March 2006

Politics and the Cape Times over a quarter of a century

By Zubeida Jaffer

Those were different times. The late seventies and early eighties were the years when South Africans excluded from political life organized to make their voices heard after the 1960 clampdown. When I joined the Cape Times in 1980, I had no idea that Cape Town would be in protest mode just a few weeks later with major student and worker action. In most of that decade, the dominant challenge was to cover the tussle between the minority in power and the majority without power. It was certainly not a time when the newspaper’s attention was focused much on poor housing provision for the vast majority or the communities in the Western Cape who had no access to electricity.

The shifts in political life over the past quarter of a century have placed different demands on the focus of political coverage. These shifts and the changing ownership profile of the Cape Times have impacted on the positioning of the paper.

Most of the eighties saw coverage of protests often against great state restrictions. Most of the nineties were taken up with negotiations and the transition to the democracy. This entailed telling the story of building the national political institutions that helped to stabilize a functioning democracy. In the present decade, the drama has finally moved onto the minutiae of local government and proper service delivery.

In the eighties, the Cape Times did not always fail to tell the story of the uprisings despite its newsrooms remaining essentially white and its ownership firmly controlled by mining interests. When the resistance first emerged in 1980, the newspaper had many months of recording the uproar at schools and universities as well as community action against apartheid. However by the end of 1980, the government had not only clamped down on individual journalists and detained hundreds of community leaders, it had also set up the Steyn Commission designed to investigate the “inaccurate reporting” of the local press. This commission proposed further restrictions on press freedom – there were already over 100 laws on the statute books defining parameters for the press. Newspaper owners chose to insist that their editors and journalists censor themselves to avoid the imposition of further restrictive legislation.  Thus the news practitioners were put in charge of the tightening the hangman’s noose around the neck of press freedom.

The editors were forced to play hangman and when they did not, the state did not hesitate over the next few years to give them a helping hand. There were arrests, detentions, restrictions, closing of newspapers and totalitarian emergency regulations that finally brought death. 

Tony Heard, in the mid-eighties, overstepped the mark when he published an in-depth interview with the exiled leader of the ANC, Oliver Tambo. He was fired as editor. His action however did represent a substantial break with Cape Times’ political past when it was seen as an ardent supporter of the United Party. Anton Harber, Caxton Professor Journalism at Wits University described the political positioning of newspapers then as follows: “The Rand Daily Mail was the only paper directly to support the Progressive Party. Its sister paper, the Cape Times, supported the United Party, which wanted a more gentle apartheid, and The Star called on people to vote for anyone except the National Party. The Afrikaans newspapers were unanimous in their unequivocal support for the ruling party.”

The new democracy brought with it new pressures on the Cape Times. Not only did the new political formations demand diversity in newsrooms,  it also opened up the country to the world bringing in international interests in many sectors. With this came new owners for the Cape Times and a change in guard. No longer constrained by white mining interests but ironically now thrust into a world of global media conglomerates. The new owner, Sir Anthony O’Reilly, placed the Cape Times in a stable of more then 130 newspapers all over the world.  Politics would take a back seat because the game was all about media structures set up to support and enlarge other business interests. When I became editor of Independent’s parliamentary bureau in 1997,  the company’s CEO, Ivan Fallon, was unapologetic about the company’s view that politics was only important in so far as it facilitated economic interests. It was all about the economy, stupid.

The newspapers contribution to nation-building and a healthy political life only became important in so far as it impacted on business interests. At the same time, the United Party influence, followed by the Progressive Party slowly gave way to ANC influence. Coverage of politics during the late nineties became enmeshed in this shift as well as the need for greater diversity in newsrooms. As parliamentary editor, I found myself not only having to cover the new parliament but to diversify the news team that had for so long been white and male. 

Time killed the expectation that the new owners would bring a capacity and a skill-base that would enhance journalistic initiatives. It slowly dawned on us that the bottom line was about profit only and that skill would come at the level of accounting but not in major investment in the skill base of all journalists.

Staff cutbacks, tight budgets and juniorisation of the newsroom became a reality. Could this be the explanation for the inadequate coverage of the recent power cuts in the Western Cape? Is it about the skill base or is it about a lack of will?

 An internet search of the Cape Times’ coverage of the recent power cuts in the Western Cape leaves the reader ignorant about the detail of electricity provision in the Cape. How does Eskom work? What is the plan for the next five years? What exactly can be realistically expected?  

“When you have an economy that is 35 percent larger than 10 years ago and you are still running on the same infrastructure, then you are heading for trouble,” said Sanlam economist, Jac Laubscher.

This is by far the biggest political story of 2006. Jacob Zuma’s rape trial, although titillating, is but a political side show. It is Minister Lindiwe Hendricks and Minister Alec Erwin that have to be under the media microscope. Problems of electricity provision in the Western Cape is of far more importance to the present and  future well-being of the country than the internal political wrangling of the ruling party. Minister Erwin appears to have deliberately misled the public with his recent suggestions that problems at Koeberg were related to sabotage.

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, those times demanded that the Cape Times break the mould and publish the words of a banned majority leader  in pursuit of the right for all to vote. These times need the intense scrutiny of the plans of the electricity provider, Eskom and pressure on political office holders  in pursuit of securing adequate electricity provision for all. Minister Alec Erwin has misled the public by claiming that sabotage has been responsible for the problems at Koeberg.  The Cape Times will serve the public well if it objects strongly to being party to such misinformation.  A consistent campaign for the minister’s removal will be the most fitting tribute to this institution on its 130th anniversary.

Ends