Media and Citizenship: Between Marginalisation and Participation 9780796926456

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Published by HSRC Press Private Bag X9182, Cape Town 8000, South Africa www.hsrcpress.ac.za First published 2017 ISBN (soft cover) 978-0-7969-2556-5 ISBN (pdf) 978-0-7969-2550-3 © 2017 Human Sciences Research Council This book has undergone a double-blind independent peer-review process overseen by the HSRC Press Editorial Board. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Human Sciences Research Council (‘the Council’) or indicate that the Council endorses the views of the authors. In quoting from this publication, readers are advised to attribute the source of the information to the individual author concerned and not to the Council. The publishers have no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URL s for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this book and do not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. This publication was made possible through a grant received from the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Copyediting: Lisa Compton Typesetting: Robin Yule Cover design: Brian Garman Printing: [Name of printer, city, country] Distributed in Africa by Blue Weaver Tel: +27 (0) 21 701 4477 Fax Local: +27 (0) 21 701 7302 Fax International: 0927865242139 www.blueweaver.co.za Distributed in Europe and the United Kingdom by Eurospan Distribution Services (EDS) Tel: +44 (0) 17 6760 4972 Fax: +44 (0) 17 6760 1640 www.eurospanbookstore.com Distributed in North America by River North Editions, from IPG Call toll-free: (800) 888 4741 Fax: +1 (312) 337 5985 www.ipgbook.com No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission from the copyright owner. To copy any part of this publication, you may contact DALRO for information and copyright clearance. Tel: 086 12 DALRO (or 086 12 3256 from within South Africa); +27 (0)11 712 8000 Fax: +27 (0)11 403 9094 Postal Address: P O Box 31627, Braamfontein 2017, South Africa www.dalro.co.za Any unauthorised copying could lead to civil liability and/or criminal sanctions.

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Contents

Preface  v Introduction  vii

Anthea Garman and Herman Wasserman

part 1: the media–citizenship nexus 1 Citizens and journalists: The possibilities of co-creating the democracy we want  3

Anthea Garman and Herman Wasserman

2

Listening: A normative approach to transform media and democracy  16



Tanja Dreher

3

Democracy and political participation: The ambivalence of the Web  35



Peter Dahlgren

part 2: the media–democracy problematic 4 Speaking power’s truth: South African media in the service of the suburbs  55

Steven Friedman

5

‘Back to the people’ journalism: Journalists as public storytellers  72



Harry C Boyte

6

A better life for all? Consumption and citizenship in post-apartheid media culture  90



Mehita Iqani

7

‘Don’t raise your voice. Improve your argument’: Reason, emotion and affect in the post-apartheid public sphere  105



Steven Robins

8

The tale of two publics: Media, political representation and citizenship in Hout Bay, Cape Town  120



Laurence Piper, Bettina von Lieres and Fiona Anciano

9

‘Non-poor only’: Culture jamming and the limits of free speech in South Africa  139



Adam Haupt

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part 3: acts of citizenship 10 Could a ‘Noongarpedia’ form the basis for an emerging form of citizenship in the age of new media?  159

Len Collard, John Hartley, Kim Scott, Niall Lucy and Clint Bracknell, with Jennifer Buchanan and Ingrid Cumming

11

The media, Equal Education and school learners: ‘Political listening’ in the South African education crisis  181



Azwihangwisi Mufamadi and Anthea Garman

12

Innocence: A free pass into the moral commonweal  200



Yves Vanderhaeghen

13

We are not the ‘born frees’: The real political and civic lives of eight young South Africans  217



Vanessa Malila

Contributors  233 Index  235

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Preface

This book flows from a six-year research project (2011–2016) conducted at Rhodes University’s School of Journalism and Media Studies, later in collaboration with the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Film and Media Studies. Funded by the Andrew W Mellon Foundation and then the National Research Foundation, the Media and Citizenship research project investigated to what extent South African media across a wide variety of outlets and expressions can and do facilitate democratic participation and voice in the public sphere, especially for the most marginalised of citizens. Through empirical research, the project established how notions of media, citizenship and democracy are articulated in actually existing social contexts in South Africa; and through theoretical explorations sought to provide a better understanding of how media could contribute to the improvement of democratic participation. The project was led by Anthea Garman and Herman Wasserman, and over the course of the six years included Vanessa Malila as the postdoctoral fellow; doctoral students Marietjie Oelofsen, Azwihangwisi Mufamadi and Mvuzo Ponono (who first completed MA degrees in the project and then continued to PhD); Chengetai Chikadaya and Rod Amner; and master’s students Hercules Louw, Welcome Lishivha, Meli Ncube, Ray Hartle, Carissa Govender and Stephane Meintjes. From the beginning we realised that the idea of meaningful citizenship in South Africa needed to be theorised beyond the boundaries of media and journalism studies and we reached out to researchers in other fields. Our own empirical work and thinking was greatly enriched by our conversations with Tanja Dreher at Wollongong University and the Australian Listening Project researchers; Steven Robins in social anthropology at Stellenbosch University; Richard Pithouse (then in political studies at Rhodes University); ethnographer Kira Erwin at Durban University of Technology; Laurence Piper and Bettina von Lieres; James Arvanitakis at the University of Western Sydney; Steven Friedman (University of Johannesburg and Rhodes University); Katrin Voltmer at University of Leeds; viola milton at UNISA; David Holwerk, director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy, Charles F Kettering Foundation; Harry Boyte; Niren Tolsi, Mail & Guardian

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journalist; Cedric Nunn, photographer and Mellon Senior Scholar (especially around his book and exhibition project Unsettled); as well as several others. As part of our attempt to take our study beyond the confines of academia we ran a series of talks with an exhibition at the 2012 Think!Fest at the National Arts Festival. In 2013 Dr Malila attended the Mail & Guardian/Brand SA Critical Thinking Forum ‘What is the role of South Africa’s youth in the National Development Plan?’ and distributed the Mellon research findings to all participants. We have also used The Conversation and the Rhodes Journalism Review to engage with audiences beyond academia and with journalists. We held a colloquium with South African media studies scholars co-hosted by viola milton from the UNISA School of Communication, which resulted in a special edition of the journal Communicatio (vol. 39 no. 4) ‘Media, Citizenship and the Politics of Belonging’. A particular focus of our attention became newly enfranchised young South Africans and their own sense of their democratic voice and power. This resulted in a number of journal articles as well as a report we collaborated on with South African and Dutch colleagues (‘A Baseline Study of Youth Identity, the Media and the Public Sphere in South Africa’, available at https:// www.ru.ac.za/media/rhodesuniversity/content/jms/documents/publications/ Baseline_study_FINAL.pdf). On a theoretical level, a central engagement has been with notions of ‘listening’ and ‘belonging’ as opposed to the somewhat overused ideas of voice and the power of the vote, and this orientation also informs the collected writings in this book. It is our hope that this book will contribute to an ongoing debate about the media’s role and place in a highly unequal, transitional country where claims to its contribution to democracy should continue to be interrogated. The perspectives contained in this volume not only provide such a critique, but also offer suggestions for how citizens can engage the media and the state in an attempt to overcome the distance between marginalisation and participation. Anthea Garman and Herman Wasserman Volume editors

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Introduction Anthea Garman and Herman Wasserman

The book combines research done by members of the Media and Citizenship Research Project and widens the discussion on citizenship in the post-apartheid era by including invited contributions from leading authors in the fields of media studies, politics and sociology. Several of these authors have already participated in the project by presenting papers at seminars and colloquia we have organised. Others we have approached because of their authority in the field and because their work was drawn on in the theoretical explorations of the project. This collection brings together contributions representing alternative theoretical approaches to the still-powerful Habermasian idea of a rationalcritical public sphere – in which the media play a central role of communication and information that contributes to rational deliberation – that still dominates scholarly discussions of the media’s role in post-apartheid political and civic life. By combining these theoretical insights with empirical research from the South African context as well as case studies of specific examples of acts of citizenship and their relation to the media, we hope to provide a multidimensional and textured picture of the nexus between media, democracy and citizenship in South Africa. The research collected here not only critiques the dominant Habermasian perspective by highlighting the shortcomings of the South African media in facilitating citizen participation in debates about policies that directly affect them, but also takes seriously other expressions of opinion by citizens that might not qualify as rational debate in the Habermasian view. These include protest actions that express frustrations by citizens about the slow pace of change and their emotional responses to the social and economic marginalisation and exclusion they continue to experience. Emotional expressions such as outrage and anger matter for democratic participation and inclusion, and should be taken seriously alongside a focus on the rational deliberation envisaged in the Habermasian model (Bickford 2011; Nussbaum 2013). By basing these contributions in the empirical context of post-apartheid South Africa, these perspectives complement and, where necessary, correct dominant scholarly work done in this area by scholarship based predominantly in the Global North. The book is informed, as the underpinning research project had been, by the understanding that the South African media operate in an emerging

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democracy and in a still-transitional society in which unequal differentials of power are very evident. These asymmetrical distributions of power impact on the way that the media construct and renegotiate civic and political identities, the extent to which it can provide a platform for different voices to be heard and, consequently, the way in which the democratic right of freedom of expression should be understood in the context of the media. By locating the theoretical discussion of these concepts within the specifics of the South African context, we intended to be attentive to the situation of newly-enfranchised people who suffer still under economic and social regimes that impinge on their exercise of freedom and voice. Central to the book’s conceptual framework, therefore, are the notions of ‘listening’ and ‘active citizenship’ particularly as they apply to the media in South African democracy. Drawing on the work of theorists such as Susan Bickford (1996), Nick Couldry (2010), Tanja Dreher (2009), Patrick Heller (2009) and Andrew Dobson (2014), this book is based on the assumption that listening is a foundational concept for ‘dialogical democracy’ (Dobson 2014: 5). By drawing attention to listening as a political concept and a form of practice, we want to highlight its transformative and even radical potential – as those in power often do not listen to citizens precisely because of the threat such a practice poses to their interests (Dobson 2014: 18). If ‘withholding listening is an expression of power’, then ‘being heard is a conferring of power’, and listening as a practice in media can therefore play a ‘key role in rebalancing power relations’ (Dobson 2014: 18). As Dreher points out in her chapter in this volume, attention to listening can help us reformulate the relationship between the media and democracy, and shift the focus from questions about citizen participation in media from ‘who gets to speak’ to ‘who is being heard’. We have structured this book in three parts. The first section considers how best to theorise the media–citizenship nexus away from the Habermasian ideas of the public sphere and the dominance of voice. This section also provides a theoretical underpinning for some of the more specific issues that are to be addressed in subsequent sections, such as media use by young people, political activism and mobilisation, and media and political engagement. In Chapter 1 we (the editors) consider theoretical ideas which are helpful in rethinking the categories of citizen, citizenship, voice, action and agency and how these are understood in the media and by journalists. We introduce the idea of democracy as in the process of becoming – borrowed from Isin and Nielsen (2008) – and insist that reorienting journalism and paying attention to the expressions and actions of the poorest and most marginalised citizens is crucial for the formulation of inclusive democracy and for more responsive media. In Chapter 2 Tanja Dreher does a more thorough consideration of the value of listening theory in understanding demands across the world, which unsettle established notions of politics. Dreher makes the case that there is a ‘turn to listening’ which holds the

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potential for transforming social relations of privilege and marginalisation while acknowledging the complexity and difficulty of such an approach. In Chapter 3 Peter Dahlgren, who has a long history of documenting big shifts in the media space in relation to democracy and participation, considers what happens when across the world a rising frustration with formal politics is coupled with the potentialities of the internet. Dahlgren shows that in a complex interplay of technology, new identities and new practices, the internet is having an impact, with often unpredictable outcomes, on citizenship and democracy. The second section, on the media-democracy problematic, contextualises these theoretical discussions within the South African environment and the Global South. Since most of the theory about media and citizenship has hitherto been produced by scholars in the Global North, this section illuminates and problematises these theories from the local context. In Chapter 4 Steven Friedman elucidates his argument about a mainstream media in South Africa that operates with middle-class bias, or what he calls the ‘view from the suburbs’. He examines a common-sense collusion between big business and the commercial media against government which results in a misdirection of how these journalists hold power to account and a consequent neglect of attention to inequality and social exclusion. Friedman’s chapter shows what a news media in thrall to commercial power and the concerns of elites looks like when the orientation we argue for is lost. In Chapter 5 Harry Boyte writes from the perspective of the United States and a long involvement in the civil rights movement. He takes these same arguments and frames them in a historical moment in both South Africa and the US when the possibility of co-creation of democracy was alive in political struggle in both countries. A prevailing truism in much media theory is that the commercial media hail their readers and audiences as consumers rather than citizens. This interpellates them into a market economy and neglects their role as members of a polity. This notion is then used to account for poor political participation and public spheres filled with triviality. Mehita Iqani in Chapter 6 puts this notion under interrogation and investigates the relationship between citizen and consumer identities in post-apartheid South Africa. She argues that such a study is necessary in order to understand the political nature of consumption and to grapple also with questions of inequality imbedded in postcolonial forms of capitalism. In Chapter 7 Steven Robins uses the recent student protests at the universities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch to investigate how acts of defiance alongside disruptive expressions of anger, together with rational debate and participation in teach-ins and reading sessions, have become a feature of political struggle in South Africa. Robins deals with affect, the emergence of the body in the public sphere, and the use of spectacle as crucial elements in understanding a new politics of ‘passion and pain’. Robins argues that that these expressions directly challenge the overly

Introduction

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constrained rationality of much political debate which denies the lived reality of a majority of South Africans. In Chapter 8 Laurence Piper, Bettina von Lieres and Fiona Anciano study two communities, one rich and one poor, living in close proximity in Hout Bay, south of Cape Town. While, formally, both communities have the status of citizenship, Piper, Von Lieres and Anciano show that the poor community is managed by the ruling party and local government in ways that rob it of citizen agency. This extends into the mediation of their voices via the two newspapers, with those with resources having very unequal access to voice and opinions despite attempts to address this through a new newspaper in the area. In Chapter 9, Adam Haupt focuses on the work of public artists Tokolos Stencils, who seek to put into public space commentary via graffiti on South Africa’s continuing racialised equalities. The City of Cape Town’s response to these culture-jamming interventions illuminates, says Haupt, how city governments use public space to continue practices of exclusion which rob poor people of their citizen status and their attempts to speak back to power. Until this point the chapters in this book have paid attention to stratified societies filled with inequity, but have not considered those so marginalised that their cultures and languages are threatened with extinction and where there is almost no compensation of being included in a modern-day polity and public sphere. The third section provides examples of ‘acts of citizenship’ (borrowing the term and concept from Isin and Nielsen (2008) with its connotations of agency and claims-making) in South Africa: examples of where citizens have claimed their civic identities through protest action and/or creative media use, or where the media have contributed to the renegotiation of identities. Chapter 10, written by Len Collard, John Hartley, Kim Scott, Niall Lucy and Clint Bracknell, takes the case of the Noongar people in the south-west corner of Australia and examines whether a form of ‘mediated citizenship’ using the power of wikis online to capture their knowledge, culture and language could arrest their symbolic extinction and give them presence in the digital realm. The case opens up the possibility that those profoundly excluded by nation-state democracies might still find recognition and a form of citizenship. Schools and the struggle for good, fundamental education is the focus of Chapter 11, written by Azwihangwisi Mufamadi and Anthea Garman. The very interesting social movement Equal Education has used a multi-pronged strategy to work with learners in public school in townships to improve all facets of their education. EE employs a strategy of listening and response to these school children which is exemplary in its practice of surfacing key issues to then take up via public protest or in the courts or with government. They also actively cultivate relationships with journalists and use the media cleverly. This chapter also tests the ideas of listening theory and attempts to build a methodology that is useful for further study. In Chapter 12 Yves Vanderhaeghen argues that white Afrikaners as

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a group still struggle to be incorporated into the South African polity as citizens despite discourses and processes of redress and truth and reconciliation. Using reporting in Beeld newspaper about farm murders, he shows that white Afrikaners are cast as innocent victims of the post-apartheid era – a dangerous discourse that aims at a parity of suffering which then allows them into nationhood via this supposed suffering. This chapter shows the strange forms that journalism takes in addressing certain constituencies in the post-apartheid era and also deals with the current phenomenon which treats those with power as though they had none and were uniquely oppressed. In the final chapter Vanessa Malila turns attention to South Africa’s ‘born frees’, those young people who are supposed to have no history or memory of apartheid and are therefore the generation that embodies the hopes of the future. Malila shows through intense engagement with a group of such youngsters just how complex their lives are and how they struggle to inform themselves, take up their agency and live their lives with dignity in social and economic circumstances that continue to deprive them of full citizenship. This focus on the youth is a fitting conclusion for a collection of contributions which investigate not only historical understandings of citizenship and its iterations in various forms across South African society and internationally, but also look towards the future of the relationship between media, citizenship and society.

References Bickford S (1996) The dissonance of democracy: Listening, conflict and citizenship. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press Bickford S (2011) Emotion talk and political judgment. Journal of Politics 73(4): 1025–1037 Brown J (2015) South Africa’s insurgent citizens: On dissent and the possibility of politics. London: Zed Books Couldry N (2010) Why voice matters: Culture and politics after neoliberalism. London: Sage Publications Dobson A (2014) Listening for democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press Dreher T (2009) Listening across difference: Media and multiculturalism beyond the politics of voice. Continuum 23(4): 445–458 Heller P (2009) Democratic deepening in India and South Africa. Journal of Asian and African Studies 44(1): 123–149 Isin EF & Nielsen GM (2008) Introduction. In EF Isin & GM Nielsen (Eds) Acts of citizenship. London: Zed Books Nussbaum MC (2013) Political emotions: Why love matters for justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press

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part 1 The media–citizenship nexus

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1 Citizens and journalists: The possibilities of co-creating the democracy we want Anthea Garman and Herman Wasserman

Citizenship can be seen as a ‘central term in contemporary South African politics’ (Brown 2015: 58). This is true historically and in the present moment. The essence of the struggle against apartheid was about claiming the right to be recognised as full members of the nation state with the right to participate in political processes and policy-making. However, with these rights formally now in place, citizenship in post-apartheid South Africa is still under contestation because it means more than just formal recognition of being a member of a national community and a political actor. It also includes consideration of the social and economic conditions that enable such participation in the polity (Brown 2015: 58). Since the media is considered to have the potential to facilitate participation in democratic deliberation, an assessment of citizenship in post-apartheid South Africa should be linked to questions about the media. An evaluation of the depth of democracy in South Africa would therefore require a ‘thick account of effective citizenship’ that aligns with human rights (Brown 2015: 58). Such a broader definition of citizenship would include the exercise of political and social rights not only in the formal spaces of democratic participation such as elections, but also in spaces where the substantive outcomes of formal rights to citizenship are questioned, contested and interrogated. The media – both in its mainstream, formal incarnations as well as in developing, informal, alternative and digital formats – can play an important role in facilitating these participatory spaces including the public sphere. While democratisation has restored the legal and political rights to citizenship denied to the majority under apartheid, the continued exclusions from economic equality and the realisation of social empowerment have resulted in a widespread experience of marginalisation. South Africa has consolidated formal constitutional democracy, but its subaltern citizens still have very little capacity to shape public policy or to debate it. It has been argued (notably by Heller 2009) that the ANC has turned local government into a site for the delivery of services, thereby turning South Africa’s poorest people into clients dependent on patronage. Nkambule says that ‘for citizenship to be effective

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it requires institutions, procedures and arenas where it can be put into practice’ (2012: 173), and he also points to local government in South Africa as an area of particular failure because this is where many rights are actually denied and people’s citizen status is diminished. We could add that one of the institutions and arenas where citizenship also needs to be worked out is in the public sphere fed by the news media. The South African public domain, says Heller (2009: 139), is characterised by lobbying by powerful interests on the one hand and, on the other, increasingly widespread local protests that have been narrowly defined as being against poor service delivery but can also be read as a deeper disillusionment with representative democracy. The result is a fragmented public sphere and a civil society that remains ‘bifurcated’ (2009: 139).

Acts of citizenship It is the broader understanding of citizenship – not only in the formal political sense, but incorporating social and economic rights, as well as a powerful sense of dignity and worth – to which South African citizens in the post-apartheid context are laying claim, increasingly outside the formal institutions of the state or the mainstream media, in what has been called ‘acts of citizenship’ (Isin & Nielsen 2008). These disruptive acts of citizenship ‘attempt to enmesh notions of status into ongoing practices of empowerment and self-realisation’ and are often engaged in by those excluded from or remaining on the margins of the ‘order of citizenship’, where they struggle to exercise political agency (Brown 2015: 59–60). These acts, in other words, attempt to highlight the continued gaps between the status of citizenship and the practice thereof. Acts of citizenship are attempts to insist on a thicker, substantive definition of citizenship premised on participation and voice, rather than a merely legalistic definition that reduces citizenship to formal aspects of belonging but does not address questions of participation, voice and action. Therefore acts of citizenship are to an extent premised on hope in a fuller version of democratic citizenship that is yet to come, but in the process of acting on this hope, they already lay claim to the values that such a democracy would embody, and in the process can be seen to actually bring these values and practices to life. As Isin and Nielsen (2008: 2) explain: Often it is stated that what is important about citizenship is not only that it is a legal status but that it involves practices – social, political, cultural and symbolic. In other words, formal citizenship is differentiated from substantive citizenship and the latter is seen as the condition of the possibility of the former. Yet, whether the focus is on status or practice, it

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remains on the doer rather than the deed. To investigate citizenship in a way that is irreducible to either status or practice, while still valuing this distinction, requires a focus on those acts when, regardless of status and substance, subjects constitute themselves as citizens or, better still, as those to whom the right to have rights is due. But the focus shifts from subjects as such to acts (or deeds) that produce such subjects. The difference, we suggest, is crucial. When, therefore, members of poor communities in South Africa rise up to demand that government listens to them, or when mine workers down tools and march to the offices of their employers, or when students shut down universities and march on Parliament to demand free education, it is not in the first instance these actors that are constituted as citizens, but the acts themselves that contribute to a better, fuller definition of what substantive citizenship entails. It is, according to Isin and Nielsen, the deed, rather than the doer, that defines the nature of citizenship. These acts of citizenship ‘constitute their actors as social beings’ and can be seen as attempts to deviate from or rewrite the political ‘script’ on which basis citizens can engage the state and other citizens (Brown 2015: 61). This is a major challenge to South Africa’s media and journalists, in that it requires recognition that such acts, even when they are seriously disruptive, are crucial for the attainment of rich citizenship in which ordinary people become agents with voices that should be given a hearing and which should shape news narratives. This understanding of citizenship as being about more than a legal status or participation in formal processes such as elections, and as inextricably linked to human rights, social justice and being heard, is fundamental to an analysis of the media’s role in democracy. Just as a definition of citizenship based on the legal rights of the members of a polity alone is inadequate, an understanding of the media’s role in a democracy premised merely on its constitutional rights to freedom of expression to keep political power to account is also too narrow. Instead, when considering the role of the media in South African democracy, the central question is not a legalistic one but a relational one. To what extent does the media succeed in facilitating participation by citizens in democratic debate, decision-making and community formation? Does the media stand in an empathetic relation to citizens by listening to their concerns and amplifying their voices? Or, conversely, does the media contribute to the further marginalisation of sections of the citizenry by marginalising their voices and privileging the viewpoints of elites? Does the media construct citizens as agents with voice and decision-making power, or does it presume to speak on their behalf while treating them as incapable of formulating their own decisions and solutions? While the freedom granted to South African media in the Constitution – a freedom that the media often lays claim to when criticised or pressured by government, for instance

Citizens and journalists

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in the ongoing debates around the Media Appeals Tribunal and the Protection of State Information Bill – is based on the assumption that the media contribute to the deepening of democracy, it also needs to be considered that the South African media may be contributing to this ‘bifurcation’ of the public sphere by privileging a narrow view of South African society from the perspective of elites. Because they favour audiences that can generate revenue, commercial media tend to ignore or marginalise the lived experiences of the majority of South African citizens or report them only in situations of disaster or major upheaval. Public service and community media, whose mandate includes serving audiences who are excluded from mainstream commercial media, remain plagued by political interference or financial sustainability challenges which prevent them from playing this role as well they should. Our research (Wasserman & Garman 2014) has shown that young South Africans in particular feel that while they trust the media as institutions and while they are conscious of their own powerful need for information, these media do not resonate with their own everyday lived experiences and are therefore largely irrelevant to their lives. This is a paradox that raises questions about the media’s ability to listen to citizens, and to amplify and legitimate their acts of citizenship. The question also arises as to whether the South African media can act as a space for the construction and renegotiation of citizenship in a post-apartheid society marked by severe inequalities and continued exclusions. What are the structural conditions needed for the participation of citizens in a mediated public sphere? What are the processes through which citizens contribute to meaningmaking around notions of citizenship and democratic participation? How are the media viewed by citizens in terms of their relevance for their everyday life and participation in democratic debate? How could the media adapt or revise their normative orientations and practical routines in order to respond to citizens’ needs? These questions form the central problematic of research into the relationship between South African media, citizens and democratic participation. To arrive at useful answers to these questions, a response from multiple viewpoints and disciplines would be required. This chapter has two main points of interest: to show that grappling with the complex reasons why modern-day democracies still fail to imbue the status of citizenship with rights for all and agency is an important theoretical project; and to contend that media theorists need to engage in questions of citizenship so as to understand the complexities of actual lived reality rather than operate at an abstract, but superficial, level which simply assumes and asserts the beneficial centrality of news media to the functioning of democracies. It is therefore important to focus on media norms and practices which lead to what is experienced by many citizens as their marginalisation and silencing by the very media that claim to provide them with a platform where they are meant to participate in the (re)construction and (re)negotiation of citizenship. Underpinning the media’s

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ability to contribute to the reconstruction of citizenship and its ability to facilitate democratic participation are a set of normative values that guide the media’s work. We argue that to improve the media’s enabling of democratic participation, a change to these underpinning normative frameworks is required. The media need to reorient themselves towards communities and enter into a relationship based on recognition of people as agents and on listening to their life experiences and demands, if they are to be, firstly, more responsive to the needs of citizens, and, secondly, to play a role in the formation of deep, enriched citizenship. It is important to note that, as the Comaroffs say of South Africa, the ‘generic citizen’ is too often conflated with the ‘the rights-bearing individual inscribed in the new Constitution’ and the ‘urban, cosmopolitan [which is] presumed in much mass-mediated discourse’ (2003: 446). When assessing the relationship between citizen, media and state, it is therefore important to be specific about the citizens or communities referred to, and to root analyses of this relationship in empirical contexts of everyday lived experience. In assessing the media’s constructions of citizenship and the support they provide for the realisation of civic duties, attention needs to be paid to both the structural dimensions of the media (associated with political economy approaches and Habermasian notions of participation and deliberation) as well as the cultural dynamics of media use (drawing on cultural studies approaches to the study of media rituals and spectacle in everyday life). The notions of ‘listening’ and ‘voice’ have proven to be useful ways of thinking these two dimensions together. They provide a way to conceive of a normative role for the media in a structurally unequal society so that they take seriously people’s subjective perceptions and experiences in everyday life, where they also engage in acts of citizenship.

The recognition of ordinary South Africans as agents The disjuncture between people’s everyday experience as members of communities and the status they hold as rights-bearing South Africans also results from the absence of new political identities that could provide them with productive models of citizenship. As Robins et al. (2008: 1071) argue, great political and social ruptures such as the end of apartheid and the advent of formal democracy do not necessarily result in marginalised people acquiring new political identities: The nature of relations between people and government in political and historical contexts marked by histories of disenfranchisement, authoritarianism and clientelism may not be as amenable to such dramatic ruptures with the past as normative versions of the new citizenships created through struggle suggest.

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Against the background of a history of oppression and marginalisation, and the persistence of structures of social and economic inequality, subjugated people do not automatically become citizens with a change of governance (Mamdani 1996). The making possible of a variety of political identities and subject positions which truly make citizens into ‘the people’ of the new democracy requires work by the state, civil society and the media, as well as the people themselves. The media, in particular journalism, can contribute to the reconstruction of political identities by hailing the formerly marginalised and the formerly powerful into different relations to the state and to each other. Where it fails to do so, the media may also contribute to the entrenchment of inequalities and polarisation. Two recent events, in particular, have reminded us that we cannot take for granted that our constitutional democracy has inducted us all into equitable citizenship or given us all the equal status of the political identity of citizen. These events have also shown that failure to understand and therefore undo the construction of political identities under both colonialism and apartheid means that we continue to live in a democracy with first class and underclass citizen statuses. (This situation is not unique to South Africa. As Mamdani (1996, 2001) has shown, similar situations pertain in other African countries including Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Uganda and Darfur, and also affect more established democracies in their dealings with migrants, refugees or former colonial subjects.) The two events, which have illuminated the limitations of South African citizenship in the post-apartheid space, are the 2012 Marikana mine shootings in which a private company and the police force dealt with a long drawn-out labour dispute with deadly force and the wave of xenophobic attacks in townships across the country in 2008 (and on several occasions thereafter) on foreign Africans by poor South Africans. Taken together, these events show that poor, mostly black, South Africans (who are nominally rights-bearing citizens) can be treated in the post-apartheid political regime as expendable human beings, and that South Africans themselves (many of them as poor and expendable as the Marikana miners) have turned on aliens and migrants and treated them too as creatures without rights to life, livelihood, decision-making power and voice. In addition, in their reporting of these events the South African news media have been strongly criticised for breaking news stories in which they treat these groups of people as unindividuated, unruly mobs, with mysterious motivations for what are considered criminal actions and an attack on the social order (Wasserman 2015: 379). A second wave of alternative reporting (Alexander et al. 2012; Marinovich 2012,1 2016; Tolsi & Botes 20152) has challenged such journalism and insisted on putting faces to and giving voice to those initiating these events, as well as recognising their actions as having meaning and purpose. These secondary accounts show how framing such events as ‘acts of citizenship’ (even if

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this terminology is not actually used by these authors) illuminates and enlarges our conceptions of citizenship. This then is a central challenge for journalists in South Africa: in the language coined by political theorist Susan Bickford, to turn ‘whats’ into ‘whos’. While it is possible to be highly critical about media attention on the marginalised only when disaster or crisis strikes, it is important to factor in the history of politics and political struggle in South Africa in creating suffering groups of people to be activated as a means for political purposes. The success of an important struggle against overwhelming political odds and tyranny is often achieved by creating a suffering ‘class’ in which the members recognise their shared experiences in suffering and their shared interests in the struggle to end that suffering. The irony is that this process turns human beings into ‘whats’ instead of ‘whos’ (Bickford 1996: Chapter 3, based on Arendt 1998/1958). Bickford says: The paradox of plurality lies in the fact that each human being is a unique ‘who’ – yet every human being shares this quality of uniqueness … human plurality means that we are both undeniably distinctive, and inescapably more than one … Plurality is a central condition of human existence, and yet it is fragile; it can disappear under conditions of tyranny, mass society, or anytime the public realm and its attendant political equality is supplanted or destroyed. (1996: 59) By contrast, the condition of being a ‘what’ is: Instead of being plural, unique individuals, they are interchangeably alike, with identical and predictable needs – in effect, a mass. And so … the activity appropriate to the social realm is not action or speech, but administration – the bureaucratic process by which we find efficient means to already determined ends. (1996: 72) In South Africa the very successful bonding of classes of people into whats (‘the black masses’, ‘the majority’, ‘the poor’, ‘the rural’, as well as ‘women’ and ‘youth’) in the apartheid period, bedevils the present by keeping those classified this way as batches of human beings who are administered as such under the present political regime and reported in this way by the news media. Of course these powerful group identifications were also mobilised successfully for the purposes of anti-apartheid struggle but they have present-day repercussions which are not always positive. If an individual from such a what stands out to speak, s/he can only be as a representative of their group and not as a broadly representative South African speaking on a national platform or international platform in this larger way as a ‘who’ with ideas and opinions. S/he can never be as an individual who speaks on their own behalf with no connection to their group, geographical location or motivating event.

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The political challenge now in South Africa is to embrace and allow a plurality of social and political positionalities to flourish generally in society and to do the work of recognising how in the post-apartheid era different coalescences of political identities will form, and to give these the space to grow out of old groups and statuses without denigrating them as of little worth and power or as dangerous and to be repressed. Movements that have tried to create new classes of identity from which to mobilise political struggle in South Africa have encountered not only violent state resistance but also incomprehension and hostility from much of the mainstream media. But also, as mentioned above, it requires of both state and media to see these actions and events as ‘acts’ of citizenship which both challenge the order of the status quo and constitute an active citizenry. It is critical that the state allows for such a possibility and that the media enables marginalised citizens to speak and hold opinions as individuals; to enter the public domain; to speak on behalf of and for others with authority (or to go further and speak not just on behalf of a group but as representative South Africans); and the power to influence decision-making and actions (in universalist ways and not just on narrow issues that affect the individual or group specifically and in a particular location). It is critical that the media consider their role in how we move away from a situation in which some can hold government to account while others are held accountable to government to the degree that they can lose their lives if they disagree with the party in power over their basic needs (housing, schooling, employment, healthcare) or indeed if they disagree about the way governance is carried out and the way decision-making is done.

Listening as an means of co-creating democracy In order for the acts of citizens to influence policymaking and elicit a response from the media and government, they need to be taken seriously as legitimate expressions by citizens, even if they may ostensibly not fit the mould of rational, political debate. For the media, this would require a normative orientation that goes beyond the conventional positions of ‘objectivity’ or ‘watchdog journalism’ to a position of engagement, involvement and active listening. This shift in orientation needs to be evident in a reconsideration of several underpinning ideas that drive both politics and journalism. Firstly, the dominance of conventional models of communication, especially the transmission model that sees communication primarily in terms of the transfer of information, means that alternative ways of understanding communication (including the communication that takes places in and through the media) are neglected or ignored (Lipari 2014: 12). An alternative way of thinking about

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communication, Lipari argues (2014: 12), is to see communicative acts as ways of ‘giving birth to worlds’. Through communication, we ‘co-construct worlds with ourselves and others’. In this framework, ‘speech’ and ‘speaking’ are not the only terms used as synonyms for ‘communication’, but ‘listening’ forms just as central a part of holistic definitions of communication (Lipari 2014: 13). This idea of the value of listening in communication corresponds well with the Isin and Nielsen idea that acts of citizenship are creative activities in which the democracy we desire may come to be realised. The shift from a journalistic orientation in the traditional mode of ‘giving voice to’ citizens, or ‘speaking on behalf of’ the public, should be to one of listening and being attuned to the needs, expectations and frustrations of citizens, however they express them. In both journalism and politics there needs to be a reconsideration of speaking as active and listening as passive. As Dobson says ‘activity in politics is (all too often) associated with speaking and passivity with listening, but … there is performativity in the latter as well as in the former’ (2014: 21). ‘The figure of the listener is a shadowy one in political theory,’ Lacey says (2013: 167), arguing, as others have (Bickford 1996, 2011; Couldry 2010; Dreher 2009), that theoretically the notion of listening must be taken out of the realm of the implicit and into the realm of the explicit. Bickford (1996: 2) also stresses that this kind of listening is political in its very nature; in fact, it is ‘what makes politics possible’. Secondly, a reconsideration of the over-attention given to the idea of ‘voice’ in attempts to protect freedom of expression is needed. Lacey argues that ‘the presence of a listening public is simply assumed, and no special freedoms or protections are afforded to the act of listening’ (2013: 165). The modern public spheres of liberal democracies are historically imbricated in the development of ‘print culture, capitalism, nationalism and the Enlightenment’ (Lacey 2013: 169) in which the public was constituted as a reading public (her italics). The further consequence is that not only is reading privileged over hearing but speaking has become a property attached to an individual and treated in law as a right to be defended and protected. The speech act as ‘self-expression’ was conceived as a product to be circulated and exchanged in the free marketplace of ideas. The act of listening could not be conceptualised in this way, could not belong to an individual subject … the defence of the freedom of speech as a property right could not, then, be extended to embrace the freedom of listening or the freedom of communication more broadly. (Lacey 2013: 169) This situation is made more complex by the fact that to speak (and often to produce a text) is to occupy the singular space of the individual but to listen is to be part of a collective and to be in plural mode. This plurality is made even more complex by the

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operations of the mass media and now by digital and social media. But the critical point to be made is that freedom of listening … inheres in the space between individuals, and is concerned precisely with guaranteeing the context within which freedom of expression can operate as communication. (Lacey 2013: 169) Thirdly, this point about listening as privileging collectivity over individuality resonates with ethical frameworks of communitarianism and relationality, although Bickford (1996: 2) points out that listening does not exclude agonistic and combative exchanges in the political arena. These exchanges would however be premised on a dialogical understanding of speaking and listening; one which implies that for a position to be articulated there has to be someone who listens. Having a voice depends on being heard. In Couldry’s (2010: 9) conceptualisation, the notion of voice is therefore not so much an individual expression, but a ‘social process’ that involves speaking and listening. This process is ‘an act of attention that registers the uniqueness of the other’s narrative’ (2010: 9). Lipari (2014: 102) suggests a way of thinking about listening as a ‘shared gathering’ that brings social community about, even if members of that community do not agree about everything: We become one when we listen together – to an opera, to a politician, to the wind blowing through the trees, or to God … Not that we will come to agree, or to see things the same way, or even come to understand in the same way. But we share the experience of being listening – and up from the listening bubbles a speaking. (Lipari 2014: 102) What would a commitment to listening require of journalists? In the first place, it would require the cultivation of a certain ‘attunement’, in Lipari’s terms. She identifies four themes, each linked to an ethical virtue, through which a practice of listening can be developed: ◆ Interconnection and generosity This orientation differs radically from the liberal individualism underpinning dominant approaches to journalism which separates subject and object of reporting, and allows journalists to remain outside of and uncommitted to the issues they report on, in the name of ‘objectivity’ and ‘independence’. Listening, instead, brings about an awareness of the interconnections between journalism and the world, leads to a greater generosity of spirit, responsibility, and an attunement to the multitude of voices that make up the social reality. ◆ Iteration and patience Recognition of repetition in different lives, different eras and different places can foster greater identification with those considered the other, and teach

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journalists humility about their own knowledge and understandings. This orientation asks of journalists to develop the ability to see the world from different perspectives, recognising the similarities between people and their experiences, but remaining aware of the limits of their understanding and knowledge. ◆ Invention and courage Listening attentively, in such a way that allows for one’s own assumptions to be challenged, requires a humility and self-ref lexivity that may not come naturally for journalists schooled in the belief that they have the ability to see the world as it is and report on it objectively and authoritatively. It requires a shift away from the presumption of a journalistic voice to the acceptance of ignorance, of not-knowing, that makes journalists dependent on the voices of multiple others that together make up social reality. ◆ Impermanence and humility The acceptance of impermanence of oneself and one’s own knowledge and insights, can enrich our interactions with others and foster listening to other viewpoints. Journalism often operates from a position of considered certainty and the assumption of a grasp on ‘the facts’ of reality, instead of acknowledging the impermanence and vulnerability of knowledge in such a way that requires a dialogic orientation towards others. (Lipari 2014: 214–220) An example of how the kind of listening referred to above can manifest in journalism, is to be found in the work of the Nobel Laureate and Belarusian investigative journalist Svetlana Alexievich. In her book Chernobyl Prayer, Alexievich not only creates a polyphonic chorus of voices testifying to the terror that had befallen them and their families, but she also relativises her own understanding of these events and their consequences by acknowledging the limitations of her journalistic position. She conducts interviews not only with survivors, but also with herself, illustrating the dialogic and interdependent orientation that comes from listening: The truth was that I had no idea how to write about it, what method to use, what approach to take. If, earlier, when I wrote my books, I would pore over the suffering of others, now my life and I have become part of the event. Fused together, leaving me unable to get any distance. (Alexievich 2013: 25) In her acceptance speech upon receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature, Alexievich summarises this commitment to the human voice, the attunement to others and the difficult listening that can result in a more compassionate and more textured journalism as follows:

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Flaubert called himself a human pen; I would say that I am a human ear. When I walk down the street and catch words, phrases, and exclamations, I always think – how many novels disappear without a trace! Disappear into darkness. We haven’t been able to capture the conversational side of human life for literature. We don’t appreciate it, we aren’t surprised or delighted by it. But it fascinates me, and has made me its captive. I love how humans talk … I love the lone human voice. It is my greatest love and passion. (Alexievich 2015) It is through becoming an ear in this way that journalists can give voice to citizens, and that media can deepen democracy in a more unified and holistic way than is the case currently in our bificurcated public sphere.

Conclusion In our consideration of the category of citizenship within South African democracy and the relationship it has with the news media and journalists, we have had to take very seriously that to think of all three of these terms (citizenship, democracy and media) as static entities with already existing definitions only serves to feed an agenda which finds all three categories wanting in the present circumstances because they do not conform to ideal, liberal conceptions of how democracies should work. Instead, if we use the three notions we have unpacked above (acts of citizenship, whos instead of whats, and listening) we find that possibilities are opened up for seeing that the struggles of the poor and marginalised hold great potential for co-creation of a new political community, an active citizenry, a responsive media and an inclusive democracy. It requires that politicians, elites, fellow citizens and those in the media recognise the demands and struggles of the poor and marginalised as valid and important, and as constitutive of the democracy we want. This does entail a powerful reorientation towards listening, attunement and paying attention.

