By Janice Winter
Last week saw one of Britain’s biggest media controversies with BNP leader Nick Griffin’s appearance on the BBC’s Question Time. Public debate pivoted on the media’s role in guarding democratic space, with interpretations of this responsibility in contradistinction: on the one hand, the view that by inviting the BNP onto Question Time, the BBC was increasing the party’s mainstream credibility and providing a powerful platform for their divisive, undemocratic views; on the other hand, the defence that as the party is legally free to stand (and indeed, win seats) in elections, it is not for the media to declare them unworthy of free speech, but the government’s role.
This immense public engagement with the media and politics led me to reflect on the relative absence of such expectation or outcry in South Africa, and the apathy that has settled in so soon after establishing democratic and media freedoms in our country.
For the purpose of provoking similar debate in South Africa, this post will compare — somewhat counter-intuitively and much to their mutual chagrin, I’m sure — Griffin’s BNP and Julius Malema’s ANC Youth League. Though one leader is accused of inciting racial hatred and white supremacist views, and the other is the youth president of the respected anti-apartheid movement, the parallel points to interesting issues in the relationship between media, politics and the public.
The quote that I instantly associate with the BNP is Nick Eriksen’s infamous assertion: “Women enjoy sex, so rape cannot be such a terrible physical ordeal … to suggest that rape, when conducted without violence, is a serious crime is like suggesting that force-feeding a woman chocolate cake is a heinous offence. A woman would be more inconvenienced by having her handbag snatched.”
While Erikson was sacked from the extremist BNP for this statement, there was comparatively little public outrage when ANC Youth League’s Malema said of Zuma’s rape accuser: “Those who had a nice time will wait until the sun comes out, request breakfast and ask for taxi money … in the morning, that lady requested breakfast and taxi money … you can’t ask for money from somebody who raped you.”
Responding to opposition leader Helen Zille’s criticism that Zuma put his wives at risk by having unprotected sex with the HIV-positive woman, Malema countered:
“Zille has appointed an all male cabinet of useless people, majority of whom are her boyfriends and concubines so that she can continue to sleep around with them … if the fake racist girl Zille continues to speak hogwash like she has been doing, we will take militant action against her … an absolute majority of South Africans support President Jacob Zuma and will find it very disgusting for a fake racist apartheid agent to continue undermining the highest office in South Africa.”
Quite aside from Zille’s anti-apartheid credentials and the immensity of the accusation that she is a “racist apartheid agent”, in a country that struggles with both the highest rape statistics in the world and the highest HIV infection rate globally, for the (albeit rather over-aged) “youth” president to call Mrs Zille a “girl” and so vitriolically to silence legitimate criticism of Zuma’s high-risk behaviour is utterly reprehensible.
Responding to criticism, both Griffin and Malema transform the media from a watchdog to a scapegoat. When asked to clarify why he used to be a Holocaust denier, Griffin answered, “I cannot explain why I used to say those things … I can’t tell you the extent to which I’ve changed my mind … ” Instead, Griffin asserted that he was the victim of a media ploy to misquote and demonise him. With striking similarity, Malema — refusing to apologise for his assertion that the ANCYL “are prepared to take up arms and kill for Zuma” — asked, “why do you apologise for something you did not mean? … We never called on anybody to immediately take up arms”. Instead, Malema noted “the distortion, misinterpretation, vulgar insults and defamatory comments” that the media have directed at him.
Malema wants the media muzzled and the public broadcaster to be a party mouthpiece. He advocates that the government pay 60% of the SABC budget “to ensure that we are in control of what is shown on TV promotes the local creative industry (sic)”.
More concerning than the comments themselves is that they have become expected (entertainment?) from Malema and his ANCYL. While civic group Sonke Gender Justice and the opposition DA have laid charges of hate speech against ANCYL members, the mainstream media and the public largely laugh the comments off, amused at the latest Malema quote. There is no public outcry at media coverage given to Malema, nor are their calls for him to be better interrogated by the mainstream press. We don’t really take him seriously and don’t seem to mind too much if our media doesn’t either. This despite statements by President Zuma this week that Malema is being groomed for leadership and “worthy of inheriting the ANC”.
While we as Africans legitimately identify and call into question insidious and undemocratic elements in Britain’s relations with our countries (past and present), it would benefit our own democratic development were we to give more attention to Britain’s internal politics, namely, the active engagement between their established media and their uniquely multicultural, cosmopolitan citizenry. Despite the BNP being a marginal party with no political links to the BBC, the British public doesn’t simply laugh about or apathetically accept Griffin’s exposure on Question Time. Is it not time that we look at our own democratic structures and engage similarly with both our ruling party’s youth president and our media’s portrayal of him?
Janice Winter is programme manager of the Axess Programme on Journalism and Democracy and has recently graduated with an MPhil in development studies from the University of Oxford, receiving a distinction for research on victims of political violence in Zimbabwe. A journalist by profession and a scholar by addiction, she is also passionate about social justice, identity politics, words and wine (not necessarily in that order).
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