Category Archives: Business Day

Business Day: Eviction delays sought while laws are tightened

http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/2014/06/17/eviction-delays-sought-while-laws-are-tightened

Eviction delays sought while laws are tightened

CAPE TOWN — Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu wants to tighten the law on evictions and has asked private and state landowners to hold off on any "until there is a clear understanding of the laws and basic human rights requirements that must be met".

She is also seeking an engagement with the Constitutional Court and the judiciary on how the law governing evictions is applied.

However, her appeal for a suspension of evictions does not have legal force.

Continue reading →

Business Day: New media outlets add to voices but not diversity

http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/columnists/2013/08/29/new-media-outlets-add-to-voices-but-not-diversity

New media outlets add to voices but not diversity

by Anton Harber

RECENT weeks have brought the birth of new radio stations and TV channels and the sale of one of South Africa’s largest newspaper groups. In Gauteng, Power FM was launched and, a little earlier, Cape Town got Smile FM and Durban got Vuma FM. On pay-TV, we now have African News Network 7 and SABC News, which are just one element of what seems to be an ever-expanding MultiChoice offering. Other satellite and pay-TV options are also imminent, as e.tv plans to break away with a free-to-air satellite offering and TopTV makes a comeback under Chinese ownership. Independent News & Media returned to South African hands, with the backing of the Chinese government, which has also launched its own English-language weekly newspaper here.

All of this has been welcomed on the grounds that media diversity is a good thing and we can’t have enough of it.

But, one has to ask after such a flurry of activity, does diversity just mean more clutter? What do we actually want when we push for diversity? Is having two more decidedly amateurish 24-hour live news channels a good thing, or is it dragging down the quality of information and debate? Do these — and especially the channel that hired models to do the work of journalists — actually add to the range and quality of available news and opinion?

Each new media outlet means the advertising pie is sliced a little thinner, with the effect that we may be building quantity at the expense of quality. We might have more and more media, with less and less to say. Joburgers already wake up to a choice of nine daily newspapers in three languages from five different owners. Capetonians can choose between nine papers in two languages from four owners. Durbanites have eight dailies in two languages from four owners. On Sunday, there is a choice between six nationals and five regional papers. Then there are weeklies, such as the Mail & Guardian and the Financial Mail.

The picture is different, of course, as one moves to smaller towns and rural areas. All of the new ventures above add mostly to media choices for upper-income urban dwellers. Nevertheless, the Association of Independent Publishers registers 250 community newspapers with a much greater diversity in language and ownership. And that excludes what they call the corporate community papers — the suburban freesheets — published by the larger media groups.

The African National Congress (ANC), of course, has been complaining not so much about the lack of diversity, but the concentration of ownership. Pity then that it has gone silent on the opportunity presented by the sale of the Independent group to sell off some titles. Of course, concentration doesn’t look so bad when it is in the hands of your friends.

The ANC has also complained over the years that there are so few media that support them. This has long been a dubious claim, but it is clearly no longer the case. The most notable aspect of recent media moves is the rise of owners close to the ANC.

The real diversity issue in this country is the absence of many voices from our public debate, the fact that our media still cater largely for an elite who sit in the centre of our politics. In the last years of apartheid, we had a right-wing and a left-wing press. Nowadays, our media are congregated in the middle of the political spectrum.

Absent are the voices of Marikana, except as victims. Hard to find are the views of those who are taking to the streets in service delivery protests daily. In the fight over leadership of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, it is the membership whose voices seem most muted. You have to look hard to find the daily lives of those who live in the informal settlements in all of our cities.

These are the sources of instability in our society, but they are largely excluded from our public debate. We talk about them, not with them. We have solutions for them, not from them.

We have a busy public sphere, but not nearly as diverse as it seems. With all these new media, it might get so noisy that we can’t hear each other speak.

Business Day: Only some are free to speak their minds in South Africa

http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/columnists/2013/07/03/only-some-are-free-to-speak-their-minds-in-south-africa

Only some are free to speak their minds in South Africa

by Steven Friedman

THE past few days have reminded us vividly that there are two South Africas, one much more democratic than the other. The democratic version we inhabit remains elusive for many in townships and shack settlements.

In the mainstream — inhabited by people with access to the national debate — some foreign journalists have battled to understand why US President Barack Obama’s visit triggered heated argument: they wanted to know why we were more anti-American than other places he visited. Some local voices joined in, denouncing some of their fellow South Africans for putting off foreign investors and sullying our name in the "civilised" world by complaining about Obama.