Notes 1

Marinovich G, The murder fields of Marikana. Daily Maverick, 30 August 2012. Accessed August 2016, http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-08-30-the-murder-fields-ofmarikana-the-cold-murder-fields-of-marikana#.V8WM9fl96Um

2

Tolsi N & Botes P, The blame game: A Marikana special report. Mail & Guardian, 25 June 2015. Accessed August 2016, http://mg.co.za/article/2015-06-25-the-blame-game-a-marikana-special-report

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References Alexander P, Sinwell L, Lekgowa T, Mmope B & Xezwi B (2012) Marikana: A view from the mountain and a case to answer. Jacana: Auckland Park Alexievich S (2013) Chernobyl prayer. London: Penguin Alexievich S (2015) Nobel lecture: On the battle lost. Accessed September 2016, https://www. nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2015/alexievich-lecture_en.html Arendt H (1998/1958) The human condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Bickford S (1996) The dissonance of democracy: Listening, conflict and citizenship. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press Bickford S (2011) Emotion talk and political judgment. Journal of Politics 73(4): 1025–1037 Brown J (2015) South Africa’s insurgent citizens: On dissent and the possibility of politics. London: Zed Books Comaroff J & Comaroff J (2003) Reflections on liberalism, policulturalism, and ID-ology: Citizenship and difference in South Africa. Social Identities 9(4): 445–473 Couldry N (2010) Why voice matters: Culture and politics after neoliberalism. London: Sage Publications Dobson A (2014) Listening for democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press Dreher T (2009) Listening across difference: Media and multiculturalism beyond the politics of voice. Continuum 23(4): 445–458 Heller P (2009) Democratic deepening in India and South Africa. Journal of Asian and African Studies 44(1): 123–149 Isin EF & Nielsen GM (2008) Introduction. In EF Isin & GM Nielsen (Eds) Acts of citizenship. London: Zed Books Lacey K (2013) Listening publics. Cambridge: Polity Press Lipari L (2014) Listening, thinking, being: Toward an ethics of attunement. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press Mamdani M (1996) Citizen and subject: Contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press Mamdani M (2001) Beyond settler and native as political identities: Overcoming the political legacy of colonialism. Comparative Studies in Society and History 43(4): 651–­664 Marinovich G (2016) Murder at Small Koppie: The real story of the Marikana massacre. Cape Town: Penguin Random House Nkambule SJ (2012) Citizenship a tool of social inclusion and exclusion in post-apartheid South Africa. Journal of Community Positive Practices 2: 170–184 Robins S, Cornwall A & Von Lieres B (2008) Rethinking ‘citizenship’ in the postcolony. Third World Quarterly 29(6): 1069–1086 Wasserman H (2015) Marikana and the media: Acts of citizenship and a faith in democracy-tocome. Social Dynamics 41(2): 375–386 Wasserman H & Garman A (2014) The meanings of citizenship: Media use and democracy in South Africa. Social Dynamics 40(2): 392–407

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2 Listening: A normative approach to transform media and democracy Tanja Dreher

From #BlackLivesMatter to #RhodesMustFall, from #SOSBlakAustralia to #Luister, protest movements that challenge systemic racism and seek to decolonise institutions are being amplified in social media. Despite their diverse aims and different locations, these movements all claim greater attention for voices that have been historically marginalised – including remote Indigenous communities threatened with forced closure in Western Australia (#SOSBlakAustralia), African American communities subjected to police violence in the USA (#BlackLivesMatter) and students demanding decolonisation of their universities in post-apartheid South Africa (#RhodesMustFall and #Luister). In countries that declare themselves to be ‘reconciled’ or ‘post-race’, these movements draw attention to ongoing marginalisation structured by categories of ‘race’, ethnicity and Indigeneity. A key demand of these movements is summed up in the hashtag #Luister, meaning ‘listen’ in Afikaans. #Luister is the title of a documentary on experiences of racism at Stellenbosch University that has sparked widespread debate in South Africa. At the heart of contemporary movements for justice in a globalising world profoundly shaped by colonial legacies, then, is an injunction to listen. I reflect on these calls to listen while living and working on Dharawal land, just south of Sydney, Australia. This might seem an unlikely location to consider political listening as a crucial contribution to debates on media, marginalisation, citizenship and participation in South Africa. Yet there are good reasons why scholars and practitioners in Australia and South Africa are increasingly developing valuable connections on these themes. Both South Africa and Australia include former British colonies in the southern hemisphere, are members of the Commonwealth and have strong cultural and sporting ties – not least through the prominence of British colonial legacies in rugby and cricket. Both are medium-sized countries with strong mining economies. Both are settler colonies – multicultural former colonies where the settlers have not gone home. As settler colonies, both Australia and South Africa are shaped by ongoing and significant questions of race,

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identity, justice, land and reconciliation. Both are also shaped by highly charged politics of immigration. Histories of institutionalised racism in Australia and South Africa are intertwined. South Africa’s apartheid system was modelled on Australian precedent – Queensland’s Aboriginal Protection Act (1897). South Africa has long figured in Australian media and political debate, particularly during the years of anti-apartheid activism and sanctions. The 1971 South Africa rugby union tour of Australia saw widespread significant protests and violent police responses. Seven hundred arrests were made and the Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Peterson declared a month-long state of emergency to enable draconian police powers. Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu are just two of the prominent South Africans who have demonstrated support for Indigenous justice and land rights during visits to Australia and in public comments on Australian politics. Given this context, there is much to be learned at the intersection of ‘southern knowledges’ developed in Australia and South Africa (Connell 2007). Both countries have recently undergone official processes of ‘reconciliation’ with a strong emphasis on the politics of listening – whether listening to testimony, listening to an official apology, or listening for untold histories. The limitations as well as the potential of these projects of official listening are becoming increasingly apparent. In these ‘post-reconciliation’ settler colonial contexts, scholarship and activism have developed concepts and practices of listening that might contribute to a transformative politics. This includes working with concepts beyond the Western tradition, including Ubuntu and Dadirri, discussed below. Interrogating the complicities of whiteness in Australia and South Africa further prompts an alternative to a liberal world view and model of democracy (Nyamnjoh 2005). This chapter introduces the key arguments of an emerging turn to listening in political theory, media and cultural studies. The turn to listening is productive in those contexts that more commonly focus on ‘voice’ or speaking, and in projects for transforming social relations of privilege and marginalisation. This emergent focus has implications for research and practice on the key themes that animate this book – media, democracy, citizenship and marginalisation. Listening is gaining ground as an intervention or a corrective particularly in political theory and in feminist theorising including postcolonial or intersectional approaches. There is a growing literature on media and democracy that highlights listening as a key intervention for the legitimacy crisis of neoliberal democracies. Feminists have long debated speaking positions and the politics of representation as a way of grappling with difference and diversity. Within this feminist tradition, listening emerges as a way of responding to calls to theorise giving up power and shifting inequalities and unearned privileges.

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In this chapter I present a brief overview of the growing relevance of ‘listening’ in media research and practice, indicating the key arguments and contributions, and highlighting perspectives from South Africa and Australia. The chapter comprises three sections. The first section outlines the ways in which attention to listening shifts conventional thinking on democracy and journalism, the second section focuses on media and listening in contexts of racialised inequalities and entrenched privilege such as South Africa and Australia, and the final section argues for listening as a contribution to ‘Southern Theory’ which develops a transformative agenda on media, democracy and marginalisation in contrast to the colonial logic of liberal inclusion.

Media, democracy and listening In recent years there have been resounding calls to bring listening to the forefront of attention in research and practice on media (Burgess 2006; Couldry 2009; Husband 2009; Lacey 2013; Penman 2012) and democracy (Couldry 2010; Dobson 2014). Kate Lacey argues that, while listening is often ‘overlooked’, it is in fact central to public life: Listening is at the heart of what it means to be in the world, to be active, to be political. Thinking in this way about listening as a political action in and of itself is strangely counter-intuitive. Listening tends to be taken for granted, a natural mode of reception that is more passive than active, but listening is, I would argue, a critical category that ought to be right at the heart of any consideration of public life. (Lacey 2013: 163) Western political theory has conventionally focused on ‘voice’ or ‘speaking’ as the key metaphor for democratic participation, citizenship and agency (Bickford 1996; Dobson 2014). In her path-breaking work, Susan Bickford (1996) traces the focus on voice back to Aristotle and argues for greater attention to the practices, politics and ethics of ‘listening’ to address the limitations of an over-emphasis on voice. To begin an overview of the emerging interest in listening as a key political practice for media and democracy, it is useful to clarify what political listening is not. Political listening as theorised by Bickford, Dobson and others is not primarily or even necessarily an auditory practice. Rather, ‘listening’ in the context of politics is a powerful metaphor and refers to a set of practices, just as the term ‘voice’ is used as a political metaphor and refers to a range of practices that are not reducible to speech. Just as ‘having a voice’ and ‘giving voice to the voiceless’ are conventional democratic values, ‘political listening’ turns our attention to the workings of citizenship, democracy and participation. Furthermore, ‘listening’ is

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not to be understood as passivity, absence or lack (of speaking), but rather as an active engagement and a form of agency. Here feminist theorising has been highly influential, as Bickford, Lacey and others reject the gendered binary, which positions listening as passive and feminine, compared to speaking conventionally assumed to be active and masculine. Just as the concept of political listening challenges the under-valuing of listening practices in much political and media theory, listening as a political practice is also distinguished from therapeutic modes of listening which we might find in the caring professions such as psychology or social work (Bickford 1996; Dobson 2014). As we shall see, listening as a democratic practice is often a difficult and unsettling practice aimed at social and political transformation rather than simply individual well-being. Political listening then is understood not as auditory practice, nor as a therapeutic activity (Lloyd 2009), but rather as an ensemble of practices which are as necessary for democratic communication as ‘voice’ or speaking. The key characteristics of political listening have been outlined by Bickford (1996) and further developed more recently (Coles 2004; Dobson 2014; Dreher 2009b; Lacey 2013; O’Donnell et al. 2009; Thill 2009). Bickford introduces openness, receptivity, attention, engagement, duration, continuation and recognition as key practices for political listening. Raymond Coles (2004) describes listening as ‘horizontal receptivity’ and ‘receptive engagement’. According to Coles, political listening ‘is less a singular capacity than a complex art that must be developed in a variety of different kinds of relationships’ involving ‘flexibility, curiosity, patience and a little vulnerability’ (2004: 685). These key characteristics can be loosely grouped under the categories of receptivity, recognition and response, and are underpinned by the values of dissonance and shifting responsibility. Receptivity is a vital component of political listening as the ‘other side’ of voice. Voices that are not heard or recognised cannot fully achieve the promise of ‘voice’ as democratic participation. Indeed, Lacey (2013) contends that the absence of listening operates as a form of censorship, comparable to restrictions on the ability to speak (see also Coleman 2013; Dobson 2014; Dryzek 2000). Nick Couldry (2010) argues for ‘voice that matters’ or political listening against a narrow conception of ‘mere voice’. Couldry argues that contemporary democracies exhibit a ‘recognition crisis’ when, ‘a system that provides formal voice for its citizens but fails so markedly to listen exhibits a crisis of political voice’ (2010: 101). While ‘voice’ proliferates, there is insufficient attention paid to voice, such that voice does not matter. Jo Tacchi finds a similar challenge in communication for development, where ‘voicing may be encouraged, it may not be heard’ (2009: 170). The turn to listening is intended as a corrective to the over-emphasis on voice in media and political theory, but not as a rejection of voice all together. Picking up on Dryzek’s argument that refusing to listen is an effective means of shutting

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down voice, Andrew Dobson argues ‘that democracy’s promise will only be fulfilled when the right to speak and the right to be heard are regarded as two sides of the same coin, when it is understood that one is incomplete without the other, and when this understanding is embedded in institutional practice’ (2014: 61). Lacey (2013) contends that attention to listening enables us to truly engage with the dynamics of communication rather than merely speech. In contrast to what Kate Crawford (2009) points out is a libertarian version of democracy firmly rooted in a politics of expression, Justine Lloyd (2009) argues that the listening alternative shifts focus to a politics of impression. While the concept of ‘voice’ connects neatly with an understanding of participation as taking part in media production, the concept of ‘listening’ more effectively brings interlocutors in democratic communication and decision-making into analysis. Listening here connects with the emerging literature which seeks more robust definitions and analysis of ‘participation’ in the age of digital media (Carpentier 2011), as ‘listening’ brings in to focus the ‘other side’ of participation (Waller et al. 2015). The receptivity characteristic of political listening requires the possibility of persuasion or change (Bickford 1996; Dreher 2009b) or ‘a form of radical openness’ (Lacey 2013: 8). This openness to the possibility of persuasion – described by Coles (2004) as ‘a little vulnerability’ – is crucial, as it involves a relinquishing of mastery and control. Receptive openness and vulnerability is not to be confused with passivity or absence. Dobson argues that silence should be a preparation for communication rather than a refusal of it (2014: 62). He quotes Oscar Wilde: ‘It is a very dangerous thing to listen. If one listens one may be convinced; and a man who allows himself to be convinced by an argument is a thoroughly unreasonable person’ (in Dobson 2014: 110) to underscore the risk involved in political listening (2014: 188) – the risk that one might be challenged, unsettled and might change one’s mind. The possibility of persuasion connects the concept of political listening to recent theorisations of recognition as a framework for social justice (Fraser & Honneth 2003). Analysing the Australian government’s responses to Indigenous voice in policymaking, Cate Thill (2009) argues that ‘courageous’ political listening can ensure the outcome of recognition, creating possibilities for negotiation and for developing collaborative responses to stories and the issues and claims they raise (Gibson 2009; Thill 2009). Most importantly, the valuing of stories as legitimate and worthy of attention is a crucial form of recognition (Fraser & Honneth 2003) and central to social wellbeing and political participation (Couldry 2010). Dobson (2014) and Dreher (2009b) draw on Fraser’s distinction between affirmative and transformative forms of recognition to argue for the importance of transformative recognition, which ‘restructures categories and identities themselves’, rather than affirmative recognition ‘on the basis of already existing categories and identities’

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(Dobson 2014: 14). The vulnerability and openness to persuasion in political listening can enable recognition, where the outcome of recognition does not simply include the other within the understanding of the self, but rather transforms the self and the relationship between self and other. Coles (2004), Dobson (2014) and Lacey (2013) agree that listening is both an end in itself and a means to an end – as political listening is vital to the development of a democratic sensibility. Here we come to the key characteristics of response and continuations (Bickford 1996) as vital to political listening. In Susan Bickford’s path-breaking formulation, political listening aims not primarily at consensus, but rather at continuation, or listening ‘in a way so that future action is possible, so that the field of freedom is maintained or expanded’ (1996: 170). Political listening thus emerges as a corrective to libertarian celebrations of free speech as an endpoint. Instead, a focus on listening as well as speech prompts attention to ‘what comes after listening?’ (O’Donnell et al. 2009: 437), an interest in listening processes (Dobson 2014) and on the quality of continuing relationships between speakers and listeners. Bickford’s emphasis on continuations rather than consensus brings us to the value of dissonance, as highlighted in the title The Dissonance of Democracy (1996). Bickford’s account of political listening, widely taken up by others (Coles 2004; Couldry 2009; Dobson 2014; Dreher 2009b; Thill 2009; Wasserman 2013), is an agonistic account, which emphasises citizenship rather than community, unsettling rather than empathy, and dissonance rather than forced agreement. Political listening is motivated not by friendship nor aiming at consensus, but is rather a difficult and courageous practice (Bickford 1996; Thill 2009). Political listening can be uncomfortable and unsettling. For Dobson, it is a dialogic approach to dealing with disagreements that aims at greater understanding rather than consensus (2014: 12). It is a practice and a politics that does not seek to overcome difference, but rather seeks a shared responsibility to maintain connection and engagement, in order to build more just futures in the context of entrenched inequalities. Against the many celebratory claims of increased opportunities for voice, speaking up and sharing stories in the age of digital media, the turn to listening is particularly important. Jean Burgess (2006) sums up the challenge: ‘The question that we ask about “democratic” media participation can no longer be limited to “who gets to speak”?’. We must also ask “who is heard, and to what end”? New media technologies including digital storytelling, blogs, social media and citizen journalism undoubtedly enable an increase in the range and diversity of voice available online. Yet there is little evidence that the proliferation of voices in and of itself ensures that a greater range of voices are actually heard. Indeed, Stephen Coleman (2013) argues ‘the challenge of digital hearing’ is one of the most pressing concerns facing contemporary democracies:

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While contemporary democracies are noisier and more talkative than they used to be, with billions of messages and conversations buzzing around the Internet everyday, the chances of them being heard by the people they aim to address are slim … The internet is a space of many voices, but how many of them are being heard? (Coleman 2013: online) If increased attention to political listening can provoke a rethinking of democracy, a turn to journalism and listening may also be productive in rethinking journalism as a vital democratic institution. Wasserman (2013) suggests an ‘ethics of listening’ as an alternative normative framework for South African media, while O’Donnell (2009) argues that listening is the ‘anchoring practice’ for change across a range of contemporary journalism practices in Australia and beyond. Analysing a local journalism initiative in the Netherlands, Costera Meijer (2013) finds that ‘violating the producer-audience boundary’ by listening to ordinary people created trust, and the sense of being given a hearing addressed some of the hurt produced by conventional news reporting. In each of these analyses there is a shift of emphasis away from the conventional focus on journalism’s ‘watchdog’ role and on to the ethics and practices that can catalyse political listening. Where Wasserman and Costera Meijer focus on journalists as listeners, O’Donnell highlights the potential for journalism to ‘help … people to listen and to hear unfamiliar voices, break silences, and establish meaningful dialogue across difference and disparity’ (2009: 503). Three examples of innovative media practices are found to be anchored in new approaches to listening: a multi-faith discussion of the Pope’s Sydney visit developed as a ‘purposive listening space’ at the national multicultural broadcaster; the GetUp! online campaign organisation in Australia which seeks to hear dissent and entrap political leaders into listening; and the bridge-blogging project Global Voices which seeks to generate intercultural dialogue with strangers. While much recent media research and practice celebrates the democratising potential of digital media technologies and practices such as citizen journalism, O’Donnell argues that purposive listening aimed at getting a proper hearing for new voices, breaking silences, and establishing meaningful intercultural dialogue with strangers requires hard work to shift journalism and media practices at both practical and conceptual levels (2009: 514). Achieving a proper hearing for marginalised or dissenting voices turns out to be difficult and demanding work, and editorial vision, communicative expertise and financial resources are identified as ‘decisive factors in enabling “everyday people” to speak, listen and be heard in the media’ (2009: 504). Reflecting on post-apartheid South Africa as a new democracy, Wasserman argues that listening offers an appropriate ethical value ‘where social polarisations continue to impact media narratives and agendas, and in a society where continued economic inequalities provide certain parts of the citizenry with disproportionate

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power to make themselves heard in the public sphere’ (2013: 77). A journalism ethics of listening is a radical project, shifting the orientation of journalists ‘from gatekeepers to gate openers’ and from detachment to proactive amplification of unheard voices and facilitating politics ‘from the ground up’ (2013: 80). The key challenge for journalism is not simply to monitor the activities of elites, but also to ‘learn to listen across different lines that continue to keep South Africans apart – journalists would have to learn to listen to the stories of those on the other side of the railway line, the breadline, the picket line, the barbed wire fence’ (2013: 80). This emphasis on listening across difference connects an interest in listening and democracy with the emerging focus on listening in research and practice on media, racism and marginalisation in settler colonial societies such as South Africa and Australia.

Media, marginalisation and privilege While an increased focus on ‘listening’ provokes a rethinking of democracy, researchers have also engaged with the long-running debates on speaking positions in intersectional feminisms and with critical race and whiteness studies (Bickford 1996; Ratcliffe 2005; Vice 2010), to highlight listening as a contribution to more just futures in contexts of conflict and entrenched inequality shaped by legacies of colonialism, including South Africa (Vice 2010). In research and practice aiming at media change, the emphasis has historically been on the politics of voice or speaking up and representation. Listening shifts the focus from access and voice for oppressed or marginalised voices to the listening practices and responsibilities of the relatively more privileged and powerful. Crucially, the arguments shift focus on media responsibilities from ‘giving voice to the voiceless’ to the much more unsettling task of cultivating difficult listening. The emphasis is on conflict, difference and a transformative politics of recognition (Dreher 2009b) rather than liberal tolerance or inclusion. The turn to listening is significant as it shifts some of the focus and responsibility for just or democratic outcomes from marginalised voices and on to the conventions, institutions and practices that shape who and what can be heard in media (Dreher 2009a). Coles (2004) and Dobson (2014) describe this as ‘turning the tables’ and shifting power, while Dobson (2014) and Lacey (2013) argue for ‘listening out’ for unheard voices and for otherness: an ethical obligation to listen out for otherness, for opinions that challenge and clash with one’s own, for voices that take one out of one’s comfort zone (Lacey 2013: 195). For Dobson, listening out produces rather than overcomes or resolves difference, so that ‘the success of dialogical democracy will be determined by the degree to which it brings previously

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unheralded voices into the political arena’ (2014: 128). A politics of listening brings difference into dialogue, as opposed to strategies such as ‘colour-blind discourse’ which silence marginalised voices and avoid the responsibility to listen. The focus on listening obligations emerges most forcefully in analyses of media, multiculturalism, difference and globalisation. Roger Silverstone (2007) posits an obligation to hospitality or listening as a foundation of the ‘mediapolis’ in a world increasingly shaped by globalisation and the mediatiation of difference. In the context of global media flows, widespread conflict and increasing inequalities, Silverstone’s central concern is with the ethics of responding to distant suffering (Chouliaraki 2006) and the mediated presence of the Other. Silverstone argues that media justice must consist of freedom of speech, but also ‘an obligation to listen and to hear’ (2007: 136). The argument rests on an obligation as opposed to a rights based model, in which ‘principal among the obligations proposed is that to ensure that the mediated other will be listened to and heard’ (2007: 24). Drawing on Derrida’s highly influential work on hospitality, Silverstone argues for an unconditional hospitality (2007: 142) understood not as tolerance or patronage, but rather as dangerous and risky (2007: 139–140). The requirement that the stranger should be heard is ‘required to make freedoms to communicate meaningful, sustainable and to make a difference’ (2007: 137). Charles Husband (1996, 2000) has made a similar argument, advocating for a ‘Right to be Understood’ to complement communication rights in a ‘multi-ethnic public sphere’. According to Husband, the right to be understood confers upon all an obligation to actively seek to comprehend the Other, and operates as a corrective to the ‘egocentrism’ of free speech traditions. Drawing on Husband’s work, John Downing (2007) argues that constructive cultural change depends on developing ‘a sense of obligation to listen’ to voices that have historically been marginalised in public communication and media. My own interest in the politics of listening emerges from more than ten years of working with ‘speaking up’ projects developed by Arab and Muslim communities in Australia during the war on terror. Reflecting on these projects, I found that the dilemmas confronting Muslims in the Australian media are not simply questions of speaking – there is no shortage of articulate spokespeople and commentators – but more importantly the difficulties of being heard … Community media interventions remind us that speaking up does not guarantee being heard, but rather depends on ‘being granted an audience’ … To focus on listening poses the question of change in terms of learning new ways for the centre to hear rather than simply requiring the marginalized to speak up. (Dreher 2010: 99)

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The emphasis on shifting responsibility is informed by, and has resonated in, critical disability studies (Goggin 2009; Thill 2009, 2015), intersectional feminisms, and critical race and whiteness studies (Dreher 2009a; Ratcliffe 2005). In each of these interconnected scholarly projects, there is an interest in shifting analysis from those who are ‘othered’ or marginalised to focus attention on entrenched patterns of power and privilege. Privilege is understood as the ‘other side’ of marginalisation, and the task is to bring the operations of privilege and power into the centre of analysis. In a chapter focused on critical race feminism, Susan Bickford shifts attention and responsibility from marginalised voices and on to privileged listeners: Just as speakers must reflect on how to speak (and what to say), listeners must be self-conscious about how they listen (and what they hear). Taking responsibility for listening, as an active and creative process, might serve to undermine certain hierarchies of language and voice. If feminist theorists are right that ‘silence and silencing begins with the dominating enforcement of linguistic conventions’ (Alarcon 1990: 363) – that is, if oppression happens partly through not hearing certain kinds of expressions from certain kinds of people – then perhaps the reverse is true as well: a particular kind of listening can serve to break up linguistic conventions and create a public realm where a plurality of voices, faces, and languages can be heard and seen and spoken. (Bickford 1996: 129) The decentring of privileged interests and voices is crucial in opening up a space for political listening. Writing within rhetoric and composition studies, Krista Ratcliffe focuses on the importance of avoiding a guilt/blame logic in listening (2005: 3) and argues for ‘standing under’ rather than understanding, as ‘standing under the discourses of others and rhetorically listening to them have the potential to transpose a desire for mastery into a self-conscious desire for receptivity’ (2005: 29). This conception of listening is underpinned by a ‘logic of accountability’, suggesting ‘an ethical imperative that, regardless of who is responsible for a current situation, asks us to recognize our privileges and non-privileges and then act accordingly’ (Ratcliffe 2005: 31–32).

Southern contributions The emerging scholarship that theorises listening as a politics and practice which can serve to shift responsibilities and to denaturalise privilege can contribute to the wider projects of prioritising Southern Theory (Connell 2007), ‘de-westernising media studies’ (Park & Curran 2000) or ‘decolonising’ knowledges and practice

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on media and democracy (Ward & Wasserman 2010). Across a wide range of disciplines and scholarly networks, interventions have been developed with the aim of challenging hierarchies in global knowledge production (Villanova 2015). Shifting these entrenched hierarchies requires greater attention to knowledges developed in the Global South, which in turn requires a critique or decentring of Northern or metropolitan knowledges (Connell 2007). The concept and the practices of political listening sketched above offer productive resources for these transformative projects for decolonising scholarship. In an argument that holds for many disciplines, including media studies, Raewyn Connell’s call for ‘Southern Theory’ begins with an analysis of the geopolitical assumptions of most general social theory. Four key features of ‘Northern Theory’ are identified – the claim of universality, reading from the centre, gestures of exclusion, and grand erasure (Connell 2007: 44–47). Northern Theory thus claims universal applicability for knowledges that include the non-metropolitan world as a source of data, but not ideas or theory, and where ‘the effect is erasure of the experience of the majority of human kind from the foundations of social thought’ (2007: 46). Scholarship of the South, including Australia and South Africa, must seek legitimacy in the dominant journals, institutions and associations of North America and Western Europe. In response, Connell offers a challenge: ‘can we have social theory that does not claim universality for a metropolitan point of view, does not read from only one direction, does not exclude the experience and social thought of most of humanity, and is not constructed on terra nullius?’ (2007: 46). The aim to prioritise Southern knowledges underpins the development of ‘experimental’ projects such as the Johannesburg Salon (Allen & Mbembe 2014) and the related Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism. For the Johannesburg Salon, the objective is ‘to enable a negotiation of global trends and ideas from a base in the South’ in order to ‘shift, if even only slightly, the nature of global scholarly debates and public conversations that are currently dominated by the perspectives of the North and West’. Inspired by scholars and activists in South America, Juan Salazar (2015) advocates ‘Buen Vivir’ as a transformative concept with strong connections to related ‘transition discourses’ such as Eco-Ubuntu in South Africa and Ecological Swaraj in India. Buen Vivir refers to practices and politics of collective well-being which are in development across South America, and enshrined in the constitutions of Ecuador and Bolivia. It is described as ‘foremost a decolonial stance … a new ethics that balances quality of life, democratization of the state and concern with biocentric ideals’ (Salazar 2015). For Salazar, the key challenge is listening:

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In Latin America, proponents of Buen Vivir are ready to influence global debates on sustainable development by fuelling ideals that other worlds/ futures are indeed possible. They are hopeful and waiting to see when, for once, the North might listen respectfully to peoples of the South. (Salazar 2015) Thus a focus on listening as a contribution to decolonising or Southern knowledges is significant not only for the potential to develop analyses and normative conceptions, which are appropriate to ‘local’ conditions or the South, but just as importantly to develop arguments and practices which can contribute to the wider process of decentring and transforming entrenched hierarchies – in no small part by developing concepts that impact and decentre metropoles. In another response to the challenge of knowledge production in a globalising world shaped by colonialism, Les Back (2009) advocates the development of ‘global attentiveness’ through a politics and practices of listening. Back further argues that this ‘necessitates re-thinking the near at hand as well as the elsewhere’. The argument begins with Spivak’s famous question, ‘can the subaltern speak?’ and reminds us that the dilemma is not a lack of voice on the part of the colonised, but rather that oppressed peoples are either spoken for, or heard only on the terms recognisable to the colonisers. Global attentiveness instead would seek to admit the subaltern, the overlooked past, to allow the ‘out of place’, a sense of belonging. This is not some quick or blithe or romantic ‘one world’ ethos in which the wretched are listened to and heard. Returning to Spivak’s provocative intervention I am suggesting something much more difficult and disruptive. For ‘difference to make a difference’ to the way the sociological ear is trained. A form of global attentiveness that challenges the sociological listener’s preconceptions and position while at the same time it engages critically with the content of what is being said and heard. (Back 2009: para. 1.12) I argue that the call for listening as a component for decolonising projects which prioritise Southern knowledges takes on a particular resonance and a specific character in settler colonial societies such as South Africa and Australia. Despite the very many differences between these two contexts, there are commonalities which foreground the potential and pitfalls of political listening. As settler colonial societies, both Australia and South Africa are deeply ambivalent contexts for decolonising politics, as the colonisers have not gone home. Indeed, institutions, ideas and Northern Theory brought with colonialism remain deeply entrenched. Both South Africa and Australia have also been through official reconciliation processes, now widely understood as incomplete projects. Public listening has

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been a key component of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in postapartheid South Africa, and the National Apology to the Stolen Generations provided the culmination to the decade-long programme of reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Dobson sees committees of truth and reconciliation as examples of ‘the way in which listening can be a ‘solvent’ of power’: ‘when the previously powerful are forced to listen to the previously powerless. There is evidence to suggest that this turning of the tables is experienced as power by those who have been systematically marginalised and excluded (2014: 8). The broader field of restorative justice, Dobson argues, ‘suggests that listening plays a key role in rebalancing power relations’ (2014: 22). Writing in 2017, the limitations as well as the significance of official reconciliation processes and the related politics of listening in South Africa and Australia are increasingly evident. Megan Davis (2016) argues that reconciliation in the Australian context has avoided grappling with truth and justice, and has not involved listening to Indigenous Australian demands for land rights and Treaty: ‘Truth and justice is not what the colonizer wants, or what the colonizer can convince an elite leadership into compromising on, it is also about listening to what it is that the community is saying.’ Many of the authors in this book approach South Africa as a country in which inequalities persist and democracy is not yet fully realised (Wasserman 2015), a setting in which ‘the continuation of existing unequal relationships to government persists even when new democratic spaces have opened up’ (Wasserman & Garman 2014: 392). In both South Africa and Australia we find that official politics of listening and reconciliation can leave behind entrenched inequalities and hierarchies shaped by race – prompting deeper thinking about the crucial role of ‘continuations’ to any politics of listening (Bickford 1996), the vital task of transformative recognition and the importance of connecting listening to material concerns of redistribution. In the ‘post-reconciliation’ settler colonial contexts of South Africa and Australia, scholarship and activism have developed concepts and practices of listening that can contribute to research and practice aiming at media justice in a globalising world shaped by colonial legacies. When Charles Husband developed an argument for the ‘Right to be Understood’ (2000) discussed above, he deliberately drew on the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights rather than the individualistic tradition of European Human Rights thinking implicit in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The African Charter, according to Husband, is informed by the value of solidarity with others, as outlined by Mbaye (1986). One of the founders of the Johannesburg Salon, Achille Mbembe, argues for a politics and ethics of mutuality connected closely to the concept of ubuntu (Allen & Mbembe 2014). Wasserman highlights the resonance of the interdependent view

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of speaking and political listening with the underlying principle of Ubuntu: ‘I am because you are’, or, to rephrase, ‘you can tell your story because I am listening to it’ (2013: 78). Mbembe (2013)1 posits three key attributes of the cultural history of Africa that can be conceptually deemed creative: multiplicity, circulation and composition. In this view from the South, the focus is on multiplicity, mobility and movement as resources for social development. The argument that everything is compositional resonates with the concept of ubuntu as meaning the process of becoming a person, a certain proposition, not about identity as a metaphysical or ontological category as in the Western tradition, but as a process of becoming as a relation; a relation in which the ‘I’, meaning the subject, is understood as being made and remade through the ethical interaction with what or who is not him. (Mbembe 2013) These ideas and practices have implications for theories of democracy, human rights and the rights of other species in times of ecological crisis. In Australia, West et al. (2012) explore dadirri – inner, deep listening and quiet still awareness as understood by the Ngangikurungkurr people of Daly River in the Northern Territory – as a crucial component of research processes that can be owned and honoured by Indigenous people in Australia. Dadirri encompasses a complex process of principles and practices, including the value of community, taking time, trust, and reflexivity. Reflexivity is vital here, because ‘Dadirri means listening to and observing the self as well as, and in relationship with, others’ (Atkinson 2002: 19). Dadirri and Indigenous research principles also underpin Waller’s proposals for improved practices in news reporting of Indigenous Australians in mainstream media (2010, 2012, 2013). The emphasis on reflexivity in dadirri is a reminder that a Southern Theory or decolonising approach to knowledge production requires not only increased visibility, recognition and influence for views from the South, but also, crucially, a critique of taken-for-granted metropolitan knowledges and a decentring of privileged knowers. Here again, a focus on listening can be productive. Reflecting on his experiences in a Johannesburg Workshop on Theory and Practice, Sides (2014) writes of the centrality of listening in the work of Frantz Fanon and also in contemporary politics: ‘The politics and the pleasures of listening, the intimacies and the animosities of aurally apprehending an Other need to be accounted for in our approaches to a project of racial critique’. Samantha Vice develops a social philosophical account of her responsibilities as a white South African in a context of unearned privilege and advantage, ‘planted on one continent but brought up on the cultural influences and narratives of another’ (Vice 2010: 331). Vice argues for a politics of humility and silence in which silence is active. It involves actively listening to and engaging with non-white voices and quiet restraint in remaining

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silent in the political realm, reducing one’s presence to avoid ‘managing others’ (2010: 335–337). Similar concerns are at the forefront of my own attempts to theorise and practice a politics of ‘eavesdropping with permission’ (Dreher 2009a) as a privileged white woman working in Australian academia and attempting from time to time to work in decolonising ways with Indigenous colleagues and communities. I draw on Krista Ratcliffe’s (2005) feminist re-reading of ‘eavesdropping’ to analyse the potential of listening in to Indigenous media. Ratcliffe asks: What if we position ourselves so that these authoritative voices are not addressing us directly? … In other words, eavesdropping is a tactic for listening to the discourses of others, for hearing over the edges of our own knowing, for thinking what is commonly unthinkable within our own logics. (2005: 105) Koori Radio 93.7FM, ‘Sydney’s only Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander full-time community radio station’ (Gadigal online), offers the opportunity for non-Indigenous people to ‘listen in’ on media which is primarily addressed to an Indigenous audience. The station prioritises the needs, interests and perspectives of Indigenous audiences, while non-Indigenous listeners are welcome. The production process is not necessarily determined by the assumed presence of non-Indigenous eavesdroppers. As I have discussed elsewhere, this form of eavesdropping contributes to spaces that enable marginalised voices to speak and serve to shift or decentre listening privilege (Dreher 2009b). Returning to the themes of media, democracy and marginalisation central to this book, political listening offers an alternative framework to the liberal world view and model of democracy which is increasingly seen as inadequate for African contexts (Nyamnjoh 2005), including in South Africa (Wasserman 2006). An engagement with postcolonial theory involves ‘opening up to alternative forms of knowledge and the “unlearning” of a privileged position of knowledge’ (Wasserman 2006: 83), so that South African concerns at the limits of liberal democratic theories of media can speak to the rest of the world – including other former colonies of the West as well as the former metropolitan centres (2006: 74). In contrast to the monitorial role of media in classical liberal theory, a relational ethics of listening can provide a foundation for a global media ethics that seeks to undo the historical dominance of Euro-American frameworks (Ward & Wasserman 2010). Grounded in a commitment to Southern Theory, ‘a global media ethics grounded in listening will be conscious of this historical marginalisation of the South when it comes to theory-building’ (Ward & Wasserman 2015: 6) and would actively seek out lesser heard voices. Reflecting on reporting of the 2012 Marikana massacre, Wasserman argues for a fundamental shift from assumptions about journalists as ‘gatekeepers’

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by turning journalists into ‘gate openers’ (2015: 7). Where mainstream media in South Africa privileged official sources and often framed the striking miners via colonial tropes of irrational violence, Wasserman calls for ‘the media to adopt a stance of listening that would recognise such emotional-volitional acts as legitimate contributions to political discourse, and the actors in these events as worthy of being listened to’ (2015: 10). This shift requires both listening to marginalised voices, and unlearning the media conventions which ensure that certain voices and ‘acts of citizenship’ cannot be heard.

Conclusion: The listening challenge I began this chapter with reference to the #BlackLivesMatter, #SOSBlakAustralia and #RhodesMustFall movements. I suggested that despite the many differences and specificities, each can be understood to include an injunction to listen to historically marginalised voices and to transform institutions. Resonances between these movements can also be found, connecting southern perspectives and decolonising demands – not least by highlighting the complex interconnections across the Global South and the Global North, metropoles and peripheries. For example, #RhodesMustFall has inspired Rhodes Must Fall in Oxford, a student campaign calling on the university to decolonise the campus and curriculum.2 Both #SOSBlakAustralia and #RhodesMustFall connect with the #BlackLivesMatter movement via social media and through high-profile support such as that from US Civil Rights leader and public intellectual Cornel West. Taken together, these social-media enabled movements demonstrate the vital role of political listening, as well as political speech, for democracy and justice in a globalising world shaped by conflicts, inequality and difference. While the ‘hashtag activism’ of these movements has had considerable achievements, the continuing campaigns are also a reminder that the politics of listening is far from easy, in fact it is necessarily difficult and unsettling. In the case of #SOSBlakAustralia, the movement has been successful in mobilising large-scale protests, yet organisers remain disappointed that the mainstream media has largely ignored the reasons behind the movement, and decision-makers have not opened up further negotiations with Indigenous communities threatened with closure (Clarke 2015). While the social media environment offers increased opportunities for marginalised voices to speak up, the scholarship on political listening discussed here turns our attention to the ways in which the relatively more privileged and powerful do, or do not, pay attention and respond. The listening challenge, then – in South Africa, Australia and beyond – entails not merely opportunities for voice, but

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also shifts in the hierarchies of value and the power relationships which determine who and what can be heard.

Note 1

Mbembe A (2013) Africa and the Future: An Interview with Achille Mbembe. Africa is a Country available online at http://africasacountry.com/2013/11/africa-and-the-future-aninterview-with-achille-mbembe/

2

Rhoden-Paul A, Oxford Uni must decolonise its campus and curriculum, say students. The Guardian, 18 June 2015. Accessed December 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/ education/2015/jun/18/oxford-unimust-decolonise-its-campus-and-curriculum-say-students

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Davis M (2016) Listening but not hearing: When process trumps substance. Griffith Review 51: 73–87 Dobson A (2014) Listening for democracy: Recognition, representation, reconciliation. Oxford: Oxford University Press Downing J (2007) Grassroots media: Establishing priorities for the years ahead. Global Media Journal (Australian Edition) 1(1): 1–16 Dreher T (2009a) Eavesdropping with permission: The politics of listening for safer speaking spaces. Borderlands E-journal 8(1): 1–21 Dreher T (2009b) Listening across difference: Media and multiculturalism beyond the politics of voice. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 23(4): 445–458 Dreher T (2010) Speaking up or being heard? Community media interventions and the politics of listening. Media, Culture and Society 32(1): 1–19 Dryzek J (2000) Deliberative democracy and beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press Fraser N & Honneth A (2003) Redistribution or recognition? A political-philosophical exchange. London: Verso Gibson M N (2009) Noel Pearson and the ‘cultural left’: Between listening and deaf opposition. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 23(4): 465–476 Goggin G (2009) Disability and the ethics of listening. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 23(4): 489–502 Husband C (1996) The right to be understood: Conceiving the multi-ethnic public sphere. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Sciences 9(2): 205–215 Husband C (2000) Recognising diversity and developing skills: The proper role of transcultural communication. European Journal of Social Work 3(3): 225–234 Husband C (2009) Between listening and understanding. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 23(4): 441–443 Lacey K (2013) Listening publics: The politics and experience of listening in the media age. Cambridge: Polity Press Lloyd J (2009) The listening cure. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 23(4): 477–487 Mbaye K (1986) Introduction to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), Human and peoples’ rights in Africa and the African Charter. Geneva: ICJ Nyamnjoh F B (2005) Africa’s media, democracy and the politics of belonging. London and New York: Zed Books O’Donnell P (2009) Journalism, change and listening practices. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 23(4): 503–517 O’Donnell P, Lloyd J & Dreher T (2009) Listening, pathbuilding and continuations: A research agenda for the analysis of listening. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 23(4): 423–439 Park M J & Curran J (2000) De-Westernizing media studies. Psychology Press London: Routledge Penman R (2012) On taking communication seriously. Australian Journal of Communication 39(3): 41–63 Ratcliffe K (2005) Rhetorical listening: Identification, gender, whiteness. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press

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Salazar J (2015) Buen Vivir: South America’s rethinking of the future we want. The Conversation, 24 July. Accessed December 2015, https://theconversation.com/buenvivir-south-americas-rethinking-of-the-future-we-want-44507 Sides K B (2014) The Ethics of Listening and Empathy’s Movements. The Salon 8: 30–33. Accessed September 2015, http://jwtc.org.za/resources/docs/salon-volume-8/3_Vol8FINAL.pdf Silverstone R (2013) Media and morality: On the rise of the mediapolis. Cambridge: Polity Press Tacchi Jo A (2009) Finding a voice: Digital storytelling as participatory development in Southeast Asia. In J Hartley & K McWilliam (Eds) Story circle: Digital storytelling around the world. Wiley-Blackwell. Milton, QLD P 163–175 Tacchi J (2012) Open content creation: The issues of voice and the challenges of listening. New Media & Society 14(4): 652–668 Thill C (2009) Courageous listening, responsibility for the other and the Northern Territory Intervention. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 23(4): 537–548 Thill C (2015) Listening for policy change: How the voices of disabled people shaped Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme. Disability & Society 30(1): 15–28 Vice S (2010) How do I live in this strange place? Journal of Social Philosophy 41(3): 323–342 Villanova (2015) About the Conference WFI Symposium 2015. Communication, Postcoloniality and Social Justice: Decolonising Imaginations. Accessed October 2015, http://wfi2015. vucommdept.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/wfi-2015-symposium-program.pdf Waller L (2010) Indigenous research ethics: New modes of information gathering and storytelling in journalism. Australian Journalism Review 32(2): 19–27 Waller L (2013) It comes with the territory: Remote Indigenous reporting for mainstream Australia Australian Journalism Monographs 14: 5–38 Waller L, Dreher T & McCallum K (2015) The listening key: Unlocking the democratic potential of Indigenous participatory media. Media International Australia 154(1): 57–66 Waller L J (2012) Bilingual education and the language of news. Australian journal of linguistics 32(4): 459–472 Ward S J & Wasserman H (2010) Towards an open ethics: Implications of new media platforms for global ethics discourse. Journal of Mass Media Ethics 25(4): 275–292 Ward S J & Wasserman H (2015) Open Ethics: Towards a global media ethics of listening. Journalism Studies 16(6): 834–849 Wasserman H (2006) Globalized values and postcolonial responses: South African perspectives on normative media ethics. International Communication Gazette 68(1): 71–91 Wasserman H (2013) Journalism in a new democracy: The ethics of listening. Communicatio 39(1): 67–84 Wasserman H (2015) Marikana and the media: Acts of citizenship and a faith in democracyto-come. Social Dynamics 41(2): 375–386 Wasserman H & Garman A (2014) The meanings of citizenship: Media use and democracy in South Africa. Social Dynamics 40(2): 392–407 West R, Stewart L, Foster K & Usher K (2012) Through a critical lens: Indigenist research and the Dadirri method. Qualitative Health Research 22(11): 1582–1590

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3 Democracy and political participation: The ambivalence of the Web Peter Dahlgren

When the internet emerged in the mid-1990s as a mass phenomenon, debates were triggered almost immediately as to what role we could expect this communication technology to play for democracy. The internet evolved into Web 2.0 and social media emerged as important elements of the public sphere; political participation via the Web has thus become a central feature in the life of democracy. Today, two decades after the advent of the internet, the extent to which and ways in which the Web facilitates political participation among citizens continues to be researched and debated. (I signal here at the outset that for ease of exposition I use the term ‘the Web’ in a very broad way, to refer to today’s ensemble of platforms that we use in our daily lives, especially social media, and including ancillary technologies such as mobile telephony). Enthusiasts laud the democratic potential of social media (e.g. Castells 2010, 2012; Jenkins et al. 2013), while sceptics underscore the limitations of these media in furthering participation (e.g. Couldry 2014; Fuchs 2014; Hindman 2009). The deployment of digital media for anti-democratic measures is also strongly asserted by some authors (notably Morozov 2011). Others split the difference, underscoring how different circumstances can have varying impact in this regard (Gerbaudo 2012; Lievrouw 2011; Loader & Mercea 2012; Van Djick 2013). Clearly we should not anticipate any simple, universal answer on this issue, not least because society, politics and the Web are always in flux and vary greatly between different settings. The affordances of the Web permit not only a wide array of civic practices, but also allow people to appropriate the technologies for ever new purposes and strategies, including political ones. We would be foolish to dismiss the unprecedented possibilities for democratic (as well as undemocratic) intervention these communication technologies offer for civic involvement in the political arena. Yet we should proceed with caution; certainly we must avoid all the glib optimism, especially the kind founded on techno-determinist thinking that ignores social and cultural contexts of Web use. My own position is comprised of a bit of enthusiasm, a

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strong dose of scepticism, as well as a sociological sensibility that suggests we must indeed contextualise any analysis and take into account the specific circumstances of Web use. In this chapter I want to add nuance to our understanding of the Web’s potential and limitations for civic participation by weaving together, in an essayistic manner, some overarching conceptual elements with some basic empirical patterns. In order to contextualise this discussion, I begin with a few short reflections around two basic concepts, democracy and participation. From there I turn to two key contingencies of the Web that impact on participation, namely its political economy and technical architecture. Thereafter I address some of the emerging socio-cultural patterns that have come to define the way citizens use the Web politically. I conclude by pulling together the main points and advocating a critical stance anchored in a contextual understanding of the Web and its political uses.

