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hat is exactly meant by the term
“alternative media” is enormously
contentious. Thirteen years ago,
Keyan Tomaselli oered an analyticalexplanation, which transcends the loose self-deni
-tions of media productions themselves. He uses the
term “progressive-alternative” to describe media,which “oers a dialectical alternative to the domi
-nant values of the capitalist press and provides a
dierent agenda for news values”. Tomaselli shows
how, from the early 1980s, the alternative mediafunctioned as part of a robust critical informationsystem. Its promotion of social dialogue and partici-patory ideas about producing and distributing in-formation reinforced its critical content in contestinghierarchical media institutions, as well as oppressivevalues and relationships. Although Tomaselli makesit clear that the alternative press had a particularrole to play under apartheid, he encourages us toconsider far-reaching ways in which the alternative
press transcends and challenges: it is “alternative”
not only because it contests overt authoritarianism, but because it can advocate and exemplify a visionof democratic goals, of community and interaction,
that are radically dierent from the hegemonic
mainstream one.The enduring liberatory role of an alterna-tive press seems to be missed in the emphaticallyconjunctural perception of South Africa’s alternativepress. This understanding is manifested in the book:
South Africa’s Resistance Press: Alternative Voices in theLast Generation under Apartheid,
published four yearsago by L. Switzer and M. Adhikari. Examining therange of print media that emerged in the struggleagainst apartheid, contributions focus on the politicswhich shaped the fate of media productions, at the
same time assuming the specically context-bound
role of the energy, courage, subversiveness and de-termination these demonstrated. The implicit claimis that the unique dynamism and energy of the dis-sident media voices does not really play a role today.It is indisputable that the vitality of the alterna-tive press was fuelled by contingencies associatedwith apartheid repression. But in what follows, Iwant to revisit the question of why these voices sorapidly disappeared, and what this disappearancemeans.South Africa’s current public information sys-tem is one in which purveyors of information acrossthe political spectrum energetically work to cementthe new nation. Largely supporting Thabo Mbeki’srecent claim that “a primary aim of governmentmust continue to be reconciliation, nation-building
and democratisation”, the perception of the strategic
importance of linking reconciliatory nation-buildingto democracy has generated a distinctively South Af-
rican momentum around “manufacturing consent”.
In South Africa, the new nation is premised insist-
ently on the “imperatives” of alliance, compromiseand accommodation. From the le-wing orthodoxy
of the SACP to the right-wing’s opportunisticmoderacy and moves towards inclusiveness, manycollude in the writing of a national identity that
smoothes over contradictions and blurs ris.
The consensus about nation-building ismanifested in the media. Whether or not purvey-ors of information share the same goals regarding,for example, the desirability of neo-liberalism, anextraordinary unanimity persists in the assumption
that the building of a unied national identity is stillan inevitable and reasonable priority long aer the
fall of the apartheid government. This is why, 10
years aer the rst democratic election, the percep
-
tion of South Africa’s democracy as a “transitional”
one persists. The idea of needing to defer realtransformation and thinking about the radical andpopular struggles generated before 1994 endures
in the context of “tactical” commitment to healing,
reconciliation and alliance-building now, in theinterests of democracy later. Much of the seductivepower of current national myth-making is thereforemanifested not in the fact that most South Africansaccept reconciliatory rhetoric, but in the fact that thenational myths have come to be seen as strategicallyreasonable and necessary. A decade of democracy brokered through negotiation and compromise hasled a range of opinion makers, information systems
and the like to carry – albeit oen with resentmentor resignation – the burden of accountability to theunied nation, so that democracy is oen projected
into the remote future. We remain locked into an
eternal “transition”. From this perspective, apart
-heid is used as a yardstick for measuring freedomand democracy. And according to this logic, wemust be free today because we were so unfree before.When it comes to weighing up what 10 years offreedom have really meant, there is a grim record.Adam Habib describes it in the following way: The
commission for the Department of Social Welfare es
-timated in their statistics in May 2004, the country’spoverty rate at a staggering 45 to 55%. It suggestedthat 10% of African people are malnourished. And25% of African children are born stunted.Most independent studies suggest that, whilethe inequality level between white and black has been decreasing, the gap is widening within theAfrican population and the country as a whole.These statistics are horrifying. If they had occurredin any country of the industrialised world, a state ofeconomic emergency would have been declared andgovernments would have fallen. In South Africa,however, not only has this not happened, but it has
been dicult to get public institutions to recognise
the enormity of the problem.It is not only public institutions that refuse to
recognise the “enormity of the problem”. We all
somehow remain reluctant to acknowledge thegrim scenario, to move to a point at which we push back the boundaries around measuring and valuingdemocracy in the new South Africa.The tendency to defer critical evaluation ofdemocracy seriously undermines what Habib has
called “substantive uncertainty”, a climate in which
social movements, political parties and a vigor-ous non-commercial critical media “loosen up the
existing conguration of power in South Africansociety”, and increase citizens’ leverage over state
elites to further democracy. In such a climate, the
open conict, explicit criticism of government and
thriving debate in the public sphere put pressureon ruling elites to become more accountable to theirconstituencies, and generate radical and substan-tively democratic change.Whether fuelled by a belief that there should be consensus to resist the threat of the rightwing;or by loyalty to liberation parties, individuals andorgans that previously spearheaded anti-apartheidresistance; or by the accommodating claim that 10years is a very short time, there has been a persistentcensoring of critical talk about the achievements andgains of democracy. Even the language for describ-ing democracy is revealing: less and less do we
nd in “progressive” spaces and forums talk about
freedom, justice or liberation as benchmarks ofdemocracy. More and more the talk is riddled withreferences to success, achievement and progress.
A transformation of social values both reectsand buresses the change in discourse. On this level,
materialism and pragmatism overtake visionary,radical and liberatory thought. This results in a
heavily technocratic denition of democracy. Our
current ways of measuring democracy shut down onthe radicalism and possibility associated with termssuch as freedom, liberation and struggle, extollingthe procedural, technical and material signs of
Encouraging thesubversive spirit
Desiree Lewis
examines the necessity for an alternative media as avoice against pretended democracy and manufactured consent.
south Africa’ current
public informationsystem is one inwhich purveyors of information acrossthe political spectrumenergetically work to cement the newnation.
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