But the debate didn’t show that we are more or less hostile to the US than anywhere else. It showed that we are a diverse society in which many competing views vie to be heard. It also showed that, for some, disagreeing is safe and easy here and so more people do it. Contrary to those who yearn for a past in which dissent was kept under tight control, the fact that different people have differing views on Obama is a source of strength. Investors put money into many countries in which debates are heated, and there is no reason they should refuse to do it here because some people say some things others would prefer not to hear.

The debate on Obama’s visit is not unusual — challenges to government decisions are the norm here. The debate is often simplistic as it frequently reduces every problem to an attack on the government. But if its quality is open to doubt, its vigour is not.

Sadly, we were also reminded last week that a very different reality prevails where the poor live. The democratic spirit in the mainstream was of little help to Nkululeko Gwala, a housing activist and member of the shack-dweller organisation, Abahlali BaseMjondolo, who was murdered last week. According to Abahlali, the killing followed a meeting in which Gwala represented residents of the Cato Crest township, who barricaded streets while protesting against corruption, in a meeting with the local councillor. He is said to have asked "why houses were only going to party members and why ward committee members were receiving two or three houses". Abahlali says Gwala and other delegation members then asked for a meeting with the ward committee but, when they arrived, found African National Congress (ANC) and South African Communist Party members, even though they had said that they did not want to talk to political parties. It says the ANC members insisted "that this was ANC land and that the housing project was an ANC project and that they would make all decisions in the area and about the project". Gwala, it says, reacted by walking out.

Later that day, according to Abahlali, there was a protest during which a councillor’s house was burned down — it says its members were not responsible. In response, a municipal car on which the words "Community Participation" were painted drove through Cato Crest calling residents to a meeting chaired by Durban mayor James Nxumalo, and ANC Durban chairman Sibongeseni Dhlomo. The meeting, says Abahlali, was devoted to attacks on Gwala, who was accused of "making it difficult for the ANC to operate" and was said to be introducing a new political party. Dhlomo reportedly said that Gwala must leave Durban and urged residents to "protect the area".

Since Abahlali was subject to violent assault in 2009, it assumed that this was another call to attack its members. That night, Gwala was, Abahlali says, accosted by four men and shot 12 times.

The implication is obvious — someone took the verbal attack on Gwala and Abahlali to its logical conclusion and removed the activist forever.

Gwala is not the first housing activist to be murdered, nor is this an unusual example of violence against those who challenge local power-holders. On the contrary, it is part of a pattern in which political bosses see challenges to their authority as mortal threats and seek to crush them, which is why challenging political authority is often as difficult in the townships as it is easy in the suburbs.

Democratic politics is not impossible in the townships and shack settlements. The ANC has lost key by-elections in these areas, a clear sign that it is possible to challenge it at the polls and win without risking life and limb. But the contrast between the open debate over Obama and the appalling fate of Gwala shows that the democracy freely available to some is less a reality to others.

This may change if more competitive party politics makes the votes of the poor more valuable, forcing politicians to plead rather than bully, and organisations such as Abahlali grow.

Until then, it might help democracy’s growth if some of the freedom available in the mainstream debate was used to defend the right to speak of millions at the grassroots.

Business Day: State suppression of popular dissent should concern us all

Leave a reply

http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/2013/03/06/state-suppression-of-popular-dissent-should-concern-us-all

State suppression of popular dissent should concern us all

by Michael Clark & Jackie Dugard

IN HIS state of the nation address on February 14, President Jacob Zuma said there were important lessons to be learnt from the Marikana tragedy. Skipping over what many may view as the most important lesson about the South African Police Service’s tragic use of lethal force, Zuma drew attention instead to the issue of violent protestors. Calling on South Africans to exercise their constitutionally protected right to protest in a peaceful manner, Zuma pointed out that protests that were not “peaceful” were “unacceptable”.

He said he had empowered the justice, crime prevention and security cluster to put measures in place to ensure that violent protests are dealt with appropriately, that arrests are made and that speedy and effective prosecutions occur. In addition, Zuma explained that specialised courts would be allocated to give priority to protest cases. Some have criticised this stance, arguing that similar measures have not been implemented in relation to a number of other pressing societal issues, such as rising inequality, violence against women and corruption.

Later in the same week, Justice Minister Jeff Radebe further elaborated on Zuma’s comments, saying in relation to protests that the state had to “exercise its authority” in order to maintain peace and security.