Democracy and participation: Conceptual contestations Situating democracy First of all, it is important to underscore that democracy is complex and contested. There are not only a range of differing political systems in the world that claim to be democratic, but also, and more pertinent to our purposes here, within political philosophy, there are different ideal models (see Held 2006 for an overview). Without going through an entire inventory, we can simply note a decided polarity between two basic ways of looking at democracy, each with its own view of civic participation – though it is probably more useful to think of the distinction as a continuum, rather than as an either-or choice. On the one hand we have what is sometimes called elite democracy; its proponents take the view that the system works best via a rotation of various elite groups who come to power through elections, and where most citizens, aside from voting, do not engage themselves beyond elections. Alternatively there are various versions of republican models (see, for example, Barber 1984; Dewey 1923; Mouffe 2005) that emphasise the ideal that citizens should engage themselves politically as much as possible, and not just at election time. It is argued that such engagement is good not only for the vitality of democracy, but also for the individual citizen, since it offers potential for personal growth and development. In this perspective democratic involvement is understood as comprising not just an electoral system, but much larger societal domains. The adjective ‘democratic’ is as something that should describe a society more generally, not just its formal attributes; democratic processes are seen as a part of an ongoing daily reality. The distinction between elitist and republican models manifests itself also to the actual character of participation. Elite models highlight citizens’ needs for information, news, commentary and debate, in order to make (rational) voting

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decisions. Republican models concur but also demand more multi-dimensional modes of participation, opportunities where citizens can interact, develop a sense of common interests, sharpen their opinions, and engage in an array of activities that may impact on decision-making. We see, in other words, a distinction in the ideal of the citizenship itself: reactive, restricted, vs. proactive, robust. These are of course generalised and abstract conceptions, yet they inform, on a subtle and often unconscious way, the manner in which different kinds of power holders as well as citizens act. As a further context for the discussion at hand, in the past 25 years or so, there has been a growing international concern about democracy’s difficulties; indeed, the situation is often referred to as a crisis. This crisis is a complex as democracy itself, but we can note that with political, economic and social crises intensifying on many fronts, discontent is rising within established liberal democracies as well as newer democracies such as South Africa. Citizens often perceive that elected officials and traditional parties are unresponsive, self-serving, incompetent, or simply corrupt. Feelings of powerlessness abound among citizens, often coupled with a growing cynicism, where trust becomes eroded (Hay 2007). Many citizens, even well-informed ones, deem that there are no meaningful ports of entry into the political life (Couldry et al. 2010); formal democracies manifest various informal mechanisms of exclusion. On many fronts one observes how corporate interests shape the political domain; real societal power glides away from accountable democratic institutions into the hands of the private corporate and financial sectors in a pattern often labelled as ‘neoliberalism’ (Harvey 2006; Streeck 2014). In these developments, even societal norms central for democracy become eroded (Sandel 2012), as economistic logic penetrates into all areas of social life. Parallel with these challenges, however, we witness a growth in what we can loosely call alternative politics that in various ways bypasses the electoral system (Rosanvallon (2008) uses the term counter-democracy). Here political engagement lies outside of party structures; activist networks, social movements, NGOs and other forms of collective agency struggle to link the political more closely to personal meaning, identity processes, and issues that often have to do with cultural matters (see, for example, Bennett & Segerberg 2013). These transformations have served not least to focus attention specifically on the nature of civic participation and its circumstances (a concern that is still very much with us; see Schachter & Yang 2012). In the realm of alternative politics we must also include the growth of versions of neo-populist parties and groups; while sometimes of a left-wing character (e.g. Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece), most today, especially in Europe, are on the extreme right wing. Thus, if we note a general global decline in participation in traditional party politics over the past couple of decades, there is a growth in extra-parliamentarian politics as well as an emergence of new,

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active parties, all boosting political participation – but not necessarily always in democratic directions.

Participation, power relations and civic identities The notion of participation derives from several different fields in the social sciences, and thus remains somewhat fluid, not least within media and communication studies (see Carpentier 2011 for an extensive treatment). A starting point for grasping the core of the concept of participation is found in the notion of the political. This refers to the ever-present potential for collective antagonisms and conflicts of interest in all social relations and settings (see Mouffe 2013). This is a broader notion than that of politics, which most often refers to the more formalised institutional contexts. Thus, we can say that participation means involvement with the political, regardless of the character or scope of the context. It therefore always in some way involves struggle. Certainly some instances of the political will be a part of electoral politics and involve decision-making and/or elections, but it is imperative that we keep in view this broader vista of the political as the terrain of political agency and participation. Also, we need to distinguish, in media contexts, participation from simple access or mere interaction; these are necessary but not sufficient for genuine participation, as Carpentier (2011) adamantly insists. Participation is thus always a confrontation of some sort with power arrangements, and therefore is always pre-conditioned by such parameters. We should recall in reference to power arrangements that they refer not only to such obvious manifestations as the state’s military and police, or the corporate sector, but also cultural and discursive forms, i.e. control or influence over symbolic environments. Moreover – and very importantly – power involves ‘power over’, in the form of coercion, constraint or influence, but also ‘power to’ (enabling). Thus, participation in itself is an expression of some degree of (enabled) power. In my own work (Dahlgren 2009) I have followed a version of this logic in looking at how the media may contribute to – or hinder civic practices. My basic supposition is that for people to participate politically, to engage in civic spaces, they must be able to see engagement as both possible and meaningful. In other words, people need some kind of an empowering civic identity. While every actor is a unique individual, such identities of course need a collective anchoring to be effective. Yet such identities cannot flourish in a vacuum; they need to be nourished by what I call civic cultures. Civic cultures are a way of answering, analytically and empirically, the question of what facilitates or hinders people from acting as political agents, from engaging with the political. If we insert the Web into this framework, we would want to highlight how it interfaces with everyday life, how the particular citizens in question use it for political purposes, what the political means for them, the power relations in which they find themselves, and so forth. Civic cultures

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serve as taken-for-granted resources that people can draw upon, while citizens in turn also contribute to the civic cultures development via their practices – i.e. their political uses of the internet. Further, civic cultures are comprised of a number of distinct dimensions that interact with each other – supporting (or eroding) civic identities. Participatory practices constitute one such dimension; others include suitable knowledge about the political world and one’s place in it, democratic values to guide one’s actions, and appropriate levels of trust. A minimal level of ‘horizontal’ trust, that is, between citizens, is necessary for the emergence of the social bonds of cooperation between those who collectively engage in politics; there is an irreducible social ’ dimension to doing politics. These dimensions could be elucidated in regard to specific affordances and usages of the Web, in concrete situations. Clarifying how these dimensions operate configurationally with each other – or not – in specific contexts enhances our understanding of the Web as a resource for civic cultures and identities. Moreover, civic cultures require communicative spaces where such agency can take place, and today the Web is clearly such a space, despite some issues that I take up below. Thus, to participate, people must be able to take on a civic self, to see themselves as actors who can make meaningful interventions in relevant political issues; civic cultures are needed to support this, and the Web is a central feature in this regard. However, those with ‘power over’ civic cultures can do much to weaken and block them; the fate of these cultural resources can therefore often become political contestation in themselves (e.g. access to knowledge, conflicting values). Without the anchoring, without access to the resources of civic cultures, citizens’ involvement with the political becomes deflected, indeed, depoliticised, especially in regard to economic issues (see Straume 2011), and participation is eroded. Of course, in the real world of democracies, we are mostly dealing with situations of more-orless and uneven forms of civic cultures rather than their total absence. Even under authoritarian regimes one can at times find repressed and submerged traces of such civic cultures – which can serve to nourish resistance, as we have seen in a number of cases in recent history. In sum, the point here is that political participation never begins with a tabula rasa; it is always conditioned by existing circumstances that have major socio-cultural elements. The availability of, and access to, such resources – often embedded in the media – has to do with power. Participation can be made more inclusive or more exclusive via measures from power elite that impact on civic cultures – and such measures can in turn be contested via civic practices.

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Contingencies of Web-based participation Political economy and ‘business models’ Into this turbulent situation for democracy, the emergence of the Web has had great significance. (It has of course also been a relevant factor in opposition to authoritarian regimes – not least the communicative dynamics of the Arab Spring illustrate this – but this lies beyond our present discussion.) Yet the Web is shaped by a variety of contingencies; chief among them are its political economy and its technical architecture. Political economy addresses questions of ownership, control, and the relations of power that derive from these factors. In a sense political economy signals the first important things to know about the Web: it is not a neutral communicative space, but is thoroughly structured by power relations. In the mediated online digital world, ownership of major corporate entities is globally more concentrated than it ever was in the era of mass media communication (Fuchs 2011). A few large corporate actors such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook and YouTube dominate the Web environment; all are commercial enterprises (only wikis are significant non-commercial actors in this regard). This raises many issues of power, from the often slave-like working conditions of those who produce the hardware to the social engineering via Web usage (for current research on such themes, see Franklin 2013; Fuller & Goffey 2012; McChesney 2013; Wilkie 2011). From the standpoint of users, the role of Google, for example, in shaping how the Web functions can hardly be exaggerated. This company has become the largest holder of information in world history, structuring not only how we search for information, but also what information is available, and how we organise, store and use it. As we probably can guess, the overwhelming majority of all searches done on the Web go via Google. All this does not deny its truly impressive accomplishments; rather, the issue centres on the position it has attained, and the activities it pursues in relation to the ideals of democracy and accountability. Thus, for instance, with its search logic built on personal profiling – the filtering of results to ‘fit your known locality, interests, obsessions, fetishes, and points of view’ (Vaidhyanathan 2011: 183) – the answers that any two people will receive based on the same search words may well differ significantly. This can erode the notion of public knowledge: members of insular groups may well get their biases reinforced instead of challenged by this filtering process (Pariser 2011). In the long run this can potentially undermine the democratic culture of debate between differing points of view. Further, Google (like many major Web actors) engages in surveillance and privacy intrusion of citizens in the gathering, analysis and sale of consumer-related data while at the same time

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denying transparency with regard to, for example, its PageRank algorithm and Google Scholar search process. While we cooperate de facto with Google in providing personal information, with Facebook we are very active in feeding such data into the system (Van Dijck 2013). We should be cautious. With Facebook social networks, the spillover from private to public can easily happen, resulting in embarrassment, entanglements, loss of employment and/or defamation. Data theft is also relatively easy and has been accomplished a number of times; hackers today are very clever, whether they are motivated by amusement, a political cause or simple nastiness. Digital storage systems are simply not fail-safe, as witnessed when hackers today have even entered high-security military databases. As with Google, the data gathered is for commercial purposes (Dwyer 2010; Turow 2011), but again changing social contexts can generate new uses and meanings of personal information. Much of this marketing is channelled through social media. We are decidedly not in the drivers’ seat here, but rather at the receiving end of carefully planned corporate strategies. This selling of personal information is done with our formal consent; yet, if we refuse, we effectively cut ourselves off from the Web. As Goldberg (2010) suggests, all participation on the Web, even the most radical political kind, feeds data into the commercial system that is its infrastructure. The more people spend time online, the more the economic power of the social media is enhanced (Fuchs 2014). And as we now well know, there is also systematic state surveillance (which I discuss below). What is ultimately required, as MacKinnon (2012) argues, is a global policy that can push regulation of the Web such that it will be treated like a democratic, digital commons; we have a long way to go.

Technical architecture and levels of control The technical architecture of the Web and social media is, of course, immensely complex; my key point here, however, is quite basic: at whatever level we look at, we find points of control – points where various actors/stakeholders are in a position to filter, edit, block or exclude what should be the democratic flow of communication for both individuals and social networks. Building in the work of several other researchers, Losey (2014) develops a simple model of five levels of technical architecture, each of which can be used as a locus of control. These five levels are: the overall technical network, the specific device being used, their concrete applications, the actual content being transferred or blocked, and social data (which include users’ location, histories of their Web usage, applications use, contact histories and so forth). He presents a number of cases to illustrate his points. For example, Syria was cut off from the global Web in late 2012; this was done by the state-owned

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telecommunications operator Syria Communication. In the spring of 2014 the Turkish government closed down YouTube and Twitter. This was done by blocking the Domain Name System Protocol (DNS protocol), a protocol that facilitates Web browsing by translating long numerical internet addresses into text-style Web addresses. Simply cutting off this mechanism engenders the blackout. In terms of devices, they can be constructed and/or programmed for general and extensive – or more restricted – compatibility with network systems, applications and other devices. Thus, the reach and the capacity for interconnection of, say, smart phones and tablets, can be designed in different ways. As we become more dependent upon the increasing ‘Internet of things’ (Bunz 2014), with the links between all sorts of devices in our kitchens, cars, on our bodies, in remote offices, and so on, the capacity to predefine and delimit connection ability between devices (models, brands, etc.) becomes a position of power. Applications such as spy programmes and malware can gather information surreptitiously and/or wreak havoc on their victims. Ever more destructive for democracy is the now well-known government surveillance carried out on a global scale by the US National Security Agency, but also replicated on a smaller scale by other governments. Since this scandal became globally known in June 2013 following the Edward Snowden revelations, we understand that there is in essence no safe haven left for privacy on the Web: all political activity (and much else) is accessible to government security agencies. Being aware of these structural contingencies is essential; however, I would not conclude that, given the corporate domination and governmental violations of privacy, the Web has become useless as civic media to be used for democratic purposes. They can be, and are, continuously being appropriated for such uses, despite the anti-democratic activities of various stakeholders.

Problematic Web use Communication and the post-deliberative Web environment The Web is used for many things in our daily lives, but politics usually comes very far down on the list; moreover, merely the fact of having access to the Web is usually not sufficient to turn a person into an active citizen. On the other hand, for those with some minimal degree of motivation, entry into the political arena can often be found easily via the Web. Indeed, the political can even at times make itself felt unexpectedly via the Web, for example, as an issue sails up in the course of a social conversation on Facebook. Yet, if the Web is largely an environment where politics is a minority activity, there is still a good deal of politics on the Web, with an ideological spectrum much larger than in the traditional mainstream media. For those who are motivated, it is easy to access politics online. And when they do participate,

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they enter an environment that is immensely heterogeneous, yet where participation nonetheless tends to follow some basic socio-cultural patterns. The Web is a part of the larger media culture, where political life is evolving ever more away from the tradition of linear, textual communication towards multi-media forms. The affordances of the Web tend to promote a mélange of visual, auditory and textual expression, with high tempo and transitory character. How to evaluate these developments is often a contentious question; for example, Keen (2015) is pessimistic about the Web’s impact on our personal lives and on society, while Carr (2010) and Harris (2014) argue that the communicative logics of the Web are undermining our capacity to think, read and remember. While such perspectives clearly have merit, they are not the whole story, and we must also assert that the Web offers massive gains in knowledge and experience as well. Still, we cannot ignore that there is a historical shift taking place in the character of the public sphere, and that this requires that we rethink some of our assumptions about democracy and participation. Partly what is at stake here is the classic notion of rationality, which has been central to liberal political as well as the Habermasian tradition. Multimedia communicative modes at great velocity and short duration are seen as undercutting rational/critical thought – and ushering us all the more into affective modes. Political culture of course does not only operate at the level of formal ideas, but is also embodied in many forms of affective expression; this has been the case since the dawn of civilisation. However, observers note that the contemporary media landscape is strongly solidifying this development. From popular culture to journalism, from street humour to self-help therapies, political thought is being framed in new, affective ways; this holds true for alternative democratic initiatives as well. Political clashes do not manifest themselves only as coherent political statements, but can be implied in televised satire (e.g. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart), manifested in the performance of rap lyrics, in social critique embedded in detective fiction, or evoked via expressions of solidarity and care for marginalised groups, and so on. Thus, while the coherent articulation of ideas still remains central to political life, political sentiments and participation are increasingly embodied affectively, by various modes of cultural expression, and the multimedia character of the Web and its social media are seen as further enhancing this. Media culture overall seems to be moving ever further away from the ideals of the traditional deliberative public sphere and its rational character in the face of the frenetic late modern mix of seemingly infinite images, sound and text. It is against this historical backdrop that we have to understand contemporary Web-based political participation. The interplay between the affordances of communication technologies and the practices by which people use them for their own purposes becomes a central dynamic of

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the Web environment and impacts on political culture more broadly, in both its mainstream and alternative variants. In this interface, people ‘construct new meanings and expressions out of existing and novel forms of interaction, social and institutional relationships, and cultural works’ (Lievrouw 2011: 216). Such practices in turn result in new political subjectivities, and the progressive evolution of civic cultures themselves; new practices become established as resources that future participation can draw upon. Alternative politics generally is based more on personal, subjective meaning and identity rather than on grand ideological abstractions, and this is often seen as a positive development. Yet the shift towards an excessively subjectivist, affective engagement, lacking in sufficient analytic foundations, is not an attractive vision for a democratic future. There have for many years been debates about popularisation and tabloidisation, the mixing of the political and the popular, and more recently about the ‘dumbing down’ of citizens (see Dahlgren 2009). Even the seeming infinite character of Web information raises issues for how we experience and use the Web, and there are pitfalls here. Of course each of us has his or her own areas of interest, networks and sites that we follow, and thereby wall off most of what is ‘out there’ as not relevant to our purposes. We all develop personal strategies for navigating the daily tsunami of information, or ‘infoglut’, as Andrejevic (2013) calls it. Yet, as he argues, even as we zero in on just those topics that interest us, we are often still confronted by a vast output, and moreover, in the realms of society, culture and politics, there are many different perspectives, premises and conclusions. And even while we tend to adhere to the groupings whose world views we share, doubt can set in. And the consequences are on the individual, group and societal levels. Cognitive certainty is dislodged by informational abundance; moreover, as citizens become all the more ‘media hip’ and understand the constructed character of mediated representation, suspicion of sources grows. So, to avoid such dissonance, we ignore those whom we mistrust the most, yet become anxious about what we might be missing. Climates of popular debunking emerge, coloured by cynicism. We see affective leaps – structures of feeling – where ‘truthiness’, the semblance of the real – can take on validity among politically motivated users. Coupled with weak sense of efficacy, it is easy for citizens’ assumptions to be psychologically stronger than their perceptions of reality. Affect can lead people to find emotionally satisfying short-cuts to deal with the massive amounts of information and their at times overall ambivalence. This becomes debilitating for the individual, as it fosters cognitive closure of groups and erodes the character of public discussion. The question ultimately perhaps becomes one of whether emerging postdeliberative political cultures and the abundance of information, coupled with

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strong affective dimensions among users, must necessarily be tied to a destructive irrationality. For the sake of democracy, we must hope that this is not the case.

The ‘solo sphere’: Seductions of a comfort zone Returning for a moment to our concept of participation, we can make a conceptual distinction between two forms: ‘instrumental’ and ‘expressive’. This is a dichotomy that emerged within traditional political science in studying the motivation of voters (see, for example, Brennan & Lomasky 1984). With instrumental politics, citizens are seen as seen as interested in actual political outcomes and their consequences, while with expressive politics, the benefit is seen as residing in the act itself. That is, there is no anticipation or demand that the act will have consequences beyond the satisfaction it affords the citizen; it ‘feels good’, it ‘gets something off one’s chest’, and so on. Expressive participation can well be important for the long-term processes of building collective identities, mobilising opinion around issues, and so forth. While this dichotomy has become somewhat problematic – e.g. it can be argued that the formation of public opinion builds to a great extent on the expression of views, which in the long run is intended to have some political impact – the distinction remains a useful heuristic device. Basically, to express something is usually a lot easier to enact than effective, instrumental interventions into the political realm. Much of the literature on political participation and the Web ignores this distinction, with the result that expressive participation often takes on a position of equal significance to that of the instrumental mode, downplaying concern with the actual efficacy of the participation. Marichal (2013) examined 250 politically oriented Facebook groups and found that very few of them encouraged any further action in any way. One would certainly define these posts as manifesting engagement and constituting participation, but it was largely in the expressive mode, not instrumental. Marichal (2013) rightly argues that this form of participation should not be dismissed or denigrated; it plays an important role in shaping identities and anchoring politics in a meaningful way within everyday life. At the same time, I would argue that from the standpoint of efficacy, such online participation is quite weak. While expressive discursive modes may help build up political potential and a sense of empowerment, if the steps required for instrumental participation are systematically avoided, the confrontation with power relations – the ‘bottom line’ of participation – remains largely unfulfilled. To add a dimension to this theme of deflected efficacy, commentators of political uses of the Web have coined such terms as ‘cocoons’ and ‘echo chambers’ to signify the tendency for people to group themselves into networks of likemindedness. This is of course an understandable social pattern, but for democracy there is a danger: such cosy social environments tend to isolate its members from

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larger discursive flows within political society. Moreover, they also serve to reduce their participants’ experiences with confronting alternative points of view, as well as their competence in engaging in argument. As a consequence, the dialogic quality of the public sphere erodes, as political groups exchange invectives with each other, and all too often never quite engage in genuine discussion. This pattern of withdrawing to enclaves of like-mindedness is enhanced with social media, most notably Facebook, where the definitive logic is precisely ‘to like’: you ‘click’ on people that you ‘like’, and often they are very much ‘like’ yourself. Differences tend to get filtered out (and the risks of narcissism loom large). A related socio-cultural pattern which further undercuts political efficacy is found in transposing certain patterns of interaction from the private to the public sphere. Various forms of personalised visibility, including self-promotion and self-revelation, are typical of social media interaction. When (especially younger) citizens do turn to politics, such patterns of digital social interaction tend to carry over into the political. Papacharissi (2010) argues that while digitally enabled citizens may be skilled and reflexive in many ways, they are also generally removed from political cultures and habits of the past. This can readily become a privatised habitus, strongly shaped by a consumerist stance. The often very loose or non-existent bonds with other active citizens serve to generate a cosy comfort zone, a private ‘solo sphere’ (Dahlgren 2013) characterised by ‘slacktivism’ and ‘clicktivism’, yielding situations where actors feel that engaging with the political remains a free-choice option among other leisure pursuits. Expressive and communicative participation is easy, no doubt at times even ‘fun’, while instrumental participation, effective politics, requires a lot more ‘work’. Effler (2010) cites several authors to make the point that live interactive participation – including rituals – is emotionally energising and can generate and strengthen collective identity. The ‘weak bonds’ of networks are an integral part of participatory politics, but stronger ones are also necessary for effective political activity. Gladwell1 also observes that Facebook does not generate the kind of strong bonds required for social movements. The experience of dealing with other citizens face-to-face in meetings, sharing the work of organising and mobilising, laughing together at the humour of some political expression, talking about what happened to them during the march, consoling each other after defeats – all such experience strengthens the bonds between activists and generates something which is absolutely essential for efficacious political agency, namely solidarity. Nurturing and expanding solidarity, engaging in effective politics, requires more than clicking on the ‘Like’ button.

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Growing anti-democratic use Finally, we must note one last trend of Web usage that is profoundly antidemocratic. As the internet became diffused through large populations in the mid-1990s, negative aspects of how people used it quickly became visible. From ‘cyberbullying’ as a phenomenon that concerned schools and parents of young people, to ‘flaming’ and the ‘uncivil’ modes of political discourse in discussion groups, to ‘hate speech’ directed at minorities and individuals. The surveillance mentioned above soon proved to be not just something restricted to authoritarian regimes aiming to quash dissent, but rather a strategy used by the US and all democratic regimes as well. The negative climates have been compounded by the harassment of public figures even within democracies, such as journalists, opinion leaders and public officials. The most vicious modes are directed at women, with threats of sexual violence, death, and even threats to their children – with the result that even in relatively placid Sweden, a number of women in the public sphere have admitted to self-censorship and avoid ‘inflammatory’ topics such as gender equality and immigration. Some have even withdrawn from public contexts because of the trauma of such harassment.

Conclusions: Modest steps beyond ambivalence Pulling together the threads The Web has been contributing to the massive transformations of contemporary society at all levels for about two decades now, and it would be odd if it did not also alter the premises and infrastructure of political life. In making available vast amounts of information, fostering decentralisation and diversity, facilitating interactivity and individual communication, while providing seemingly limitless communicative space for whoever wants it, at speeds that are instantaneous, it is redefining the practices and character of political participation. Also, while politics remains a minor Web usage, the vast universe of the Web and its various (and everevolving) technologies make it easy for the political to emerge in online settings, especially within the new alternative politics that is on the rise. There are thus grounds for optimistic views about the Web’s significance for political participation, and there is a good deal of research which supports this view, some of which I have mentioned above. At the same time, as also noted, other voices are cautionary: once we enter into complex socio-cultural realities, the role of the Web becomes more equivocal. Clearly it is not a question of coming to some simple resolution, a neat, all-purpose truth about the Web as a civic resource and space. Rather, the challenge is to think critically and realistically about it in concrete circumstances.

Democracy and political participation

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In the discussion above I have emphasised that democracy is a multivalent and contested term, prescribing various forms of citizenship and participation. Aligning myself with a republican model, I argue that the Web can and has facilitated civic participation, both within and beyond party systems. Indeed, the notion of ‘politics’ and ‘participation’ are undergoing transformation, and clearly the Web is playing an important role in this regard, as citizens involve themselves in democratic (as well as, alas, anti-democratic) politics. I have also proposed a conception of participation that is robust: genuine participation engages with power relations and enters into the political; it is not just a question of having access or a general exercise in interactivity. At a time when democracy globally finds itself in a tumultuous period, manifesting progress as well as roll-backs, such a demanding view is, in my view, important as a conceptual defence of democracy. As a communicative space, the Web is structured by its political economy and its technological architecture; these structure power relations that embed any participation on the part of a citizen. They cannot be ignored; they condition the empowerment attainable for citizens, though they need not per se a priori block participation. The new online public spheres where citizens are active are characterised by multimedia communication, considerable affective behaviour, and communicative modes that are often ‘post-deliberative’. These developments comprise both new, positive possibilities as well as pitfalls. It is much less demanding to engage in expressive rather than instrumental politics; moreover, the solo sphere of privatised political connection can readily become a consumerist comfort zone, with citizens spending less and less time in developing strong bonds in face-to-face settings – and thereby often avoiding the hard work and the long-term involvement required for effective political work. And not least, going online politically is a form of risk-taking in that one may expose oneself to forms of harassment, hate and threats. Thus, the Web is an ambivalent mixture of possibilities delimited by sets of contingencies, and these are operative in different ways in different contexts: obviously the very different societal circumstances and political cultures of South Africa, and say, Sweden, should make us reticent about making sweeping generalisations. The socio-cultural patterns of use also suggest that there are easy ways of participating that may not always be the most effective in regard to attaining political goals.

Dynamic civic cultures and the Web Thus there are many factors that can impact on participation via the Web. So where does this leave us? While there are still grounds for being enthusiastic about the Web’s capacity for facilitating participation, and even stronger ones for being cautious, it is the emphasis on analysing concrete situations – examining the details of any given situation – that will provide us with the most understanding

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for purposes of activism, research, or both. It is the way we can take at least a few concrete steps beyond ambivalence. Here I would loop back to my discussion above on empowered civic identities and the dimensions of civic cultures that can sustain them. This analytic framework offers a guide for empirical analysis of Web use and the forms of participation made possible in any given context. We would of course begin with the context itself: analyses of actual and potential participation via the Web must also include the political issues at stake, their history, the actors and their interests, and configuration of power relations that frame the situation. Further, as part of the context, the discursive character of relevant Web environments could by charted: are there, for example, clearly hegemonic discourses, are counterhegemonic ones mobilised, or is the situation very mixed and discordant – for example, concerning economic inequality, dealing with austerity, vocalising the rights of minorities? From there we would turn concretely to the patterns of Web use – the forms of participation and pertinent aspects of the Web’s discursive environment. Here the civic cultures framework could be deployed. Thus, we would examine the kinds of knowledge that are available, or missing; who has access to them, which forms are legitimate and which forms are contested? For example, how might the knowledge of ‘experts’ stand in relation to citizens’ lived experience? Next, which values are in circulation, and which are given priority? Does ‘equality’ or ‘justice’ have as strong a position as, say, ‘private ownership’ in the particular context at hand? Looking at another dimension, what is the character of trust between individual citizens and groups involved in the issues, and beyond that, how might we depict the social bonds between them? Further, might these be strengthened in any way? In looking at the spaces of civic cultures, we must always be specific: there are on- and offline spaces, and these can have various connections. On the Web, we should distinguish between specific platforms; these can have relevance for different kinds of practices. For example, an activist group may need to: a) internally discuss ideas and debate; b) develop collective identities; c) mobilise members; d) strive to reach out to new members; e) try to get mass media coverage; f) coordinate on-site during a demonstration. Facebook could well serve a) and b), Twitter may be very serviceable for c) and e), YouTube might be useful for d), and mobile phone calls and SMSs be especially useful for f). There is nothing hard and fast here, yet one should be aware of how different platforms offer divergent affordances, and how this may shape the patterns of use in specific settings. Moreover, the various platforms can be and are used in convergent ways, with relays, feeds, and sharing across the platforms (see, for example, Thorson et al. 2013). Returning to the starting point of civic identities, we would then be in a better position to understand the sense of political self being fostered, and the kinds of dispositions required to effectively deal with the political context at hand.

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This kind of mapping of dynamic dimensions of civic cultures, and the configurations between them, can provide a more rigorous and useful portrait of Web-based participation than sweeping generalisations. The actual technology itself is of course highly relevant, but it must be understood as being both socially situated and actively adapted for particular uses by certain actors – it does not operate as an independent, ahistorical force. An extended example of this kind of approach is found in Mattoni’s (2012) study of the media practices of activist workers in today’s crisis-ridden Italy; this movement in fact used such an analysis to devise its own media strategies. Like all media, the Web has a degree of ‘power over’, yet more than most media it can facilitate for citizens ‘power to’. In the modern world, the political is often manifested precisely in that forcefield.

Notes 1

Gladwell M, Small change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted. New Yorker, 4 October 2010. Accessed 27 February 2015, http://www.newyorker.com/ reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell

References Andrejevic M (2013) Infoglut: How too much information is changing the way we think and know. Abingdon: Routledge Barber B (1984) Strong democracy: Participatory politics for a new age. Berkeley: University of California Press Bennett WL & Segerberg A (2013) The logic of connective action: Digital media and the personalization of contentious politics. New York: Cambridge University Press Brennan G & Lomasky L (1984) Democracy and decision. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Bunz M (2014) The silent revolution: How digitalization transforms knowledge, work, journalism and politics without making too much noise. Basingstoke: Palgrave Pivot Carpentier N (2011) Media and participation: A site of ideological-democratic struggle. Bristol: Intellect Carr N (2010) The shallows: How the internet is changing the way we think, read and remember. London: Atlantic Books Castells M (2010) Communication power. Oxford: Oxford University Press Castells M (2012) Networks of outrage and hope: Social movements in the internet age. Cambridge: Polity Press Couldry N (2014) The myth of ‘us’: Digital networks, political change and the production of collectivity. Information, Communication & Society 18(6), doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2014.979216 Couldry N, Livingstone S & Markham T (2010) Media consumption and public engagement: Beyond the presumption of attention. Basingstoke: Palgrave Dahlgren P (2009) Media and political engagement. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

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Dahlgren P (2013) The political Web. Basingstoke: Palgrave Dewey J (1923) The public and its problems. Chicago: Swallow Press Dwyer T (2010) Net worth: Popular social networks as colossal marketing machines. In G Sussman (Ed.) Propaganda society: Promotional culture and politics in global context. New York: Peter Lang Effler ES (2010) Laughing saints and righteous heroes: Emotional rhythms in social movement groups. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Franklin MI (2013) Digital dilemmas: Power, resistance and the internet. New York: Oxford University Press Fuchs C (2011) Foundation of critical media and information studies. London: Routledge Fuchs C (2014) Social media: An introduction. London: Sage Fuller M & Goffey A (2012) Evil media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Gerbaudo P (2012) Tweets and the streets: Social media and contemporary activism. London: Pluto Press Goldberg G (2010) Rethinking the public/virtual sphere: The problem with participation. New Media and Society (13)5: 739–754 Harris M (2014) The end of absence: Reclaiming what we have lost in a world of constant connection. New York: Current/Penguin Harvey D (2006) A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press Hay C (2007) Why we hate politics. Cambridge: Polity Press Held D (2006) Models of democracy (3rd edition). Cambridge: Polity Press Hindman (2009) The myth of digital democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press Jenkins H, Ford S & Green J (2013) Spreadable media: Creating value and meaning in a networked culture. New York: New York University Press Keen A (2015) The internet is not the answer. London: Atlantic Books Lievrouw LA (2011) Alternative and activist new media. Cambridge: Polity Press Loader B & Mercea D (Eds) (2012) Social media and democracy. London: Routledge Losey J (2014) Networked entrepreneurship: How the locus of control of networked communications influences social movements. Paper presented at the Helsinki Conference on Freedom of Expression, Helsinki (8–9 May) MacKinnon R (2012) Consent of the networked: The worldwide struggle for internet freedom. New York: Basic Books Marichal J (2013) Political Facebook groups: Micro-activism and the digital front stage. First Monday (18)12, doi: 10.5210/fm.v18i12.4653. Accessed March 2015, http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4653/3800 Mattoni A (2012) Media practices and protest politics: How precarious workers mobilise. Farmingham: Ashgate Publishing McChesney RW (2013) Digital disconnect. New York: New Press Morozov E (2011) The net delusion: How not to liberate the world. London: Allen Lane Mouffe C (2005) On the political. London: Routledge Mouffe C (2013) Agonistics: Thinking the world politically. London: Verso Papacharissi Z ( 2010) A private sphere: Democracy in a digital age. Cambridge: Polity Press Pariser E (2011) The filter bubble: What the internet is hiding from you. London: Penguin Rosanvallon P (2008) Counter-democracy: Politics in an age of distrust. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

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Sandel M (2012) What money can’t buy: The moral limits of markets. London: Allen Lane Schachter HL & Yang K (Eds) (2012) The state of citizen participation in America. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing Straume I (2011) The political imaginary of global capitalism. In IS Straume & JF Humphrey (Eds) Depoliticization: The political imaginary of global capitalism. Malmö: NSU Press Streeck W (2014) Buying time: The delayed crisis of democratic capitalism. London: Verso Thorson K, Driscol K, Ekdale B, Edgerly S, Thompson LG, Schrock A, Swartz L, Vraga EK & Wells C (2013) YouTube, Twitter, and the Occupy Movement: Connecting content and circulation practices. Information, Communication & Society 16(2): 1–31 Turow J (2011) The daily you: How the new advertising industry is defining your identity and your worth. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press Vaidhyanathan S (2011) The googlization of everything: And why we should worry. Berkeley: University of California Press Van Dijck J (2013) The culture of connectivity: A critical history of social media. New York: Oxford University Press Wilkie R (2011) The digital condition: Class and culture in the information network. New York: Fordham University Press

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part 2 The media–democracy problematic

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4 Speaking power’s truth: South African media in the service of the suburbs Steven Friedman

There may be no phrase more beloved of the media and those who speak for it and about it, in South Africa as elsewhere, than ‘speaking truth to power’ – indeed, in 2013 Rhodes University’s much respected Highway Africa conference, which brings together media practitioners and academics from across the continent, chose the phrase as its theme (Highway Africa 2013). In fairness to Highway Africa, the phrase was used then in an aspirational way – to recommend what media should become.1 But it is more often a claim that this is what our media already are2 and is made most frequently when media are under real or perceived attack.3 When used this way, it expresses the dominant world view of South African media: it portrays the media as both powerless and as champions of others who share its powerlessness. The source of power in this view is the government. 4 By speaking for ‘the citizen’ to those who control the state, the media ensure that power is held to account and is a key source of democratic accountability. This tells only half the story. States do wield power and, if unchecked, may use it to prey upon citizens – before 1994 and afterwards, media here have at times challenged this form of power. But, as a previous article (Friedman 2011) argued, media see the world from the vantage point of the middle class. This is reflected in the selection of news and commentary – what is covered and who is seen as authoritative – and how events are understood and interpreted. As that article tried to show, the freedoms mainstream media defend are only those of the middle class; they are largely impervious to the experience of millions of citizens who inhabit townships and shack settlements which part of the middle class has never visited and from which another part has only fairly recently escaped. And so the truth which is spoken is only that of a fraction of society – almost invariably that which least needs the media’s protection since the middle class is both more likely to protest at infractions of freedom and less likely to experience them (Friedman 2014).

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But the analysis offered then also tells only part of the story. In this earlier formulation, ‘middle-class bias’ is a problem of perspective, a failure of vision caused by a tendency to assume that the world of the middle-class journalist is that of everyone else. This leaves unchallenged the assumption, central to the world view of most South African media, that those in the middle class on whose behalf the media speak are powerless and that the core problem is a state which has power and an undifferentiated citizenry which does not. It asserts that only some who lack power interest the media – but says nothing about the power held by those the media champion. Part of the problem may be the use of the term ‘middle class’: it is useful in conveying the difference between those who live in comfort and those who do not, but is not usually associated with the exercise of power. Two realities are obscured by this way of looking at the phenomenon. First and most important, the power of those whose perspective a media with ‘middle-class bias’ would convey. Some on whose behalf this bias speaks are indeed employees of large corporations who wield little social and economic power. But not all are. ‘Middle-class bias’ is also code for a propensity to regard the owners of large businesses (including media houses) or professional practices as powerless even though they take scores of decisions daily which affect the lives of employees and consumers, and many may have considerable influence on public decision-making. Second, it also regards as powerless editors and vice chancellors and opinion formers who shape how people think and act (Friedman 2015). And so, to the extent that the media express a ‘middle-class bias’, they may be speaking not to power but on its behalf: the media are in this case speaking on behalf of one source of power – the private variety – to another, the public sort. Given this, it may be appropriate to abandon the tag ‘middle class’ and to speak of the media as the eyes and voice of the suburbs, those areas of our cities where both the middle class (understood as better-off people who wield little power) and the holders of private power live. Analyses of this sort run the risk of lapsing into crude conspiracy theory in which rich owners and their willing minions conspire to tell the story which the economically powerful wish to be told. This may have been – and may still be – plausible in some parts of the Anglo-Saxon world where powerful media owners imprint their stamp on news organisations (Arsenault & Castells 2008). In this model, strong, egocentric, owners – William Randolph Hearst in the US, Beaverbrook and Rothermere in Britain (Cudlipp 1980; Nasaw 2000) – turned the media they owned into extensions of their personalities. Even in that environment, however, the conspiracy theory described the reality only in extreme cases. As a classic critique of the US media reminds us, control of the news agenda: ‘Is normally not accomplished by crude intervention, but by the selection of rightthinking personnel and by the editors’ and working journalists’ internalization of priorities and definitions of news-worthiness that conform to the institution’s

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policy’ (Herman & Chomsky 1978: xi). This warning against conspiratorial thinking is even more apposite in South Africa, where the commercial media are usually owned by large conglomerates, which tend to see the media outlet as one of many commercial ventures, rather than by a single family or individual determined to use the newspaper or broadcaster to place their stamp on the world. As Herman and Chomsky suggest, the issue is not that the South African media are under instructions from anyone. It is, rather, that those who make the decisions in the media tend to share a common view of the world, which is a product either of common experience (senior journalists either began life in the suburbs imbued with their world view or gravitate towards it as they win promotion) or of immersion in a set of values and assumptions which tend to creep into people’s consciousness when the norm is the suburbs and the lived experience of everyone else is an exotic reality. However it is acquired, it is what is required to achieve sufficient respect from news organisations to merit appointment to a senior position. That it is a product of shared or learned assumptions also explains why the critique offered here is not only directed at the mainstream commercial media – with some important exceptions it is shared by much of the alternative media too. Most senior media practitioners express the view of the suburbs because they are suburbanites – to live in a suburb is to ensure both privilege and power which others are denied. To a degree, journalists are not speaking for the suburbs because they are told to – they do so because they are a part of that for which they speak. And so, for much of the media, either personal or professional experience ensures that the ‘common sense’ which underpins editorial decisions is that of the suburbs in which most of the media are located and to which most of its senior journalists return after work. Clifford Geertz has pointed out that ‘common sense’ is in reality ‘an organized body of considered thought’ (Geertz 1983: 75). It is not the reality which would appear to most normal humans but something constructed and propagated (again, not by a malevolent figure but by how people located in particular places in society tend to see the world). It organises the way we see reality, portraying some views as normal and natural, and others as irrational. It is a particular view which dominates in a particular context – it could do more to misrepresent than to represent. It also says more about the world view of those whose ‘considered thought’ produces ‘common sense’ than it does about the world. And in the ‘common sense’ of much of the media, the power of the suburbs is the natural product of innate talent and thus is not power at all – that of the government is an alien intrusion by power on the natural abilities of the suburban individual or the companies that suburbanites own, a view of the world that the Canadian philosopher CB Macpherson called ‘possessive individualism’ (Macpherson 1962).

