Media is only one of many voices
READING and listening to the commemorations of the October 19, 1977 government clampdown, you could swear the day was primarily about the media.
From what I have read and heard from those who were around those heady days, it was about the attempt by the apartheid government to kill the civil-society movement as a whole.
All post-apartheid heads of state have commemorated the event by recognising it as a media event, and little attention has been paid to the other aspects and organisations that were banned on that day.
As it has happened in other years, President Jacob Zuma praised the role of the media and lauded the bravery of journalists who were prepared to lay down their lives and careers for the public’s right to know.
As they are wont, the journalists as the drafters of history tend to remember their own contribution or suffering more than they do of others.
Intentionally or not, the media has continued the unfounded belief that it is at the apex of rights accorded in terms of our constitution.
I’d like to have it taken for granted that the fact that I work in and benefit from the media, and have freedoms that my professional forebears did not have, means that I value media freedom.
I don’t take lightly that ours is the only vocation named by name and guaranteed its freedom in our constitution.
That said, we miss the woods for the trees if we forget that the apartheid government’s decision and the range of organisations banned and persons arrested or restricted was an attempt to shut down the very human desire of people to improve their lot and do what they can to guarantee the future of their children.
To make the media the focus of the day can easily make us forget that the struggle for freedom was multifaceted and led from many fronts.
It is not very different to the impression some in the governing party like making that it and it alone freed the people of South Africa from political bondage.
The organisations banned on that day in 1977 and the personalities arrested came from all walks of life and represented a wide range of courses.
They included women’s organisations, youth and student formations, journalists’ trade unions and writers’ associations.
We in the media do our own vocation, as the first drafters of history, a disservice when we talk only about ourselves but say nothing about the fate that befell the Association for the Educational and Cultural Advancement of African People of South Africa and the Christian Institute of Southern Africa on the day that The World and Weekend World newspapers ceased to exist.
It is being unfaithful to history to mention that The World’s editor Percy Qoboza was arrested that day and Donald Woods, of the Daily Dispatch newspaper in East London, was banned, but say nothing of the incarceration of the likes of Mpotseng Kgokong, Aubrey Mokoena and George Wauchope.
Again, I am at pains to emphasise I am not against the focus on the media; I am opposed to the focus on the media to the exclusion of other issues impacted on by October 19, 1977.
The distorted focus makes the commemoration of the day ahistorical.
Focusing on one aspect of a struggle and ignoring the rest can easily make us forget that our struggles are intertwined with those of others.
The clampdown on the media was no worse than the killing of the Black Parents Association at a time when children most needed the leadership of their parents.
Who is to say how the current upheavals at our universities could have been handled if there were a parents’ structure involved and in tune with the issues affecting young people.
Who can say that the purpose for which an organisation such as the Association for the Educational and Cultural Advancement of African People of South Africa has been delivered by everyone being allowed to vote on April 27, 1994.
As we remind ourselves of October 19, 1977, we dare not forget that a vibrant society is made so by the free voices of all who live in it, and not only the media.
For all its faults, the apartheid government understood that interconnectivity was the backbone of a vibrant civil society.
By banning and clamping down on civilsociety organisations, they rid themselves of an irritant, even if it was just for the time being.
That is why I hope future commemorations of the day will focus on the difference that an organised civil-society movement can do for the advancement of a society.
With all the challenges that beset our country and with political parties that prioritise partisan interest ahead of what is good for society, only a vibrant civilsociety movement can lead an agenda for a common good.
Of course, the press has a role to play in the protection of civil freedoms, but Black
Wednesday was about so much more
than journalists