JAUNDICED EYE

After decades of straightforward winner-takes-all elections, the public for the past fortnight has been watching in rapt befuddlement the complex negotiations taking place behind closed doors to assemble a Government of National Unity (GNU). Almost as mystified has been the media, whose sole role in life is to inform its readers and listeners accurately.

It’s virtually a done deal, Business Day assured its readers late on Wednesday night. The GNU would be installed by the weekend.___STEADY_PAYWALL___

“According to party insiders”, it wrote, the Democratic Alliance (DA) had scaled down its earlier demand for 12 Cabinet posts, all economic portfolios. President Cyril Ramaphosa had conceded some of these, including Trade and Industry, Public Works, and Transport. This would secure DA support for Paul Mashatile in the post of Deputy President and Enoch Godongwana as Finance Minister.

“We are taking the deal,” said a DA source. An unnamed African National Congress (ANC) leader said: “There are no roadblocks. We are comfortable with what has been proposed.”

Not so, reported News24, barely half a dozen hours later. Ramaphosa had withdrawn the offer of any influential ministries, leaving the DA with portfolios that they considered lacking “social and economic heft”. But this was the ANC’s “final offer” and the DA had until Sunday to decide, following which Ramaphosa would announce his Cabinet “as soon as possible”. 

This to-ing and fro-ing, the giving with the one hand and taking away with the other, might have been ANC negotiating tactics. This could have been Ramaphosa, reputedly the master manipulator, using the supposed intransigence of elements in his party to pressure the DA to cave. 

On the other hand, it might have been a response to real pressure from those who have remained within ANC ranks but still have strong ties with the breakaway parties, Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe and Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters. Compounding Ramaphosa’s problem of Quislings in the ranks, there’s the antipathy of the ANC tripartite alliance partners to any deal with the DA, as well as the ANC buccaneers who would prefer to avoid any uncomfortable compromises with the DA by simply buying the support of a dozen or so MPs from the smaller parties.

The true situation is murky and likely to remain so for a while. Whatever the reality, the DA dug in its heels. Its leader John Steenhuisen responded that unless the ANC stuck to its earlier “full and final settlement offer”, the agreement was dead in the water.

Steenhuisen’s response spotlights one of the ironies of the GNU. It’s an arrangement that the ANC needs to survive but does not want. For the DA, in contrast, it’s something South Africa’s second-biggest party wants but does not need to survive. 

And here’s the second irony: for the moment, the ANC needs Ramaphosa more than he needs it. Should he resign or be ousted, his future is that of the multi-billionaire former statesman. Look at Tony Blair to see how burdensome a life that would be. However, for the ANC, aside from the further national economic decline that would be unleashed by Ramaphosa’s departure, there would likely be a further significant loss of support in the next election. Certainly, at the very least, the ANC of Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela would no longer exist.

The GNU has been challenging not only for the politicians. The coverage of the negotiations has cast a harsh light on the shallowness of South African journalism, with the absence of basic news editing and copy subbing glaringly obvious. 

It has also shown how blurred the line between factual news reporting and opinion has become in newsrooms, as well as how gullible — or maybe more accurately, how partisan — some journalists are. Speculation is routinely published as fact, faint hopes as imminent reality.

While it’s true that attributable sources are hard to find when dealing with manipulative politicians, that’s an ancient reality that experienced reporters relied on: healthily large dollops of cynicism and the aggressive interrogation of information “leaked” to them. Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case. Local media houses seem oblivious to the need for industrial-grade levels of scepticism in order to avoid powerful political players setting the narrative to best suit themselves.

Any vaguely critical reader will have noticed the black holes in media coverage. One example, replicated across print, online and broadcast news outlets, is particularly notable because it illustrates not only the lack of basic reading and writing skills but also the mainstream media's ingrained aversion to the DA. 

The reports, dealing with yet another hiccup in the negotiations, referred repeatedly to the DA’s “outrageous and outlandish demands”. However, they consistently neglected to mention, for context, that this was — surprise, surprise! — the ANC’s assessment of the DA’s position.

Former newspaper editor Peter Bruce took up this incident in his BusinessLIVE column, where he suggested that the ANC so hated the thought of having to go into government with the DA that it had lost its ability to read for meaning. (Of course, that would scarcely be surprising, since research shows that 81% of South African 10-year-olds suffer from the same affliction.)

“When the DA put a list of ‘preferred’ positions suggesting a variety of possible ministries,” writes Bruce, “the ANC not only leaked the letter from DA federal executive chair Helen Zille to the media, but it and many media houses then spent much of Monday and Tuesday treating the letter as if the DA were demanding all of the ministries mentioned.”

“Cue media hysteria and wild misreporting. In fact, the DA wants eight portfolios and, given the proportionality of the parties in the GNU, that is about right. The ANC would get about 16 and the IFP one, while the rest of the parties, each with a tiny percentage of the May 29 vote, would share the remaining three or four positions.” 

Bruce, whose column is generally critical of the DA, writes that despite not having a great election, the DA solidified its position as the second-biggest party. “Attempts to somehow delegitimise it now that it is asking no more than its due in a government it has been invited into, with the media sadly complicit, has been disgraceful.” 

Complaints about media inadequacy and bias are nothing new, nor are they confined to this country. While there is everywhere available a plethora of opinions, often disguised as reportage, basic fact-finding journalism has become as rare as hens’ teeth.

The mostly poor and generally slanted coverage of the GNU negotiations — and even more glaringly of the election that preceded it — is a reminder that cheap journalism comes at a high cost. The gears of democracy just can’t mesh properly when much of the media has given up on its job of being watchful, evenhanded and unafraid. 

As for the GNU, on Friday, when this column went to press, talks were at an impasse. Ramaphosa, according to reports, was accusing the DA of “moving the goalposts”, wanting to form “a parallel government”, “wilfully misinterpreting” ANC statements, being “misguided”, and in general acting in an “offensive, condescending” manner that — for good measure — was “inconsistent with the Constitution”. 

So, what was the DA’s response to such a devastating broadside? 

Sorry, I don’t know. As yet, no reporter seems to have thought to ask them.

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