Speaking power’s truth

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If we see the issue in this way, the problem is not a media which fights power but only on behalf of some of those it dominates. It becomes a media which proclaims itself to be holding power to account while it speaks for power – almost always without being told to do this. It becomes not a partial and inadequate antidote to domination of the citizenry but a means by which some exercise power over others. And its watch over the state becomes not a means of resisting power but of exercising it – of seeking to bend the power of the state to that of the suburbs. For this to be so, it is not necessary to show conspiracy between the media and the sources of economic and social power. It is not even necessary to show that media practitioners consciously seek to impose the power of the suburbs: journalists who play this role may believe firmly that they are contesting power rather than representing it. What is necessary is to show that the way in which media report and interpret events has this effect. This chapter seeks to do that. It will, firstly, show how the media portrays powerful private actors as victims of state power, implicitly endorsing their right to dominate society. It will then show how it portrays problems in which private power is implicated as a consequence of the exercise of public power alone. It will conclude with reflections on possible antidotes.

Painting power powerless: The corporation as victim A clear example of the way in which power is portrayed as powerless is the media’s treatment of businesses or business leaders which criticise government and are then criticised by it. A widely reported incident of this sort was the clash between First National Bank and the governing African National Congress in January 2013, prompted by an FNB advertisement video in which school pupils attacked the ANC: one urged the older generation to ‘Stop voting for the same government in hopes for change – instead, change your hopes to a government that has the same hopes as us’.5 The pupils in the advertisement described the minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga, as ‘brainless’; they complained that ‘the country is being overrun by poverty … while [President] Jacob Zuma is renovating his home’ and that ‘The government is only thinking for themselves …” The ANC reacted angrily while the Presidency responded: ‘Frivolous adverts which display hatred of government or the ruling party will not help us to achieve the country’s developmental goals. The presidency is disappointed and surprised by the one-sided First National Bank campaign’.6 After a meeting between the secretary-general of the ANC, Gwede Mantashe, and the chief executive of FNB’s holding company (FirstRand), Sizwe Nxasana, the company apologised – it had already withdrawn the advertisement.

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It said the problem occurred when ‘research clippings’ not meant for public display were inadvertently posted online.7 These events were met with a veritable orgy of truth telling to power by the media and those whose opinions they value. Reports quoted social media responses from prominent figures denouncing the ANC for bullying FNB; some chided the bank for giving in to the pressure. University of Free State vicechancellor Jonathan Jansen responded: ‘I am deeply disappointed by FNB for running to apologise/explain to a political party for airing the voices of children. Does FNB realise how much blood was spilt for the right to say what you think? I fear for my country.’ Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Helen Zille was quoted telling social media followers: ‘Saying that FNB caved in order to protect the kids in the advert is a more devastating statement on the ANC government than anything the ad said.’ Former DA leader Tony Leon tweeted: ‘The ANC must be laughing all the way to the bank.’ The media were represented directly by City Press editor Ferial Haffejee: ‘I wonder when we who get bullied say so far and no more? Not a good feeling at all’.8 A similar theme – repeated in various forms in many other articles – was struck by Andrew Donaldson in the Weekend Argus: ‘Is it out of courtesy, or is it terror that compels the corporates to drop everything at a moment’s notice and nip off to Luthuli House for a frightful bollocking?’ He added: ‘Did the bankers struggle to keep a straight face as Mantashe and company detailed yet again their objections to people who speak their mind, and those whose opinions differ to theirs?’ The FNB ad was ‘embarrassingly mawkish, crassly exploitative and, like most commercials, an insult to intelligent people everywhere’. But ‘it is not treason’. The ANC, he observed, was offended by ‘children speaking their minds’. Like others in the media, Donaldson linked the ANC’s response to its angry reaction, some days earlier, to a statement by Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) that it might retrench 14 000 workers. Nxasana, he wrote, must have approached his meeting with Mantashe with ‘nervous laughter’ after the latter’s ‘reckless’ reaction to Amplats’ statement had shown ‘that Mantashe has very little grasp of how things work out there in the big world’. His naiveté, he added, is a consequence of his failure to understand that ‘in the face of massive strikes and the global slump in the price of platinum, Amplats would want to cut back on production and lay off workers’. Mineral Resources minister Susan Shabangu had ‘darkly hinted that Amplats could lose their mining license’. Referring to reports that the ANC had, at its 2012 Manguang conference, sought to reach out to business, he concluded: ‘Clearly the post-Mangaung business-friendly ANC does not exist. It is very much the same old, same old; don’t do anything we don’t like, okay, else you get whacked’.9

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The evidence suggests that Donaldson’s article was typical – a search unearths only one newspaper article which offered an analytical perspective: an article in Business Day by Stephen Grootes, which seeks to understand the perspective of both sides and does not assume that the governing party was acting irrationally.10 The only other coverage which could have been considered critical were news reports in The New Age (owned by the Gupta family who are close to the President and therefore regularly the only paper dismissed as ‘pro-government’) and repeated in Mail & Guardian which indicated that the advertisement was scripted and that the scholars who appeared were paid. The rest of the coverage may not have gone quite to Donaldson’s lengths – but the view that the company was bullied by the governing party to censor itself and outspoken young people is well-nigh universal. The alternative view appeared only in social media and in the occasional comment or column by commentators not employed by newspapers – including this author.11 There was also a cost of raising a head above the parapet in this way – immediate denunciation as a government lackey by those who shared the mainstream media’s world view.12 The Donaldson view – and that of Jansen, Zille, Leon and Haffejee – had become the ‘common sense’ view. As this article noted earlier, ‘common sense’ is often not nearly as commonly sensible as it might seem – in the sense in which it is used here, it describes the common understanding of a social group which may entirely distort reality. And so the ‘common sense’ which this incident generated is worth examining because it tells us much about how the mainstream media and those who share their view see the world. It is hardly normal for companies to flight advertisements that take sides in party politics (by urging voters to vote against the government). Even American billionaires who use their fortunes to influence politics do not use company advertising budgets to express their preferences. Nor do the 5 000 British small business owners who, during that country’s election campaign, endorsed the economic policies of the Conservative Party (Dominiczak 2015).13 The reason is obvious: while business people may express political views, it makes no sense to alienate clients and employees who support other parties by linking the company to a party. And so the FNB ad was not a ‘normal’ exercise of free speech – it was an aberration which the governing party was entitled to see as highly abnormal. This is why the company insisted that it had made a mistake. While the media responses assumed that the government and ANC had rebuked FNB for doing what citizens in a democracy normally do, in reality its complaints were directed at a form of expression which exceeded the limits which companies, for good reason, place upon themselves. A company is not a private citizen or a civil society organisation and so there are limits on what corporations say in public. If FNB had flighted the ads in a Northern democracy, it would have attracted hostility too.

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Jansen and Donaldson seem to confuse a bank with a grassroots civil society organisation. Both imply that the freedom of speech of young people was abridged. But the pupils were not simply speaking for themselves. FNB confirmed that they were paid: it told reporters that the pupils were told that they could talk freely and that the casting interviews were ‘unscripted, uncensored and very much from the heart’. But the final product was scripted and approved by the bank’s marketing team. Participants were ‘carefully selected’.14 Although the participants were not reading from a script and were thus expressing their views rather than those of the bank, there was a process in which the bank decided which views it wanted the world to hear. In that sense, the advertisements were at least as much an expression of the views and preferences of the bank as it was of a group of young people. It could be argued that neither Jansen nor Donaldson knew this when they reacted. But even if the views expressed were not the product of a selection process, the fact that the teenagers were speaking in a bank advertisement made it inevitable that the ANC and government would see it as a statement by a powerful corporation. By ignoring the crucial fact that the pupils were speaking under a literal and metaphorical company logo, Jansen and Donaldson portrayed a statement by a wielder of economic power as a form of expression by children. There can be no more obvious example of an attempt to portray the powerful as powerless. Further perspective on the claim that the strong were bullying the weak is offered by the fact that the ANC and government did not threaten FNB with any action if it continued to flight the advert. It is simply assumed that, when a governing party says it objects to something a bank has done, it is bullying it. If this is carried to its logical conclusion, banks should be able to say whatever they wish about politicians, who should never reply – which is absurd. It is hard to understand why Haffejee, who was saying what many in the media were thinking, had any justification for claiming to have been bullied since the ANC’s umbrage was not directed at the media, let alone at any particular publication or broadcaster. Unless she assumed that the bonds between media and corporations are so close that an attack on one is an attack on the other (more or less the argument of this chapter), her claim to be a victim of bullying seems based more on a fervent desire to portray the media as a powerless victim of the state regardless of the evidence than on any credible threat to her, her newspaper or the media in general. But what of Donaldson’s argument that the ‘reckless’ ANC response to Amplats has created a climate in which FNB had every reason to feel intimidated? Besides the sneering tone, this typifies the deep-rooted suburban prejudice which lies at the heart of the critique. It is hard to imagine too many governments or governing parties that would feel no alarm or hostility if an employer threatened to kill 14 000 jobs – particularly if they rely on the votes of working people. ANC ‘recklessness’ was the response we would expect from a party with a large

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constituency among workers and the poor. Nor were the threats improper. Mining licenses are granted under current legislation partly on condition that companies show social responsibility; threatening to cancel the license of a firm if it rendered tens of thousands of people destitute could be seen as an appropriate interpretation of the law. It is worth noting also a subtle elision in Donaldson’s article – the ANC response to Amplats was not a reaction to criticism: rather its position on a social issue was portrayed as a bullying attempt to impose its will. The threats were never carried out despite the fact that Amplats did retrench large numbers of workers later in the year,15 but this seems to have far less to do with their irrationality or illegality than with the ingredient which all these responses ignore – the power balance between corporations and governments. As Donaldson himself implies, Amplats, like FNB, wields power. As long as it does, governments are unlikely to do what the ANC threatened to do. The gap between what it threatened and what it did confirms that the ‘bullied’ wield more power than the ‘bully’. If FNB had wanted to ignore the ANC’s complaint, it would no doubt have been able to do so. The responses grossly misrepresented the power balance between the government and the bank – they reinforced a frequent theme in media coverage of the government–business relationship, which repeatedly portrays large businesses and their senior executives as intimidated individuals terrified to utter a word which might offend an overweening and bullying government. That their power often exceeds that of the government is ignored.

The chair of the board as victim Portrayal of the corporation as victim is a common theme in the media’s treatment of tensions between business and government. Another example had occurred the previous year, when the ANC and the government reacted angrily to remarks by Reuel Khoza, then chair of the board of another bank, Nedbank. Media reports almost universally portrayed Khoza as the victim of unprovoked attack by the governing party, designed to intimidate. A commentator and journalist declared that: ‘Last week saw the African National Congress (ANC) launch vicious attacks on Nedbank chairman Reuel Khoza’.16 Another report: ‘two senior ANC members lashed out at Nedbank chairman Reuel Khoza in media reports on Friday’.17 A third appeared under a headline declaring that a government representative had ‘taken a swipe’ at Khoza – with a sub headline referring to his ‘attack’ on the ANC, implying, of course that the affront was invented.18 The implied claim that Khoza was being browbeaten into silence despite saying nothing that deserved this response was made explicit by the then head of

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the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, who was approvingly quoted observing that ‘as soon as a concerned citizen like Khoza puts his finger on the button, he is vilified in every way’.19 An analysis by a senior journalist, written in superficially dispassionate terms, cast the issue in a similar light. Describing Khoza as a ‘stern but kindly schoolmaster’, it said his remarks had unleashed ‘a torrent of accusation, recrimination and what bordered on outright name-calling’. It added:’ It remains to be seen whether the fire storm of criticism and counter-criticism that followed Khoza’s original statement causes self-censorship … in business, or whether it will serve as an example to be emulated’. Neren Rau, chief executive of the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry is quoted thus: ‘Yes, sometimes we’re not vocal or aggressive enough … we don’t want to be cowards, but we generally have to be more circumspect than the other party … If you are a politician and around the period of elections people criticise you, they are essentially threatening your job …’.20 So the gentle rebuke of a kindly man had unleashed a torrent of vilification from people whose concern for their job makes them hyper-sensitive. Government is powerful enough to force business into ‘self-censorship’ and the issue is whether the cowed business leaders will be able to escape their victimhood. But what was said and what were its consequences? Khoza observed: ‘South Africa is widely recognised for its liberal and enlightened Constitution, yet we observe the emergence of a strange breed of leaders who are determined to undermine the rule of law and override the Constitution. Our political leadership’s moral quotient is degenerating …’.21 To question whether this was an attack is odd – the chair of one of the country’s largest banks is saying that the country is governed by people of a dubious nature and declining morality. This may be stern but there is nothing kindly about it. It is a personal attack on government leaders – there is none of Rau’s circumspection here. And those who are attacked are presumably entitled to respond in kind. This they did. Then Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa said Khoza had omitted to discuss ‘persistent racialised poverty and inequality, a legacy of imperialist plunder, slave wages and racialist capitalist development and what Nedbank, among others, is doing to arrest these for a better life for all’. He added: ‘Understandably, [Khoza] would not want to touch on these issues, lest he offend his paymasters, who I should assume are predominantly the beneficiaries of centuries of racist economic and political dispensation’. Mantashe said he would be ‘very worried if the business community began to think that it has a monopoly of understanding of political leadership’. Government spokesman Jimmy Manyi said Khoza ‘would be better off adhering to his bank’s pay-off line, “Make things happen”, rather than arguing, with no evidence proffered, that things are not happening in our country or that we are about to succumb to a “recurrence of the past”’.22 It is hard to see how any of these

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remarks are any harsher than Khoza’s: Mthethwa’s alone may be vaguely equivalent since they imply that he is guilty of a moral failing – saying not what he believes but what his paymasters want. Mantashe simply implies that he is expressing business arrogance and Manyi that he is making claims which he does not justify. None threaten any action against Khoza or the bank. Nor was any ever taken – Mantashe and Khoza met, just as he and Nxasana met, but there was no apology from the businessman. A statement issued by the ANC after the meeting observed: ‘We are encouraged that a variety of options in terms of engagement were considered. The meeting resolved that there will be more meaningful interaction between the two parties in future’ (ANC 2012) – presumably diplomatic jargon for a failure to agree. Khoza slightly tempered his remarks after the ANC reaction: ‘I firmly believe that leadership in the public and private sectors working constructively together can make a positive contribution’.23 But this is far from a retraction. He continued as Nedbank chair until his retirement and both he and the bank, by all accounts, continued to prosper. None of this is evidence of an all-powerful bullying government beating business into submission. The exchange was sharp but many exchanges in democracies are. In many democracies, governing politicians who were subject to public personal attack might react angrily. Khoza was not bullied into changing anything, and he and the bank continued to exercise as much power over the economy as they had always done. Perhaps the only comment conveyed in the media which put its finger on what was at stake was that of Cosatu. Its spokesperson Patrick Craven said it believed firmly in freedom of speech but some seemed to have more freedom than others: ‘It’s not that business doesn’t have the right to criticise, but it has far more access to the media than the workers and the poor’.24 This summed up the issue far more accurately than the media reports. Khoza had a right to say what he did but his position at the helm of a major bank gave him opportunities to speak which most citizens do not enjoy. The ANC had a right to get angry in return as long as it did not threaten the democratic rights of Khoza or the bank. A spat between two sources of power was turned into an assault on the freedom of a powerless citizen by a powerful government.

The power of the pointing finger A different but related tendency in much media coverage is to assume that all the country’s ills are the responsibility of the government. This can produce some spectacular lapses in journalistic accuracy. It also reproduces the attitude to power discussed here – problems are caused by a government presumably powerful enough to shape the society, never by the private interests who inhabit the suburbs.

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There is one exception to this rule – the media are willing, a study suggests, to give the authorities favourable coverage if they do what the suburban world view sees as their prime function – protecting the affluent from workers. A study by Jane Duncan of the early press coverage of the killings at Marikana in August 2012, finds that it ‘was heavily biased towards official accounts of the massacre, and … overwhelmingly favoured business sources of news and analysis’. Business sources were most likely to be ‘primary definers’ of news stories and ‘miners’ voices barely featured independently of the main trade union protagonists, which was significant as many miners did not feel sufficiently represented by the unions’. Early press coverage failed to ‘reveal the full extent of police violence against the miners’. The police version of events ‘was allowed to stand largely unchallenged’ and the coverage ‘portrayed the miners as inherently violent, disposed to irrationality and even criminality’ (Duncan 2014). But, when workers are not on strike, the media norm is a world in which government is the source of all problems even when suburban responsibility is palpable. A stark example is an article on growing international concern at inequality which has turned a lengthy academic book, Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twentyfirst Century (Piketty 2014), into a best-seller. So strong has this current become that it has washed up on the shores of the South African media – but in a rather different form to that found elsewhere. While in other countries it centres on the gap between private owners of wealth and the rest, in the South African media it is blamed on ‘transformation’ – affirmative action which seeks to compensate black people for apartheid. This, we are told, has ensured that inequality between race groups has dropped, but that ‘inequality within the black African population has increased – to 0.55, compared with 0.42 for whites and 0.45 for Indians (where inequality has fallen sharply)’. Black economic empowerment and affirmative action have created a class of wealthy black people while black unemployment has risen: ‘That raises difficult questions about priorities in the new South Africa and how to balance them’.25 None of the data quoted show that affirmative action is the cause of rising inequality – they don’t even show that inequality is necessarily rising, only that it is widening within racial groups. While it may well be that, given the size of the black population relative to others, a widening of inequality between black people would mean the same trend in the society, this is not automatic and needs to be demonstrated. The assumption that inequality is caused by ‘transformation’ policies is not demonstrated either. Widening inequality between black people could equally well be caused by the fact that racial curbs on ownership and access have been abolished, which would automatically widen inequality as black incomes at the top were no longer suppressed by racial laws. This ‘explanation’ entirely ignores the findings of the 2011 census, which shows that, in the past two decades, government programmes have significantly

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reduced poverty through the extension of social grants (Van der Berg & Siebrits 2010) and basic services, while income disparities in the private sector have grown.26 It says nothing about the thus far unchallenged claim of the minister of trade and industry, Rob Davies, that in 2012 ‘the highest-paid chief executive earned 51 000 times what someone earns on the child support programme’.27 Or a recent book which reported that South African executives are the second most highly paid in the world when the measure is purchasing power (Massie et al. 2014). For the media, the vast and growing gap between private incomes is the consequence of government racial priorities. This expresses the widespread view of the suburbs which blames all economic ills, including inequality, not on the habits and lifestyles of suburban residents but on a new class of greedy and undeserving affluent black people created by government policy.28 Another example is a report of an address by then SA Reserve Bank governor Gill Marcus in which she is reported to have ‘stepped up her criticism of the government’s failed economic and labour policies, in a tough speech that leaned hard against the populist, left-wing tendencies in President Jacob Zuma’s Cabinet’. It added: ‘Her warnings … elaborated on her forthright call in early June for “decisive leadership” to tackle South Africa’s domestic challenges, which she said then had reached “crisis proportions”’. Marcus was ‘throwing down the gauntlet to the government’ – telling it ‘in no uncertain terms, to take more seriously the challenges facing South Africa’.29 A central banker who cut her teeth in the ANC scolding its government is clearly important news. But the report’s worth diminishes dramatically when we examine what Marcus actually said (Marcus 2013). The governor did observe that ‘Labour market reforms that enable more efficient movement of workers from one sector to another are necessary because they help economies adjust to changing circumstances’. This is usually seen in the South African debate as a call to weaken union or worker rights. But Marcus suggested instead ‘innovative programmes to enable firms to keep people on their payroll, albeit at lower wages, instead of retrenching workers’ as well as ‘matching activities for both people and firms’ and ‘tax credits to employers to take on specific categories of workers’ (Marcus 2013: 5). She called for ‘structural reforms aimed at improving economic efficiency’ but, instead of the expected litany of pro-business measures which are often associated with these words, she called for tougher policies to combat anti-competitive practices, ‘education, training and the retraining of workers’ (Marcus 2013: 6). High unemployment in South Africa, the governor said, dated back to the 1970s. The reason was apartheid: ‘While we cannot simply look backwards and blame our past, we also cannot simply wipe away its terrible and enduring legacy. The deep structural features of apartheid … have all contributed to the situation

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where we have one of the highest levels of inequality in the world and over a third of adults are out of work’ (Marcus 2013: 6). The country had to acknowledge ‘that there remain deep structural weaknesses in our economy that prevent faster growth and higher labour absorption. [They] … include uncompetitive product markets, low levels of fixed capital investment, a low savings rate, inadequate progress in improving education and training and poor public services’ (Marcus 2013: 7). The labour relations system, while it had initially reduced conflict, was not contributing to growth. But she urged not a change of the law – a favourite topic in the suburbs – but ‘firm-specific agreements linking salary increases to productivity gains … Within the existing legal framework such agreements are possible’ (Marcus 2013: 8). The only criticism of the government in the speech was Marcus’s view that it needed to improve public services (Marcus 2013: 8). Any other connection between the report and the address are entirely coincidental. A discussion of the difficult choices which face a society with a history of racial exclusion becomes criticism of ‘failed policies’. An address which spread responsibility for problems between history, the world economy, business, government and labour becomes a ‘throwing down of the gauntlet to government’. An analysis which urges no change to labour law, policies to curb uncompetitive behaviour by business and stepped-up training becomes an attack on a ‘left-leaning government’ which, in the view of most mainstream analysis and scholarship, is purely a figment of the author’s imagination. The current government is clearly not responsible for apartheid, which Marcus blames for part of the problem. Or necessarily for uncompetitive product markets and the failure of business and labour to engage in productivity bargaining. And yet the reporter manages to translate this analysis into a loud attack on the government. Why does this happen? Some on the left would insist that the reporter is an agent of the class which dominates the economy and is distorting reality on behalf of the capitalists who pay her salary. Here the flight from reality is a deliberate act of deception. But there is another, equally plausible view – that the reporter and those who edit her work are so accustomed to the ‘common sense’ of the suburbs they serve that they are capable only of selective seeing and hearing. In the suburbs, demands for reform always seek to shackle labour and free business. Calls for change are always directed at the government only and explanations which blame apartheid are never heard. Which may explain why a journalist deeply embedded in this world view can see in the Governor’s speech only the demand of suburban power, not the words Marcus really used and the ideas she really expressed. But the motive matters less than the fact that a call on all power-holders, public and private, to face economic challenges has become a demand by private power that the public equivalent do as it is told.

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Conclusion: Speaking truth to the suburbs So the South African media, in the mainstream, do not speak truth to power: they convey one power’s message to another. Their treatment of the economy and related issues are a further example of Aubrey Matshiqi’s observation that, in South Africa’s democracy, the political majority is a cultural minority because the view of a suburban minority ‘continues to dominate the shaping of social and economic relations’.30 The media mainstream is an important source of influence for the political-minority-as-cultural-majority. In a society deeply divided by race and social class, is the hope of media which speak as much truth to suburban power as they do to the equivalent in government an illusion unless the distribution of power in society changes dramatically? An influential strain of left-wing thought would insist that this is so. And this does seem to be the logical conclusion of an analysis which locates the current view of the media in a ‘common sense’ deeply rooted in both material reality – who owns the media, who advertises in them, who is more likely to complain to them – and in a deeply ingrained view of the world. But this depends on how the desired change is defined. It is unrealistic to expect a media in a deeply unequal society which is largely comprised of, and which largely serves, those who enjoy power and privilege to see left-wing thought as simply a phenomenon to be reported and analysed, and not a threat to be resisted. It is equally unrealistic to expect the media to desert the suburbs which provide their revenue and life world, and to see the world from the perspective of the shack dweller. As long as society remains so unequal, and the media are drawn from and serve those who have material and cultural power, so will the media continue to see the world from the vantage point of those at the top. If we look to a society in which the media fearlessly campaign for the poor and working people against the wielders of suburban power, media practitioners are part of a milieu in which ‘common sense’ is always likely to make that impossible unless society changes: media outlets are neither owned nor staffed by people for whom this role would be possible, not because they willingly obey a paymaster or mistress, but because people in their position tend to see the world in a particular way. But this realism merely sets the outer boundaries beyond which the media will not stray. Within them, there is much room for change. This analysis has stressed that the media are as they are because world views – ‘common sense’ – make them so. While world views are rarely exchanged for other views, they are subject to substantial modification. During the apartheid period, the media generally presented the white view of the world but, in the face of sustained critique by social actors (more than media analysts) some of them changed – they did not become vehicles for articulating the black experience but some media and some

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journalists did begin to take it more seriously. There is no reason why similar change is not possible here if social actors and media analysts insist on it: again, it will not prompt the media to abandon the suburbs but may well persuade some within them to take the experiences and the perspectives of those living outside them more seriously than they do now. If we look to a media which see bank advertisements which exhort people to vote against particular parties as a mistake rather than an expression of free speech; which accept that politicians who are insulted by business people may insult them in return without abridging freedom; in which workers are quoted with the same prominence and respect as business people; in which huge corporate salaries are as much criticised as government affirmative action policies; and the media report what the central bank governor really said rather than what suburban power feels she ought to have said, change is possible. What is advocated is hardly revolutionary – it is simply a consistent application of journalistic principle. Nor would it spell the end of suburban power – it would simply ensure that it is wielded more fairly. And we know that a different sort of reporting is possible because it happens – here and elsewhere – whatever the mainstream may say and do. There was at least one balanced attempt to understand the FNB dispute – there have been attempts to practice journalism in a way which is fair to all. There are not enough – but, if there are some, there can be more. This suggests that pointing out the problem and demanding a different approach is not futile – it can contribute to change and sometimes does. And so scholars of journalism, those who analyse it and those who teach the craft, social critics and commentators have a crucial role in working towards a media that is less a vehicle of suburban power and more the voice of, and a mirror to, society. Speaking truth to power is necessary and it is not impossible that power, or some who wield it, might listen. But, in the South African media, the power to which truth must be spoken is as much that in the suburbs as its equivalent in the offices of government.

Notes 1

Van Zyl M, Listen to the powerless then speak truth to power. Open Source, 2 September 2013. Accessed April 2015, http://www.highwayafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2013/09/ Web-Issue-2.pdf

2

Independent on Line (IOL), A time to remember. The Star, 21 March 2012. Accessed April 2015, http://www.iol.co.za/the-star/a-time-to-remember-1.1260921?ot=inmsa. ArticlePrintPageLayout.ot

3

Kajee A, Why we don’t want the Secrecy Bill: Right2know. SABC News, 8 September 2011.

4

Monageng T, Facing down a bully. Letter to the editor, Business Day, 24 April 2012.

5

Donaldson A, FNB: The ANC goes bananas. Politicsweb, 26 January 2013. Accessed April 2015, http://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/fnb-the-anc-goes-bananas

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6

Media 24, ANC, FNB bigwigs to thrash it out over ad furore. 24 January 2013. Accessed April 2015, http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Politics/ANC-FNB-bigwigs-to-thrash-it-outover-ad-furore-20130124

7

SA Press Association (SAPA), FNB apologises for ad campaign. IOL News, 25 January 2013. Accessed April 2015, http://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/fnb-apologises-for-adcampaign-1.1458925#.VT8_MPDCcxc

8

SA Press Association (SAPA), Motshekga ‘disappointed’ over FNB ad SMS leak. Mail & Guardian, 28 January 2013. Accessed 28 April 2015, http://mg.co.za/article/2013-01-28-motshekgas-sms-leaks

9

Donaldson A, FNB: The ANC goes bananas. Politicsweb, 26 January 2013. Accessed April 2015, http://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/fnb-the-anc-goes-bananas

10

Grootes S, ANC vs FNB: Who’s in the wrong? Business Day, 23 January 2013.

11

Friedman S, Freedom works both ways in a democracy. Business Day, 6 February 2013.

12

De Vos P, On Steven Friedman’s incoherent conflation of criticism with censorship. Constitutionally Speaking, 6 February 2013. Accessed April 2015, http://constitutionallyspeaking. co.za/on-steven-freedmans-incoherent-conflation-ofcriticism-with-censorship/

13

Dominiczak P, Boost for David Cameron as 5,000 small firms back Conservatives. The Telegraph, 26 April 2015. Accessed April 2015, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/davidcameron/11564460/Boost-for-David-Cameron-as-5000-small-firms-back-Conservatives.html

14

Mail & Guardian, Report: FNB ads scripted, children paid as actors. 29 January 2013. Accessed April 2015, http://mg.co.za/article/2013-01-29-fnb-ads-scripted-and-children-paid-as-actors

15

Gebhardt M, Amplats to retrench 3,300 workers. Business Day, August 30 2013.

16

Grootes S, Tussle with Khoza really about Mbeki’s legacy. Business Day, 8 August 2012.

17

SA Press Association (SAPA), ANC lashes Nedbank’s Khoza. The Times, 13 April 2012. Accessed April 2015, http://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2012/04/13/anc-lashes-nedbank-skhoza

18

Mail & Guardian, Manyi takes a swipe at Nedbank’s Khoza. 10 April 2012. Accessed April 2015, http://mg.co.za/article/2012-04-10-manyi-takes-a-swipe-at-nedbanks-khoza

19

Whittles G, SA’s democracy lacks maturity – Loubser. Eyewitness News, 18 October 2012. Accessed April 2015, http://ewn.co.za/2012/10/18/Loubser-slams-immature-democracy

20

De Wet P, Nedbank chief hits raw nerve, Mail & Guardian, 13 April 2004.

21

De Wet P, Nedbank chief hits raw nerve, Mail & Guardian, 13 April 2004.

22

De Wet P, Nedbank chief hits raw nerve, Mail & Guardian, 13 April 2004.

23

De Wet P, Nedbank chief hits raw nerve, Mail & Guardian, 13 April 2004.

24

De Wet P, Nedbank chief hits raw nerve, Mail & Guardian, 13 April 2004.

25

Joffe H, Raging debate over inequality has resonance for SA. Business Day, 24 April 2014. Accessed May 2015, http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/columnists/2014/04/24/raging-debateover-inequality-has-resonance-for-sa

26

Manuel T, Proof of how much we have done – and must still do. Business Day, 21 October 2012.

27

Holmes T, The ‘hidden’ billions of SA’s elite executives. Mail & Guardian, 11 April 2014.

28

Mail & Guardian, DA: It’s all about merit, not race. 4 September 2003. Accessed May 2015, http://mg.co.za/article/2003-09-04-da-its-all-about-merit-not-race

29

Maswanganyi N, Marcus in fresh attack on failure of state policy. Business Day, 1 August 2013. Accessed April 2015, http://www.bdlive.co.za/economy/2013/08/01/marcus-in-fresh-attack-onfailure-of-state-policy

30

Matshiqi A, Why Manuel is right and wrong about Manyi’s ‘racism’. Business Day, 8 March 2011.

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References African National Congress (ANC) (2012) Statement on the meeting between Gwede Mantashe and Reuel Khoza, 16 April. Accessed April 2015, http://www.anc.org.za/content/statementmeeting-between-gwede-mantashe-and-reuel-khoza Arsenault A & Castells M (2008) Switching power: Rupert Murdoch and the global business of media politics –­­a sociological analysis. International Sociology 23(4): 488–513 Cudlipp H (1980) The prerogative of the harlot: Press barons and power. London: Bodley Head Duncan J (2014) South African journalism and the Marikana massacre: A case study of an editorial failure. The Political Economy of Communication 1(2): 65–88 Friedman S (2011) Whose freedom? South Africa’s press, middle-class bias and the threat of control. Ecquid Novi 32(2): 106–121 Friedman S (2014) South Africa: Electoral dominance, identity politics and democracy. In R Doorenspleet & L Nijzink (Eds) Party systems and democracy in Africa. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan Friedman S (2015) Race, class and power: Harold Wolpe and the radical critique of apartheid. Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press Geertz C (1983) Local knowledge. New York: Basic Books Herman ES & Chomsky N (1978) Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media. New York: Pantheon Books Highway Africa (2013) 16th Highway Africa Conference 2013: Speaking truth to power? Media, politics and society. Accessed April 2015, http://www.adeanet.org/portalv2/en/events/16thhighway-africa-conference-2013-speaking-truth-to-power-media-politics-and-society#. VT3-8PDCcxc Macpherson CB (1962) The political theory of possessive individualism: From Hobbes to Locke. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press Marcus G (2013) Employment and the economics of job creation. Speech presented at the 26th Annual Labour Law Conference, South African Reserve Bank (31 July). Accessed April 2015, https://www.resbank.co.za/Lists/Speeches/Attachments/379/ Employment%20and%20the%20economics%20of%20job%20creation%20final.pdf Massie K & Collier D with Crotty A (2014) Executive salaries: Who should have a say on pay? Auckland Park: Jacana Nasaw D (2000) The chief: The life of William Randolph Hearst. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Piketty T (2014) Capital in the twenty-first century (trans. Arthur Goldhammer). Cambridge, MA, and London: Belknap Press Van der Berg S & Siebrits K (2010) Social assistance reform during a period of fiscal stress. Working Papers 17/2010, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics

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5 ‘Back to the people’ journalism: Journalists as public storytellers Harry C Boyte

The writers among us bemoan the triviality of the mass media, but why … do they allow themselves to be used in its silly routines by its silly managers? These media are part of our means of work, which have been expropriated from us … we ought to repossess our cultural apparatus and use it for our own purposes. – C Wright Mills (in Denning 1997: 113)

Drum, the 2005 South African film by Zola Maseko starring Taye Diggs as Henry Nxumalo, an investigative reporter, introduces audiences beyond South Africans to a remarkable chapter in the history of South African journalism, with extensive if little-known connections to the black freedom movement in the United States (Graham & Walters 2010). The story, unfolding in 1955 in the culturally vibrant interracial community of Sophiatown before it was demolished, illustrates a neglected political role for which journalists and other cultural workers are distinctively suited but which they tend to avoid both because of their training and because of conventional theoretical frameworks of civic engagement. The movie shows that media work (in this case both the film and the magazine) can become sites for developing ‘public narrative’, a story which connects ‘story of self’, personal narratives (including those of journalists) to the ‘story of us’, a common story, framed by a ‘story of now’, public consequentiality. Three points frame the chapter which follows: citizen politics, public narrative, and the people.

Citizen politics The movie conveys a citizen politics of civic agency and citizens as co-creators of democratic society. This has kinship with the idea of civic agency in communications studies by Peter Dahlgren (2009)1 but with an explicitly political

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sense. In the film, citizen politics, owned and practiced by a diverse group of people, conveys a different sense of ‘politics’ than partisanship or party (Boyte 1989, 2001; Bretherton 2015). Such a citizen politics view of the movie connects to questions about the structure of the media itself such as Tanja Dreher’s (2010) ‘listening’, while adding a productive dimension that highlights the media as a socially constructed environment which can be reconstructed through intentional political organising (Boyte 2011). Drum recounts a process of political learning in newsrooms and bars, street scenes and prize fights, and other everyday settings which took on public and political qualities. Such settings can be conceived as ‘free spaces,’ a concept developed by Sara Evans and Harry Boyte (1992), and further specified by Francesca Polletta (1999). Free spaces are sites with an important measure of autonomy from dominant norms where people have room for self-directed civic and political development with the sense of contributing to a democratic political project. In the movie, in such spaces white people develop respect for black people, black people learn not to hate all white people, and the characters develop political consciousness and seriousness about themselves and the world. The anti-apartheid movement had a myriad of free spaces where people developed politicised civic agency, obscured in depictions of the struggle like the TRC, which instantiated two ‘ideal types’ in struggle history, victim and perpetrator (Cronin 2006).2 The political learning in the film develops productive and sober politics, to use elements which Margaret Canovan (2002) discerned in Hannah Arendt’s treatment distinguishing ‘people’ from ‘masses’ and ‘mobs’. The final scene is a funeral march where a mix of everyday citizens from a variety of contexts – including government workers, journalists, and people gathering from streets and shops – walk with dignity to the baffled rage of apartheid officials. The scene prefigures the people’s politics that will topple the seemingly impregnable system of apartheid. It continues to have resonance as an expression of the meaning of the struggle (see, for example, Suttner 2014).

Public narrative The movie illustrates the work of journalists and other cultural workers who played crucial roles in creating public narratives about the work of building a democratic way of life. Public narrative is a concept developed by civil rights activist, community and labour organiser turned Harvard professor, Marshall Ganz, who named practices he observed over decades in change efforts (Ganz 2008). The concept of public narrative, communicating ‘Yes We Can’, was used by journalists,

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poets, singers and other cultural workers in the Obama campaign in 2008. It was also widely used in training campaign workers.3 Public narrative, writes Ganz, is the process ‘through which individuals, communities, and nations make choices, construct identity, and inspire action. It can both instruct and inspire – teaching us not only how we ought to act but motivating us to act’. Public narrative is a way to understand oneself as animated by broader public purpose. ‘Some of us may think our personal stories don’t matter,’ says Ganz. But ‘if we do public work we have a responsibility to give a public account of ourselves – where we came from, why we do what we do, and where we think we are going’ (2008: 11). In his article ‘What Is Public Narrative?’, Ganz used Obama’s famous speech to the Democratic National Convention in 2004 as an example. In the speech, Obama located his own ‘improbable story’ of a mixed-race American in the challenge of recovering the American story of a society woven of many different cultures and experiences. It provided a crucial public narrative for the campaign when translated into ‘yes we can’, a narrative of collective agency. Though public narrative as an explicit concept in political theory and practice is of recent invention, public storytelling practices have a rich history in democratic movement building and contemporary community organising. The following describes a tradition of ‘back to the people journalism’ which generated such stories by journalists in the popular democratic movements of the first half of 20th-century America and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. I recount how such practices were replaced with a culture of journalistic distance and purported ‘objectivity’ during the 1950s which continued through subsequent decades. Public journalism, focused on deliberative practices, is a useful bridging concept that moves part of the way toward reconnecting journalists with lay citizens and the civic culture. It can be deepened through explicit recognition of the political authority of the people and journalists’ role in such politics.

The people In this chapter, drawing on the political theorist Sheldon Wolin’s work on founding narratives (Wolin 1978, 1980), I argue that by seeing democratic politics as the productive action of a public-spirited people – neither a mass nor an electorate – citizen politics locates political authority among the people. Elite actions, market dynamics and ‘technocratic creep’ have dramatically eroded the people’s authority and ownership of politics, but new resources are appearing for naming and transforming what Pope Francis calls ‘the techno-economic paradigm’ (Francis 2015b). I conclude with brief comparisons between ‘politics of the people’ in the US and South Africa. In both societies ‘people’ developed self-constituting political

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identity – becoming a people who acts – as the foundation of a new society. This meant that political leaders did not simply represent the people but most importantly drew authority from grounding among the people. The challenge is for journalists in both societies to help make public narratives that recover the story of the people as the agents and architects of democracy.

