Damned if you do and damned if you don’t
Press coverage of Nelson Mandela’s health and his stay in hospital has evoked strong opinion, writes S’Thembiso Msomi
MAKAZIWE Mandela undoubtedly spoke for scores of others this week when she accused sections of the media of behaving like “vultures” in their coverage of the current hospital stay of her father, Nelson Mandela.
There was a “racist element”, Makaziwe told the SABC, in the manner in which the foreign media dealt with the former president’s state of health.
“It is like, truly, vultures waiting when the lion has devoured the buffalo, waiting there, you know, for the last carcasses. That is the image that we have as a family.
“It is very crass. The fact that my dad is a global icon, one of the 25 most influential people of the 20th century, does not mean that people cannot respect the privacy and dignity of my dad,” Makaziwe said.
She was particularly angry about foreign publications and television networks, whose reporting has often suggested that the public is not being told all it needs to know about Mandela’s health.
But that her feeling of outrage towards the media was by no means universal became clear a day later when Mandela’s ex-wife, Winnie MadikizelaMandela, publicly expressed a different view. Speaking outside the old Mandela home in Soweto on Friday, MadikizelaMandela thanked the media for keeping the world informed about Mandela’s stay in hospital.
“We had no idea of the love for us out there . . . There may be problems here and there when some of you get carried away and talk about our father in the past tense,” Madikizela-Mandela said.
Although she did not refer directly to Makaziwe’s statement, MadikizelaMandela acknowledged that the family’s reaction had sometimes been highhanded. “If sometimes we sound bitter, it is because we are dealing with a difficult situation.”
The differences of approach between these two senior Mandela family members highlight the complexity of the issue.
The local media has largely treated the story with much sensitivity, preferring mainly to rely on updates from presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj.
This is partly because of the cultural sensitivities in a society in which public discussion of death is still very much a taboo.
The foreign media, on the other hand, has tended to be more robust in their probing, unhindered by much of the local considerations.
However, has the local media abandoned its role of asking hard and inconvenient questions in a bid not to cross the line of dignity, respect and privacy that Makaziwe spoke about?
What do we make of the fact that it had to be a foreign broadcaster that broke the story about the military ambulance breaking down while transporting Mandela to hospital?
For most of the past two years, there has been a lack of trust between the government and the media on Mandela, and journalists have operated on the basis that the presidency is not being open about the story.
The level of mistrust heightened in December last year with rumours among journalists that South Africans were not being told the truth about the deteriorating state of Mandela’s health because of the ANC’s elective national conference.
Some went as far as to claim that the Presidency was hiding the fact that Madiba had passed on.
When all these rumours later proved to be false, many media houses began to take Maharaj at his word.
But the ambulance incident should serve as a reminder that, although it is important to respect the family’s and government’s wishes for privacy, the media has a duty constantly to ask hard and uncomfortable questions about Mandela’s health and the state’s ability to take care of him.