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Southern Africa Vol MENNEN Southern Africa Vol. 6No. 1 D- CD July 1990 U .7 ,- - - , MAY 7. RomtJLITM ,&fyAgm Vol. 6 No. 1 6--7 REPORT July 1990 Contents Editorial: Whose Media? ..... ...... .. Keeping the Right Image: The Mainstream Media in South Africa .......... When Actors Become Authors Radical Communications In The 1980s ........... Perish or Publish: Southern Africa Consolidating the Alternative Voice ............. REPORT Hard Pressed: is produced 5 times a year by a Bi-Cameral Racism and the Globe and Mail ....... volunteer collective of the Toronto Committee for the Liberation of Southern Africa (TCLSAC) The I Love Lucy Show: 427 Bloor St. W. The "Taking Strides" Consultative Forum, May, 1990 Toronto, M5S 1X7 Tel. (416) 967-5562 Building Civil Society: Submissions, suggestions and help in Moses Mayekiso Interviewed .... ........ 21 production are welcome and invited. ISSN 0820-5582 Nicaragua Revisited? SAR is a member of the Canadian Peace and Democracy in Angola Magazine Publishers Association. Subscriptions Zimbabwe Ten Years After: Prospects for a Popular Politics . .. Annual TCLSAC membership and Southern Africa Report subscription rates are as follows: SUBSCRIPTION: Individual (1 year) . ... $18.00 Individual (2 years) . ... $35.00 SAR Collective Institution .......... ... $35.00 Chris Cavanagh, David Cooke, MEMBERSHIP: (includes subscription) David Galbraith, Dave Hartman, Carole Houlihan, Johan Jacobs, Regular .. ......... .. $35.00 Jay Jervis, Judith Marshall, Alberto Mourato, Unemployed John S. Saul, Joe Vise, Anne Webb, Student .. ......... .. $18.00 Maureen Webb, Barbara Willey Senior Sustainer ..... ... over $100.00 Overseas add $5.00 Cover design by Hartman Cover photos by Afrapix & Hartman ________________________________________________________________________________I Second class mail registration N~ '844 at Action Print Printed byby Union La3bourLabour at Action Print .N t - - Second class mail registration 844 Whose Media? Philosophy 101. If a tree falls in the vering attention of the fickle and fad South Africa! It is no more of an forest and no-one is there to hear dish international media themselves. accident - as Jo-Anne Collinge and its fall, does it really make a noise? Beyond fads, however, there is David Niddrie reveal in our lead ar Communications 101. If a revolu also the question of power. It is ticle - that powerful media voices tion is taking place and television a truism to say that, left uncon inside South Africa itself are seek cameras fail to record it, is it really tested, the mainstream media re ing to shape perceptions of the ne taking place? flects primarily the opinions and in gotiations process in ways similarly terests of the politically and eco unsympathetic to the imperatives of The latter is a question the anti genuine change. apartheid movement has had to ask nomically powerful. And this is no itself many times over the years. less true for Canada than it is for However, in South Africa (if not When the apartheid government had South Africa. It is no accident that in Canada) the very success of the some success in suppressing media Toronto's Globe and Mail (see the popular movement that has forced coverage of events in South Africa article entitled "Hard Pressed") now negotiations onto the agenda has also begun to force hard questions and in keeping the starkest im finds itself sympathetic not - heaven ages off the small screen in Canada forbid - to apartheid, but certainly regarding the media out into the and elsewhere public concern for the to the "reasonable" efforts of the open. There is certainly an im struggle tended to recede. Equally South African government to consti petus to do so that carries over important have been the ebbs and tutionally protect "property rights" from the precedents established as flows of coverage imposed by the wa- from "majority tyranny" in a new part of the broad-gauged struggle for Southern Africa REPORT july 1990 democracy of recent years: as Don here at home. Recent issues of SAR still very far from committing itself Pinnock demonstrates in this issue have suggested something of the de to an "irreversible" process of de ("When Actors Become Authors"), bates that swirl within the south mocratization. True, too, that Can guerilla communications - the de ern Africa support network around ada has, in recent years, supported velopment of alternate media - has such issues as how best to relate to a a number of quite positive initiatives been one key means by which the Mozambique whose original revolu on the ground inside South Africa democratic movement has succeeded tionary trajectory has been substan if not supporting, in any very mean in undermining the repressive status tially altered. And similarly com ingful way, the ANC itself. quo. Yet it is an even greater chal plex questions spring from analyses lenge to now contemplate the struc in this issue of the troubled situa But surely no reader of Linda