‘Back to the people’ journalism ‘The people’ is not historically indeterminate, but it is a different kind of category than ‘class’ or ‘interest groups’, a different idiom than the charts and statistics that dominate in conventional social science. The concept challenges not only concentrations of wealth and power, but also the culturally deracinated thinking and identities characteristic of today’s professional systems, left and right. The people involves a story, always contested but also often vivid, based on memories, places, origins and ways of life. ‘People’ is understood through language, stories, symbols, traditions, foods, music and memories. A people has a moment of birth, sacred texts and foundational spaces, as well as contending identities (Boyte 1981). As Luke Bretherton has argued, populist movements growing from the people are either democratic or authoritarian in orientation depending on whether they have a political character, in the sense of citizen politics that holds open a diverse sense of peoplehood, or whether they have an anti-political quality, seeking to purify the people’s identity (Bretherton 2015). ‘People’ had particular meaning in American political self-understanding that was inextricably tied to the idea of the society as a ‘democracy’, as Sheldon Wolin showed in a series of essays in the New York Review of Books during the Carter and Reagan administrations. Unlike monarchies emerging from the mists of the past, or aristocracies ruled by landed nobility, or communist governments which claimed the label of ‘people’s republics’ guided by vanguards, the political identity of the United States was a nation founded by ‘we the people’, agents and authors of the new society. The revolutionary generation of the 1770s, drawing on decades of experiences in which settlers built towns and local governments, constituted themselves as the authoring and authoritative political body (Countryman 2003; Wood 1992). In Wolin’s terms, the Declaration of Independence ‘set out a conception of collectivity that … attempted to ground public authority in the specific capacity of the people to constitute their own political identity’. A decade later the Constitution ‘preserved the democratic conception of collectivity … the idea of a people who could act politically (Wolin 1978: 2–3). Elite interests set to work to undermine the founding democratic premises. The Constitution which followed the Preamble was full of mechanisms to dilute the

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voice of citizens. Another strategy was effort to substitute ‘voters’ for ‘people’. ‘On the face of it, the creation of a mass electorate seemed to hold out the promise of translating into action the abstract idea of a collective will,’ argues Wolin. ‘In reality, the “electorate” was a pseudo-equivalent for “the people” … The electorate was “the voters”, which meant that only on infrequent occasions was the citizen encouraged to think of himself [or herself] as a member of a … body politic’ (1978: 4–5). Yet America continued to be the setting of robust self-organising activities, from voluntary associations, common schools and colleges to settlement of towns, which created what historian Robert Wiebe (1995) called a sense of ‘portable democracy’, created through the labour of citizens. Meanwhile, movements such as abolition, labour organising and suffrage sought to create ‘a more perfect union’ with liberty and justice ‘for all’ (Evans & Boyte 1992). Abraham Lincoln’s formulation of ‘government of people, by the people, and for the people’ can be understood as the expression and crystallisation of decades of such self-organising civic action, which created a heritage of civic agency challenging views of politics in which ownership was vested in the political class: government was not simply based upon consent of the governed. It was ‘grounded in the people’ (Wolin 1978: 3). To return to the formative period in late 19th- and 20th-century democratic journalism in America is to go back to young intellectuals and professionals involved in what Lewis Feuer (1959) called the ‘back to the people’ movement, a movement emerging out of the Guilded Age which sought to restore the people as the agents who act collectively as the foundation of democracy. The settlement house leader Jane Addams said, ‘[We were all motivated] by a desire to get back to the people, to be identified with the common lot; each of [us] magnified the obligation inherent in human relationships as such’ (cited in Feuer 1959: 546). Public universities and liberal arts schools like Oberlin and Augsburg were sites for the ‘back to the people’ intellectual movement, and its expressions in different professions, because of higher education’s formative role in shaping the identities and practices of professionals. Thus, for instance, the University of Michigan in those years was a leader in the shift in American higher education toward the public university with commitments to access for a diverse citizenry and extensive engagement with the society. James B. Angell, Michigan’s president from 1871 to 1909, strongly believed that public universities needed to embody a ‘democratic atmosphere’ on campus, full of debate, discussion, experimentalism, open play of different viewpoints and wide engagement with the society. The Michigan curriculum also emphasised science (Williams 1935). In Science, Democracy, and the American University, a reinterpretation of American intellectual history from the Civil War to the Cold War (roughly 1865 to the 1950s), Andrew Jewett (2011) has demonstrated that pragmatist philosophers like John Dewey, who spent formative years at the University of Michigan, and William

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James at Harvard (Throntveit 2014) were part of a broad, diverse movement of ‘scientific democrats’ who saw their major contributions as promoting democratic values and practices among the people. ‘When these early scientific democrats spoke of the “scientific method”, they referred as much to a particular style of free and open dialogue as to a set of empirical techniques,’ Jewett writes, ‘involving no imposition of coercive authority … because it acknowledged that the listeners were free beings in control of their own destinies’ (Jewett 2011: 40). Scientific democrats fed the movement of ‘citizen professionals’ who saw themselves as part of the people, sharing the fate and participating in the struggles of their fellow citizens. Citizen professional practices took a variety of forms. Thus, for instance, public and land grant colleges, full of contradictions, nonetheless included many who saw their work as helping to create democratic political communities. Indeed, land grants were sometimes called ‘democracy’s colleges’. In the 20th century, as the historian Scott Peters (2013) has detailed, civic-minded academics and professionals contributed to rural democracy through sustained collaborative partnerships with communities, often called public work. The idea that professionals’ work should aim at developing the productive and political capacities of the people, and not mainly provide dependency-creating services, was also illustrated in Harlem on a large scale. In the 1920s and 1930s during the African American cultural movement called the Harlem Renaissance, professionals of many backgrounds and disciplines – journalists, artists and poets, labour organisers, teachers, ministers, musicians, and others – saw themselves as having a civic obligation to develop the capacities of ‘the common people’ and make them visible in the larger society. Alain Locke, the first African American Rhodes scholar, in his 1925 book The New Negro articulated the philosophical rationale. The black American, he wrote, ‘resents being spoken for as a social ward or minor, even by his own, being regarded [as] a chronic patient for the sociological clinic, the sick man of American Democracy’. In Locke’s view, the point of the Harlem Renaissance was to make vivid that the black American is ‘a conscious contributor and lays aside the status of beneficiary and ward for that of a collaborator and participant in American civilization’ (Locke 1925: 1). Civic-minded professionals in Harlem helped to create and sustain free spaces ranging from newspapers and radio stations to jazz spots like the Cotton Club to churches, labour study groups, locally owned businesses, union locals, the Harlem library, schools, and theatre projects. These settings mingled with fluid boundaries to create vital local public culture where, as in Sophiatown, people learned skills of dealing with others who are different and developed public identities and a sense of their impact on America. Free spaces and public culture-making also were present in many other parts of the country, as cultural historians such as Michael Denning (1997) and Lary May (2000) have detailed. Such cultural workers challenged the content of an American

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dream defined by individualist, White Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP), consumerist norms, overwhelmingly dominant in the 1920s, with a far more cooperative, racially pluralist and egalitarian vision of democracy in the New Deal. In the process, cultural workers developed a strategic consciousness. They had a sense of their own roles in the battle of ideas and as allies with industrial workers, blacks, and other groups. They also advanced their own interests, conveyed by Mills’ quote at the essay’s beginning: they fought for themselves and others as part of ‘the people’. Such a view of the people animated the public narratives of the Depression-era journalist Ernie Pyle, whose reports on the struggles and lives of everyday citizens helped to shape a substantial counter-public narrative, ‘Century of the Common Man [and Woman]’ which challenged the great power narrative of ‘the American Century’ propagated by Henry Luce, founder and editor of both Time and Life magazines. The journalist Susan Faludi (1999) has conveyed the contrast. While Luce developed a narrative of ‘the American Century’ which enlisted the people in an imperial version of the American project, Ernie Pyle’s Century of the Common Man returned to the concept of the people collectively shaping their destiny. His story emerged from years of stories about the struggles and lives of everyday citizens. As Faludi puts it, during the Great Depression ‘in his columns he had crafted … while touring small-town and rural America chronicling the quiet struggles of Alabama sharecroppers and Mississippi shrimp-canary workers, Oklahoma ditch diggers and Great Plains Dust Bowl farmers trying to survive the nation’s economic devastation … an [alternative] model … in which no longer was competition considered superior to cooperation’ (Faludi 1999: 20). Pyle’s narrative of the ‘Century of the Common Man’ fed into Pyle’s stories from the front lines of World War II which wove together as a narrative of ‘GI Joe’, everyday Americans whose quiet heroism and cooperative ethos came into their own in the battle between democracy and fascism. Pyle contrasted GI Joe with celebrity ‘fly boys’, fighter pilots from economic and professional elites.

The triumph of the fly boys: The rise of technocracy and the displacement of the people In the decades after the war, the fly boys gained the upper hand. Market dynamics and corporate power played an important role but here I want to concentrate on a dynamic most often slighted by progressive social scientists, with some important exceptions (for example, Hays 1959; Lagemann 1989): the rise of technocratic power and a technocratic epistemology fed transformation of the people into an atomised mass of consumers, clients, and voters.

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As early as 1902 Jane Addams had warned a class of ‘experts’ who saw themselves outside the life of the people. In her view, detached expertise reinforced existing hierarchies based on wealth and power, and created new forms of hierarchical power that threatened the everyday life of communities (Addams 1902). Her warnings applied to a group of architects of a new way of seeing the world that replaced ‘politics’ with scientific administration of the state. Over time, expert claims to unique authority, based precisely on outsider ways of knowing, reshaped the nature of science, academic life, journalism and politics. As Andrew Jewett describes in the case of science, ‘The scientists who powerfully shaped the national discourse on science in the middle years of the twentieth century drew a sharp line between science and society. They portrayed science as utterly deaf to human concerns and sought to insulate the research process [as] … a space untouchable by both the state and the horizontal communication between citizens’ (Jewett 2011: 310). Recent efforts to ‘engage’ professions and academics with the life of the society maintain the stance of elite outsider. Thus Donna Shalala, then chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, illustrated this dynamic in a famous speech calling for renewal of the Wisconsin Idea in 1989, ‘Mandate for a New Century’. Shalala redefined the older Wisconsin Idea, always a contested concept but one which often involved horizontal interactions with the people, into an unabashedly elite perspective, widespread among intellectual and professional elites, including those on the left in the United States. As she put it, ‘The ideal [is] a disinterested technocratic elite … society’s best and brightest in service to its most needy [dedicated to] delivering the miracles of social science [on society’s problems] just as doctors cured juvenile rickets in the past’ (Shalala 1989). In this framework the general population, no longer a people of civic producers, are reconceived as clients and consumers serviced by experts, while citizenship itself is narrowed to practices like voting, volunteering or petitioning government for redress. ‘Civic professionalism’ turns into ‘disciplinary professionalism’ (Bender 1993). Patterns of technocracy have generally remained invisible in public life in the United States. Thus Donna Shalala – the most left-wing member of Bill Clinton’s cabinet and now head of the Clinton Foundation – could embrace ‘the technocratic ideal’ with not a hint of self-consciousness. Shalala and the foundation, it is important to observe, are not isolated cases: they reflect the larger pattern of ‘translational science’ and its affiliated branches of positivist science, which develop and implement policies with no public input by claiming a stance of apoliticality. Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’, the climate encyclical, draws attention to this pattern for mainstream audiences in ways that hold explosive potential to rethink the modern social landscape (Francis 2015b). Francis describes the epistemological shift that prioritises informational approaches for dealing with human problems

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over relational and cultural approaches, a pattern which predominates across the sweep of modern professional life. ‘The basic problem goes even deeper’ than concentrated economic and knowledge power, he argues in the section about the Globalization of the Technocratic Paradigm. ‘It is the way that humanity has taken up … an undifferentiated and one-dimensional paradigm [that] exalts the concept of a subject, who, using logical and rational procedures, progressively approaches and gains control over an external object’ (2015b: 78–79). Here he is naming the positivist theories of knowledge which have become the default, unselfconscious way of seeing. ‘Many problems of today’s world stem from the tendency, at times unconscious, to make the method and aims of science and technology an epistemological paradigm which shaped the lives of individuals and the workings of society’ (2015b: 80). Technocracy like this always works in combination with power. ‘The technocratic paradigm also tends to dominate economic and political life. The economy accepts every advance in technology with a view to profit, without concern for its potentially negative impact on human beings’ (2015b: 109). As a result, technological transformations ‘have given those with the knowledge, and especially the economic resources to use them … dominance over the whole of humanity and the entire world’ (2015b: 77). There is tension between Francis’s epistemological critique, which uncovers the nakedly political power dynamics behind the stance of ‘objectivity’ and ‘apolitical science’ through the whole of the modern world, and his definition of ‘politics’, which he distinguishes from the civic, ‘the countless array of organizations which work to promote the common good and to defend the environment’ (2015b: 167). But the larger messages of the encyclical for repoliticising the entire ‘system world’ of bureaucracies and professions is unmistakable. And the implications are profound. As Pope Francis puts it in his speech to popular movements in Bolivia in July 2015, ‘The future of humanity does not lie solely in the hands of great leaders, the great powers and the elites. It is fundamentally in the hands of peoples and in their ability to organize’ (Francis 2015a). The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, which shaped me as a young man, represented a powerful counter-trend, revitalising an understanding of democracy as a way of life created and sustained by the people in ways which helped to catalyse democratic movements across the world. Yet participatory democracy, on balance, did little to overcome the techno-economic paradigm because it did not sufficiently explode the fiction of apolitical science. The displacement of citizens’ agency by the rise of the experts was vividly illustrated in the presidency of Jimmy Carter, a Democrat. Carter in his 1978 State of the Union address declared that to remedy the distance that had grown between people and government, ‘we must have what Abraham Lincoln sought – a Government for the people’. Wolin observed that ‘in … appealing to the memory of

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the folk hero (Lincoln) … the president effected a distortion … that was as revealing as it was radical’. He dropped government ‘of’ and government ‘by’, leaving only government ‘for’ (Wolin 1978: 8–9). In the technocratic paradigm, government provides benefits and solutions, the president is manager-in-chief, and citizens are needy and dependent clients. One of the great ironies of contemporary politics is the way Barack Obama, after running a successful presidential campaign on civic agency themes, immediately abandoned most of them after taking office (Boyte 2009). The outsider, expert-knows-best dynamics have been both reflected in and furthered by trends in journalism. The historian David Thelen analyses this pattern in his treatment of journalists’ coverage of the Iran Contra hearings during the Reagan administration when the United States Congress investigated Oliver North and others on the government payroll who sold American missiles to the Iranians and used the profits to support guerrillas in Nicaragua fighting the Sandinista regime (Thelen 1996). Thelen shows that the media, no less than other professionals, saw ‘the people’ as an undifferentiated mass, dangerous when activated, otherwise entertained and easily manipulated. ‘On the one side were the professionals with the training and insider credentials that entitled them to interpret events. On the other side was everyone else … who viewed “the news” as amusement’ (1996: 38). Overwhelmingly, the journalistic establishment saw ‘the American people’ as almost entirely concerned with entertainment. ‘Having stripped from viewers the capacity to think or speak except when spoken to, journalists then complained that “audiences lose the habit of memory and let slip their hold on the ladders of history and geography”, in Lewis Lapham’s words’ (1996: 37). The view of politics as elite activity increasingly shaped North Atlantic definitions in ways which influenced newly emerging independent nations. In 1960 Seymour Martin Lipset defined democracy as a system of elections with few questions raised in mainstream intellectual thought in Political Man. ‘Democracy in a complex society,’ wrote Lipset, ‘is a political system which supplies regular constitutional opportunities for changing the governing officials, and a social mechanism which permits the largest possible part of the population to influence major decisions by choosing among candidates’ (Lipset 1960: 45). A few dissented with a cautionary warning to societies emerging from colonial rule, recalling older concepts of politics as the horizontal interactions among diverse citizens, not simply ‘party politics’, or vertical politics in relationship to the state. Thus Bernard Crick in In Defense of Politics called politics ‘a great and civilizing activity’ that emphasised negotiation and engagement of diverse views and interests. Drawing on Aristotle and Hannah Arendt, and shaped by the experiences of popular politics in the Great Depression, Crick developed his argument as a warning to newly

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emerging societies in the Global South not to be taken in by North Atlantic party politics. An emphasis on ideological ‘unity’ destroys politics’ defining quality. Crick (1962) defended politics against a list of forces which he saw as obliterating recognition of plurality, including nationalism, technology and mass democracy, as well as partisans of conservative, liberal and socialist ideologies. His citizen politics view played an important, if little-known role in South Africa’s transition, informing the framework of Frederick van Zyl Slabbert, who founded the Institute for a Democratic Alternative in South Africa in 1987 as a way to enact a ‘politics of engagement’ across deepening racial divisions (Boyte 2003). More generally, however, state-centred party politics generated the major strand of progressive politics in the Global South as well as the North Atlantic arc. This was ‘mass politics’, which stressed universal claims, distributive justice, individual rights and a consumer view of the citizen. A one-dimensional view of the person took hold among opinion elites – ordinary people (if not themselves) are singularly concerned with filling their needs and wants, not with questions of life purpose, creativity, civic contribution or meaningful work. In the US, mass politics crystallised in the mobilising approaches to citizen action and elections that emerged in the 1970s. Mobilising techniques included the door-to-door canvass, robo-calls, direct mail fundraising, internet mobilisations, and other mass communications methods, taking ‘us versus them’ to new levels of psychological sophistication, using advanced communications techniques based on a formula: find a target or enemy to demonise, stir up emotion with inflammatory language using a script that defines the issue in good-versus-evil terms and shuts down critical thought, and convey the idea that those who champion the victims will come to the rescue. Such mobilising and polarising techniques now dominate across the entire political spectrum. Mobilising has won victories for disadvantaged groups in a difficult political culture. But it is a ‘slash and burn’ approach, which also ravages the public culture (Boyte 2009). Against the grain of such politics, a citizen politics which advances the concept of the people as political agents also began to find new foundations.

Return to citizen politics Citizen politics is the way people negotiate different, sometimes conflicting interests and views in order to build the power across differences to get things done and build a democratic way of life. At times, diverse interests can be integrated through such politics, but the aim generally is not to do away with conflict – politics is a never-ending ‘rough and tumble’ activity. Sometimes it surfaces previously submerged clashes of interest. Rarely does it achieve consensus. Citizen politics

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aims rather to avoid violence, to contain conflicts, to generate common work on common challenges, and to achieve broadly beneficial public outcomes. A rough and tumble citizen politics revived on a significant scale in what is called broadbased community organising (Boyte 1989; Bretherton 2015; Larkin 1990; Wood 2002). Over the last generation, close to 200 groups called broad-based community organisations involving several million people in the United States reintroduced civic agency politics into a society where people’s capacities for self-directed collective action had sharply eroded. Broad-based community organising networks include the Gamaliel Foundation, as well as the Industrial Areas Foundation, PICO, DART, and many independent groups. Organisations reflect a wide range of religious views, and bring together African Americans, Spanish-speaking Americans, Asian Americans, and European Americans. Though their primary base is working families, they also include very poor, upper middle class, and a few upper class members. Such organising has spread to several African countries, including South Africa, where the former Black Consciousness leader Ishmael Mkhabela was long the key figure. Such organising is based on a narrative view that recognises each person as a unique, meaning-making and immensely complex individual. It also involves developing public skills, habits and mental outlooks of refraining from quick and categorical judgments. Members of broad-based organisations learn to understand the stories and motivations of others of different income, religious, cultural or partisan political backgrounds through what are called ‘one-on-ones’, the foundational method of civic politics. People learn to think in strategic ways and in the long term. They pay close attention to local cultures and networks. All this involves learning to use conflict for productive ends and public purposes. These groups stress moving from ‘protest to governance’, as described by Gerald Taylor, a key architect of organising. ‘Moving into power means learning how to be accountable,’ said Taylor. ‘It means being able to negotiate and compromise. It means understanding that people are not necessarily evil because they have different interests or ways of looking at the world.’ Such groups have become sophisticated in forming what they call public relationships with establishment leaders whom many once saw simply as the enemy. When BUILD leaders met for the first time with Paul Sarbanes, senior senator from Maryland, for example, he welcomed them, took out his notepad, and asked, ‘What can I do for you?’ ‘Nothing’, was the answer. ‘We will be around for a long time, and you are likely to be as well. We want to develop a relationship. We need to understand your interests, why you went into politics, and what you are trying to achieve’ (Taylor in Boyte 2002: 5). The dynamic qualities of civic politics contrast with mass mobilising politics and other forms of technocratic action, both in method and in philosophy, confounding

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narrow and static categories – ‘liberal’, ‘conservative’, Evangelical’, ‘Muslim’, ‘rich’, ‘homeless’, and the like. Community organising is also typically limited by a fatalism about the larger structures of the system world where technocracy holds sway – government, professions and the cultural industries. This has meant that organisers have not fully grasped or addressed technocracy and its effects. It has also greatly limited organisers’ capacities to impact the larger society beyond their organisations. But an important development is the emergence of journalists who, like other citizen professionals, themselves rediscover deeply democratic elements of their own traditions.

The journalists of public narrative The Nehemiah Homes organising effort was undertaken by East Brooklyn Churches, an affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation, or IAF, the largest of the broad-based community organising networks. 4 East Brooklyn Churches (EBC) is a citizen organisation based largely among African American churches in impoverished neighbourhoods of Brooklyn, New York. The group began modestly in 1978 with a small group of Catholic and Protestant clergy and laity to discuss the formidable array of community issues they faced. They followed the organising dictum to start with small ‘winnable’ issues around which poor and powerless people can experience confidence-building success and develop clear-eyed assessment of risks. EBC members forced clean-ups of rotten meat in local food stores, pressured the city to install hundreds of street signs, forced renovation of local parks and worked together to clean up vacant lots. Slowly they forged a sense of solidarity and potency. ‘We are not a grassroots organization,’ thundered the Reverend Johnny Ray Youngblood, a key leader in the organisation, at one rally. ‘Grass roots are shallow roots. Grass roots are fragile roots. Our roots are deep roots. Our roots have fought for existence in the shattered glass of East New York.’ In the early 1980s, EBC took on a project to build thousands of houses affordable for working-class and low-income people, a scale that dwarfed not only their own prior activities but any other low income housing development initiative in the country. The EBC turned to housing out of the conviction that only widespread home ownership could create the kind of ‘roots’ essential for renewed community pride and freedom from fear. Teaming up with a well-known newspaper columnist I.D. Robbins, they adopted his controversial argument that for half the cost of high-density, high-rise apartments, it would be possible to build large numbers of single-family homes, owned by low-income families that could create stable neighbourhood anchors. EBC named their undertaking the ‘Nehemiah Plan’, recalling the Old Testament prophet sent back to Jerusalem by the King of Persia in

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420BC to lead in the rebuilding of the city after the Babylonian captivity. Nehemiah held together a motley crew – 40 different groups are named, including merchants, priests, governors, members of the perfume and goldsmiths’ guilds, and women. At one point he organised a great assembly to call to account nobles making excessive profit from the poor. As the Jewish people rebuilt their walls, they renewed their purpose and identity. Although the group had won financial commitments from an impressive array of backers, the project’s success depended on city funding for a loan pool and they had been stymied by the New York mayor Edward Koch, who refused to meet with them citing a negative experience with a sister organisation in the Queens area of New York. Leaders held a press conference to publicise his indecision. That evening, the local CBS television affiliate broadcast clips of the desolate area and a reporter told the story of the organising which had led to the plan for low-income houses. Meanwhile an announcer read from the Book of Nehemiah: ‘You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suffer disgrace.’ The CBS story was an example of ‘public narrative’, creating a public story of citizen agency in which diverse groups could see themselves. It activated the viewing audience on an enormous scale. The following day, Mayor Koch declared himself the new Nehemiah and pledged his support for the effort, giving Nehemiah speeches for several months thereafter. Thousands of Poles and Italians and other ethnics from Catholic parishes in Queens joined an interfaith religious celebration at the groundbreaking of the first Nehemiah homes. Nearly 4 000 have been built. It became the spark for the only major national low-income housing legislation during the Reagan years. The recent anniversaries surrounding the civil rights movement have occasioned similar examples of public storytelling. Thus, for instance, the CNN documentary We Were There, based on oral histories of the March on Washington in 1963, dramatises how key strategic leaders like A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin brought a power-building, cross-ideological, coalition-building politics from the 1930s to the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s (CNN 2013). Rustin was the march organiser, and as Rustin’s young aide Rachelle Horowitz describes in the documentary, he believed that the march must aim not to polarise but rather to ‘win over the middle’. Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech embodied this strategy, coupling a challenge to America to make real the promise of democracy with a call to discipline anger. Despite widespread fatalism, there are multiplying signs that technocracy is not the ineluctable future. The recent collection Democracy’s Education: Public Work, Citizenship and the Future of Colleges and Universities (Boyte 2015) is full of stories of democratisation of professions and institutions in and around higher

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education, as well as the revival of the concept of democracy as a way of life. These are accompanied by a new focus on agency in theory, developed in the field of civic studies, launched by a group of engaged political theorists (Boyte et al. 2007). Civic studies enriches earlier treatments of agency, such as the prominent article by Mustafa Emirbayer and Ann Mishe ‘What is Agency?’ (1998), by stressing that citizens are builders of political communities, not simply deliberators about political communities. Agency is understood as the capacity to act in diverse and open environments to shape the world around us (Tisch College of Citizenship 2015). Citizenship is ‘public work’ expressed through ‘world-building’ work and work sites with democratic dimensions, not simply off-hours volunteerism or participation in governance structures (Boyte 2011). Finally, in this view, academics and professionals more generally themselves are citizens. Knowledge should improve capacities to act collectively, effectively and ethically. As Peter Levine puts it, civic studies ‘treats scholars as citizens, engaged with others in creating their worlds … accountable for the actual results of their thoughts and not just the ideas themselves’ (2014: 7). This idea that professionals are citizens, not dealing ‘with’ citizens, returns to the concept of the people as the agents and architects of democracy. It is a new frontier of media as a space for public narrative-building.

Politics of the people: South Africa In South Africa today, ‘democracy’ means elections, or more narrowly even ‘rule by the numbers’, as Marianne Merten has recently observed. She quotes Jacob Zuma, who dismissed the ‘rights’ of union members who criticised the government report on the Marikana killings by arguing ‘We have more rights here because we are a majority. You have fewer rights because you are a minority … that’s how democracy works’.5 Yet there is an alternative narrative of democracy below the surface. In South Africa, the politics of the people played itself out far longer than elsewhere because broad popular politics in ‘the struggle against fascism’ merged into ‘the struggle against apartheid’. David Everatt, in his history of progressive politics of the 1950s, The Origins of Non-Racialism, details how the concept of broad alliancebuilding against fascist dangers took new forms after the election of the National Party in 1948. Proponents of alliance-building politics became critics of ideological purity (Everett 2009). Such alliance-building culminated in the campaign for the Freedom Charter. Subsequent struggles deepened these themes. As Raymond Suttner has described:

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During the popular power period [of the UDF] grassroots practices led to an expanded or enriched understanding of the Freedom Charter. The role of ‘the people’ came to mean not only voting for a democratic parliament but also taking control over their own lives … before, and also after, the moment of the seizure or transfer of power. (2014: 9) Put differently, like the US Declaration of Independence and the Constitutional Preamble, there is, at the founding narrative of South Africa, the concept of the people as agents and architects of democracy. In both societies, the democratic work of journalists can be conceived as helping to retrieve and bring to renewed consciousness these narratives. Such work has potential for global impact.

Notes 1 ‘If we map the two concepts, we can say that the notion of civic is broader, encompassing the terrain of the public, while it is on this terrain that politics and the political arise. The civic is thus a precondition for the political, in the sense that it situates us in the realm of the public’ (Dahlgren 2009: 58–59). 2 Cronin J, Legacy of the TRC: A forum of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa, Cape Town (21 August 2006). Boyte’s notes of speech. Xolela Mangcu (2012) argues that the Black Consciousness Movement forms a little understood alternative to the mass politics of protest and was South Africa’s most important tradition of a ‘citizen-centric’ politics of popular agency. 3 I saw this first hand when the 2008 Obama campaign asked me to organise a ‘civic engagement committee’. 4 This section adapted from Boyte (1989: 82–84). 5 Merten M, In parliament, politics has given way to politicking. The Star, 6 July 2015.

References Addams J (1902) Democracy and social ethics. New York: Macmillan Bender T (1993) Intellect and public life: Essays on the social history of academic intellectuals in the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press Boyte HC (1981) Populism and the left. Democracy 1(2): 53­– 66 Boyte HC (1989) CommonWealth: A return to citizen politics. New York: Free Press Boyte HC (2001) Reconstructing democracy: The citizen politics of public work. Visiting scholar’s lecture to the Sociology Department, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Accessed June 2017, https://www.google.co.za/?gfe_ rd=cr&ei=ahk4WejmFO6o8wfYgIKIDA#q=Harry+Boyte+Havens+Center+ Reconstructing+Democracy+The+Citizen+Politics+of+Public+Work+Havens Boyte HC (2002) Information-Age populism. Dayton, OH: Kettering Foundation Boyte HC (2003) Constructive politics: The Institute for Democracy in South Africa. Pretoria: Idasa Boyte HC (2009) Civic agency and the cult of the expert. Kettering Foundation Working Paper, Dayton, OH

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Boyte HC (2011) Constructive politics as public work: Organizing the literature. Political Theory 39(5): 630–660 Boyte HC (Ed.) (2015) Democracy’s education: Public work, citizenship and the future of colleges and universities. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press Boyte HC, Elkins S, Levine P, Mansbridge J, Ostrom E, Smith R & Soltan K (2007) The new civic politics: Civic theory and practice for the future – framing statement of civic studies. Tufts University, Boston. Accessed June 2017, http://activecitizen.tufts.edu/civic-studies/ summer-institute/summer-institute-of-civic-studies-framing-statement/ Bretherton L (2015) Resurrecting democracy: Faith, citizenship, and the politics of a common life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Canovan M (2002) The people, the masses, and the mobilization of power: The paradox of Hannah Arendt’s populism. Social Research 69(2): 403–422 Countryman E (2003) The American revolution. New York: Macmillan CNN. (2013) We were there: An oral history of the march on Washington. Documentary. Accessed June 2017, http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2013/08/01/we-were-there-the-march-onwashington-an-oral-history-debuts-friday-august-23-at-1000pm-et-pt/ Crick B (1962) In defense of politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Dahlgren P (2009) Media and political engagement: Citizens, communication and democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press Denning M (1997) The cultural front: The laboring of American culture in the twentieth century. New York: Verso Press Dreher T (2010) Speaking up or being heard? Community media interventions and the politics of listening. Media, Culture & Society 32(1): 85–103 Emirbayer M & Mishe A (1998) What is agency? American Journal of Sociology 103(4): 962–1023 Evans SM & Boyte HC (1992) Free spaces: The sources of democratic change in America (2nd edition). Chicago: University of Chicago Press Everatt D (2009) The origins of non-racialism: White opposition to apartheid in the 1950s. Johannesburg: Wits University Press Faludi S (1999) Stiffed: The betrayal of the American Man. New York: William Morrow Feuer LS (1959) Dewey and the back-to-the-people movement. Journal of the History of Ideas 3: 545–568 Francis (2015a) Address of the Holy Father to the second annual meeting of popular movements, Santa Cruz, Bolivia (9 July). Accessed 7 June 2017, http://w2.vatican.va/ content/francesco/en/speeches/2015/july/documents/papa-francesco_20150709_boliviamovimenti-popolari.html Francis (2015b) Laudato Si’: On the care for our common home. Vatican: Vatican Publishing Ganz M (2008) What is public narrative? Accessed June 2017, http://www.wholecommunities.org/pdf/Public%20Story%20Worksheet07Ganz.pdf Graham S & Walters J (2010) Langston Hughes and the South African Drum generation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Hays SP (1959) Conservation and the gospel of efficiency: The progressive conservation movement, 1890–1920. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press Jewett A (2011) Science, democracy, and the American university: From the Civil War to the Cold War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Lagemann E (1989) The politics of knowledge: The Carnegie Corporation, philanthropy, and public policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Larkin MB (1990) Cold anger: A story of faith and power politics. Denton: University of North Texas Press Levine P (2014) The case for civic studies. In P Levine & K Soltan (Eds) Civic studies. Washington, DC: AAC&U Lipset SM (1960) Political man. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Locke A (1925) The new negro. New York: Macmillan. Mangcu X (2012) African modernity and the struggle for people’s power. The Good Society 21(2): 279–299 May L (2000) The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the politics of the American way. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Peters S (2013) Democracy and higher education: Traditions and stories of civic engagement. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press Polletta F (1999) ‘Free spaces’ in collective action. Theory and Society 28: 1–38 Shalala D (1989) Mandate for a new century. Dodd Lecture, University of Illinois. Accessed June 2017, http://www.uic.edu/depts/oaa/ddh/ddhlectures/Lec11.pdf Suttner R (2014) Popular power, constitutional democracy, and crisis: South Africa 1994– 2014. Strategic Review for Southern Africa 36(2): 7–30 Thelen D (1996) Becoming citizens in the age of television. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Throntveit T (2014) William James and the quest for an ethical republic. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Tisch College of Citizenship. What is civic studies? Accessed June 2017, http://activecitizen.tufts.edu/civic-studies/ Wiebe R (1995) Self-rule: A cultural history of American democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Williams BA (1935) Thought and action: John Dewey at the University of Michigan. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Bentley Library Wolin S (1978) State of the union. New York Review of Books 25(8). Accessed June 2017, http://www.nybooks.com/issues/1978/may/18/ Wolin S (1980) Reagan country. New York Review of Books 27(20). Accessed June 2017, http://www.nybooks.com/issues/1980/dec/18/ Wood G (1992) The radicalism of the American revolution. New York: Random House Wood RL (2002) Faith in action: Religion, race, and democratic organizing in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

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6 A better life for all? Consumption and citizenship in post-apartheid media culture Mehita Iqani

This chapter addresses the question of consumption in post-apartheid South Africa, and explores its relation to theories of citizenship, participation and the mediated public sphere.1 The critical study of consumer culture in South Africa is an emerging field of study. It argues not only that consumption is political in a number of senses, but that a deeper understanding of what consumption means in contemporary South Africa is a key to unlocking some of the complexities attendant to pervasive inequality, hopes and dreams of a better life, and forms of public connection in everyday life. In order to present this set of arguments, the chapter begins by reviewing relevant international scholarship about the links between consumption and citizenship, making the argument that consumption (both material and mediated) is an important form of public connection that needs to be considered alongside political participation. Then, the chapter reflects on the role played by consumption in colonial and post-colonial contexts. Deployed as one form of racist govermentality during the apartheid regime, consumption has taken on unique inflections in the post-apartheid era: either celebrated as evidence of progress and empowerment, or disparaged as evidence of having betrayed the socialist principles of the liberation struggle. Against this backdrop, the chapter concludes by considering the politics of aspiration, in which consumption practices and consumerist desires are arguably deeply enmeshed. It is argued that the ideal of ‘a better life for all’ needs to be understood in acutely materialist terms, and that opportunities to consume are not only hugely valued by all citizens, but desperately desired in particular by the ‘have-nots’.

South African consumer culture: Introductory remarks This chapter outlines some key links between consumption and citizenship in contemporary South African culture, which is understood to be inherently

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mediated. In post-apartheid South Africa, consumption has become an integral part of the practices shaping a new public imaginary – and like all other aspects of everyday life in transition – is actively tested and contested in media discourses. The commodities citizens desire, the celebrities they admire, the lifestyles to which they aspire are all actively communicated and contested through media discourses, which through their unique form of publicity provide ever-proliferating stages through which ideas of participation, citizenship and ‘a better life for all’ are actively inscribed and contested, and as such require ongoing research and theorisation. South Africa has to some extent always been a consumer society. Throughout the colonial and apartheid eras, South Africa’s economy was built on the exploitation and trade of gold and other highly desirable raw materials, as well as forms of industrial production associated with those commodities. The racist regime ensured that white South Africans (the minority of the population) enjoyed access not only to political rights but also all of the lifestyle trappings of capitalist society – malls, consumer goods, international travel, and extremely comfortable if not luxurious material standards of living. Deprived for centuries of these material markers of a ‘better life’, South Africans comprising the oppressed racial categories remained marginalised onlookers of globalised consumer culture, deprived of both political rights and economic opportunity during apartheid. As such, it is no surprise that the liberation struggle culminating in the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990 and the first democratic elections in 1994, were widely expected to usher in both political and economic reform. In the more than two decades that have passed since South Africa’s liberation, consumption has arguably come into the public eye in increasingly compelling ways. Consider this (by no means complete) list of events, stories, personalities and actions that have made headlines at various points in the past 25 years. In the early 1990s, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela came under increasing media scrutiny not only for several allegations of serious misconduct and crime, but also for her penchant for high fashion, parties and pink champagne (Iqani 2015b). The rise of the so-called ‘new’ black middle class was the topic of a number of documentary films, countless newspaper articles and editorials in the white press, which devoted much attention to their move to the formerly white suburbs, their shopping habits, their allegedly avaricious attitudes (Iqani 2015a, 2015c). While politicians like Thabo Mbeki and Trevor Manuel spoke out publically about the importance of a black bourgeoisie in stabilising the new nation (Gevisser 2009; Lodge 2003), others like Cyril Ramaphosa left politics in order to capitalise on the need for black businessmen to enter industry, making billions in the process (Lodge 1998). The building of malls, notably Maponya Mall in Soweto (Zondi 2011), and the entry of major international brands like McDonalds into the South African market were celebrated as evidence of how ‘far’ the country had come.

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The first major test of the integrity of the new government (one which was by most accounts a tragic failure) was the arms procurement deal – and the key to that saga of corruption coming into the public realm was the mysterious procurement of a fantastically expensive Mercedes Benz 4x4 by then Chief Whip of Parliament, Tony Yengeni, who was also widely renowned in the media for his penchant for tailored suits and snappy sunglasses (Botha 2003; Crawford-Browne 2004; Holden & Van Vuuren 2011; Iqani 2016). In a similar vein, Julius Malema, former head of the ANC Youth League and now leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters and long-time media enfant terrible (Posel 2014), was – before his fall from ANC grace and his donning of the red beret – routinely pictured in the media wearing custommade purple suits and expensive Rolex watches. Rumours circulated about high profile politicians’ shopping habits, such as instructing bodyguards to close down luxury stores for afternoons of personal shopping. Current president Jacob Zuma allegedly spent billions from public funds on building himself an ultra-luxurious estate in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal (see Southall 2011 for more on Zuma’s politics). Meanwhile in the private sphere, self-made billionaires threw lavish parties: Kenny Kunene’s famous ‘sushi’ 40th-birthday bash catapulted him into the media limelight as South Africa’s poster boy for conspicuous consumption (Morwe 2014; Van Staden 2015). And entrepreneur Khanyi Dhlomo-Mkhize used a government development grant to open a luxury department store selling imported shoes, bags and clothing in Johannesburg’s most luxurious mall, and was then roundly critiqued by the media for selling items worth many times more than the monthly salaries of the workers who cleaned the toilets in those same corridors. Alongside these narratives of elite expenditure, new youth subcultures have emerged, and new local brands have garnered almost slavish followings. Proudly local fashion and lifestyle brands and events have been lovingly nurtured by township entrepreneurs. One can tour Soweto by fixed-speed bicycle with the Fixin Diaries crew, purchase designer AmaKipKip or Skomline 7 455 T-shirts from local fashionistas in townships in Johannesburg and Cape Town, taste different vintages at the Soweto wine fair, enjoy a Sunday brunch at a pavement café on Vilakazi Street while watching hand-polished Porsches and Bentleys pull up outside. The Smarteez engineered a unique aesthetic sensibility celebrating post-modern (and arguably post-apartheid) style (Venter & Johnson 2012); while groups of ‘izikhotane’ gather in Katlehong and Soweto to conspicuously destroy expensive luxury items like UltraMel custard and Carvela shoes (Gurney 2013; Howell & Vincent 2014; Jones 2013; Mkhwanazi 2012). Photographers, journalists and artists document these lifestyle role models, subcultures and brand communities, all of which represent a new perspective on ‘born-free’ culture. From AmaKipKip clothing (Musangi 2009) to izikhotane, young black South Africans are expressing their desire for material goods and their delight in accessing and deploying those goods in ways that are

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meaningful to them. Any glance around a South African university campus or shopping mall will reveal that the youth of today are extremely preoccupied with fashion, style, and self-presentation, and arguably have been celebrating and politicising these opportunities since the early 1990s (Nuttall 2004, 2008). Existing in an almost parallel universe are the platinum miners working in the North West province, striking out of frustration with poverty wages as well as the garnishee orders placed on their already meager salaries (Bond 2015), the domestic workers waking up before 5am to get to their R150 per day (if they’re lucky) jobs in the suburbs where they tend to their middle-class employers’ washing, ironing and child-minding, constantly surrounded by material evidence of lifestyles to which they will probably never have access. The co-location of huge inequality and indefatigable aspiration are most certainly a key feature of life in post-apartheid South Africa. Against the backdrop of this whirlwind summary of the many ways in which consumption has come into the public sphere through media representations of various stories which centre material and consumer cultures in their narratives, the remainder of this chapter explores the politics of consumption in post-apartheid South Africa, and asks how it can be theorised and conceptualised in relation to citizenship. As the discussion will show, questions of consumption are inherently political, and can provide an original and compelling route into theorising questions of citizenship in post-apartheid culture. Accessing questions of citizenship through consumption allows not only for important new research areas to receive due attention, but to open up space to learn more about the material and aspirational dimensions of what it means to be a South African citizen today.

Consumers and citizens: Both public actors? Arguably questions of citizenship and consumption are intertwined in complex ways in every human society and context. As such, in order to think through the particular flavour of this link in the context of South Africa, the discussion will turn to international and local scholarship. While reflecting on the meaning of consumption in post-apartheid society, it is important to avoid slipping too deeply into the parochial and to enter into wider-ranging debates about the complexities attendant to consumption in the Global South broadly conceived (Iqani 2016). Considering the past two and a half decades of South African history from the perspective of consumption, one could be forgiven for thinking that for South Africa the liberation struggle merely produced a state even more neo-liberal than the oppressive, racist regime that preceded it. South Africa has arguably turned into a society even more consumerist than the one that preceded it: popular

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culture seems more interested in bling cars, fancy shoes, sexy celebrities, shopping and fast food than in collectively forging a society in which extreme poverty is systematically eradicated. One of the key features of the shift to post-modernity and the neo-liberalisation of everything is the rise of the idea of the consumer as the primary mode through which individuals are invited to act in the public domain. In late modernity, ‘the primary economic image offered to the modern citizen is not that of the producer but of the consumer’ (Rose 1990: 102). Neoliberal values mean that ‘consumption and purchasing power are put forward as the primary means by which individuals can shape, manage and make meaningful their own lives’ (Iqani 2012: 26). Arguably, consumer culture has produced individuals whose ‘citizenship is … manifested through the free exercise of personal choice among a variety of marketed options’ (Rose 1990: 226). The citizen and the consumer have often been theorised as separate and incommensurable identities. The citizen is conceptualised as a collective player, one who is involved in and contributing to issues of shared concern that need communal resolution, while consumers are framed as self-interested, individualistic and concerned primarily with meeting their own desires and needs. In the ‘liberal social imaginary of Western capitalist democracies’ citizens are conceptualised as rightsbearing individuals who give a political mandate to the state, and in return to whom the state is responsible, while consumers are conceptualised as emotive actors in an economic relationship, engaged in the exchange of money for commodities, and motivated by private concerns (Clarke et al. 2007: 2). However, arguably, the binary construct of consumers as individualist, self-interested and irrational, and citizens as publicly minded, collectivist and rational requires further complication. Néstor García Canclini argues that consumption is not only an appropriate site for thinking through big questions about social mobility and equality, but also fundamentally linked in with the ways in which citizenship and public connection are enacted in globalised late modernity: The rapprochement of citizenship, mass communications, and consumption has, among other aims, to give recognition to the scenarios in which the public is constituted. It becomes evident that in order to live in democratic societies it is indispensable to accept that the market of citizens’ opinions includes as great a variety and dissonance as the clothing and entertainment markets. Remembering that citizens are also consumers leads to finding in the diversification of tastes one of the aesthetic foundations for the democratic conception of citizenship. (Canclini 2001: 28) In opposition to the perspective that argues that consumers have no ability to connect with public (read ‘political’) concerns, another perspective argues that

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consumption has always been political and must continue to be theorised as such. It is important also to map out the ways in which activities that are not explicitly political are also forms of public engagement. For example, activities formerly considered as occupying the realm of the emotive, such as an interest in shared forms of popular culture, entertainment or celebrity, deserve attention as forms of public connection (Couldry et al. 2007; Couldry & Markham 2006, 2007; Markham & Couldry 2007). As such, it is necessary to re-theorise the relationship between consumers and citizens (Canclini 2001), as well as the notion of the public itself. In an important canon of media theory, citizens are conceived as rational actors who rationally debate matters of common concern through media spaces and as such participate in the public sphere (Habermas 1991; Lunt & Livingstone 2013). As I have argued elsewhere, working with Hannah Arendt’s theory of the public realm (Arendt 1958), which in fact pre-dated Habermas’s seminal intervention, and to which it is indebted (Benhabib 1996: 199) and Lilie Chouliaraki’s notion of media texts as ‘spaces of appearance’ (Chouliaraki 2006a, 2006b, 2008), in the age of consumer culture, the notion of the public needs to be reconceptualised: Media texts such as consumer magazines are public artefacts, put out into common space and, theoretically at least, accessible and visible to all. When objects (commodities), subjects (individual personalities and celebrities) or ideas are made visible to the widest possible audience through media texts, technologies or spaces, they too become public. It is important to carefully delineate the nature of this publicness as one that prioritizes appearance and display. This type of publicity equates to a project of gaining mindshare through an appropriation of the ocular. Arguably, visual mediation has a special kind of publicity, in the sense in which it allows linguistic barriers (of translation or illiteracy, for example) to be overcome. Images have the potential for reaching global publics, as they have the potential to be seen and interpreted by the largest possible audiences. The strategy of creating a common focus on symbolic messages is central to consumerist communication, while ideas of common action are de-emphasized in favour of an individualist performative view on social life and identity. In this framing, the notion of audience is prioritized over that of a civic collective, thereby privileging the operation of visibility/spectatorship rather than participation/debate. The consumerist view on the public prioritizes the value of widely accessible visibility and de-emphasizes the value of democratic participation. (Iqani 2012: 20) In this framework, the idealised participating citizen morphs into an agonal actor more concerned with individualised visibility and economic transactions and who connects more with media forms than collective social action. Consumption is

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a form of public action and participation and a process of making visible – both of which are inherently political. Rather than simply being a binary opposite to citizenship, consumption is ‘a site of cognitive value; … good for thinking and acting in a meaningful way that renews social life’ (Canclini 2001: 47).