The comments by Zuma and Radebe clearly indicate what has become increasingly obvious to protesters themselves: the government is serious about controlling protests and has prioritised swift state response to crowd management.

While on the face of it there is nothing wrong with a government seeking to ensure that protests do not get out of control, when viewed alongside the range of inherently more pressing social problems facing SA, this preoccupation with crowd control does raise the question why the government has placed so much emphasis on “illegal” protest actions. The answer seems to emerge from the protests themselves.

Since 2004, and gaining momentum over the past few years, there has been a huge surge in the number of popular protests that occur in poor communities, causing some commentators to suggest that SA is facing a mushrooming rebellion.

While undoubtedly related to socioeconomic conditions such as chronic unemployment and inequality, and often referred to as being about “service delivery”, the protests are also about poor communities’ desires to meaningfully participate and influence the decisions that affect their daily lives: protests signal communities’ frustration with being excluded from decision-making processes by officials who either fail to engage with them or unilaterally convey government decisions that have already been taken on their behalf.

With formal avenues for contest and dissent blocked off, communities resort to a more visible expression of their discontent in protest actions. Protests thus expose the failure of formal democratic processes, which may explain the government’s profound discomfort in responding to public gatherings. Indeed, it seems it is the visible dissent and not necessarily the threat of violence that has spurred the government towards this repressive stance.

As such, protests are really a litmus test of our fragile democracy. In their proliferation, as well as in the government’s reaction to them, our leaders are found increasingly wanting.

In this light, protests represent an increasingly visible failure on the part of the government to advance an inclusive democracy. The state’s response is to attempt to suppress the rising tide of dissatisfaction by repressive means if necessary. This is apparent in the conduct of the police at public gatherings.

The police have recently been criticised for their insensitive and unsympathetic responses to protests in general. This is seen in their propensity to prohibit protests on unlawful grounds or unduly proscribe protest action, despite the fact that the Regulations of Gatherings Act (1993) specifies that demonstrators must notify the police of their intended protest, but need no permission.

Yet, as any community attempting to protest will attest, in case after case, the authorities unreasonably delay processes and the police regularly label ensuing protests “illegal”, using this terminology to unlawfully disperse legitimate protests or intimidate and threaten demonstrators.

The police have also been criticised for their increased brutality and heavy-handedness. This ruthless attitude was recently highlighted in the shocking video footage of a taxi driver (originally from Mozambique) who was viciously assaulted by police and dragged behind a police vehicle. The taxi driver later died, while being held in police custody. This incident speaks to a culture of violence that is being left unchecked.

Whether or not the culture of violence in the police is actively encouraged by the state, mere tolerance of such unchecked violence indirectly serves to undermine dissent.

At protests, police often use teargas, rubber bullets and even live ammunition for crowd management. In fact, as Jane Duncan, the Highway Africa chairwoman of the Media and Information Society at Rhodes University recently pointed out, it is often the violence of police against a generally peaceful protest that turns protests violent.

This reactionary violence is then employed by the police to justify the use of excessive force. The same criticism can be launched at the criminal justice system in general, where the arrest, detention and prosecution of demonstrators occurs regularly, often on trumped-up charges, in an attempt to intimidate, threaten or destabilise community-based movements.

These actions are generally targeted at community activists who are depicted as “troublemakers” and “criminals”. Such labelling allows the government to disregard underlying concerns instead of meaningfully engaging with the protesters and incorporating these concerns into formal democratic processes.

With each new protest, the government’s failure to meaningfully include the majority of South Africans in the benefits of our democracy is more evident.

However, instead of recognising our failures and encouraging participation at the formal and informal levels, the government appears to be going all out to clamp down on protests and suppress growing popular dissent. This is a very worrying trend that should concern us all.

Business Day: Secrecy bill

Leave a reply

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=159255

Secrecy Bill

by Steven Friedman

If we want to protect our freedoms, we need to make sure they are not seen as the concern of only a few. The Protection of State Information Bill, which comes before Parliament today, is a threat to the freedom of many of us. But those who have campaigned against it have misread both its intent and its likely effect. In the process, they have revealed how the battle for freedom in this society is still the preserve of only some of us.

That the bill is being tabled over their protests may show the weakness of a defence of liberty restricted to the middle classes.

To begin with the intent. Contrary to widespread belief, this bill is not aimed at closing down media coverage of government corruption and incompetence. If it was, it would not say information cannot be classified if it reveals wrongdoing or ineptitude in the government.