turing, on entirely new premises and tions in Angola and Zimbabwe. Freeman's annual surveys of Cana on a society-wide basis, of a full dian policy in these pages can doubt blown democratic network of com There is also the very consider the slipperiness of official Canada's munications, particularly when the able challenge of effectively charac anti-apartheid stance - not least society is one as hierarchical and as terizing a quickly changing South on the very issue of the imple complex as that of South Africa. African scene (the discussion of mentation of sanctions, for exam the interplay between "civil society" ple. Nor can there be much doubt Certainly, the wielders of me and the political realm broached by that a free-trading, welfare-bashing dia power are not prepared to pro Moses Mayekiso in the interview re Tory government will be far less en vide a stationary target for such counted here providing particularly thusiastic about the need for dra an effort. As Collinge and Nid rich food for thought in this respect) matic socio-economic changes in a drie also reveal, such actors as the and of moving forward to link sup formally-democratic, post-apartheid South African Broadcasting Corpo portively to fresh developments in South Africa than will most anti ration and the Argus Group are side South Africa. Indeed, this lat apartheid activists. Indeed, we have already moving quickly to protect ter challenge premised much of the made the point editorially before themselves and their privileged role debate at a recent national meet ("Opportunism Knocks," SAR, De in the production of ideology by ing of Canadian anti-apartheid ac cember, 1988) that on those occa preemptive means (by privatization, tivists, the "Taking Strides" Consul sions when the Canadian govern for example, and by the whipping tative Forum held in Ottawa on the ment has taken a relatively advanced up of hysteria about the threat of weekend of 4-6 May. position on South African questions, nationalization). Indeed, the very it has done so precisely to rein in, complexity of the challenges that As will be seen from our re by preemptive action, a process of are beginning to arise regarding the port on the Forum ("The I Love change in South Africa that might democratization of the media (in Lucy Show"), the question of how otherwise become too radical. cluding, as another example, in the best to position South Africa's sphere of progressive publishing here leading liberation movement, the Confrontation, then? Not for its analyzed by Glenn Moss) provides African National Congress, within own sake certainly, although this is an exemplary case-study of the kinds the Canadian anti-apartheid move what anti-apartheid moderates, at of dilemmas that face a democratic ment gave rise to some controversy. the Ottawa Forum and elsewhere, movement - if, as and when it comes More startlingly, however, contro seem to seek to imply when they to power - in virtually evcry sphere versy emerged around the question wave the term around in an attempt of South African life. of what stance the Canadian move to discredit their critics. What is re ment should be adopting towards quired, however, is unremitting pop Not that the ANC or anyone else the Tory government in Ottawa re ular pressure, the better to realize professes to have any easy answers garding the latter's South Africa some very concrete goals. The bet to the media question - as the state policy. Should our stance vis-a-vis ter to keep the Canadian govern ments cited by Collinge and Niddrie the government be "conciliatory" or, ment honest on sanctions. The bet from ANC national executive mem as moderates at the Consultative Fo ter to encourage it to support, ever ber Aziz Pahad make clear. For the rum sought to pigeon-hole the alter more overtly and wholeheartedly, moment, however, what is impor native position with which they dis the true protagonists of change in tant is that changing conditions at agreed, "confrontational"? South Africa (especially the ANC). last begin to make it possible to pose The better to make it as difficult as such questions concretely and in a It is true that the Canadian gov possible for our government to "reasonably" fall in promising manner. ernment has been slower than many behind outcomes (con * * * other western governments to ques stitutional or otherwise) to negotia tion the necessity of sustaining sanc tions in South Africa that could help If no glib answers are available tions in order to bring pressure to undermine real political and socio in South Africa, this is equally true bear on a South African government economic democratization. july 1990 Southern Africa REPORT Keeping the Right Image: The Mainstream Media in South Africa BY JO-ANNE COLLINGE 9z turing communication between sig talk to the ANC? Probably not, talks are in DAVID NIDDRIE nificant business figures and leaders but the Groote Schuur of the Mass Democratic Movement tune with the times.
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