The politics of consumption in the post-colony With the important links between consumer culture and the media, and citizenship and consumption, thus sketched out, it is now necessary to consider whether consumption carries any special meaning in the post-colonial context. As Jean and John Comaroff argue, consumption has become increasingly relevant to citizens of the world since the turn of the millennium. The key question for scholars of social and cultural change in the global south is the extent to which global capitalism broadly conceived and the specific social practices associated with it, such as consumption, are ‘invested with the capacity to wholly transform the universe of the marginalized and the disempowered’ (Comaroff & Comaroff 2001: 2). With this provocation in mind, it is worth turning our attention to a consideration of the role that consumption played in colonial contexts, and to reflect on how that was carried forward into the post-colonial moment. During imperialism, structures of consumption were imposed by imperial powers for their own economic benefit. Raw materials were extracted and shipped out and manufactured commodities were shipped in: colonies were expected to function as markets for all of the excess goods produced by the metropolitan powers. Consumption was aggressively promoted as part of the colonial agenda and was underwritten by a civilising mission that saw modernisation as tied up in consumer economies (Burke 1996). Indeed, consumption has been ideologically identified as the ‘moving spirit of the late twentieth century’ by states and corporations rooted in the West (Comaroff & Comaroff 2001: 4). In colonial regimes, practices of consumption were promoted and imposed; they were also regulated and forced to conform to the colonial imagination of what black consumers ‘should’ and ‘should not’ buy. Black consumers in colonial and apartheid societies were routinely humiliated and excluded from spaces and practices of consumption reserved for white people. The black customer would have to go ‘to the small window of the big department store and whatever he desired to purchase was chosen for him and brought to the window’ (Charles Nyereyegona, a ‘black marketing’ expert writing in 1973, quoted in Burke 1996: 134). This shows how impossible it is to disentangle consumption from questions of agency and choice, especially in the context of societies in which consumption was actively used as a form of racist regulation and exclusion.

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In the context of South Africa’s history of anti-apartheid struggle, certain forms of consumption or orchestrated non-consumption were explicitly political acts. Defiance of the Group Areas Act, which controlled not only where black South Africans could live, but also their leisure and retail opportunities, could have profound consequences – both symbolically conscientising or dangerously punitive. In her autobiography, Part of My Soul Went With Him, Winnie Mandela argued that her act of walking into a store reserved for ‘whites only’ in Brandfort (the scene of her banning order after the 1976 student uprisings in Soweto) and brazenly doing her shopping amidst the white customers was an important act of resistance (Mandela 1985). Furthermore, consumer boycotts were a fundamental part of civil disobedience campaigns, both within South Africa’s towns and townships (Lodge & Nasson 1991: 79; Swilling 1987) and in the global anti-apartheid movement (Smith 1987). Groups and individuals marginalised by social and economic power have been theorised as ‘subalterns’ (Spivak 1999, 2005, 2013). In the realm of consumption, this lack of agency takes a specific shape. Subaltern consumers have no spending power, struggle to access even the most basic necessities, never mind luxury and non-essential commodities, and their consumption practices are regulated and marginalised by power structures. Despite neoliberal promises of worlds of choice communicated through corporate media, subaltern consumers have few options in what, where or whether they consume. They have little or no opportunity to engage in the forms of pleasure-seeking or value production through consumption that are taken for granted by those who are in the centre of consumer society. Subaltern consumers lack freedom in terms of their agency in consumption, and also in terms of their vulnerability as sophisticated political-economic entities like multinational corporations seek to exploit them as new markets (Varman & Vikas 2007). In post-colonial cultures, the erasures initiated in the colonial project are arguably sustained, and re-allocated. Certain groups and individuals remain erased from ‘mainstream public spaces’ – such as consumption opportunities – and ‘cut off from lines of access to the center’ (Dutta & Pal 2010: 364). In post-colonial contexts, the argument can certainly be made that despite certain superficial changes in consumption opportunities (such as no longer having to endure the humiliation of standing at a side window and asking a white storeowner to bring the goods one wants to buy), neo-liberal structures of post-colonial societies continue to cut out possibilities for equal participation and economic mobility. Consumption has been theorised in two broad strokes (see Iqani 2012 for a more in-depth discussion). The first considers consumption as evidence of manipulation by the imperialist, capitalist system and is rooted in Marxist critique. For example, the ‘culture industry’ critique framed mass media consumption as evidence of strategic manipulation (Adorno & Horkheimer 1944). More recent

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critiques frame consumption as a form of labour that helps to drive capital (Lee 1993; Perrotta 2001). The second considers consumption as a practice through which individuals exercise agency through the construction of class identities (Bourdieu 1984) or even communicate love and care to one’s family (Miller 1998). The ‘Marxist’ (to summarise it crudely) approach emphasises political-economic structures, the power of capital, industrial and post-industrial commodity production, and the limited choices available to individuals within this system. The ‘cultural’ approach emphasises the pleasures inherent in consumption, and takes note of how consumption is a crucial zone in which individuals exercise choice and agency, construct relationships and self-express. In colonial and apartheid contexts, because consumption was racialised and regulated so as to entrench white supremacist capitalism and black consumers were denied the same consumer agency that white consumers took for granted, the ability to consume became inherently politicised on a collective level. Deborah Posel has shown how consumption, lifestyle and pecuniary regimes were an important part of how the apartheid regime defined, legislated and regulated racial categories (Posel 2010). To some extent, overturning racist consumption structures could be considered evidence of the democratisation of South African consumer society, indeed this is the argument of some high-profile black individuals who became wealthy after liberation: they did not ‘join the struggle to be poor’ (a statement much cited by academics from then ANC spokesperson, Smuts Ngonyama) (Posel 2010: 157). This argument – that consumption represents the achievement of economic liberation – needs tempering by the recognition that consumption is always inextricably linked to capital and neoliberal values. ‘[T]he apotheosis of consumption [is a] concrete, historically specific outworking of millennial capitalism and the culture of neoliberalism’ (Comaroff & Comaroff 2001: 44). In post-apartheid South Africa, consumption has been in turn vilified and celebrated. On the one hand are high profile individuals who present themselves as role models of the oppressed, and who celebrate the ‘good life’ as finally accessible to black as well as white South Africans. On the other hand, are commentators who point out the inconsistencies inherent in former socialist freedom fighters having seamlessly transitioned into super-consumers: ‘erstwhile activists who were previously within the ANC’s Marxist fold … seem not to experience any discomfort at their sometimes spectacular enrichment’ (Posel 2010: 159). Although it is important to acknowledge how meaningful consumption is to groups to whom it was historically denied, it is also important to ask how liberating consumption could possibly be when it represents on so many levels – the economic, the political, the cultural – neoliberal power. It is always necessary to ask who gets to consume, and who is excluded from that possibility. In other words, consumption can never be set apart from questions of power; it is always political. In post-colonial

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societies, consumption plays important roles: it helps to forge global connections through migration, reframes claims to modernity and autonomy (as opposed to simply operating as a form of mimesis), and becomes embedded in local cultures and practices in unique ways (Newell 2012). Just as in the Global North, but in ways unique to the post-colonial context, consumption is a social process (Newell 2005: 185): it is complex and should be theorised as a site in which a complex dialectic between manipulation and empowerment takes place (Iqani 2012: 39).

Consumption as aspiration: Possibilities for participation? Considering these complex theoretical perspectives on consumption, it is perhaps no surprise that consumption has become a key flashpoint for questions to do with race, class, quality of life, equality, redistribution and aspiration. Debates about how consumption intersects with these issues are played out in media representations and discourses. Despite the socialist rhetoric that underwrote the South African transition, in terms of economic policy the new government quickly championed neo-liberalism, and thus, of course, formal economic structures. Neoliberal politics (as the benefit of hindsight allows us to easily observe) simply succeeded in widening the gap between the rich and poor. Although subalterns were entering a state of political inclusion, and some elite previously disadvantaged groups gained quick and easy access to the economic centre, most black South Africans remained (and remain) economically excluded (Mbembé 2008). South Africans of colour were granted the political power of citizens but many are still excluded from the political power of consumer practice. In countries such as South Africa, which exhibit extreme levels of inequality and see growing wealth among a small elite and growing desperation and poverty amongst the rest, who gets to consume and who doesn’t becomes a question not only about the distribution of resources but a question about citizenship. And media texts and technologies are key social sites on which those tensions play out. As Zygmunt Bauman has pointed out, in societies of both the North and South, more and more citizens find themselves categorised as ‘disaffected consumers’ who find themselves excluded from opportunities to participate in consumer society (Bauman 2007). Demanding the right to consume, and to see evidence of materially better lives evidenced in housing, transport, lifestyle, leisure and fashion are consistently identified by South Africa’s poor as things that they want and need. Indeed, the political mandate of Julius Malema’s new party, the Economic Freedom Fighters, is based precisely on the recognition of how important economic agency is to South African citizens. Voting is not enough for those living on the breadline. Theorising what consumption means in an unequal society therefore requires thinking beyond the binaries of public/private,

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collective/individual, political/frivolous. It requires recognising consumption, closely linked as it is to media cultures, as an integral part of experiences of citizenship and public participation. Elsewhere (Iqani 2016), I have devoted some attention to theorising consumption as aspiration, which I argue is a key additional conceptual perspective required when thinking about the significance of consumption in the Global South: Although it is important to continue to point to the injustices that produce and perpetuate material inequality, it is insufficient to merely set the two off against each other as though they are antagonistic and insuperable. Yes, it is most certainly true that the rich are to some extent indifferent to the plight of the poor, and that the poor are to some extent resentful of the rich, but this narrative is arguably overly simplistic and problematic in that it excludes all sorts of other nuances about the discursive power of wealth and the complex relations between elite and subaltern groups. It is necessary to understand how in global south societies the wealth of the elite is not always, only, an insufferable insult to the poor of those societies, and how it functions as a powerful symbol of freedom to which the poor aspire. (Iqani 2016: 60) Being a South African citizen today means much more than the right to vote, the delivery of public services, and ongoing debates about the politics of governance. Citizenship in the new South Africa was expected by the previously disadvantaged to deliver not only the right to have a say in who governed them, but also as channel for demanding access to opportunities to improve the material conditions of their lives. The ability to practice consumption in a more democratised manner certainly remains high on the agenda of many South Africans who bear the brunt of systematic exclusion and institutionalised, grinding poverty. For these reasons, it is impossible to consider citizenship apart from the possibilities and limitations of consumption in the South African context. This is arguably true for many postcolonial and post-authoritarian societies. Both citizenship and consumption are constantly mediated in different ways, and as such both ideals cannot be separated from important questions about the role of the media in producing narratives about identity, agency and public participation. ‘Consumption is an arena of fascination which, in its visibility, in its excess and extravagance, in its (contrary) basic economic necessity, in its expressive freedom and in its ability to call up anxieties and moral orders, returns us to the limits of society and value/s’ (Iqani & Kenny 2015: 96). The study of consumption in its many forms – of media, of commodities, of celebrities, of lifestyles – is not a frivolous topic confined to the ‘superficial’ corners of media and cultural studies, but in fact a field that can shed light on crucial questions of citizenship. As questions of public participation are increasingly mediated through neoliberal

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formations and modes of communication, it will be increasingly necessary for social and cultural theorists to look for new entry points to studying citizen identities and practices. A focus on questions of aspiration, ostentation, acquisition, materiality, commodification and lifestyle can provide a wealth of new empirical material through which to theorise how citizenship is defined – and contested – in the age of post-apartheid consumer culture. To conclude, it is worth considering the particular role that media play in the consumption-citizen nexus. The media sector in South Africa – as well as elsewhere internationally – is largely profit-driven and organised around neoliberal logic. One outcome of this is that consumption is naturalised as an aspiration discourse within media content, and the idea is prioritised that ‘a better life’ looks like one that is organised around individualistic consumer identities and practices. Alternative discourses about what successful, developed or happy lives look like are few and far between. But it would be incorrect to claim that because it is predominantly mediated in this way that consumption itself is inherently problematic. As this chapter has shown, consumer identities and material practices are an important component of public connection and participation, and they exist in complex interplay with political modes of citizenship. Indeed, consumer aspirations and practices should be understood as integrated with claims to citizenship, rather than set in opposition to them. To critique consumption as shallow or a betrayal of political duties is at best shallow, and at worst undermining of a new political project that recognises the importance of a fair distribution of economic resources post-apartheid. Although media discourses produce, as well as reflect, social reality, it would be short-sighted to argue that the media’s promotion of consumer lifestyles problematically evacuates the political potential of consumption, or ‘proves’ that consumption is frivolous and apolitical. This chapter has shown how consumption is political and concerned with public life, how consumption and citizenship are interrelated, and that media discourses are important sites in which the complexity of that interrelationship should be explored, analysed and critiqued.

Note 1

This chapter draws on some material from a previously published article: ‘Spazas, hawkers and the status quo: Black consumption at the margins of media discourse in post-apartheid South Africa’, published in the Brazilian journal Animus (vol. 11, no. 22) in 2012. My thanks to that journal for permission to reproduce parts of that article in this chapter.

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Iqani M (2015a) Agency and affordability: Being black and ‘middle class’ in South Africa in 1989. Critical Arts 29(2): 126–145 Iqani M (2015b) ‘The consummate material girl?’ The contested consumption of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela in early post-apartheid media representations. Feminist Media Studies 15(5): 779–793 Iqani M (2015c) A new class for a new South Africa? The discursive construction of the ‘black middle class’ in post-apartheid media. Journal of Consumer Culture 17(1): 105–121 Iqani M (2016) Consumption, media and the Global South: Aspiration contested. London: Palgrave Macmillan Iqani M & Kenny B (2015) Critical consumption studies in South Africa: Roots and routes. Critical Arts 29(2): 95–106 Jones M (2013) Conspicuous destruction, aspiration and motion in the South African township. Safundi 14(2): 209–224 Lee MJ (1993) Consumer culture reborn: The cultural politics of consumption. London: Routledge Lodge T (1998) Political corruption in South Africa. African Affairs 97(387): 157–187 Lodge T (2003) Politics in South Africa: From Mandela to Mbeki. Cape Town: New Africa Books Lodge T & Nasson B (1991) All, here, and now: Black politics in South Africa in the 1980s. Cape Town: New Africa Books Lunt P & Livingstone S (2013) Media studies’ fascination with the concept of the public sphere: Critical reflections and emerging debates. Media, Culture and Society 35(1): 87–96 Mandela W (1985) Part of my soul went with him. New York: Norton Markham T & Couldry N (2007) Tracking the reflexivity of the (dis)engaged citizen: Some methodological reflections. Qualitative Inquiry 13(5): 675–695 Mbembé JA (2008) Passages to freedom: The politics of racial reconciliation in South Africa. Public Culture 20(1): 5–18 Miller D (1998) A Theory of shopping. Cambridge: Polity Press Mkhwanazi JP (2012) Conspicuous consumption and black youth in emerging markets. MBA thesis, University of Pretoria Morwe KL (2014) A critical analysis of media discourse on black elite conspicuous consumption: The case of Kenny Kunene. MA thesis, University of the Witwatersrand Musangi J (2009) Ayoba, Ama Kip Kip, Ayoba. Scrutiny2 14(1): 49–56 Newell S (2005) Migratory modernity and the cosmology of consumption in Côte d’Ivoire. In L Trager (Ed.) Migration and economy: Global and local dynamics. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press Newell S (2012) The modernity bluff: Crime, consumption, and citizenship in Côte d’Ivoire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Nuttall S (2004) Stylizing the self: The Y generation in Rosebank, Johannesburg. Public Culture 16(3): 430–452 Nuttall S (2008) Youth cultures of consumption in Johannesburg. In N Dolby & F Rizvi (Eds) Youth moves: Identities and education in global perspective. London: Routledge Perrotta C (2001) The preclassical theory of development: Increased consumption raised productivity. In D Miller (Ed.) Consumption: Critical concepts in the social sciences. London: Routledge Posel D (2010) Races to consume: Revisiting South Africa’s history of race, consumption and the struggle for freedom. Ethnic and Racial Studies 33(2): 157–175

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7 ‘Don’t raise your voice. Improve your argument’: Reason, emotion and affect in the post-apartheid public sphere Steven Robins

On 12 March 2015, a 30-year-old, fourth-year political science student at the University of Cape Town (UCT) flung a plastic container filled with human waste on the statue of Cecil John Rhodes at UCT’s upper campus. Standing shirtless in front of the large, looming statue and wearing a bright-pink mineworker’s hard hat, Chumani Maxwele told the crowd of students and journalists that he had targeted Rhodes’s statue because he felt suffocated by the overwhelming presence of colonial names and memorials on the campus. Maxwele complained that most black students couldn’t breathe on campus because of the claustrophobia produced by English colonial dominance at UCT. ‘There is no [black] collective history here – where are our heroes and ancestors?’ he asked a large group of students and journalists before emptying the container of human waste onto the statue.1 His actions triggered national protests and debates about colonial statues, the names of university buildings, affirmative action, curriculum reform and calls for the transformation of the allegedly racist and colonial institutional cultures of South African universities. For weeks, newspapers and social media were saturated with reports on these protests as well as denunciations from politicians and the wider public of Maxwele’s ‘irrational’ and unruly act. The student protests that Maxwele catalysed also came in for considerable criticism, especially from white middleclass newspaper readers who were dismayed by what they perceived as the failure of the students to appreciate Rhodes’s magnanimous philanthropic donations to UCT. Eventually, following weeks of student protest, the statue was lifted by a crane, loaded onto a truck and taken away to a place of storage while its future was being decided. During the weeks of student protests that followed Maxwele’s action at the statue, the Cape Times devoted its front pages, letters to the editor and its opinion editorials to covering the protests. This chapter focuses on some of these media and public responses to the protests. The chapter also reflects on my own engagements in the print media through a series of Cape Times op-ed articles that I have written

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over the years on post-apartheid social movement activism in the Western Cape. These articles included a concern with questions relating to the contrast between the instant media spectacle of the burning barricades and the more mundane and enduring forms of ‘slow activism’ (Robins 2014) deployed by the predominantly African working-class membership of Khayelitsha-based civic organisations such as the Treatment Action Campaign, the Social Justice Coalition and Equal Education. With the eruption of student activism at UCT and other campuses in 2015, I once again became interested in questions relating to the media spectacle, this time in relation to the emotive language of individual testimonies of pain in the context of institutional racism. This in turn encouraged me to engage with debates on the role of emotion in contemporary forms of democratic communication and deliberation. Susan Bickford (2011: 1025), for instance, writes about the need to develop ‘resources for illuminating the worldly effects of beliefs about emotion in a context of inequality’. She examines how the ways in which we listen to ‘emotion talk’ is shaped by the citizen ethos and democratic desires we subscribe to. Bickford’s discussion of emotion talk takes place in the context of scholarly debates about deliberation as an ‘overly rational’ process that depends on an ideal of dispassionate and reasoned exchange, and that ultimately devalues and delegitimises the role of emotion in forms of democratic engagement. She attributes this to historically produced emotional dispositions that have emerged ‘in the context of racism, sexism, class inequality, and diverse social prejudices’ (Bickford 2011: 1031): We are habituated to value certain kinds of emotions expressed in certain ways by certain kinds of people, and to denigrate suspect, or avoid expressions that don’t fit these parameters … A standard example is the phenomenon of angry women often being regarded as hysterical, upset, overreacting … As in those inevitably hairy-legged feminists who are angry all the time … ‘Angry blacks’ are a stereotype that supports the racial order that implicitly treats blacks as dangerous and less moral/reasonable selves. Thus a multitude of forceful emotional expressions are too easily viewed [and dismissed] as ‘anger’. (Bickford 2011: 1031) Following a lengthy discussion of Aristotle’s conceptions of reason, emotion and rhetoric, Bickford concludes that we need to develop resources for judging emotion talk that do not attempt to transcend power or partisanship, but instead examine ‘how emotion talk works and what it works to do’. As she observes: We should neither exclude emotion from legitimate political communication, nor simply privilege more affective modes. Rather, we should recognize that emotion talk is both a constituent of our judgments and also gives us materials to

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remake those judgments, and thus ourselves, and thus the world. (Bickford 2011: 1036; emphasis added) This chapter draws on my own attempts to make sense of, and make political judgements about, the student protests at UCT, and at my own institution, Stellenbosch University. The chapter reflects upon student protests that were framed by a complex mix of affectively charged acts of defiance and testimonies of painful encounters with racism, alongside ‘rational’ debate and deliberation and participation in ‘teach-ins’ and reading groups where the writings of Frantz Fanon and Steve Biko were discussed by students and visiting intellectuals. At these events, which mostly took place inside UCT’s Bremner administration block that was occupied and renamed Azania House by the students, students debated questions of ‘intersectionality’ in relation to race, class, gender and sexuality. Yet, as will be seen, the student protests tended to be framed, and judged, by the media and political commentators in terms of the standardised binaries of reason versus emotion.

Rethinking ‘emotion talk’ after the fall of Rhodes Until March 2015, Rhodes’s statue had nestled comfortably in the bosom of Table Mountain where it majestically surveyed the whole of Cape Town. In this bronze incarnation of the mining magnate, philanthropist and Cape prime minister, Rhodes seemed to confidently contemplate his Cape-to-Cairo colonial vision while peering imperiously across the black and coloured townships of the Cape Flats in the distance. Even UCT’s vice chancellor, Max Price, had openly acknowledged that the statue’s spatial and symbolic dominance on the campus was a problem. It either had to go or else it needed to be ‘contextualised’ by means of a plaque or a counter-monument designed to unsettle its cultural hegemony. The vice chancellor had called for rational deliberation, but the students wanted immediate action. They occupied the administration building and demanded a date for the statue’s removal. Very soon the controversy spread to Rhodes University and the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where students poured white paint all over a statue of King George V. Beyond the borders, in Zimbabwe, youth members of the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (­Z ANU-PF) had to be prevented from disinterring Rhodes’s grave in the Matopos. In a rambling speech given in South Africa at the time, Zimbabwe’s President Mugabe jested that it was probably best to leave Rhodes’s bones beneath the ground lest his restless spirit should return to haunt the present. Meanwhile, UCT’s Rhodes Must Fall campaign gathered momentum and students produced a long list of demands, including the removal of the colonial footprint of Rhodes and his partner in crime, Leander Starr Jameson.

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As the students upped their ante, so the letters pages of the Cape Times became cluttered with condemnations of the students’ ‘irrational’ actions. Michael Rolfe, in a letter to the Cape Times editor, sprung to Rhodes’s defence, questioning why the protesting students did not appreciate Rhodes’s generous philanthropic endowments to UCT and Rhodes University (Cape Times, 11 March 2015). But it was Maxwele’s poo attack that received the most censure in these indignant letters to the editor. Even progressive black political commentators such as the University of the Free State rector Professor Jonathan Jansen argued that using human waste to make a political point undermined the dignity and integrity of the protesters and their cause. Referring to the dignified civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King, Jansen claimed that flinging poo in public spaces was pure opportunism and violated conceptions of respectability and rational political action: Like the televised beheadings of Islamic State victims in Syria, the discharge of human excrement in prominent sites of the Cape is designed to capture maximum public attention. In both cases we respond on cue, spewing our disgust at the barbaric methods of protest and dismissing the perpetrators as uncivilised misfits. But when a University of Cape Town student launches a bucket of human waste over a settled statue of Cecil John Rhodes within eyeshot of Jameson Hall, campus citizens need to do more than simply react; we need to think … But there is an even deeper question underlying these protests and it is this: is there a dignity to citizen protests that should be upheld? Yes there is, and that is why I believe we should condemn the vileness of how we protest for the consequences downstream are much more serious than the immediate spectacle of pouring human excrement over things we do not like might suggest … What does that say about us as citizens and about protest as civic action? This is where the US civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jnr made a sobering point to his army of non-violent protesters: ‘If you will protest courageously, and yet with dignity, the historians will have to pause and say, “There lived a great people – a black people – who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilisation”.’2 What is of particular interest in Jansen’s response was his searing critique of the short-term, instrumentalist logic of the media spectacle. He argued here that rather than simply seeking out political mileage from spectacular acts of protest, activists ought to infuse their actions with ‘dignity’. Similarly, in a Sunday Times article entitled ‘Culture of violence damages students’ legitimate protests’ (4 October 2015), Professor Adam Habib, vice chancellor of the University of Witwatersrand, criticised the ‘new style of campus activism that uses theatrics and intimidation instead of principled politics risks trading South Africa’s hard-won liberties for short-term

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gains’. Habib was writing in the recent aftermath of violent student action at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Westville campus, where cars and university buildings had been torched, causing millions of rands in damage, and leading to the temporary closure of the university. Habib concluded that student protesters had opportunistically appropriated Frantz Fanon and Steve Biko ‘to justify violence in the post-colony’. As he put it, ‘profanity and threats on social media replace reasoned debate. Theatrics replace principled politics. Civil liberties are seen as “bourgeois” distraction’.3 In the case of the Rhodes Must Fall campaign, however, it was precisely the affective charge of the non-violent, media-friendly spectacle of flinging poo on the statue that had initially captured the imagination of student protesters, journalists and the wider public. Yet, with the growing momentum of the calls for the statue’s removal, the students’ political discourse swiftly shifted attention away from Maxwele’s odorous act and focused instead on ‘proper’ political and policy matters such as affirmative action, heritage, curriculum reform, the labour conditions of ‘outsourced’ campus services, and the ‘decolonization’ and transformation of UCT’s institutional culture. In the name of a more respectable and ‘rational’ political discourse, the students left behind the potent-smelling medium of Maxwele’s ‘unruly’ and ‘irrational’ message. It was this sanitised and domesticated political language that circulated in the Cape Times and the wider public sphere. The reason I began to write in the press about Maxwele’s ‘poo politics’ was precisely because it was widely deemed to be an irrational and backward act by a broad range of actors across the political spectrum. Since 2008, I had been doing research on the sanitation activism of the Social Justice Coalition as well as the forms of ANC community activism that emerged in 2010 and later came to be referred to as the ‘toilet wars’ and ‘poo wars’. My research on sanitation activism convinced me that the poo protests of 2013 – when ANC community activists under the leadership of Andile Lili threw portaloo containers of human waste in various public spaces in Cape Town – needed to be rendered politically legible rather than simply dismissing these acts as ‘irrational’. In March 2015, Maxwele’s onslaught on the Rhodes statue involved the same mundane, plastic object as the 2013 poo protests – the portable flush toilet (PFT) or ‘portaloo’ that Andile Lili and the other ANC poo protesters had rejected with such contempt. In a Cape Times article published in 2013 I had shown how, in response to a series of political controversies about the alleged poor delivery of sanitation services in Cape Town, the Democratic Alliance-led city government distributed thousands of these portaloos in informal settlements that, for a variety of reasons, did not have access to conventional sanitation infrastructure and flush toilets. 4 Since 2013, ANC activists, who later joined the Ses’khona People’s Rights Movement, regarded these portaloos as a violation of the dignity of the users because these toilets allegedly

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compromised the privacy of users and produced lingering smells in peoples’ homes. It was these objections that had led them to haul the human-waste contents of portaloo containers from the shacks of the urban periphery and dump them in public spaces in Cape Town’s centres of political, cultural and economic power – the steps of provincial parliament, the Cape Town International Airport, and, most recently, to the University of Cape Town. Andile Lili and the Ses’khona leadership were outraged that the poor had to use these portable toilets in single-roomed tin-shacks as this meant that intimate partners, parents and children had to relieve themselves in the same room, and the same space in which they slept, received guests and prepared their meals. Maxwele claimed that it was his outrage about this untenable situation that had triggered his actions at UCT. The pouring of human waste on the Rhodes statue elicited widespread public expressions of indignation and outrage in the mainstream media. But what was elided in these public responses was any reference to Maxwele’s poignant and deeply personal statement to a reporter in which he said that he had thrown the faeces and urine contents of a portable flush toilet container at the statue to express his feelings of shame, anger and pain at the sanitation conditions his family had to endure on a daily basis in a poor informal settlement in Cape Town. As he put it, ‘We want white people to know how we live. We live in poo. I am from a poor family; we are using portaloos. Are you happy with that?’ he asked the journalists. ‘I have to give Cecil John Rhodes a poo shower and whites will have to see it’ (The Times, 13 March 2015). This turned out to be one of the only media accounts of why Maxwele had chosen to inscribe his message of indignation in the medium of human waste. There was almost immediately a shift of public and media attention away from the fetid contents of the portaloo container and virtually no media commentators mentioned the connections between Maxwele’s smelly act and everyday conditions of life in poor and working-class neighbourhoods. There was also silence in the media and the public sphere about the relationship of Maxwele’s actions to the recent history of sanitation activism in Cape Town (see Robins 2014). The consensus seemed to be that this act was an irrational act without any meaningful political content. My challenge was to write about this in the media in a way that questioned this ahistorical, and at times overtly racist, representation of Maxwele’s act as residing outside of political rationality.

A politics of the body and the public sphere Despite all the expressions of shock and disgust at Maxwele’s defilement of the statue, I discovered that he was by no means the first South African to use human waste and bodily fluids as a medium of protest. Ayanda Kota of the social movement

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Abahlali baseMjondolo insists that he was the pioneer in this form of protest. A few years earlier, Kota had dumped a bucket of human waste in a government building in Grahamstown in protest against poor state service delivery. Bodily fluids are clearly a medium for the expression of political dissent and protest in South Africa. The anthropologist Antina von Schnitzler (2016) writes that in February 2009, shortly before a court case challenging the installation of prepaid water metres in Johannesburg, a group of female protesters flung soiled and red-stained underwear at the feet of the police standing outside a local government building. When interviewed by reporters, one of the women said that the prepaid metres restricted poor women’s access to free water to clean their bodies properly and thereby caused them to be dirty. This, she argued, was a denial of their rights to dignity. South Africans do not have the patent when it comes to using bodily fluids to make political points. In a Cape Times article published on 9 April 2015, shortly after Maxwele’s protest at UCT, I reminded readers that in the late 1970s IRA female prisoners smeared menstrual blood on the walls of their cells in protest against poor prison conditions, and in 1978, during the ‘Dirty Protests’, IRA male prisoners smeared excrement on their cell walls in protest against the refusal of the prison authorities to recognise their status as political prisoners (Robins 2015; see also Feldman 1991). If ‘poo politics’ in Cape Town had historical analogies and precedents elsewhere, perhaps it too had some sort of political logic or rationality. European political theorists and philosophers have generally avoided engaging with these messy realities of shit and bodily fluids. For Hannah Arendt, for instance, the private domain of the household (the oikos), and everything that takes place within its walls, was not considered to be a properly political matter of public concern. Arendt, a fiercely masculinist thinker, understood ‘proper politics’ to consist of public debate and deliberation on matters beyond the feminised domestic realm; private household matters such as defecation, toilets and sanitation did not qualify as ‘properly political’. Yet, as sanitation activists observe, it is precisely the rape of women going to toilets at night that makes defecating in some of Cape Town’s violent informal settlements so dangerous and political. It is also women who have to deal with the dire health consequences of children playing in spaces contaminated by raw sewage. Jurgen Habermas would probably have also excluded private household matters such as toilets and human waste from consideration as issues for democratic deliberation. For Habermas (1962), the early European public sphere that emerged from the 17th century until its decline in the mid-20th century was an elevated discursive space of critical-rational debate that surfaced in the civilised spaces of bourgeois coffee houses and salons. Here too issues were meant to transcend private interests and concerns. Moreover, affect and emotion barely featured in Arendt’s and Habermas’s very cerebral conception of the political.

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In contrast to these European political theorists, Achille Mbembé (2001) is far less restrictive in his assessment of what counts as ‘proper politics’. Mbembé writes eloquently about the porous borders between the private and the public in his accounts of an affectively charged West African politics in which the bodily fluids, private parts and orifices of ‘Big Men’ are more than game for public commentary, scrutiny, parody and ridicule by citizen-subjects. Despite these historical precedents, South African political commentators and ruling-party spokespersons agreed with the national health minister’s assertion that flinging faeces in public places was a dangerous health hazard and an unruly expression of ill-disciplined behaviour without any real political content. Similar views were expressed in numerous newspaper letters to the editor. This type of action, it was widely agreed, had no place in the post-apartheid public sphere. Meanwhile, those who flung poo at the airport were charged under the Civil Aviation Act. There seemed to be a broad consensus on what counted as ‘proper politics’. But this question wasn’t entirely settled. The UCT student protesters who were inspired by Maxwele’s act at Rhodes’s statue also came under scrutiny by critics who questioned the credibility of the protests on the grounds of being driven by emotion, spectacle and theatrical affect rather than reasoned debate and deliberation.

Affect, spectacle and the politics of pain at UCT, 2015 During the April 2015 UCT student protests – at a time when students were demanding not only institutional transformation but also the removal of the Rhodes statue from the campus ­­– a UCT lecturer was photographed holding up a poster with the words ‘Don’t raise your voice. Improve your argument’. Surrounding the lecturer, the students appear to be jeering, laughing, singing and dancing. The lecturer stares straight ahead with a stern, if not stoic, expression. This image captured the tension between the militant, animated and affective style of protest of the students on the one side, and on the other the assertions by their critics that they were behaving irrationally and refusing to engage in the kind of debate typically associated with the Habermasian ideal of a rational-critical public sphere. The students dismissed these calls for ‘reasoned debate’, choosing instead to make militant demands for immediate action and articulate what some critical commentators labelled ‘a politics of pain’.5 In an article posted on the Daily Maverick website, UCT sociology professors Nicoli Nattrass and Jeremy Seekings argued that a ‘politics of pain’ had emerged on campus that ended up silencing democratic deliberation and debate about questions

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of racism, institutional transformation, curriculum reform and the legacies of colonial culture at the university: Passion and pain play important roles in political life. But the Manichean politics of pain has its weaknesses. It fosters an intolerance of both the diversity of opinion and of reasoned deliberation, and it easily serves to obscure some privileges and injustices at the same time as highlighting others. The intolerance of the politics of pain was evident at the University Assembly held on Wednesday 25 March (subsequently viewable on YouTube). The Assembly provided an overdue opportunity for students and staff to express their pain over the Rhodes statue and other aspects of what is seen as a lack of ‘transformation’ at the university. But the expression of pain served to legitimate less laudable aspects of the Assembly. The Assembly was hijacked by a well-organised group of students implementing a carefully‑prepared plan. Instead of allowing a rich diversity of voices to be heard, examples of racist commentary from the social media were used in an attempt to reduce the debate to ‘us’ (the pained) and ‘them’ (racist critics), whilst students who sought to express dissent were heckled and jeered. We suspect that there are very many students, both ‘black’ and ‘white’, who are disgusted by racism but remain unpersuaded by the SRC, and whose voices were silenced. The undermining of deliberation was evident also at the meeting of the university’s Senate to discuss the Vice-Chancellor’s proposal to remove the statue. The politics of pain prevented serious debate over what should be done with the removed statue, and legitimated an amendment (to the Vice-Chancellor’s proposal) that the statue be removed off the University and permanently.6 In a response to the Seekings and Nattrass article, also posted on the Daily Maverick website, UCT sociology professor Xolela Mangcu questioned their critique of ‘the politics of pain’ by referring to the daily realities of black people’s embodied and existential experiences of racism on the streets: Jeremy Seekings and Nicoli Nattrass, in an earlier column on 31 March, decry that ‘the racialisation of pain serves to reduce injustices and indignities to race, foreclosing serious consideration of other forms of injustice and indignity’. I don’t know about Seekings and Nattrass, but to me as a black person, racism is a primary form of injustice and indignity. It is what links me to other black people no matter how much I may try to distance myself from them. While Seekings, Nattrass and I all share to different degrees the privileges of being professors at UCT, to many white people on the streets I am a breed apart. I would have to announce that I am a professor before I am

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treated with respect. At such moments racism is not ‘relatively autonomous’ or secondary to class. It is the existential pain of black people that Seekings and Nattrass will never have to experience.7 Alongside this discussion on the ‘politics of pain’, a public debate emerged about the relationship between affectively charged political action and ‘rational debate’. In an earlier op-ed in the Cape Times published on 25 March 2015, Mangcu had argued that ‘calls from university administration on students to resolve the question of the removal of the Rhodes statue through rational deliberation [are] based on a particular epistemology of scientific rationality that has proven bankrupt when it comes to the great moral questions of the day’: I point to the dangers of this ‘rational conceit’. [It is] a conceit that proceeds along several interrelated arguments or, more accurately, prescriptions. The first prescription is that the protesting students must take the views of other stakeholders into account. These stakeholders include the very same, largely white Senate and Council who recently abolished race-informed affirmative action, despite the objections of black staff and students. This episode was the grossest form of racial majoritarianism I have seen in this country since 1994 … The second conceit is that universities are sites of rational deliberation. This ideal of pure reason has long been repudiated by political philosophers. And, as UCT anthropology professor Francis Nyamnjoh more recently put it, ‘this epistemology’s logic is simple and problematic: it sacrifices pluriversity for university and imposes a one best way of attaining singular and universal truth …’ The third conceit is that UCT can split the difference by moving the statue elsewhere on campus. Given our own recent history, I would have thought the university knows that half-measures don’t work when it comes to dealing with evil …8 On 7 April 2015, Jared Sacks, a social movement activist based in Cape Town, provided an even harder-hitting critical response to Seekings and Nattrass in the Daily Maverick: Seekings and Nattrass are, in their call for rational debate, describing as irrational forms of deliberation not managed by the establishment. This conforms to a basic colonial trope in which reason is the unique preserve of whiteness articulated through constituted forms of authority. In this racist colonial tradition, blackness is incompatible with both reason and democracy. In essence, therefore, they are acting in service of the reification of the authoritarian power of the university as a neocolonial and paternalistic institution … Seekings and Nattrass, acting from a position of real power, both at the university and in society in general, believe it is their place to

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educate struggling black students about their relative privilege in relation to other blacks. This is grossly patronising … Seekings and Nattrass present their critique as if it were motivated by democratic concerns. They claim the students themselves are operating against the basic tenets of democracy. They claim the students are using their pain to hold the university hostage. They even claim this movement has through ‘the Manichean politics of pain foreclosed the kind of debate and deliberation that might have allowed more serious consideration of this [museum] option.’ And they say nothing at all about the silencing of black pain that was enforced before the emergence of the new student struggle and continues to be given lip-service by the university …9 UCT student leaders also criticised the university administration’s calls for reasoned argument by referencing the 2014 ‘We can’t breathe’ campaign in the US following the death of Eric Garner, an African American who died after a police officer put him in a chokehold for 15 seconds. Black UCT students and academics claimed that they too ‘couldn’t breathe’ on campus because of white cultural hegemony and racism. Rather than submitting to calls for ‘reasoned debate’ about the statue and other issues, the students occupied the administration building and deployed emotively charged forms of protest that ultimately succeeded in getting the university to, among other things, remove the Rhodes statue. Although political commentators in South Africa reflected on the role of emotion and affect in the protests, most of this commentary viewed political expressions of emotion as an obstacle to the Habermasian ideal of a rational-critical public sphere. For example, in a column in The Times, Jonathan Jansen bemoaned the increasingly theatrical and spectacular character of post-apartheid politics, identifying this as a sign of the decline of the rational public sphere. As he put it: In South Africa, politics is not simply lived or experienced. It is performed. It is a form of street theatre in which clowns mount a platform and entertain an audience hungry for any distraction from that daily grind called life. Disruptions in parliament are planned for optimal media coverage; and we long for it as the media prime us for the coming showdown as if it were a contest between boxing heavyweights – Julius Malema versus Baleka Mbete, for example.10 For Jansen, anti-apartheid politics had morphed into unruly, irrational and opportunistically driven political theatre. His article referred to a series of recent political events in the country that had captured the imagination of the media and large sections of the population. These events included the rowdy disruption of parliament in 2015 by Julius Malema and his Economic Freedom Fighter members of Parliament. In another column published in The Times a few weeks earlier,

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Jansen had described Maxwele’s actions at the Rhodes statue as an outrageous and undignified act, contrasting it starkly with the dignified politics of Martin Luther King’s civil rights movement and the anti-apartheid struggle. A few weeks later, in May 2015, Jansen was once again outraged when, at the University of the Witwatersrand, Student Representative Council (SRC) President Mcebo Dlamini publicly stated his admiration for Hitler’s charisma and organisational skills. On Facebook, in the press and in television interviews, Dlamini proclaimed his ‘love for Hitler’ because of his leadership qualities and because he grew the German economy and expanded the country’s infrastructure. The problem in South Africa, Dlamini stated, was that the country did not have strong and decisive leaders like Hitler. For Jansen, Dlamini’s statements and the throwing of shit on Rhodes’s statue were signs that for some student leaders ‘the time to talk was over and any public engagement on the issue was over-rationalisation’. ‘Places of high learning,’ Jansen concluded, ‘are being reduced to episodic bursts of street theatre performance [and] instead of rational debates we have public spectacle [and] our campuses have become places that mimic rather than challenge the broader public culture of incivility and disdain.’ The more outrageous you are, the more laughs you draw. A student leader boasts that he admires Hitler; the young ignoramus knows he will become the centre of attention for weeks to come. He also knows there will be hundreds of supporters for this outrageous statement, including those who tell us to ‘understand’ what he is saying; that his words were ‘taken out of context’; and that one can admire the mass murderer’s ‘effectiveness’ without condoning the racist killings of millions of human beings … This is what concerns me about our universities today – places of higher learning are being reduced to episodic bursts of street theatre performance … Instead of rational debates, we have public spectacle.11 Professor Jansen’s comments drew many critical responses from students. In a Sunday Times opinion editorial, Rhodes Must Fall student activists Rekgotsofetse Chikane and Jessica Breakey accused university vice chancellors such as Jansen of using their influence within the mainstream media to trash and dismiss their protest actions as irrational political theatre devoid of any possibilities for reasoned debate: Vice-chancellors across the country are openly utilising their influence on the media to control a narrative that posits university students, advocating for change, as an uncontrollable grouping of irrational, self-entitled cabals … They like many others, believe we are simply not capable of orchestrating logical, coherent and sound arguments to defend our position on issues … University of the Cape Town vice chancellor Max Price once described the Rhodes Must Fall movement as a small lobby group and insinuated that

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our perspective could not truly be considered because our actions were not conducive to academic debate … A recent article in The Times, ‘Theatre of the immature’ by Professor Jonathan Jansen, the vice-chancellor of the University of the Free State, feeds the public perception of student leaders … Jansen argues that students are unable to to reason or sustain an argument in public. He argues that if we were to engage in debate on a sensitive subject, it would obviously lead to an outburst of anger. He has unwittingly positioned himself as the harbinger of enlightenment to the ‘savage backwoods’ of student politics … Jansen believes students are no longer able to engage in intellectual discussions and that we are simply ‘political clowns’. We would like to challenge his claims in an open debate on the need for the decolonisation of our universities …12 Jansen’s and Habib’s argument, it would seem, relies on a series of binary oppositions between instant spectacle and sustained deliberation, affective gestures versus rational debate, theatrical performance versus ‘proper’ politics. What worried these vice chancellors of two of South Africa’s top-ranked universities was that students were being increasingly drawn to ‘street theatre’ and ‘public spectacle’ rather than serious argument and democratic deliberation. Yet, Chikane and Breakey’s Sunday Times article insisted that the UCT student protesters were indeed capable of rational argumentation in the liberal democratic public sphere; they insisted that the Rhodes Must Fall students were not trapped in a binary world of either pure reason or pure irrationality.