Nor would changes have been introduced that seek to ensure that only security information is secret. Rather, it is an attempt by the security establishment, particularly the intelligence services, to ensure that it operates in secrecy.

The bill began life, ironically, as an exercise in replacing apartheid-era law — it was meant to replace a restrictive statute passed by the old regime with one in tune with the democratic values of our constitution. But the attempt to further free up information law must have run aground on the obsessive demand for security, which is the stock-in-trade of intelligence agencies.

The spies and their political allies seem to have stepped in to insist that too much openness threatens our safety.

Government defenders of the bill, from State Security Minister Siyabonga Cwele down, harp on about our vulnerability to foreign spies — without saying who our enemies are and why we would be threatened if foreigners know what our security agencies do. This shows the influence of the intelligence operatives on government thinking.

Why would politicians want to end reporting on corruption? Political insiders know that most of what we hear or read about government wrongdoing comes from politicians fighting their battles by fingering other politicians: they are not about to close down an essential weapon in their armoury. The real problem is the growing influence of the security establishment over the current administration. President Jacob Zuma has staffed the security cluster with trusted allies and this is why their desire to operate in the dark carries so much weight.

Failure to see this has distorted the campaign against the bill. Thus, some campaigners have argued that it is legitimate to protect state secrets but not to deter reporting of corruption. This shuts out a vital debate — on how legitimate it is to allow intelligence agencies to keep secrets from us. All over the world, security and intelligence establishments try to keep information secret which the public should know. Here, repeated revelations that government intelligence is used to fight political battles, not to protect us from threat, should cause us to challenge the spies’ demand that we keep our nose out of their affairs. We need to challenge their insistence on secrecy — the misdiagnosis of the problem has prevented us from doing this.

What about the effect?

What bills are meant to do, of course, is not always what they really do.

It is here that another misdiagnosis shows the elite bias behind the way our mainstream debate sees freedom.

We are told repeatedly that this law will close down investigative journalism and prevent the media from reporting on government wrongdoing.

This ignores the point made earlier — that it contains clauses insisting that it cannot be used in this way. Officials who want to protect themselves will no doubt ignore them. But there is no reason why the media should.

Journalists are presumably entitled to take the law at its word and to continue reporting all those government failures the law says they can reveal. If they are prosecuted, they will hire lawyers who will point out that they were protected by the law. As long as our courts remain competent and independent, no journalist reporting on government misbehaviour can be convicted.

And so, if the government does try to use this law against the media, it is likely to find that the effort is futile.

The clause is unlikely to offer the same protection to a group of township or shack settlement residents who want to know where the money for their development projects went. If municipal officials use the bill to protect themselves, the activists are unlikely to be able to afford a lawyer to help them fight the prohibition.

If we add the reality that media organisations have far more of the resources needed to get hold of documents that officials and politicians do not want us to see, it is clear that the real losers will not be the media but grassroots citizens.

Trying to get the government to serve citizens has always been more difficult for the poor than for the middle classes and the affluent. This bill will make it even harder.

Those who have campaigned against the bill have, therefore, presented a threat to the rights of the grassroots poor as one to the media. As usual, rights and freedoms are those of the middle class and the affluent, not the poor. If this does not change, freedom could be in serious trouble.

Since 1994, freedom has been preserved here largely because the suburban elite that dominates business and the professions has been strong enough to dissuade a government they distrust from tampering with their liberties. This does not mean that a desire for freedom is restricted to the suburbs — the evidence suggests that it is shared by many at the grassroots. But it is the affluent who have the resources and the connections to make themselves heard. And the government knows that there are economic costs to ignoring them.

This has benefited the entire society — the poor need freedom at least as much as the better off. While they have often been denied it by local power realities that do not affect the suburbs, poor people would be even worse off if our freedoms go. But for how long can a freedom preserved by only a fraction of the society endure?

We may not yet have reached a pass at which freedom will be in dire peril if its only advocates are the suburban middle classes. But we are sure to reach it sooner or later.

In a limited way, perhaps we already have — would the bill have survived if it had faced the sustained resistance of the grassroots, who stand most to lose from it?

The fact that the bill is now before Parliament should serve as a warning.

If our mainstream debate remains obsessed with the freedom of the few and ignores that of the many, that freedom will remain fragile.

If, however, we understand that the chief victims of unrestrained official power remain the poor and that poor people must play a key role in protecting all our freedoms, we may yet ensure that we not only hold onto the freedoms we have but ensure that more and more of us enjoy them.