being offensive to suggest that he eats fish and chips.
The decision seems to have more to do with the depiction of a showerhead in the ad, derived from Zapiro’s depiction of a showerhead on Zuma’s head in his cartoons after Zuma had suggested that a shower was adequate protection against contracting HIV.
After the Metro FM censorship, SABC management threatened to can a regular workers’ issues slot on SAfm (an SABC-owned English language station with about 550,000 listeners) because the ANC was not represented — despite a representative from the ANC’s alliance partner, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), being featured.
Motsoeneng’s subsequent solution to the “problem” is to centralise control over talk shows dealing with politics across the 18 SABC radio stations, a move which will add a bureaucratic layer that could stifle open engagement with issues, said Media Monitoring Africa.
At the beginning of November, the acting head of news Jimi Matthews banned the use of words such as “compound”, “homestead” and “any other such term” with reference to Zuma’s controversial private dwelling at Nkandla that is costing tax payers R260 million (17 million GBP). UNCUT has previously reported on calls by Zuma’s allies for insult laws after reports revealing Nkandla’s costs.
The SABC has also in recent months been accused of censoring reporting on Zuma’s detractors and last year tried to avoid broadcasting a correction for slandering an investigative journalist.
But even before that, in 2006, exposure of its decision to blacklist certain political commentators led to the Freedom of Expression Institute pursuing legal action. The out of court settlement was reached only last month (November) but seems to have left little if any impression on SABC management.
05 Dec 12 | South Africa
US pop superstar Lady Gaga’s first sojourn to South Africa has raised the hackles of newspaper editors and religious fundamentalists alike.
Local organisers Big Concerts informed the press that, while journalists would be admitted, no press photographers would be allowed at the Johannesburg and Cape Town concerts on 29 November and 3 December. The usual practice is that press photographers take photos during the first three songs, which are then splashed across newspaper pages the next morning.
Announcing a retaliatory blackout on Gaga’s concerts, Alastair Ottor, online editor for Independent Newspapers, described it as:
a growing trend toward individuals and organisations imposing these kinds of restrictions on news media. Sporting bodies in particular have started imposing extreme restrictions on news media because of financial interests and this very often extends beyond what we are allowed to cover to how we are allowed to cover it. As the news industry evolves into a new era, placing restrictions on the use of multimedia, or our own photographs, for example, is not something that we as the media should agree to.
Big Concerts, in a typically obtuse response, pleaded ignorance about the reasons for the ban: “This is just how Live Nation (the global concert organisers) does it. They allow journalists and send (publicity) photos out afterwards,” local newspaper Beeld was told.
The South African National Editors Forum (Sanef) released a statement decrying the decision “as a form of press censorship fundamentally in conflict with the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of media in South Africa”.
Sanef, which represents editors and senior journalists, argued that reporters and photographers are “independent observers” whose coverage the public will only trust if they are not interfered with. “While it is clear that the Lady Gaga tour is just another commercial venture, recent controversy in South Africa regarding a number of religious and other organisations which have protested vigorously against even her very presence in the country, makes her visit a matter of real public interest, and not just ‘of interest’ to her fans.”
Sanef added:
Lady Gaga’s freedom to visit South Africa and to perform regardless of any offence she may cause to those opposed to her shows is in fact protected by the freedom of speech provisions in our constitution.
The organisation expressed concern about “a growing trend by commercial event organisers to try to impose censorship or restrictions on the media”.
However, Sanef omitted to mention that the South African press includes multinational companies with a commercial interest in the ownership and distribution of photos.
Gaga has recently been subjected to international press attention exposing her so-called “weight gain”, which would explain why she would want to control the kinds of images that the media elect to distribute of her.
Gaga’s Cape Town concert featured a performance espousing a feminist objection to the control of women’s bodies, as she was wheeled onto the stage hanging among make-believe animal carcases, shouting: “Do you think I am meat? Meat is precisely what we treat women as.”
Independent Newspapers decided to boycott the concerts by not publishing reviews, even though Gaga attracted some 65,000 people in Johannesburg and 40,000 in Cape Town.
But Mail and Guardian online editor Chris Roper ridiculed that stance: “It’s true! Gaga is worse than a Satanist! She’s also an enemy of democracy who spits on our Constitution, and is possibly the worst threat our fledgling country has faced… Seriously, guys? Because Gaga doesn’t want news photographers to take upskirt shots of her meat dress and no veg, it’s a threat to our Constitution?”
