National interest versus public interest

Writing in “A decade of democracy“, published by the finance weekly Financial Mail, President Thabo Mbeki says: “Those who tell the story of the past decade must show they have assimilated the spirit of new times and can speak in its language.”

For me, at least for the purposes of this blog, I will misinterpret the Mbeki statement to suggest that he may have been appealing to those who hold the pen and paper and dominate the intellectual sphere in our country to imbibe the new euphoria in the nation and even allow themselves to be influenced by the emergence of the “season of hope”.

The assurance is that today is better than yesterday and tomorrow will be even better.

More importantly, though, the president was calling on those who participate in the first draft of history to be aware not to dwell forever in their anger and determination to undermine the new rulers and miss capturing the spirit of the new South Africa. That would be a disservice to the nation.

In media- and politics-speak, Mbeki was advocating for more prominence of the national interest between the pages as we reflect on our collective journey since 1994.

Now the promotion of the national interest tends to be interpreted as the suppression of public interest — as if public interest is unattainable without the promotion of the national interest.
This debate kicked in the moment Nelson Mandela took the reigns of power. Veteran journalists who have never reported positive developments and efforts to rebuild a nation suddenly found the attainment of democracy was an anticlimax. Politics no longer sold newspapers and developmental reporting was seen as being pro-government and not bringing in the bucks.

Journalists of yesteryear had never written reports capturing the joys brought by the improvement of lives of those who have been deemed as lesser people for centuries. They needed to be schooled on how to deliver the good news. The craft became boring. Newspaper writing lost its appeal.

This boredom, however, did not last because as our leaders worked hard to improve the lot of our people, some among them thought it was payday. So they stole from the state purse. Prophets of doom sprang into action. They are still at it.

In the same way that they claim to care about black Zimbabweans, they argue they care more about poor black South Africans and are set to protect them from their liberators who are fast becoming enemies of the people. And so the dichotomy between the public interest and national interest emerged.

Seeing this, Mbeki wheeled out Netshitenzhe to talk to those who hold the pen and paper and therefore act as gatekeepers to what we read and do not read.

In 2002, Netshitenzhe argued that the “dichotomy between national interest and public interest does not mean that the two are contradictory, let alone antagonistic: inasmuch as the dichotomy between the state and the people does not mean that the state is necessarily anti-people or that the people are necessarily anti-state.

“In fact, this raises the fundamental questions of legitimacy and democracy. In a consistently democratic dispensation, the state exists not for its own sake but to serve society. Legitimate states derive their mandate from the people, and they have the right and the responsibility to exercise leadership. Similarly, the governed have a right to contribute on how they should be governed.

“Thus, to counter-pose national interest and public interest could in fact mean that civil society cedes to someone else the right to define the national interest: instead of the people governing, some elite governs and the people protest!

“So, under popular democracy, national interest and public interest can and do coincide; they should in fact be complementary. National interest and public interest, as claimed, should not be confused with the immediate self-interest of the claimant.”

I agree, fighting for and promoting national interest is impossible under a tyrannical government but cannot be in a democracy founded by a negotiated settlement and crafted on a constitution that is accepted by all.

The brouhaha that has been generated by SABC CEO advocate Dali Mpofu’s announcement that the SABC would no longer associate itself with the privately owned and profit-driven media stems directly from this lack of consensus on how to deal with the dichotomy between matters of public interest and those of national interest.

Several platforms have been created and much effort made by both the government and the media — first to educate us about the differences between the two important interests and secondly to define how media are driven by a pursuit of public interest can play a role in the development and defence of the national interest.

Despite all these efforts over the years since the founding of our democracy, some have laboured to find a consensus on these issues while others have set out to undermine these important efforts, creating a sense of antagonism between those seeking to promote national interest above public interest and vice versa.

It is unfortunate that over the years, the government has been presented as seeking to elevate the national interest above, if not at the expense of, public interest while the media seek to elevate public interest above all else.

This sorry state of affairs has created an impression that the government seeks to undermine or limit the rights and freedoms of the media, while it perceives the media as an emerging enemy of the state. Antagonism thrives.

In reality, it is in the interest of the government to ensure that the right conditions exist for public interest to thrive. It is also the role of the media to build and defend the national interest — especially one as noble as ours — for the media to continue to exist unhindered in their quest to deepen and defend democracy.

It is therefore sad for the media to assume national interest is the same as government interest or the interest of the ruling party.

It would also be sad if the government were threatened by the media’s pursuance of the public interest.

I must also say I think it is nonsensical, if not downright foolish, of some media practitioners to act as if they do not understand the difference between the two. Our national interest — the collective consensus of what we seek to be as a people and how we want to be viewed by the world — is clearly defined in our Constitution. Ours is to continue to strive tirelessly towards being the people we wish to be as defined in this important document.

More often than not, it is right-wing thinking disguised as liberal thinking that make “some among us” to be uncomfortable with marching in step with the rest of the nation in promoting and defending the national interest.

The true ideological views of these people compel them to suggest that promoting national interest and national consensus is tantamount to kow-towing, being a stooge of the government and being embedded. And so the media join the prophets of doom in big business and occupy themselves with the perceived looming decline of standards while the native is in control.