Caught between affect, emotion and reason? Deborah B Gould (2009) writes that the scholarly literature on social movements and protests during the first half of the 20th century was typically characterised by studies of ‘collective behaviour’ that assumed that popular protests were the result of structural tensions produced by industrialisation, urbanisation and economic depression. These structural strains were understood to produce ‘abnormal psychological conditions in individuals, leading them to engage in rash, frenzied, disruptive, violent group behaviour’ (Gould 2009: 14). From this perspective, protests were driven by irrational behaviour and resulted in unruly outbursts of emotion. As Gould notes, ‘motivated by psychic conflicts and unruly passions rather than reason, protesters were deemed unstable deviants who posed a threat to social order and thus should be feared’ (Gould 2009: 14). In On Populist Reason, the political theorist Ernesto Laclau (2005) writes about the need to rescue the term ‘populism’ and ‘popular revolt’ from its marginal and pathologised position in the social sciences and public opinion alike. He traces

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this pathologising discourse to the 1870s and, in particular, to Gustave Le Bon’s famous book The Crowd (published in French in 1875). Le Bon, who is seen as one of the key figures in the formation of modern crowd psychology, refers to ‘the inferior reasoning of crowds,’ a phenomenon that he believed was destined to become one of the permanent features of modern society (Laclau 2005: 21). According to Le Bon, once in the grip of the crowd, individuals quickly lost their capacity to reason and were swept up in the collective fervour of the crowd, thereby becoming susceptible to ‘hypnotic suggestion’ and distorted representations of reality. Le Bon’s ideas contributed to the systematic pathologisation of the collective politics of ‘the crowd’. Contemporary scholars have noted that the use of the term ‘crowd’ in late 19th-century schools of ‘crowd psychology’ carried within it pejorative connotations that reflected the ideological positions and preferences of the ruling class, and it was used as a euphemism for irrational, violent and destructive behaviour. For scholars such as Laclau, the task at the present moment is to politically articulate the possibility of a leftist populism that challenges the legacies of pathologising discourses on ‘the crowd’ promoted by Le Bon and the founders of mass psychology. In the 1970s, political scientists seemed to take on this task of challenging pathologising analyses of unruly crowds and irrational mobs. They did this by formulating resource mobilisation and political process models that implied that protesters were essentially rational actors who sought to further their interests through the deployment of carefully calculated modes of mobilisation. However, these models, in their attempts to avoid portraying protesters as de-individuated and irrational, ended up overstating their role as rational actors, thereby ignoring the emotional and affective dimensions of collective politics. The emotional turn of the late 1990s was an attempt to counter the excesses of the rationalist paradigm by acknowledging the role of emotion and affect in social movements and other forms of contentious politics (Gould 2009: 16). The challenge now, it would seem, is to ‘neither exclude emotion from legitimate political communication, nor simply privilege more affective modes’ (Bickford 2011: 1036). The analysis of the two case studies in this chapter – the 2013 poo protesters and the 2015 student movement at UCT – calls upon us to explore ways of developing the critical conceptual resources needed for interpreting and judging forms of ‘emotion talk’ in democratic communication and deliberation. To achieve this we may want to pay closer attention to actual political repertoires and practices, including the ways in which the UCT students sought to straddle the seemingly contradictory political logics of the affectively-charged instant media spectacles surrounding Rhodes’ statue and the more sustained and reasoned deliberation on how to decolonise the curriculum and reimagine intellectual life on post-apartheid South African campuses.

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Notes 1 Media 24 interview with Chumani Maxwele, 19 March 2015. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBoiRdRCjW8 2 Jansen J, Poo protest unfit for a king. The Times, 20 March 2015. Accessed June 2015, http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2015/03/20/the-big-read-poo-protest-unfit-for-a-king 3 Habib A, Culture of violence damages students’ legitimate protests. Sunday Times, 4 October 2015 4 Robins S, Maxwele’s visceral ‘poo politics’ flushed away in name of respectability. Cape Times, 9 April 2015 5 Seekings J & Nattrass N, Rhodes and the politics of pain. Daily Maverick, 31 March 2015. Accessed July 2015, http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2015-03-31-rhodes-andthe-politics-of-pain/#.VRxY1k39m74. 31 6 Seekings J & Nattrass N, Rhodes and the politics of pain. Daily Maverick, 31 March 2015. Accessed July 2015, http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2015-03-31-rhodes-andthe-politics-of-pain/#.VRxY1k39m74. 31 7 Mangcu X, Race transcends class in this country: A response to Seekings and Nattrass. Daily Maverick, 6 April 2015. Accessed July 2015, http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2015-0406-race-transcends-class-in-this-country-a-response-to-seekings-and-nattrass/#.VVcySU2Ji744 8 Mangcu X, Danger of ‘rational conceit’: Bankrupt moral arguments on state. Cape Times, 25 March 2015 9 Sacks J, The politics of those who inflict pain: A response to Seekings and Nattrass. Daily Maverick, 7 April 2015. Accessed http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2015-04-07the-politics-of-those-who-inflict-pain-a-response-to-seekings-and-nattrass/#.VWHSB02Ji74 10 Jansen J, Theatre of the immature. The Times, 7 May 2015 11 Jansen J, Theatre of the immature. The Times, 7 May 2015 12 Chikane R & Breakey J, Students’ decolonisation of varsities has only just begun. Sunday Times, 24 May 2015

References Bickford S (2011) Emotion Talk and Political Judgment. The Journal of Politics 73(4): 1025–1037 Feldman A (1991) Formations of violence: The narrative of the body and political terror in Northern Ireland. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press Gould D (2009) Moving politics: Emotion and ACT UP’s fight against AIDS. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Habermas J (1962) The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Laclau E (2005) On populist reason. London and New York: Verso Mbembé A (2001) On the Postcolony. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press Robins S (2014) Slow activism in fast times: Reflections on the mass media after apartheid. Journal for Southern African Studies 40(1): 91–110 Von Schnitzler A (2016) Democracy’s infrastructure: Techno-politics and citizenship after apartheid. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press

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8 The tale of two publics: Media, political representation and citizenship in Hout Bay, Cape Town Laurence Piper, Bettina von Lieres and Fiona Anciano

This chapter makes the case that access to the spaces of public debate in postapartheid South Africa is about the challenge of political representation as much as it is about the challenge of access to communication technologies. These representational issues centre on the racialised and partisan nature of state-society relations framed, in part, through identity discourses and, for many poor citizens, patronage politics linked to local governance. In the urban setting this often also takes a spatial form linked to the neighbourhood or community, and involves local leaders who invoke the exclusive right to mediate for poor and marginalised groups in the name of liberation nationalism and service delivery – elsewhere termed the politics of the ‘party-society’. This representational politics creates two distinct publics that both limit democratic citizenship: one by affirming racial hierarchies over equal rights, and another, for poorer black communities, by constricting citizen voice independent of party sanction. It produces a form of ‘mediated’ citizenship in which third-party representatives and the ways in which they ‘speak for’ citizens come to define (and often limit) possibilities for inclusive, democratic citizenship (Von Lieres & Piper 2014). Illustrated through the case of two newspapers in Hout Bay, the chapter shows how the main community newspaper, The Sentinel, gives voice overwhelmingly to white and wealthy residents of Hout Bay; views that at least some black residents perceive as racist. Further, attempts by ANC-aligned local leaders to counter the perceived bias of The Sentinel through their own paper, Hout Bay Speak, does not necessarily give voice to all poor black residents. This is most evident in its deliberately ignoring the existence of community leaders not aligned with the party hierarchy in Hout Bay. This racialised and partisan character of state-society relations is a significant constraint on constructing a more inclusive public sphere in Hout Bay, and indeed we suggest, in much of urban South Africa.

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Introduction It is widely accepted that the formation of public opinion that genuinely reflects the views of citizens, even if not necessarily a consensus, and even if only indirectly impactful on formal state institutions, is critical to contemporary democratic governance. South Africa is no exception in this regard, with many formal commitments to democratic practice beyond the authorisation of representatives at periodic elections, such as a free press, and other civil and political rights foundational to a plural and largely unrestricted public realm. Notably, these democratic commitments are twinned with a commitment to economic and social development, including the notion that the state should be a developmental one committed to addressing poverty, inequality and its racial forms inherited from the past. This conception of the developmental state is nowhere better illustrated than in the burdensome design of post-apartheid local government. Made responsible for much of service delivery including water, electricity, most roads and sanitation, but also to some extent housing, education and health (through control of land), local government is also required to work more democratically than other spheres of the state. This is manifest not just through regular elections, but also through the requirements for democratic practice between elections summed up as ‘participatory governance’ (see Barichievy et al. 2005). This set of legal obligations includes institutions like ward committees and ward forums, requirements for public consultation on budget, development planning and the like. In addition, development projects not administered by local government also have a requirement for some form of public consultation. It is now widely recognised that this model of participatory local governance in South Africa is not a success (Atkinson 2007;  Bénit-Gbaffou 2008, 2015). This is mostly evident through the substantial scale of protest by poor communities justified in terms of frustration at poor service delivery and the broken promises of local leaders. In addition, there is lots of research to show that participatory governance is generally not effective at giving citizens voice, and tends to be captured for other politics, usually partisan, or local factions within the party contending for office and its spoils. While incompetence is a large factor in this politics, so is a burgeoning politics of patronage and corruption, perhaps best symbolised by controversial R350 million security upgrades to the President’s personal residence at Nkandla in KwaZulu-Natal. One of the issues raised by the vexed attempt at democratic development through local governance in South Africa, is the viability of democratic institutions without democratic citizens – a problem categorised as one of ‘political culture’ in mainstream political science. More specifically, can we expect institutions of plural or liberal democracy, fashioned through elite bargaining, to work in a country

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where many people are not fully committed to equality or individual rights but still think in terms of contending race groups with differential entitlements? A key claim of this chapter is that these ideas of race, rooted in the contending Afrikaner/ white and African/liberation nationalisms of the apartheid era, linger on into the present, albeit often inchoately and in hybridised ways, and serve to constrain who is regarded as entitled to speak, in what terms, and on what authority. In what follows, we trace how public debate around developmental local governance in one site, Hout Bay, expresses these enduring anti-egalitarian ideas, and how, when entwined with patronage politics linked to accessing state resources, shapes not only who can get what and when, but who gets to speak in public too. In effect we show how the convergence of apartheid-era ideas with the logics of developmental local governance undermine democratic citizenship. Democratising the public realm in Hout Bay is thus a story not just about access to technologies of communication, although this is clearly important, but about recognising the silencing (and at times unconscious) legacy of racism, and the constricting effects of party sanction on popular voice. It is thus about the ‘right to have rights’ in two different ways: the right to be recognised as fully human, and the right to speak without authorisation from above. In making this case, we begin by outlining the theoretical assumptions and framing of the argument in respect of democracy and the public realm, especially as regards to nationalism, race and citizenship, and then by relating these to an account of state-society relations in post-apartheid South Africa, especially the ‘party-society’ politics of poor, black urban communities (Piper 2015). This framework is then applied to the case of Hout Bay, with a focus on the public debate around a number of development projects, most recently a new clinic proposed for a central location in a wealthy part of the settlement. The chapter explores media representations on these questions through comparing and contrasting two newspapers, The Sentinel and Hout Bay Speak, pointing to the important racial and partisan exclusions manifest in both.

Democratic citizenship, racial nationalism and partisan state–society relations It is widely accepted that democracy under modern conditions is more than elections, and involves a variety of means of translating the idea of the rule of the people into governance. A key element here is the idea that the development of public opinion through a public sphere, or a range of spheres, is central to democratic governance, even if it only impacts indirectly on actual decision-making. As Habermas (1991) described it, the public sphere is an area in social life where

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individuals can come together to discuss freely and to identify societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action. While writing overtly about rise and decline of a bourgeois public sphere in the 18th century, the idea that contemporary democracy requires a sphere or realm for inclusive and deliberative opinion formation is echoed in his later work, and has a central relationship to the media, which is inevitably involved in many interactions between the millions of people who comprise modern states. This idea that modern democratic society requires a space or spaces where citizens can deliberate on issues of common concern in an uncoerced and unrestricted way, as facilitated by various forms of media, has been taken up widely. A variety of debates ensue, including whether this is best conceived as one sphere that is all-inclusive and deliberative, or a multitude of spheres or various characters, that may be linked in various ways. Hence, in a famous response to Habermas, Fraser (1992) points out what she sees as the exclusive nature of the bourgeois public sphere for women and others, and how deliberation can be used as a mask for domination, effectively shifting political power from ‘a repressive mode of domination to a hegemonic one’. The exclusions of the public sphere that Habermas does not identify lead Fraser to make the case for counter-publics – spaces, venues and processes where marginalised groups formed their own views of the social order. Indeed, as outlined below, the emergence of Hout Bay Speak and its selfconception as giving voice to those not represented in The Sentinel can be read in this light. The implication for contemporary democracy is that it may be important, especially in deeply divided societies, to acknowledge the inevitability of forms of exclusion and the value of a variety of publics, some explicitly counter the dominant one. The implication for democratic citizenship is that a formally open society with a free media is not necessarily enough for marginalised groups to feel empowered or recognised as legitimate to participate in just one space through one medium. Writing about media in South Africa, Berger (2002: 31) notes that the status and influence of a public sphere (even if heterogeneous) may fluctuate in relation to the balance of dominant voices within it. If, for example, government media predominates and propaganda about leaders’ speeches is primarily what is heard in the public sphere, then this realm is likely to reinforce state power. Furthermore, counter-publics and alternative media may well produce their own exclusions, as we shall also demonstrate below. Indeed, as argued in Von Lieres and Piper (2014: 1–2), one reason for these exclusions is that relations between the state and citizens are often mediated by third party intermediaries who often have their own agendas. Third-party intermediaries who speak for citizens can sometimes facilitate democratic representation through teaching people about rights, self-representation and agency.

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At times third-party representatives can contribute to a democratic politics, capable of addressing some of the weaknesses of both liberal representative democracy and participatory governance (Huq & Mahmud 2014; Robins & Fleisch 2014; Von Lieres 2014). A recent process of engagement by an environmental group, trying to bring all voices together in Hout Bay to formulate a plan to address water and waste issues in the area, demonstrates this potential. However, in many cases mediators produce anti-democratic outcomes for citizenship (Wheeler 2014). In particular, we draw attention to intermediaries not formally authorised to speak for poor and marginalised groups, but who claim the legitimacy to do so on a variety of grounds and with various implications for democracy. In this chapter we showcase a form of political representation that is informal in that it is not authorised by law, but claims exclusive legitimacy in terms of liberation nationalism. This is a form of representative ‘capture’ (Wheeler 2014) that has yielded mixed democratic outcomes, asserting an important view from poor, black communities but at the expense of at least some rivals. In addition to requiring reflection on questions of democracy and publics, our case in Hout Bay also requires we say something more about citizenship and its relationship with nationalism, in particular the egalitarian and individual rights-bearing conception of citizenship entailed in the South African Constitution of 1996, and the group hierarchies of race that endure from the contending nationalisms of the apartheid era. Here we use the idea of citizenship as more than one of legal status in respect of state membership, identifying substantive and normative conceptions too. Substantively, we take citizenship to reflect the agency people actually have in respect of the state, and thus treat it as an open empirical question; whereas normatively we take democratic citizenship to mean something like free and equal membership of a state with associated civil, political and socialeconomic rights à la TH Marshall (1950). Nationalism, in contrast, is the claim that a group, more specifically a self-sustaining group or ‘a people’ form the legitimate basis of the state. Although historically a critical idea through which inclusion of ‘the masses’ in the institutions of modernity was justified, nationalism and nations offer a conception of statesociety relations that is potentially in conflict with the normative conception of democratic citizenship. Hence, the classical ethnic nationalisms of 19th-century Europe located popular sovereignty within a group that was ethnically defined (Hobsbawm 1990). This conception of the nation limits citizenship to only certain residents who belong to the right group. In South Africa’s recent past this would include the ethnic and racial exclusions of Afrikaner and white nationalisms (Moodie 1975), or the racial ambivalences of African nationalism (Walsh 1987). As Hobsbawm (1990: 169) notes, 19th-century European ethnic nationalism was followed by waves of different kinds, specifically the anti-colonial nationalisms

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of the post-World War II period, and then the self-consciously multicultural nationalisms of largely immigrant societies like Canada. Imagined more on common political grounds than cultural or ethnic, these nationalisms exist more easily with egalitarian and individual conceptions of democratic citizenship as legitimacy is not connected to group identities. Further, as illustrated by Kymlicka (1995), it is possible to reconcile collective or special groups rights with individual rights under certain formulations – principally in terms of enhancing equal access to rights to all and thus deconstructing rather than reconstructing group-based social hierarchies. As illustrated below, the ideas of racial hierarchy that endure from apartheid-era nationalisms, and are to some extent reproduced into the present, serve to undermine notions of egalitarian and individual citizenship, albeit in different ways for different groups. For example, enduring ideas of white supremacy, whether consciously framed or not, can dovetail with the bio-political logic of governance that, as Chatterjee (2004) notes, tends to treat poor people as populations to be managed rather than citizens bearing rights. More mundanely it can serve to delegitimise ‘black’ voices by ignoring, silencing or disabling deliberation before it even starts. In this regard, the discourse of land invasion, whether by ‘foreigners’, ‘refugees’ or ‘bussing from the Eastern Cape’, takes on greater significance. Conversely, while the idea of ‘the racist’ can be invoked to silence voice, and is well commented upon in the public domain in South Africa, more important is the ambivalence in the liberation nationalism of the ANC and others towards non-racialism (Anciano 2014). This manifests in a privileged role for the historically oppressed, who are racially defined, and poses a challenge for egalitarian and individual conceptions of citizenship, although more so in terms of first access to state office and state resources, rather than exclusion. More important in the Hout Bay case are the implications of the idea of ‘ANC entitlement to rule’ for popular representation for poor, black communities in Hout Bay. Heller (2009) makes the case that, as in India, political society tends to dominate civil society in South Africa. In line with this general claim, the case has been made for how this works at the local or community level in South Africa through a combination of liberation nationalist ideology and patronage politics mediated through the ANC and its allies (Piper 2015; Piper & Anciano 2015). Termed the politics of the ‘party-state’, it centres on the attempt to monopolise the representation of poor, black communities to the state and others by leaders aligned with the ANC. Legitimated through the idea of the ANC’s entitlement to rule, and reinforced through the capacity to deliver state resources to the community, this politics is informal but important. It is also often hotly contested, but almost always within ‘party-society’ logic. Thus protest may lead to new leaders, but almost

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always ones aligned to the same party, in the same patronage relations with local government. In short, the space for voices unsanctioned by the ANC is relatively constrained. As we shall see, this is certainly the case in Imizamo Yethu in Hout Bay, although ‘party-state’ plays a lesser role in the predominantly white valley. Of course, the dominance of civil society by political society is not absolute, as evidenced by the emergence of social movements rooted in poor, black communities, independent, and for some, even overtly critical, of the ANC and its allies. However, they are relatively few in number and often struggle to sustain themselves independently of state or donor support. More sustainable are professionalised NGO-type social movements such as the Treatment Action Campaign and Sonke Gender Justice that look to combine branches in poor, black areas, with middle-class and professionalised leadership from the suburbs (Robins 2014). However, these movements tend to focus on policy at national or city levels. Politics at the most local level is likely to be more about informal leaders who monopolise voice in partisan terms and produce, at best, a form of mediated and exclusionary citizenship. In what follows, we explore how public debate around developmental local governance in one site, Hout Bay, manifests these forms of exclusion in a formally open and inclusive governance process, as exemplified in The Sentinel and Hout Bay Speak newspapers. We begin by introducing the case-study site, and tracing these exclusionary dynamics through development projects around housing, water and, most recently, health.

Hout Bay: Microcosm of post-apartheid Cape Town Famous for its beautiful and striking setting, Hout Bay is also regarded as a microcosm of Cape Town, and indeed South Africa, as it contains three distinct communities living side by side. Hence, the overwhelming majority of Imizamo Yethu, Hangberg and the Valley (see Figure 8.1) are black African, coloured and white respectively. As summarised in Table 1, these three communities, the Valley, Hangberg and Imizamo Yethu, encapsulate much of the racial, socioeconomic and cultural diversity of Cape Town more broadly. Further, many of the challenges that confront Hout Bay reflect those of the wider country. In looking at the social profile of Hout Bay, it is striking how race, class and place coincide to a significant degree. This, of course, was the project of apartheid, and its enduring form in Hout Bay reflects the degree to which it is yet to be undone. Hence, the smallest settlement in spatial terms, Imizamo Yethu, is home to the most people, with 47% of the population squeezed into about 40 hectares of land. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of residents (77%) are living in informal

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Figure 8.1 Map of Hout Bay

Source: City of Cape Town (2013)

housing, and many are recent immigrants over the last decade with Imizamo Yethu founded only in 1992 (City of Cape Town 2013). This recent and rapid settlement helps explain the relative lack of formal housing as indicated by similar unemployment rates, income levels and education levels between black African and coloured residents (City of Cape Town 2013). Given the links between formal housing and piped water, sanitation and refuse collection, much of the difference between Imizamo Yethu and Hangberg can be explained in terms of significant in-migration into Imizamo Yethu in a short period, compared to a long-established and relatively stable population in Hangberg. Lastly, it is noteworthy that a significant proportion of the population of Imizamo Yethu are from elsewhere in Africa. Some are migrants, like the Ovambo from Namibia and Angola, whose presence stretches back to the early 1990s, and are mostly men working in the fishing industry. More recent immigrants include families from Zimbabwe, Malawi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and beyond. It is also common cause that the population of Imizamo Yethu is underestimated in the formal census count of 2011, not least due to the high proportion

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of foreign residents, many of whom would avoid state officials due to their illegal status and fear of repression. Given this, it is not surprising to hear that Imizamo Yethu has also experienced waves of xenophobic violence, principally in 2008, although also since then. More dangerous aspects of life, however, emerge due to the consequences of a dense, poor and informal settlement – high levels of insecurity, regular fires every couple of years that destroy shacks and take lives, and poor health conditions from lack of adequate sanitation, poor diet and a large population of rats and other vermin. If the black African population who constitute 96 per cent of the residents of Imizamo Yethu are the worst off in Hout Bay in terms of socioeconomic rights, the overwhelmingly coloured community of Hangberg is only slightly better off in terms of income, and actually a little worse off in terms of education. The most substantial difference is in terms of formal housing, and its associated benefits, as reflected in Table 8.1. However, not reflected in these socioeconomic indicators are widely referred to social ills of alcohol and drug abuse, gangsterism and perlemoen smuggling. Historically a community of fisher folk, Hangberg has been on the decline with the demise of the small fishing industry in the last 15 years or so. In this depressed context, substance abuse and various illegal activities have become common. The third and most well-off section of the community are the residents of what is collectively termed ‘the Valley’ that constitutes most of Hout Bay, where 99 per cent of white people reside. White residents are substantially better off than coloured or black African residents. Indeed, Hout Bay is part of the Atlantic seaboard, the wealthiest part of Cape Town, known for many residents from Europe, sometimes called ‘European swallows’ for the seasonal nature of their presence.

Table 8.1: Demographics of Hout Bay

Population Unemployment

Black African

Coloured

Asian

White

Other

Total

15 391

6 345

162

9 797

1 173

32 868

47%

19%

0.5%

31.7%

32%

8.8%

30% 3.3%

3.5% 17%

100% 23%

Formal housing

28%

73%

80%

99%

38%

57.5%

Water

29%

85%

71%

99%

48.5%

60%

Flush toilets

62.5%

88%

92%

99%

94.5%

79%

Refuse

63%

96%

96%

99%

80%

80%

Electricity (light)

80%

98%

100%

99%

96%

89%

Source: City of Cape Town (2013)

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Notably then, the extreme differences of wealth in Hout Bay are exacerbated by migrants at both ends of the socioeconomic spectrum: wealthier European ‘swallows’ who live in ‘the Valley’, and poorer African ‘foreigners’ who live in Imizamo Yethu. The ‘Valley’ is a collection of a number of suburbs located between Imizamo Yethu and Hangberg on the mountains to the east and west respectively. Notably, the location of these two settlements on the slopes of the surrounding mountains marks Hout Bay as distinct from apartheid design in one important respect: wealthy, white residents can see poor black settlements. Further, the black African settlement is not mediated from the historically whites-only area by a coloured one in between. This fact has made a difference to the local development of Hout Bay in that the vision of poverty has reportedly informed some foreign white philanthropists to initiate development projects in Imizamo Yethu.1 Fundamentally then, Hout Bay reflects the diversity of South Africa in identity, socioeconomic and spatial terms that illustrate quite well the enduring racial character of post-apartheid South Africa, albeit with two key differences that typify the post-apartheid city. The first is rapid urbanisation and informalisation of urban settlements. Hence the City of Cape Town has 356 informal settlements the vast majority of which are post-apartheid creations.2 The second is greater migration from outside South Africa’s borders, mostly but not exclusively from the rest of Africa. Hence it is apparent how in these ways Hout Bay can be seen as a microcosm of the wider society, especially when one considers the full range of social issues that confront the area.

A double-edged sword: Development politics and party influence in Hout Bay Central to the post-apartheid history of Hout Bay has been the growth of Imizamo Yethu, and thus a key feature of local governance has been meeting the development needs of this area in particular, but also to a significant extent those of Hangberg. The politics of development has been significantly overlain with party politics, such that the leadership of Imizamo Yethu is widely recognised as the overtly ANC-aligned SANCO and, until 2010, the same was true of Hangberg, with the ANC-aligned Hout Bay Civic Association. Notably, the implementation of development projects in Hout Bay has served to undermine both SANCO and the Hout Bay civic, especially in the last ten years. Further, that the two issues are connected is revealed by the fact that the conflict that has hurt ANC leadership has been around development projects.

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In the case of the Hout Bay civic, the organisation was the largest of a variety of not very popular formations in a politically divided settlement until about 2010. Like most so-called ‘coloured’ settlements in Cape Town, Hangberg has increasingly voted for the Democratic Alliance (DA) over the ANC. In 2010 issues in Hangberg came to a head when the city tried to forcibly remove shacks that had been built on the firebreak above the formal housing of Hangberg. In what came to be known as the ‘battle of Hangberg’, residents refused to move and battled police for two days, with significant number of injuries to both sides, before a truce was called (IOL 2010).3 In the aftermath of the conflict the government initiated a mediation process that led to the formation of the Hangberg Peace and Mediation Forum (PMF) in 2011. The PMF is an area-based structure with representatives elected from different areas of the Hangberg settlement. Through the court process the PMF was legally sanctioned as the sole representative of the Hangberg community. Not surprisingly, the Hout Bay civic, which along with other existing formations, was effectively marginalised from representing the community to the city, was deeply unhappy with the advent of the PMF. Formally required to be non-partisan, some have described the structure as DA aligned; ‘there was a feeling that the forum was a vehicle for the DA’. 4 Notably, though, by 2015 this attitude had mollified a little, although tensions clearly remain, as some of the ANC-aligned leaders in Hangberg now appear to be working with the PMF to access the state around various development initiatives including a skills-training centre and an aquaculture project. Simultaneously, several leaders of the forum were critical of government’s progress with the various commitments of the Accord.5 A similar story is evident in Imizamo Yethu, although ANC leaders remain more central to politics in that settlement. As noted above, the logic of ‘partysociety’ entails a monopoly of representation of poor, black communities by leaders aligned with the ANC, legitimated through the idea of the ANC’s entitlement to rule based in its liberation nationalism, and reinforced through the capacity to deliver state resources. As noted in Piper and Benit-Gbaffou (2014), a partial exception to this pattern is opened up by the enmity of the DA government to the ANC and its allies in Cape Town, creating a potential legitimacy crisis for local leaders from ANC aligned communities who are willing to engage the DA developmental governance on its non-partisan terms. Thus whereas in most of the rest of South Africa, proximity to the ANC is important for accessing the resources of local government, and hence dispensing resources critical for poor communities, in Cape Town it is a disadvantage. At the same time, embracing the City of Cape Town requirement that community representation is ‘non-partisan’ places local leaders at risk of betraying

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the ANC’s entitlement to rule, and being portrayed as sell-outs who are ‘too friendly with the whites’. This dilemma has been played out in leadership conflicts in SANCO in Imizamo Yethu between an ‘old’ SANCO leadership which chose to embrace the city’s model of non-partisan representation and invested heavily in participating in all the state and governance forums in Hout Bay, and a ‘new’ SANCO which accused the ‘old’ of being too friendly with the white DA and taking their side in disputes over development projects (see Piper & Benit-Gbaffou 2014: 31). The key issue over which this conflict manifest was a dispute over whether the city should endorse the building of a new primary school paid for mostly by foreign benefactors who live in Hout Bay, or use the land for more housing. ANC leaders mobilised against the old SANCO leader on this basis and even held a protest march to his house. They then organised an election that instituted the ‘new’ SANCO leadership. The legitimacy of the election was contested by the ‘old’ SANCO on procedural grounds. The divisions within SANCO regionally and nationally have meant that the dispute between these contending leadership groups could not be resolved, and remains until this day. That the legitimacy dilemma of ANC loyalty versus accessing the DA state is a real one is also reflected in the fact that new SANCO leadership have all failed to engage in the various governance forums of Hout Bay. Indeed, there have now been several iterations of new SANCO leadership in the last three years, none of which have even really tried to access the forums of local governance in Hout Bay, allowing the ‘old’ SANCO leadership to continue to represent in these spaces. Several ANC-aligned leaders have bemoaned the decline of SANCO in Imizamo Yethu from a point in the 1990s when it could mobilise thousands to a mass meeting, to today where around 50 residents attend. Notably, the organisational decline of SANCO should not be read as the decline of the legitimacy of the ANC in Imizamo Yethu. The ANC took Imizamo Yethu overwhelmingly in the 2014 national election, and ANC networks remain strong enough to mobilise people to stop initiatives they do not sanction – most recently a Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) Turnaround station at an entrance to the settlement. Further, most leaders from Hangberg and the Valley know that there is a legitimacy crisis in SANCO but have decided to back off and wait for SANCO to resolve its own issues in recognition of the enduring importance and power of the ANC in that settlement. Paradoxically, then, the history of development politics in Hout Bay over the last ten to fifteen years has been a double-edged sword for these communities, as it has weakened their most important leadership structures at the same time as bringing new houses, new schools, new sports grounds and, currently under way, a new clinic.

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Representation in media: The Sentinel and Hout Bay Speak A central complaint of ANC leadership in Hangberg and especially Imizamo Yethu, is that residents of the Valley in Hout Bay do not have their best interests at heart, and they perceive many as racist. As one leader noted, ‘I know for a fact that they don’t like black people.’6 Further, they feel many government officials are suspicious of ANC leaders as they are seen as pursuing only an ANC agenda in a DA controlled city. Consequently, they complain of being ignored by government, seldom consulted by authorities, and when there are public meetings, they complain of being made to feel unwelcome and seldom accommodated in deliberations. A recent example of this is the current public consultation by provincial government for a new ‘polyclinic’ proposed for Hout Bay that will replace the existing clinics in Hangberg and Imizamo Yethu (http://www.hbrra.co.za/node/76). Speaking to us of his experiences in this process, the chair of the ANC for Ward 74 complained about the lack of communication around the meeting, noting that he ‘was not invited, and they (the Valley-dominated Hout Bay Ratepayers Association) were not happy to see me there’.7 He noted that advertising in the local paper, The Sentinel, will not reach many residents of Imizamo Yethu. The ANC chair also reported that he had to inform the meeting that consulting with the leader of ‘old’ Sanco could not be considered as consultation as he no longer represented Imizamo Yethu.8 Substantively, the ANC chair perceives the representatives from the Hout Bay Ratepayers and Residents Association to be racist and he remains unconvinced by their objections to the new clinic too: ‘the Ratepayers are saying they say they want that place to be green because it is the only piece of land in Hout Bay that is left’. However, he takes objection mostly because ‘this issue does not really affect them, they all go to private doctors and dentists. The clinic will not affect them, but it will make a big difference for us.’9 The support for the Ratepayers by the DA ward councillor, confirms his suspicions of racial and political marginalisation. Interestingly, it is not only the ANC leadership who has a low opinion of the Ratepayers Association. Interviews with various officials from the City of Cape Town confirmed a general impression of a network of retired, conservative, white men who had, until recently, dominated the Ratepayers and associated formations like the Heritage Trust, and who city officials experienced as demanding and difficult.10 According to one official in charge of a department that covers the entire city, the most confrontational and rude engagement she experiences from ‘clients’ (the public), comes from wealthy, white residents on the Atlantic seaboard. ‘I learned some new swear words from the emails,’ she said, adding, ‘I had to ask my children what they meant.’11 While this claim was not made specifically in relation to the Ratepayers, it speaks to the character of a substantial and influential constituency

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resident in the area. Notably, this constituency is, however, not reflective of the whole of the Valley as there are a number of residents actively working to address socioeconomic concerns in Imizamo Yethu and Hangberg. Indeed, generational and ideological divisions like this run though all the settlements of Hout Bay.12 The reference to The Sentinel is instructive, as similar to other community newspapers in the City of Cape Town, The Sentinel covers only very local news to Hout Bay, but is largely dominated by views and concerns of residents of the Valley. In this regard it is important to note that community newspapers are important, and unique, vehicles for advertisers to access local markets (both national and local advertise in a ratio of about 40:60), and form part of the Independent Media group advertising suite, including The Sentinel.13 This means that they are inevitably targeted at consumers rather than the community as a whole. Given this, it is no surprise that a cursory glance at the names of the contributors and the issues in The Sentinel reflect a view of Hout Bay that is mostly ‘from the suburbs’. We recall clearly the anger of one SANCO leader at a letter in the paper from a resident of the Valley expressing disbelief that nearly 95% of Imizamo Yethu had voted for the ANC in the 2014 national election. Somewhat patronisingly, the resident stated something to the effect that if a toaster or a kettle broke, people would replace them, but why will they not replace a broken political party like the ANC. ‘You see how racist they are’, the SANCO leader exclaimed, ‘they compare us to broken kettles.’14 Further, it is not so easy to access The Sentinel in Imizamo Yethu or Hangberg, although it is available. A free newspaper distributed at the major public shopping centres and points of public interest, it is usually available at the Hout Bay police station, which is situated at one entrance to Imizamo Yethu. However, short of going into the police station residents are unlikely to gain access to it. It is not available online for instance. Notably, while there is a community library more centrally situated in Imizamo Yethu, it seems to stock The Sentinel irregularly. Nevertheless, when asked at a workshop discussing environmental concerns in Hout Bay who reads The Sentinel nearly half the participants from Imizamo Yethu, including several school children, indicated they do.15 At a recent stop at the Imizamo Yethu community library we found a copy of a new newspaper for Hout Bay, called Hout Bay Speak. Like The Sentinel it appears to be a free newspaper committed to local news, but unlike The Sentinel it is not part of the Independent Media advertising stable, and it is focused exclusively on the issues that confront Imizamo Yethu and Hangberg. Hence, on page 3 it states: Welcome to the first edition of Hout Bay Speak, community members and organisations believe it is long overdue that a newspaper that can voice the concerns, aspirations, anxieties and struggles of the communities of

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Hangberg and Imizamo Yethu should see the light of day. Following is [sic] messages from some of the community organisations showing their public support for the publication of a newspaper that aims to reflect the lives of the whole community of Hout Bay. (Hout Bay Speak, December 2014) Notable in this regard is a heading on the front page that exclaims, ‘Lets [sic] be heard’. What follows are photos and endorsements from ANC-aligned leadership, although no political party leaders are explicitly included. Notably by their absence are the PMF and the leaders of ‘old’ SANCO in Imizamo Yethu who are not currently endorsed by ANC leadership. Further, the substance of the newspaper reflects the issues and language of the liberation movement tradition. Hence the main heading on the edition is ‘Give back our land!’, and the edition includes articles on unemployed youth and building a united sports movement. In many ways this brief contrast between The Sentinel and Hout Bay Speak provides a vignette of the larger dynamic of community representation in the public spheres of Hout Bay. The Sentinel largely represents the views of the organised forms of the white and wealthy Valley. Dominated by the view from the suburbs, other voices struggle to emerge. Conversely, Hout Bay Speak is self-consciously framed as an intervention in the public domain intended to add the views of poor, Figure 8.2: The Sentinel

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Figure 8.3: Hout Bay Speak

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black communities to the larger conversation about Hout Bay. Notably, however, it does so in a somewhat partisan way, obviously ignoring important other leaders and thus perspectives from the poorer, black communities.

Conclusion The relationship between The Sentinel and Hout Bay Speak is a metaphorical, if partial, image of the larger public sphere in Hout Bay, one that is dominated by historically white and wealthy people from the suburbs, and where more marginal voices from poorer, black communities tend to be monopolised by party leaders. Our explanation of this politics points to the enduring significance of notions of race for political identity in South Africa, conceptions rooted in contending nationalisms of the apartheid era, now evolving in new ways, but largely maintained by class, as well as the dependence of poor residents on the state for access to key services, and the largely partisan nature of access to the state. For some in the organisations representing wealthier, white residents this legacy dovetails with forms of governance that treat the urban poor as populations to be managed, rather than citizens bearing rights. Thus while overtly racist language is rare in the public realm, its legacy can be seen in the ease with which some embrace governance categories that deny a common humanity. This noted, there are also other, newer, strains in the public realm that eschew racism, but these voices are taking time to become cohesive. Conversely, organisations aligned to the ANC tend to portray an exclusive right to represent poor, black communities, sometimes in ways that ignore or marginalise other voices. Hence, both the dominant ‘white’ voice in the public sphere and the ANC-aligned ‘counter-public’ manifest forms of representation that limit access to public debate in ways other than through access to institutional forums or communication technology. Notably, these two discourses are connected. The perceived and real racism of some in the white community justifies the racialised liberation nationalism of some in the ANC. Conversely, the distrust and scepticism of ANC leaders towards the white community and the state can reinforce distrust in a negative dialectic that is enabled rather than disabled by processes of consultation between state and society in Hout Bay. Any attempt to build democratic citizenship will have to find ways to transform this negative dialectic in public spaces into one that affirms a common humanity and includes a greater diversity of voices. There is an important asymmetry in this relationship, however, that is linked to the dependence of poor communities on the state for service delivery. So long as the DA city remains reluctant to engage with what it perceives as partisan community representatives, and the ANC refuses to enable non-partisan

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representation, local leaders will find themselves on the horns of a legitimacy dilemma that affirms the party at the expense of development, or affirms development at the expense of the party. The historical demise of the Hout Bay civic in Hangberg and the enduring leadership crisis of SANCO in Imizamo Yethu, both prompted by the politics around development projects, suggest that sooner or later, new and non-partisan ways of expressing subaltern voice need to be found, or they may find their own way through more confrontational and disruptive channels. The Hout Bay case speaks to the enduring complexities of ‘mediated’ citizenship and the limits of liberal democracy in post-apartheid South Africa. The relative absence of inclusive formal institutions of political representation for marginalised groups has led to the rise of informal third-party mediation as the dominant form of political representation. While third-party mediators sometimes act in ways that produce and deepen democratic citizenship, they mostly reinforce exclusionary forms of political representation and with it, weaken democratic inclusion. Paying attention to the detailed and often contradictory logics (and expressions) of mediated citizenship becomes crucial for our understanding of the possibilities and limitations of democratic inclusion, and with it, democratic citizenship.

Notes 1 Hence, ‘rich developer and businessman Niall Mellon’ was on holiday in Cape Town in 2002, when he ‘was moved to establish the Niall Mellon Township Trust after he witnessed at first hand some of the impoverished living conditions in the Cape Town township of Imizamo Yethu’, https://www.melloneducate.com/about/our-story/. 2 City official, Solid Waste Management, City of Cape Town, interviewed by Laurence Piper, 7 April 2015, Cape Town. 3 Zille has declared war on us. IOL, 22 September 2010. Accessed May 2015, http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/western-cape/zille-has-declared-war-on-us1.680941?ot=inmsa.ArticlePrintPageLayout.ot 4 Hangberg Pastor, interviewed by Fiona Anciano, 20 August 2015, Hout Bay. 5 PMF leader, interviewed by Fiona Anciano, 17 March 2015, Hout Bay. 6 ANC leader, Ward 74 Branch Chair, interviewed by Laurence Piper, Hout Bay, 13 February 2015. 7 ANC leader, Ward 74 Branch Chair, interviewed by Laurence Piper, Hout Bay, 13 February 2015. 8 ANC leader, Ward 74 Branch Chair, interviewed by Laurence Piper, Hout Bay, 13 February 2015. 9 ANC leader, Ward 74 Branch Chair, interviewed by Laurence Piper, Hout Bay, 13 February 2015. 10 Ratepayers Association Committee Member, interviewed by Laurence Piper and Fiona Anciano, 17 August 2015, Hout Bay. 11 City official, Solid Waste Management, City of Cape Town, interviewed by Laurence Piper, 07 April 2015, Cape Town. 12 An interesting reflection of this tension can be read daily on the Facebook site Hout Bay Organised. Set up and managed by a long-standing estate agent from the valley, it now has over 16 000 members (Matt Mercer, creator and editor of Hout Bay Organised Facebook site, interviewed by Fiona Anciano, 9 April 2015, Hout Bay). Issues such as crime in

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Imizamo Yethu, for example, are discussed and understood from various perspectives. There are certainly implicitly racist voices that attribute crime and violence to racial factors, but many other voices, from all racial groups, discuss systemic issues of poverty and unemployment, for example, and try to engage in open debate (Hout Bay Organised, Facebook site. Accessed May– August 2015, https://www.facebook.com/groups/ houtbay/?fref=ts). 13 Sharim S, A whole lot of media … for free. The Media Online, 10 October 2011. Accessed July 2016, http://themediaonline.co.za/tag/cape-community-newspapers/ 14 SANCO leader, SANCO executive committee member, interviewed by Laurence Piper, 8 July 2014, Hout Bay. 15 in/formal south workshop, observed by Fiona Anciano, 29 July 2015, Hout Bay.

