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Lifetime Bluff resident serving his third term in office as representative
of the area. Member of the Democratic Alliance.
This weeks Councillor comments
Duncan Du Bois
Phone:467-0343 or mobile:083 291-4913
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Educating for Eternity
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Media bid should be cause for alarm
•Fri, 9 Nov 2007

By Duncan du Bois

‘The concentration in the ownership of South Africa’s media calls into question editorial
independence’, writes DUNCAN DU BOIS


Freedom of the press and the independence of the judiciary are constitutional provisions the
ruling party and its associates claim to support. Yet through the insidious process of political
correctness those principles are being eroded.

In February 1982 the Steyn Commission of Inquiry into the media expressed the view that
“much diversity had already disappeared from the South African media scene” because of the
degree of corporate control over the press.

The commission warned that the information industry was threatened by Leviathan because
of the powerful and predatory position of the Argus Group. By 1986 Leviathan had arrived
when 90% of the English-language press was controlled by the Argus Group.

But that was the old South Africa which did not have a bill of rights and in which press freedom
was circumscribed by nearly 100 legal provisions.

Notwithstanding the changed circumstances since 1994, Leviathan in the media is as much a
reality today as before.

Independent Newspapers, owned by an Irishman known to be well disposed to the ANC,
controls 75% of the country’s daily press. Naspers and Media24 control 60% of the magazine
market and a number of major newspaper titles.

Concerns at the effect this concentration of ownership may have on editorial independence
are routinely dispelled.

Editors bristle with indignation at the suggestion that editorial policy is dictated to them.

The issue, however, is more subtle than that. It’s about promoting convergent thought and
marshalling it in a particular direction. It’s about manipulating tone and volume so as to
manufacture the impression that divergent thinking is being catered for while in reality a single
message is being propagated. The insidiousness of convergent thinking and its ally, political
correctness, is that, in time, it resembles an unseen series of electrified fences which serve to
condition and to contain public debate, thereby ensuring political correctness prevails.

Influencing thought is one of life’s major occupations. It is, therefore, naïve, where
newspapers are concerned, to view a nexus between big business and those with political
interests as a low-key development. That certainly was not the case back in the seventies
when the National Party government secretly channelled state funds through business tycoon
Louis Luyt to launch a newspaper, the Citizen, that would promote thinking convergent with
the government’s cause. At the time it was called the Information Scandal.

All above board

The appetite for influence has not changed — just the way it is pursued. News that a black
empowerment company, Koni Media, which has direct links with key personnel in the Office of
the President, is bidding for Johncom, the owner of the Sunday Times, the country’s biggest
newspaper, using funds from the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), should ring alarm bells.
But according to Allan Greenblo, a media mogul in Johncom, that is not necessary. Greenblo
attempts to shepherd thinking away from alarmism by contending that it’s all above board and
that, in any case, the PIC, as an agent of the huge Government Employees Pension Fund
(GEPF), would not contravene the mandate given to it by GEPF trustees (Business Report,
November 7).

That may be well and good. But Greenblo’s view that the GEPF trustees may be counted on
to honour their fiduciary duty and that any shortfall suffered by the GEPF, as a defined
benefit fund, would have to be made up by the government is a premise that cannot be taken
for granted. As state interests and party interests grow increasingly indistinguishable, one
wonders where Greenblo has been in recent years. As ANC toadies and cronies come to hold
positions of influence on virtually every board and commission, what guarantee is there that
the rules of good governance won’t be watered down and overlooked? After all, power
corrupts.

Three situations already testify to that. First is the serial failure of state departments to satisfy
the audit requirements of the Auditor-General. Yet year after year not a single director-
general or cabinet minister is sacked for mismanagement. Then there is the total lack of
governance in Zimbabwe as a result of the complete infiltration and takeover by Zanu-PF of
all organs of state and of civil society.

Worldwide, there is hardly a more sobering example of what happens when political
correctness becomes a straitjacket.

But it is the functioning of the Judicial Services Commission, as this column remarked
previously, that poses the greatest threat to the future of good governance. Stacked 16 out of
23 with Mbeki-sanctioned individuals, the JSC’s findings in the Judge John Hlophe case speak
volumes. By failing to recommend the impeachment of Hlophe for his gross violation of judicial
ethics, the message the JSC has sent out concerning the future of good governance is a
bleak one.

The longer a political party is in power, the greater its potential to abuse power. In this respect
criticism and the health of society are inseparable: the one is a gauge of the other. The more
vigorous, penetrating and fearless the criticism a nation can stand, the healthier and stronger
it will be. That needs to be the watchword for the media and for all concerned with the
dispensing of good governance.

• Duncan Du Bois is a Durban Metro DA ward councillor. He writes in his private capacity.

Published: 9 November 2007
The Witness
Pietermaritzburg
You can contact Councillor D Du Bois by e-mail @ dubois@axxess.co.za