The same business community that worries about a political risk associated with doing business in South Africa is, in fact, looting more of the country’s wealth to foreign stock exchanges than ever before.

Netshitenzhe says: “We are grappling with a reality, among other attributes, in which the political ruling elite is strictly speaking not the ruling class. Ownership in the economy including means of communications, the dominant culture in discourse and attitudes in the media reflect the intense contestation within a nation still in search of a common identity, a society that still has to reflect an overwhelming appreciation of the national interest.”

The government can only persuade this lot gently.

It was in this climate of confusion that a frustrated Mpofu decided his media house could no longer participate in what he viewed as a quest to undermine the national interest in a bid to please a segment of the public whose interests are served by a media that claims the interest of this few is, in fact, the interest of the majority — and therefore public interest.

Mpofu felt his mandate while including the quest for that which is in the interest of the public, also included contributing to building, shaping and defending the national interest — that collective quest of all South Africans clearly defined in our noble Constitution.

He felt it was bordering on being immoral to sacrifice the national interest to tickle a few who believe our country is destined for failure.

He could no longer participate in this act of denigration of the convictions of the majority of the citizenry and the elevation of a few who think they are more equal than others. So he walked away.
It is not the fact that Mpofu took an ill-considered decision to walk out of the South African National Editors’ Forum that moves me, but the fact that wherever I go, people say “more power to Dali”.

In one move, Mpofu, especially if he refuses to return to Sanef, has added a powerful voice to the ruling party’s claim that the media are abusing their powers, trivialising issues of national interest and continuing to fail to tell the South African story.

This claim is, of course, incorrect because it’s not the media who are abusing their powers but a few gatekeepers within the media who are using the independence of the media to pursue their views that blacks by virtue of being black are failures.

Mpofu’s walkout serves to confirm the conformity of the SABC with the current rulers. In the same way his move discredits the private media as an institution that serves the interest of an elite few neo-liberals.

The lack of consensus on how to balance national interest with the public interest has brought us to this sorry state of affairs.

And those of us seeking a consensus on these matters are frustrated by non-team players who continue to interfere with any effort to reach a consensus on these matters in the same way that they seek to undermine and derail efforts to define what constitute our national consensus.

Unfortunately for us, this lot continues to dominate the intellectual space and has — through the media — the monopoly to set the tone of, if not the entire, national debate.

In this environment matters of great importance to the majority are trivialised in this quest to promote the interest of a few.

This cannot be in the national interest nor can it be in the public interest. The national crisis that is the scourge of Aids hardly makes it to the front pages of newspapers because it does not sell newspapers. Reducing those leading the fight against Aids to incompetent lunatics and nincompoops who are utterly bonkers does, in fact, sell newspapers.

Such an angle of writing of course feeds into the theory that Africans are inherently incompetent and cannot run a country effectively.

And so we continue to write for the amusement of a few who have not yet “assimilated the spirit of new times” and continue to yearn for the old times.

The worst gutter form of journalism in South Africa thrives because there exists a dangerous religion of great minds and experienced writers who have dedicated their careers to teaching the native how to rule himself and to prophesy the immediacy of the inevitable doom that comes with native rule.

Sadly this religion seems to be bent on undermining the achievements of our country, denigrating us as a people and perpetrating racist convictions.

It is now common in the best of our publications to read urban dinner-table talk stated as fact and arguments pursued in vast columns of editorial space about swart gevaar theories that have no basis.

We also continue to isolate the majority from the national discourse so that dialogue becomes a preserve of a few — a few who have now set up “dial-a-quote” outlets all over the country with a handful of self-styled experts claiming to have monopoly on wisdom in any subject.

We now have media practitioners who will defy all manner of reason on matters such as Zimbabwe, Mugabe, Zuma, Tshabalala-Msimang and Mbeki-the-denialist. Mugabe haters, Manto bashers and those who want us to believe Thabo Mbeki has less grey matter between the ears than George Bush now dominate our intellectual space.

The rest of us must gobble this nonsense — and pay for it, nogal.

Progressive thinkers seek to muzzle dissenting voices such as Ronald Suresh Roberts, Christine Qunta and others, yet bash Snuki Zikalala for his ban list.

I for one then fail to understand how the national broadcaster can pull the nation — including the marginalised poor in rural uMvuzi village — into the main discourse while still seeking approval from the few who are tickled by their own propaganda that our country is ruled by scoundrels who are sure to drive it head first into hell.

At uMvuzi village, where we have no water, electricity or ablution facilities, we believe our country has never been under a better government. Who will deliver us this exciting story, then, if the SABC’s uMhlobo wenene should also feed us the garbage that our country is going the way of Zimbabwe?

While I think the fishers of corrupt men must keep their lines in the water and reel in more of those who have their hands in the till, I do not think the behaviour of these thieving criminals is an indication of what we have come to be.

I, like Mbeki, believe that which ever way the South African story is told, “it cannot detract from the excitement inherent in creating something that is, in many respects, entirely new, that is as different as a nonracial, nonsexist and democratic South Africa must necessarily be from an apartheid South Africa”.

This, I believe, is the story that the SABC needs to tell this nation.