Roper pointed out a similarity between Sanef and fundamentalist Christians who started a Facebook page called South Africa: No to Lady Gaga and Satanists. Both, Roper says, represent “outmoded belief systems reacting with antagonism towards the inevitability of the new world. Sanef still seems to believe that it matters a damn to Gaga whether traditional media covers her concerts, and Christians seem to believe that they can stem the tide of rational secularisation.”
The South African Council of Churches, an umbrella body once known for its anti-apartheid resistance, held a small protest at the offices of the government arts and culture department in Pretoria, demanding that Gaga be denied entry into South Africa. A handful of people also protested in Cape Town, insisting that the “bride of Satan” will bring a curse upon South Africa.
19 Nov 12 | South Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa
The South African Communist Party (SACP) this week made a public call for a law to be instituted to protect the country’s president against “insults”. The call, by one of its provincial branches, was in response to growing public outrage about R240 million (about £17m) worth of taxpayer’s money spent on upgrading the private homestead of the incumbent, Jacob Zuma.
Minister for higher education and SACP general secretary Dr Blade Nzimande reportedly supported the call by the KwaZulu Natal SACP but later said he is calling for a public debate on the issue.
Two investigations are underway into the price tag attached to “security upgrades” at Zuma’s private residence in Nkandla in rural KwaZulu Natal, which far exceeds that of residences of former presidents.
South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma speaking to a union congress (Demotix)
In parliament last week (15 Nov) Zuma insisted that “all the buildings and every room we use in that residence was [sic] built by ourselves.” In response, Lindiwe Mazibuko, the leader of the official opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), pointed out that the upgrades are not limited to “security” but include 31 new buildings, lifts to an underground bunker, air conditioning systems, a visitors’ centre, gymnasium and guest rooms. It reportedly even includes “his and hers bathrooms”.
Since the excessive amount became known at a parliamentary meeting in May this year, investigative journalists have requested further information using the Protection of Access to Information Act. The public works department, however, refused to comply, citing the National Key Points Act, which makes it illegal to distribute information about sites related to national security. The public works ministry also launched an investigation to find the whistleblower who leaked the information to the media, with a view to prosecution.
The SACP believes that questions about the Nkandla extensions, including by DA leader Helen Zille who led a thwarted visit to the homestead, harm Zuma’s dignity. In a thinly veiled threat, the SACP claimed such questions would undermine South Africa’s “carefully constructed and negotiated reconciliation process and could unfortunately plunge our country into an abyss of racial divisions and tensions.”
Insult laws “protecting” presidents from criticism exist in France, Spain and across South America and Africa.
Christi van der Westhuizen is Index on Censorship’s new South African correspondent
29 Oct 12 | Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa
South Africa’s president Jacob Zuma dropped his defamation lawsuit against the country’s most prominent newspaper cartoonist, Zapiro, over the weekend [28 October].
The suit centred on a 2008 cartoon in the Sunday Times, the highest-circulation local weekend newspaper, depicting Zuma unzipping his pants to rape a woman held down by other politicians. Zapiro, whose real name is Jonathan Shapiro, identified the figure of the woman as symbolising “Lady Justice”.
At the time, the cartoon drew mixed responses, given racist attitudes towards black male sexuality and the cartoon’s use of rape as “metaphor” in a country with a high incidence of rape (studies show between 25 to 40 per cent of South African women will experience at least one sexual assault in their lifetime).
In 2006, Zuma was charged with and acquitted of rape.
His office explained this weekend’s unexpected withdrawal of the case as based on a concern over its chilling effect on freedom of expression. “The President (…) would like to avoid setting a legal precedent that may have the effect of limiting the public exercise of free speech,” Zuma’s spokesperson, Mac Maharaj, said in a statement.
Maharaj indicated that the president regarded the case as a “diversion”, as he wishes to provide leadership in the face of more urgent matters such as “the global economic meltdown and frustrations by the people on the ground”.
Zapiro celebrated with the cartoon below:
© 2012 Zapiro (All Rights Reserved) Printed/Used with permission from www.zapiro.com
Christi van der Westhuizen is Index on Censorship’s new South African correspondent