References Anciano F (2014) Non-racialism and the African National Congress: Views from the branch. Journal of Contemporary African Studies 32(1): 35–55 Atkinson D (2007) Taking to the streets: Has developmental local government failed in South Africa? In S Buhlungu, J Daniel, R Southall & J Lutchman (Eds) State of the nation: South Africa 2007. Cape Town: HSRC Press Barichievy K, Piper L & Parker B (2005) Assessing ‘participatory governance’ in local government: A case-study of two South African cities. Politeia 24(3): 370–393 Bénit-Gbaffou C (2008) Are practices of local participation sidelining the institutional participatory channels? Reflections from Johannesburg. Transformation 66/67: 1–33 Bénit-Gbaffou C (Ed.) (2015) Popular politics in South African Cities: Unpacking community participation. Cape Town: HSRC Press Berger G (2002) Theorizing the media–democracy relationship in southern Africa. International Journal for Communication Studies 64(1): 21–45 Chatterjee P (2004) The politics of the governed: Popular politics in most of the world. New York: Columbia University Press City of Cape Town (2013) 2011 Census suburb Hout Bay. Compiled by Strategic Development Information and GIS Department, City of Cape Town Fraser N (1992) Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. Social Text 25/26: 56–80 Habermas J (1991) The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Hobsbawm E (1990) Nations and nationalism since 1780. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Heller P (2009) Democratic deepening in India and South Africa. Journal of Asian and African Studies 44(1): 123–149 Huq L & Mahmud S (2014) Mediation at the grassroots: Claiming rights by empowering citizens in Bangladesh. In B Von Lieres & L Piper (Eds) Mediated citizenship: The informal politics of speaking for citizens in the Global South. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan Kymlicka W (1995) Multicultural citizenship. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marshall TH (1950) Citizenship and social class and other essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

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Moodie D (1975) The rise of Afrikanerdom: Power, apartheid and the Afrikaner civil religion. Berkeley: University of California Press Piper L (2015) From party-state to party-society in South Africa: SANCO and the informal politics of community representation in Imizamo Yethu, Hout Bay, Cape Town. In C Bénit-Gbaffou (Ed.) Popular politics in South African cities: Unpacking community participation. Cape Town: HSRC Press Piper L & Anciano F (2015) Party over outsiders, centre over branch: How ANC dominance works at the community level in South Africa. Transformation 87: 72–94  Piper L & Bénit-Gbaffou C (2014) Mediation and the contradictions of representing the urban poor in South Africa: The case of SANCO leaders in Imizamo Yethu in Cape Town, South Africa. In B von Lieres B & L Piper L (Eds) Mediated citizenship: The informal politics of speaking for citizens in the Global South. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan Robins S (2014) Slow activism in fast times: Reflections on the politics of media spectacles after apartheid. Journal of Southern African Studies 40(1): 91–110 Robins S & Fleisch B (2014) Mediating active citizenship and social mobility in working-class schools: The case of equal education in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. In B von Lieres & L Piper (Eds) Mediated citizenship: The informal politics of speaking for citizens in the Global South. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan Von Lieres B (2014) The politics of mediation in fragile democracies: Building new social contracts through, and for, democratic citizenship in Angola. In B von Lieres & L Piper (Eds) Mediated citizenship: The informal politics of speaking for citizens in the Global South. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan Von Lieres B & Piper L (Eds) (2014) Mediated citizenship: The informal politics of speaking for citizens in the Global South. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan Walsh P (1987) The rise of African nationalism in South Africa. London: Hurst Wheeler J (2014) ‘Parallel power’ in Rio de Janeiro: Coercive mediators and the fragmentation of citizenship in the favela. In B von Lieres & L Piper (Eds) Mediated citizenship: The informal politics of speaking for citizens in the Global South. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

Interviews/Observations ANC leader, Ward 74 Branch Chair, interviewed by Laurence Piper, 13 February 2015, Hout Bay City official, Solid Waste Management, City of Cape Town, interviewed by Laurence Piper, 7 April 2015, Cape Town Community Policing Forum meeting, observed by Fiona Anciano, 28 July 2015, Hout Bay Hangberg pastor, interviewed by Fiona Anciano, 20 August 2015, Hout Bay Hout Bay Organised, Facebook site. Accessed May–August 2015, https://www.facebook.com/ groups/houtbay/?fref=ts In/Formal South workshop, observed by Fiona Anciano, 29 July 2015, Hout Bay Matt Mercer, Creator and editor of Hout Bay Organised Facebook site, interviewed by Fiona Anciano, 9 April 2015, Hout Bay PMF leader, interviewed by Fiona Anciano, 17 March 2015, Hout Bay Ratepayers Association Committee Member, interviewed by Laurence Piper and Fiona Anciano, 17 August 2015, Hout Bay SANCO leader, SANCO executive committee member, interviewed by Laurence Piper, 8 July 2014, Hout Bay

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9 ‘Non-poor only’: Culture jamming and the limits of free speech in South Africa Adam Haupt

This chapter explores the culture jamming practices of the South African media activist collective Tokolos Stencils in order to pose questions about the ways in which free speech rights are limited and the extent to which marginal subjects’ claims to rights associated with citizenship are undermined by the City of Cape Town’s approaches to public art, graffiti, culture jamming and public contestation. Specifically, I examine its jam of artist Michael Elion’s Perceiving Freedom, a sculpture of a giant pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses along the Sea Point promenade facing Robben Island, where former president Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for his stance against apartheid. Elion’s critics contend that his work is a Ray-Ban commercial dressed up as a public art tribute to Nelson Mandela.1 I argue that Tokolos’s culture jam of the Ray-Ban ‘artwork’, which was spray-painted with messages that challenge Elion’s framing of his sculpture, suggests that the City of Cape Town would rather ensure corporate access to public space than facilitate civic access to it. The collective’s jam of Elion’s work draws attention to the continuing racialised class inequalities in post-apartheid South Africa. I also contend that the City of Cape Town’s and Elion’s response to Tokolos’s dialogue with the sculpture offer troubling insights into the extent to which free speech and a diversity of perspectives are tolerated more than twenty years after a South Africa’s first democratic elections. This chapter commences with a definition of culture jamming, which will advance the idea that culture jamming plays a vital role in setting counter-hegemonic agendas. These culture jammers challenge hegemonic readings of artwork, media texts and public space. Specifically, Tokolos contests the suggestion that Elion’s artwork is actually a public artwork and draws attention to the elitist practices of the artist. Tokolos contends that Sea Point promenade, as a public space, is not accessible to all. This raises questions about what kinds of policies guide the curation of public art and what strategies are in place to ensure that the public actually benefits from public art initiatives. The chapter then turns to debates about free speech in relation to responses to Tokolos, as well as to the

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ways in which the South African government and the ruling party has responded to criticism levelled at it by artists and journalists.

Culture jamming, the commons and the public sphere Culture jammers parody advertisements, including those on billboards in public spaces, as well as public figures, such as politicians (Klein 2000). Writing about a context that is increasingly saturated by commercial media messages, Naomi Klein, the author of No Logo, contends that what is at stake is the unequal relationship of power between citizens and corporations. She argues that ‘since most residents can’t afford to counter corporate messages by purchasing their own ads, they should have the right to talk back to images they never asked to see’ (2000: 280). Marilyn Bordwell contends, ‘Culture jamming aims to liberate the mental environment from the powerful grip of market-structured consciousness by reclaiming airwaves and public spaces to propagate ideas instead of plugging products’ (2002: 238). We therefore see a tension between private interests and the public interest. The broader context for this tension is the impact of neoliberal economic policies on public spaces and the public sphere (Haupt 2008). If private interests encroach upon public space, the Habermasian public sphere model, the blueprint for modern democracy, is compromised. According to Habermas (1989), the public sphere is constituted through rational-critical debate about the common good. This separation between public and private is crucial to one’s understanding of this model: The model of the bourgeois public sphere presupposed strict separation of the public from the private realm in such a way that the public sphere, made up of private people gathered together as a public and articulating the needs of society with the state, was itself considered part of the private realm. To the extent that the public and private became intermeshed realms, this model became inapplicable. That is to say, a repoliticized social sphere originated that could not be subsumed under the categories of public or private from either a sociological or legal perspective. (Habermas 1989: 175–176) His critics have questioned some of the premises upon which Habermas builds his model, which assumes that participation in a single public sphere is crucial and that the formation of multiple publics led to the fragmentation of the model (Fraser 1992; Warner 2002). Some of the criticism that can be levelled at the public sphere model is that it is exclusive in terms of class, gender and racial as this blueprint for modern took shape in 18th-century Europe – a time in which exploration of the ‘New World’ set off the shift from feudalism to capitalism, thanks to the annexation of land and resources as well as the enslavement of Africans and South East Asians

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(Haupt 2014). These exclusions are crucial to our understanding of the critique that Tokolos offers in their work. In fact, Nancy Fraser questions whether it is possible to bracket inequalities so that participants in the public sphere may deliberate as if they are equals (Fraser 1992). Instead, says Fraser, inequalities need to be addressed for the public sphere to be functional. The formulaic nature of deliberation potentially excludes citizens with varying levels of literacy and educational backgrounds. She holds that contestation between competing publics is crucial and advocates the formation of multiple publics that engage in contestation with dominant interest groups in society (Fraser 1992). We therefore see contestation between a range of subaltern counter-publics with hegemonic publics in efforts to place their issues on the agenda. In contrast to deliberative processes, these processes of contestation do not have to be polite as in deliberative processes, thereby creating room for one to make sense of counterhegemonic cultural practices, like culture jamming, that intervene at the level of representation. Culture jamming is a response to commons enclosure (Haupt 2008). In an essay titled ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Garret Hardin argues that natural resources, which are commonly used by all, but owned by none, needed to be enclosed in order to ensure that they are managed effectively (Hardin 1968; Haupt 2008). These resources were placed in the hands of private landowners – the landed gentry – for safekeeping to ensure that common fields are not overgrazed or over-farmed, to avoid deforestation and that rivers are not polluted or depleted (Hardin 1968; Haupt 2008). In other words, the commons were entrusted to the elite members of society in the transition from feudalism to emerging capitalism in England and Europe. Legal scholar James Boyle contends that there is little evidence to suggest that commons enclosure actually led to innovation or better management of resources: The tragedies predicted in articles such as Hardin’s ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ did not occur. In fact, the commons frequently may have been well-run, though the restraints on its depletion and the incentives for investment in it may have been ‘softer’ than the hard-edged norms of private property. Thus, while enclosure produced significant distributional changes of the kind that so incensed an earlier generation of critical historians, there are significant questions about whether it led to greater efficiency or innovation. (Boyle 2003: 36) While life for commoners in feudal societies should not be idealised, what is worth noting is that they had avenues for subsisting; they were able to supplement their incomes with produce from the commons (Haupt 2008: Humphreys 1990). Commons enclosure forced subjects into a wage economy as employees on large-scale commercial farms and, when opportunities became limited with the industrialisation of farming, they worked in factories in cities. Effectively, their

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range of options to subsist was limited by commons enclosure and they effectively became proletarianised (Haupt 2008; Humphreys 1990; Kidd 2003). As Jane Humphreys argues, elderly widows were particularly marginalised by these key changes as they were unable to become active members of the working class and could no longer live off the commons (Humphreys 1990). It is in this way that commons enclosure placed private interests above those of the public interest. In the first instance, jammers are responding to the corporate appropriation of public space – the enclosure of the physical commons. They also make use of digital media in order to challenge the enclosure of the digital commons, which James Boyle (2003) refers to as the second enclosure movement. Writing about the information commons, David Bollier holds that open standards on the internet ‘are an affirmative means by which ordinary people can assert their civic, cultural, and economic interests over and against those of government and business, which have their own distinct interests in how the internet architecture should be designed’ (Bollier 2003: 109). In the case of Tokolos, we see a symbolic challenge to the enclosure of a physical commons – the use of corporate sponsorship and promotion via Elion’s collaboration with Ray-Ban in a public space, the Sea Point promenade. Tokolos Stencils Collective is an anonymous team of artists/activists who seem to be based mainly in Cape Town and whose work are aligned to the work of social movements that address the plight of landless and unemployed. They mainly make use of stencil art in public spaces to propagate their perspectives. The collective also employs the internet for civic ends through its use of social media, such as Tumblr and Facebook, to publicise its culture jamming practices in physical spaces (for example, its jam of Perceiving Freedom and its ‘Gentrinaaiers’ [Gentrifuckers] stencils in upmarket spaces, such as Salt River and Woodstock’s Old Biscuit Mill2). This is in line with research on street art and graffiti that suggests that artists often document their work and share images on social media platforms due to the fact that municipalities are likely to remove their work in a short period of time (McAuliffe & Iveson 2011). Their use of commercial social media platforms demonstrates Hardt and Negri’s argument that the very means that extend corporate monopolist interests can be used to challenge it (Hardt & Negri 2000) – which is signified, in this case, by the expanding global market share of Ray-Ban and commercial social media platforms like Facebook and Tumblr – in order to present challenges to logic of neoliberal economics. Evidence of this logic can be found on scholarship on gentrification in Cape Town through the work of the Cape Town Partnership, a public-private partnership aimed at regenerating the city and certain urban spaces, such as Sea Point, Rondebosch and Claremont – historically privileged white spaces under apartheid (Didier et al. 2012; Lemanski 2014; Miraftab 2007).

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Elion’s cultural appropriation Michael Elion’s Perceiving Freedom was located on the promenade in Sea Point as part of the public art project, art54, which is a reference to Ward 54. In a media release by the City of Cape Town on its website, Councillor Garreth Bloor, Mayoral Committee Member for Tourism, Events and Marketing, explained the significance of the project: The City of Cape Town, through its new Arts and Culture policy, is committed to promoting temporary public art in all its forms as part of the City’s continuing attempts to nurture artists, beautify and enliven public spaces, enhance public life and create an enabling environment for public art. Cape Town is the World Design Capital 2014 and this project showcases the creative ability of local artists. The art pieces will reach a diverse audience of local residents as well as visitors drawn to the area’s popular public spaces. (City of Cape Town 2014b) Of course, the public art policy in question was only approved in December of 2014 and was not officially in place at the time that art54 was launched. Writing in response to public criticism of Perceiving Freedom, art54 selection committee member Farzana Badsha3 contends that Elion took advantage of a process that was flawed. Elion had initially applied to have a water installation set up on the beach at Camp’s Bay – possibly something along the lines of what he had done with an installation called ‘In Rainbows’ (see One Small Seed 2014a). According to Badsha, he later applied to have another installation considered for the same space, a piece that contained none of the political symbolism and references to Nelson Mandela when it was later relocated to Sea Point. 4 Badsha explains that, in the absence of a clear policy on public arts, the process of negotiating the various levels of bureaucracy in the City of Cape Town was complicated and time consuming, and that the key changes that Elion made to his sunglass installation were made after the selection committee had done its work and Elion was negotiating with City bureaucrats.5 The result was an artwork that moved from working with the concepts of fun and play on the beach to one that was framed as a tribute to Nelson Mandela.6 Elion created an events page on Facebook to mark the launch of the installation. The framing narrative for this page reads as follows: #perceivingfreedom – PERCEIVING FREEDOM is a sculptural tribute to Nelson Mandela, the nation of South Africa and the concept of freedom itself on the eve of 20 years of South African democracy. This giant set of stainless steel spectacles looks out in contemplation towards Robben Island and sets up

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an axis and dialogue with our country’s history. It links us to the mind of a man whose incredible capacity to transcend enduring physical hardship, with unwavering mental fortitude and dignity, transformed the consciousness of an entire country and left a giant and lasting legacy to the world. The sculpture asks the question: how did Nelson Mandela perceive the world? And, what does it mean for each of us to be truly free? (Elion 2014) As Badsha7 argues, relocating the installation to the promenade changed the dynamics of the work substantially. Elion’s framing narrative exploits the work’s position in order to link the work to the story of Nelson Mandela’s incarceration in Robben Island under the apartheid regime. Elion makes no mention of the extremely repressive circumstances under which the ANC leadership opposed apartheid and provides a selective reading of Mandela’s activism by emphasising his decision to ‘forgive and forget’ in line with the dominant discursive formation towards reconciliation during the early ’90s. The narrative glosses over accounts that suggest that the process of negotiations after the release of key political activists in the early ’90s was by no means easy given that South Africa was in a state of civil war in key townships spaces in Boipatong and the East Rand, for example (see Gumede 2005; McDonald 2006; Pilger 2006; Van der Westhuizen 2007). It also glosses over the breakdown of negotiations in the face of allegations that the National Party was instigating violence in apparent attempts to destabilise townships and the ANC’s support bases. In this context, Mandela did not spare his words in expressing his anger at his negotiating partners’ apparent bad faith. Prior to these events, he also made remarks about nationalisation upon his release from Victor Verster Prison, indicating his intention to deliver on the promises of the Freedom Charter and, thereby making the markets somewhat nervous. Key compromises had to be negotiated before it was possible for the mainstream media to mythologise the first president of a democratic South Africa as an icon of reconciliation. This included the adoption of neoliberal economic policies that safeguarded white capitalist interests as well as the launch of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which did not compel full disclosure and did not lead to large-scale prosecution of human rights violations. As Elion’s Facebook post suggests, his militant, assertive and revolutionary past was expunged from narratives of his past. A measure of delegitimisation (Hebdige 1979) has taken place; everything but the burden (see Tate 2003) of the black liberation struggle has been appropriated to serve his own ends, which in this case involves a public artwork that was co-sponsored by a global corporate brand (Ray-Ban). The installation was originally accompanied by a plaque that featured the Ray-Ban logo and presented a sanitised narrative of the circumstances under which the photograph of Mandela, wearing sunglasses, was taken. In an op-ed on use of the photograph, Tom Eaton recalls that it was taken on Robben Island in 1977 as part

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of a public relations exercise organised by ‘Major-General Jannie Roux, a psychiatrist and deputy commissioner of prisons’.8 He was therefore an unwilling participant in the exercise, to say the least. In fact, he was angry and defiant.9 Eaton argues: By removing this context, the photograph (and the artwork it speaks to) do us a disservice in that they subtly rewrite our collective history and therefore skew our collective present. Over the last three decades Mandela has been transformed from a man into a concept and finally into a kind of sentimental pulp, used to plaster over the widening cracks in our national psyche; but this doesn’t help us get any closer to his – and therefore our – humanity.10 The banner on the Facebook events page strengthens the argument that the photograph was being used selectively. In the banner, we see a sunset image with the sunglass installation in the foreground, pointing in the direction of the sea. On the right-hand side of the image, we see a caption marking Robben Island’s location, while we see a well-known quote from Mandela’s autobiography, A Long Walk to Freedom, on the top left-hand side of the banner: ‘As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison’ (Elion 2014). We see the prison photograph of Nelson Mandela superimposed in the top centre of the banner above the sunglass installation. The banner therefore forces connections between the Ray-Ban-sponsored installation, the decontextualised photograph of Nelson Mandela and the reconciliatory quote from his autobiography. Appropriation therefore happens on two levels. In the context in which the prison photograph is taken, Nelson Mandela is paraded before journalists against his will in order to serve the apartheid regime’s narrative of Robben Island. The apartheid regime is able to do so because it can employ state apparatus to coerce prisoners to comply with its orders. In short, it can do what it pleases because it possesses the power to do as it pleases. In the context of Perceiving Freedom, Elion is able to appropriate the original photograph from its original context and imbue it with the meanings of his choice because he commands sufficient social capital to draw on corporate resources and to negotiate with the City of Cape Town for access to public space. In short, he can do so because he has the power to do so. Both forms of appropriation therefore conform to Jonathan Hart’s description of cultural appropriation. The act of defining cultural appropriation is less a case of conceptualising cultural practices and expressions in essentialist terms, but more of recognising unequal relations of power in processes of exchange, which are not mutual. Hart holds that ‘[c]ultural appropriation occurs when a member of another culture takes a cultural practice or theory of a member of another culture as if it were his own or as if the right of possession should not be questioned or

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contested’ (Hart 1997: 138). Cultural appropriation is thus a demonstration of power, an expression of entitlement, on the part of dominant sectors of society over marginal subjects. This exercise of power by the coloniser over the colonised subject is elucidated by Edward Said’s discussion of Orientalism: ‘The Orient was Orientalised not only because it was discovered to be “Oriental” in all those ways considered commonplace by an average nineteenth-century European, but also because it could be – that is, submitted to being – made Oriental’ (Said 1978/2000: 72). Both Nelson Mandela, the prisoner, and Nelson Mandela, corporate media’s icon of reconciliation, are subject to hegemonic co-option on the part of elite interests. In certain respects, the signifier of Mandela the freedom fighter/ political activist was co-opted by juridical mechanisms (via the Rivonia Trial, his incarceration and the repressive laws banning the liberation movements) to present him as an outlaw/terrorist (see Hebdige 1979). By the time of his release, that same signifier was converted into a mass-produced object, what Dick Hebdige calls the commodity form, which is what Elion exploits in his work (Hebdige 1979). It is in this way that countercultures are delegitimated. Elion’s work delegitimates the counterhegemonic, revolutionary politics for which Mandela was imprisoned by presenting an apolitical message attached to a public artwork, which secures a very prominent position for the Ray-Ban brand in a public space.

Tokolos reclaims the commons The culture jam by Tokolos Stencils responds to this act of appropriation. It does so by speaking directly to Elion’s work by producing counter-messages on the installation itself as well as by appropriating public space, to which Elion was given privileged access – hence the declaration on the right inner arm of the sunglass frames, ‘OPEN Graffiti ZONE’ (Tokolos Stencils 2014). The statement lays claim to the work, given that it is located in public space. The lenses contain the message ‘We broke your hearts’. This is a reference to Elion’s ‘Secret Love Project’, which is described by One Small Seed as follows: ‘As a social engineering experiment and part of the World Design Capital events, the Secret Love Project 2014 was conceptualized and initiated by Elion to raise positive collective consciousness through the pervasive application of a universally understood symbol – the heart’ (One Small Seed 2014b). The project essentially involved spraying hearts in different parts of the city. As Roger Young suggests, the culture jam by Tokolos points to some of the inconsistencies in the City’s application of its by-laws on vandalism: Tokolos stepped into this fray when they defaced Elion’s glasses with the words We Broke Your Hearts, a reference to his previous project, an

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onslaught of vinyl heart-shaped stickers stuck onto public and private property everywhere, in clear violation of Cape Town’s vandalism laws that graffiti artists fall foul of daily. Elion, even though he claimed responsibility for the stickers, has not been charged.11 While Elion has not been charged, hip-hop graffiti artists have fallen foul of this by-law. Section 3 (1) and 3 (2) of the City of Cape Town’s Graffiti By-law, 2010, prohibits graffiti without a permit: 3. (1) No person shall within the area of jurisdiction of the City, without a permit issued by the City, apply graffiti or cause graffiti to be applied to any – (a) property; (b) natural surface; or (c) wall, fence, structure or thing in any street or other public place. (2) A ny person who aids or assists the person referred to in subsection (1) in the application of graffiti as contemplated therein, in contravention of this By-law, shall be guilty of an offence. (City of Cape Town 2010) The by-law effectively criminalises hip-hop graffiti artists, culture jammers and political activists who rely on Section 16 of the Constitution, which enshrines free speech rights, to produce counterhegemonic messages. It also places the onus on private property owners to remove graffiti or murals that have not been designed with the City of Cape Town’s permission. This is in line with the establishment of the Cape Town Partnership (CTP), a public-private partnership that is geared toward regenerating the central business district (CBD), and the establishment of Central Improvement Districts (CIDs), which utilise additional rates contributions by businesses in the CBD in order to provide ‘top-up’ services, such as additional security. CIDs make use of private security companies to enforce by-laws, such as the graffiti by-law (Berg 2010). They effectively become ‘by-law bobbies’ who function with the ‘broken windows’ hypothesis which, in short, posits that any signs of disorder in a neighbourhood, such as broken windows that have not been fixed, graffiti, abandoned buildings and litter will invariably undercut systems of social control and ‘tip’ the neighbourhood from a low-crime to a high-crime area’ (Berg 2010: 291). The City of Cape Town’s approach is similar to that of city administrators in other countries. Writing about the Australian context, Cameron McAuliffe and Kurt Iveson contend: In seeking to justify the link between graffiti and criminality, politicians and media commentators frequently draw upon the so-called ‘broken windows’ theory of urban disorder and crime. In its most basic form, the broken windows theory states that if a window in a building is broken and is left

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unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken; that by breaking the codes of order we invite further disorder to occur. (2011: 130) They argue that research suggests that the ‘broken windows’ hypothesis, which originated during Rudi Giuliani’s term as New York mayor in the 1990s, ‘overemphasises the causal link between minor instances of anti-social behaviour and more serious crimes’ (McAuliffe & Iveson 2011: 131). Effectively, patterns ‘of legal interventions backed up by the exhortations of local politicians [have] constructed a dominant visioning of the graffiti vandal’ (McAuliffe & Iveson 2011: 131). Julie Berg writes that ‘the public spaces it has ‘claimed’ (or reclaimed) have taken on the shape and language of a private space – a space that is well maintained and protected, and thus more marketable and attractive to investors, tourists, businesses and the like’ (Berg 2010: 291). The logic of commons enclosure operates in the space; it is public space that is policed by private contractors using the logic of private property. Writing about the CTP and CIDs, Miraftab argues that by tying the availability of adequate services, whether waste collection, safety or outreach work among homeless and street kids, to the property owners’ ability to pay extra, CIDs continue apartheid’s urban spatial inequalities. I argue that territorially bounded programs like CIDs continue the apartheid legacy by re-linking the basis of state-citizen relationships to physical urban location. They shift the basis of exclusion from race to class, but still access to better security or cleaning services is defined by whether one is located in an improvement district or not. (Miraftab 2007: 617) Neoliberal economic imperatives direct the provision of services in the city to the extent that inequalities generated by apartheid are, in fact, not eliminated. It is from this perspective that art54 makes sense as a public art project in a historically white Group Area. Racialised class inequalities are enabled by placing public resources in private hands. Miraftab contends that in ‘the post-apartheid, neoliberal era, effective privatization of public urban spaces, whether or not actual ownership is transferred to the private sector, hands to that sector control over the logic of what should – and should not – be done in public space’ (Miraftab 2007: 617). Sophie Didier et al. concur with this argument by suggesting that ‘[d]espite discursive re-orientations towards more socially inclusive forms of development, CIDs remain deeply entrenched in private strategies linked to market primacy and businessfriendly policies’ (2012: 134). Private interests thus prevail over the public interest by protecting elite corporate interests. In the case of the World Design Capital’s condemnation of the Tokolos culture jam as ‘vandalism’ and ‘lawlessness’12, as well as in dominant media framing of the jam as vandalism13, we see the discourse of property rights being invoked in order to prime subjects to view the act unsympathetically. Ironically, the very process by which historically privileged

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individuals come to retain and/or extend their property rights at the expense of historically marginalised subjects is not interrogated in this media framing of counterhegemonic acts of culture jamming. When Tokolos made the University of Cape Town (UCT) the focus of its attention during the week of the third anniversary of the Marikana killings, in which 34 miners were shot dead during a period of extended strike action for better wages and working conditions (Alexander et al. 2012) by jamming key prominent spaces on the campus, UCT responded in a similar fashion. The World War memorial on Jameson steps was jammed with the message ‘Marikana 16 Aug. Remember Marikana’, and one of their most prominent stencils was sprayed dead centre onto the monument, that of the man in the green blanket – Mgcineni Noki, who emerged as an organic leader in the uprising. Each lens on Elion’s sunglasses was also decorated with this green stencil with the message ‘Remember Marikana’. Another message sprayed onto the pillars at the entrance of Jameson Hall read, ‘Max Price for black lives?’ The message plays with the name of UCT Vice Chancellor Max Price. ‘Max’ refers to the VC’s name and the idea of paying a maximum price for black lives, thereby suggesting that black subjects’ lives are seen by the university in transactional terms. The pun suggests that public universities are governed by capitalist thinking and thereby place a low premium on black lives. The term ‘black lives’ also collocates with the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement in the US, where activists have drawn attention to the persistence of racism in the States. The intervention on campus was geared towards drawing attention to the fact that the UCT Retirement Fund (UCTRF) invests in Lonmin mining, which was at the centre of the workers’ strike in Marikana, and that Justice Ian Farlam, who headed the Commission of Inquiry into Marikana, is a member of Council – thereby arguing that his interests are conflicted. UCT’s first press statement on this issue was to lead with a statement of sympathy for the mineworkers and their families and then to condemn the action by Tokolos in the following manner: UCT condemns the use of vandalism as an irresponsible and inappropriate method of protest that shows no respect for the students and staff of the UCT community. While the university encourages and supports the responsible exercise of freedom of expression, we do not condone defacing buildings and memorials. (Lucas 2015) The statement draws on the discourse of property rights and does not recognise the jam as a ‘responsible exercise of freedom of expression’ (Lucas 2015). To put it crudely, free speech rights are trumped by property rights. Of course, free speech rights are not absolute. They have to be balanced with the public interest. Likewise, the right to private property is not absolute and needs to be balanced with the

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public interest. Of course, Subsection 2 of the Section 16 stipulates that freedom of expression does not extend to a) propaganda for war; b) incitement of imminent violence; or c) advocacy of hatred that is based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion, and that constitutes incitement to cause harm. It is highly debatable whether calls for remembrance of the Marikana killings amount to propaganda, incitement to violence or hate speech. While the play on words in the statement that references Vice Chancellor Max Price amounts to an attack on his character, it is not clear that it amounts to hate speech, incitement to violence or propaganda. The statement can either question what the maximum price is, for black lives, or question whether Max Price stands for black lives. It also plays on the #BlackLivesMatter movement in the USA, which arose after a number of black citizens were killed in encounters with police officers, and therefore suggests that black lives are not valued. In the context of the shootings in Marikana and the fact that neither politicians nor members of the police service have been held criminally accountable, Max Price stands in as the object of anger at ongoing injustice in light of UCT’s investment ties to the mine. In an op-ed on this jam by Tokolos, Rebecca Hodes maintains: I believe in the potential for street art to serve as social commentary. I believe the Tokolos Stencil Collective has made a powerful and decisive contribution to freedom of speech and expression in South Africa. Their defacement of an advertisement for designer sunglasses masquerading as a tribute to Mandela on the Sea Point promenade is one of the most effective ‘culture jams’ in the post-apartheid era. But those who spraypainted the pillars outside Jamieson Hall, and other iconographic sites around campus, are guilty of vandalism.14 Again, it is the discourse of property rights that trump those of free speech. As a public institution, UCT is a politically contested space in much the same way that public space, like Sea Point promenade or Cape Town’s CBD, are politically contested in the face of the fact that these spaces are being encroached upon by corporate interests through processes of gentrification. The iconography to which Hodes refers is also politically contested. Like Pat Lucas in her UCT press statement on the action by Tokolos, Hodes sees the culture jam as vandalism. It does constitute, in the words of Lucas, an ‘irresponsible and inappropriate method of protest’ (Lucas 2015). This begs the question whether protests are meant to meet with institutional requirements to be recognised as appropriate. Furthermore, would applying to the City of Cape Town for permission to protest the racialised class exclusion of citizens

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from the City not defeat the very aim of protest? Culture jammers challenge citizens to become active citizens by challenging the means through which consent is manufactured in legitimating hegemonic ideologies (Haupt 2008; Klein 2000). In Dick Hebdige’s terms, this challenge to hegemony happens through style; it is style in revolt and revolting style (Hebdige 1979). It is not meant to meet with the criteria or standards set by elite sectors of society and is neither aesthetically nor politically pleasing. Furthermore, McAuliffe and Iveson write that graffiti ‘transgresses norms of power and control in urban spaces’ (2011: 140). Mark Halsey and Ben Pederick argue: ‘The capacity to provide a space for unsanctioned activity, for a freedom of expression that impacts the surfaces of public property, seems outside the logic of post-industrial cities’ (2010: 97). They hold that what is needed is ‘an ecology that makes room for graffiti as neither publicly sanctioned art nor crime’ (Halsey & Pederick 2010: 97). We seem to be very far from such a scenario on account of the far-reaching influence of the ‘broken windows’ theory. McAuliffe and Iveson contend that graffiti problematises the public/private binary, thereby challenging notions of ownership and processes of commodification: It also subverts property relations and the commodification of urban space, by appearing on private property and on the billboards and signs that are managed by the state or have been delimited through economic transactions. It represents disorder and mobilises moral panics about youths out of place in the city. These distinctive geographies of graffiti challenge us to clarify distinctions between public and private, between legitimate and illegitimate expression, between legal and illegal activities in the city, between art and crime. (McAuliffe & Iveson 2011: 140) McAuliffe and Iveson’s research on graffiti therefore supports arguments about culture jammers’ counterhegemonic challenge to ‘market-structured consciousness by reclaiming … public spaces’ (Bordwell 2002: 238). This brings us closer to Nancy Fraser’s reworking of the Habermasian public sphere. As opposed to valuing deliberation of the common good, Fraser advocates a pluralist model that sees the proliferation of multiple publics as being closer to realising democratic ideals. Instead of deliberation, it is contestation that facilitates dialogue by helping subaltern subjects to contest the processes through which hegemonic agendas are set for debate – thereby creating room for alternate agendas to be introduced and for subaltern counterpublics to contest key issues that drive their marginalisation. In the case of the Marikana stencils, subjects are challenged to see the connections between continuing racialised class exploitation of working class subjects in the mining sector and the privilege enjoyed by elites in gentrified spaces like Sea Point promenade as well as elite practices in public institutions, such as UCT.

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Conclusion: Democracy has two nemeses The City of Cape Town’s response to the culture jam by Tokolos was to cleanse the work, thereby forestalling the possibility of using the original artwork and its jam as a point of entry into further debate about the value of public art, access to public space and the value of the public sphere. Likewise, UCT had cleaned the Marikana graffiti by Tokolos by 24 August 2015 – after the commemorations had passed. These kinds of responses, as well as the characterisation of graffiti and culture jamming as vandalism, should be read in relation to growing intolerance towards free speech and operation of free media. Calls for the establishment of a Media Appeals Tribunal, the passing of the Protection of State Information Bill, the ruling party’s negative response to media coverage of Brett Murray’s artwork about President Jacob Zuma (Haupt 2014), as well as the Film and Publications Board’s Draft Online Regulation Policy 15 all point to a shift towards curtailing free speech and heavily regulating the information commons. For one to have a functional public sphere in which citizens may make informed decisions about matters relating to the public interest, one needs a thriving information commons – in other words, knowledge should flow freely in the public domain in order to ensure that democracy thrives. Censorship therefore poses a threat to the commons. Likewise, a scenario where private interests dominate the public sphere at the expense of the public interest also poses a threat to democracy (Haupt 2012, 2014). Democracy, therefore, has two nemeses: state censorship and corporate monopolisation. As Badsha16 indicates, the City did not have a clear arts policy at the time. However, one was put into place towards the end of the year. The policy should be lauded for its comprehensive attempts to be supportive of the arts. However Section 3 (g) of the new Arts, Culture and Creative Industries Policy stipulates: (g) In the funding of public art, the City may: (i) Set aside relevant public funds for the inclusion of public art in new urban design initiatives and in City buildings that are used by the general public such as Libraries and Community Centres. (ii) Encourage wards and subcouncils to set aside funds to commission public art projects for their areas by educating them on the value of public art. Wards and subcouncils will be encouraged to involve affected local communities in the selection of artworks for their areas. (iii) Cultivate public-private partnerships for the development and management of public art. (City of Cape Town 2014a) While Subsections (i) and (ii) are promising, Subsection (iii) keeps the possibilities for corporate funding of public art open. In other words, we may see further

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projects, such as Elion’s Perceiving Freedom and Chris Swift’s SunStar, an installation on Signal Hill sponsored by Southern Sun Hotels. As is the case with CIDs, we see private logic directing the management of public space. It is hard to see how elite interests will not be served in such a scenario. It is in this way that private interests stand to prevail over the public interest. Elion’s Ray-Ban-sponsored public artwork is not the exception, but points to something that is becoming normative via the City of Cape Town’s Cape Town Partnership and its CID. In closing, the scenario is best captured by the folk poem cited by Boyle (2003) in his discussion of the first enclosure movement in 18th-century England: The law locks up the man or woman Who steals the goose from off the common But leaves the greater villain loose Who steals the common from off the goose. The law demands that we atone When we take things we do not own But leaves the lords and ladies fine Who take things that are yours and mine. The poor and wretched don’t escape If they conspire the law to break; This must be so but they endure Those who conspire to make the law. The law locks up the man or woman Who steals the goose from off the common And geese will still a common lack Till they go and steal it back. The class contradictions that are apparent in the poem, as well as the racialised class exclusion to which the work by Tokolos refers, raise questions, not just about the ways in which free speech rights are limited, but about who is recognised as citizens in public space that is increasingly shaped by private interests. What is also at stake is what forms of speech are recognised as public discourse in the public sphere. The intervention by Tokolos draws attention to the ways in which both public space and public discourse are policed by elite interests at the expense of more diverse citizens in the South African public sphere.

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Notes 1

See, for example, Sean O’Toole’s ‘Monstrous shades colours perceptions about role of art’ (Mail & Guardian, 13 November 2015), http://mg.co.za/article/2014-11-13-monstrous-shadescolours-perceptions-about-role-of-art.

2 Historically working-class neighbourhoods, such as Salt River and Woodstock, are rapidly being gentrified as part of the city’s regeneration programme. One signifier of this regeneration is the establishment of the Old Biscuit Mill as an upmarket space for trendy and well-off consumers. The introduction of affluent young professionals and artists is slowly displacing older and less affluent communities of colour. Tokolos has ‘graffiti-bombed’ such spaces with a ‘gentrinaaiers’ stencil. The term ‘gentrinaaier’ combines the word ‘gentrification’ with the word naairer (Afrikaans for ‘fucker’) to signify the violation of poorer communities. For an explanation of the stencil, see ‘Cali-forni-cation’ by Beautiful Mind (21 March 2015), http://btflmind.blogspot.co.za/2015/03/cali-forni-cation.html); and, for examples of work by Tokolos on Tumblr, see https://www.tumblr.com/search/gentrinaaiers. 3

Badsha F, Michael Elion and the willful manipulation of a flawed process. Daily Maverick, 19 November 2014. Accessed August 2015, http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2014-1119-op-ed-michael-elion-and-the-willful-manipulation-of-a-flawed-process/#.VctkqlMw-Uk

4 Badsha F, Michael Elion and the willful manipulation of a flawed process. Daily Maverick, 19 November 2014. Accessed August 2015, http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2014-1119-op-ed-michael-elion-and-the-willful-manipulation-of-a-flawed-process/#.VctkqlMw-Uk 5

Badsha F, Michael Elion and the willful manipulation of a flawed process. Daily Maverick, 19 November 2014. Accessed August 2015, http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2014-1119-op-ed-michael-elion-and-the-willful-manipulation-of-a-flawed-process/#.VctkqlMw-Uk

6 Badsha F, Michael Elion and the willful manipulation of a flawed process. Daily Maverick, 19 November 2014. Accessed August 2015, http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2014-1119-op-ed-michael-elion-and-the-willful-manipulation-of-a-flawed-process/#.VctkqlMw-Uk 7 Badsha F, Michael Elion and the willful manipulation of a flawed process. Daily Maverick, 19 November 2014. Accessed August 2015, http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2014-1119-op-ed-michael-elion-and-the-willful-manipulation-of-a-flawed-process/#.VctkqlMw-Uk 8 Eaton T. The Big Read: Looking through the glasses darkly. Times Live, 12 November 2014. Accessed August 2015, http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2014/11/12/the-big-readlooking-through-the-glasses-darkly 9 Eaton T. The Big Read: Looking through the glasses darkly. Times Live, 12 November 2014. Accessed August 2015, http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2014/11/12/the-big-readlooking-through-the-glasses-darkly 10 Eaton T. The Big Read: Looking through the glasses darkly. Times Live, 12 November 2014. Accessed August 2015, http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2014/11/12/the-big-readlooking-through-the-glasses-darkly 11 Young R, Cape Town’s problem with public art. The Con, 15 December 2014. Accessed August 2015, http://www.theconmag.co.za/2014/12/15/cape-towns-problem-with-public-art/ 12 Traveller24, WDC2014 slams graffiti artists for defacing artwork. Traveller24, 18 November 2014. Accessed August 2015, http://traveller24.news24.com/News/WDC2014-slamsgraffiti-artists-for-defacing-artwork-20141118 13 For a good example of how the issue has been framed, see the Keeno Kammies interview with Adam Haupt on Cape Talk radio about Tokolos Stencils Collective’s culture

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jam of Michael Perceiving Freedom (19 November 2014; https://soundcloud.com/ primediabroadcasting/vandalism-or-remembrance-of-our-turbulent-history). 14 Hodes R, Op-ed: How Rhodes Must Fall squandered public sympathy. Daily Maverick, 20 August 2015. Accessed 24 August 2015 http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/201508-20-op-ed-how-rhodes-must-fall-squandered-public-sympathy/#.Vds6nVPot9A 15 See Julie Reid’s ‘Africa’s worst new internet censorship law: Everything you don’t want to know – but need to’ (Daily Maverick, 10 June 2015), http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/ opinionista/2015-06-10-africas-worst-new-internet-censorship-law-everything-youdont-want-to-know-but-need-to/#.VduOzFPot9A; the policy at http://www.fpb.org.za/ profile-fpb/legislation1/514-draft-online-regulation-policy-2014/file; and an Arterial Network panel discussion at https://soundcloud.com/adam-haupt/no-freedom-noexpression-public-panel-on-artistic-rights-in-africa. 16 Badsha F, Michael Elion and the willful manipulation of a flawed process. Daily Maverick, 19 November 2014. Accessed August 2015, http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2014-1119-op-ed-michael-elion-and-the-willful-manipulation-of-a-flawed-process/#.VctkqlMw-Uk

References Alexander P, Lekgowa T, Mmope B, Sinwell L and Xezwi B (2012) Marikana: A view from the mountain and a case to answer. Auckland Park: Jacana Media Berg J (2010) Seeing like private security: Evolving mentalities of public space protection in South Africa. Criminology and Criminal Justice, 10(3): 287–301 Bollier D (2003) Silent theft: The private plunder of our common wealth. New York and London: Routledge Bordwell M (2002) Jamming culture: Adbusters’ hip media campaign against consumerism. In T Princen, M Maniates & K Conca (Eds) Confronting consumption. Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press Boyle J (2003) The second enclosure movement and the construction of the public domain. Law and Contemporary Problems 66(33): 74 City of Cape Town (2010) Graffiti by-law. Accessed August 2015, https://www.capetown.gov. za/en/ByLaws/Promulgated%20bylaws/Graffiti%20By-law%202010.pdf City of Cape Town (2014a) Arts, culture and creative industries policy (Policy Number 29892). Accessed August 2015, http://www.capetown.gov.za/en/Policies/All%20Policies/Arts,%20 Culture%20and%20Creative%20Industiries%20Policy%20-%20(Policy%20number%20 29892)%20approved%20on%2003%20December%202014.pdf City of Cape Town (2014b) Outdoor public art exhibition takes place in Green Point. Accessed August 2015, https://www.capetown.gov.za/en/Pages/ CitysponsorsoutdoorartexhibitionGreenPoint.aspx Elion M (2014) Perceiving freedom. Facebook events page, 6 November. Accessed August 2015, https://www.facebook.com/events/1496670597284514 Didier S, Morange M & Peyroux E (2012) The adaptative nature of neoliberalism at the local scale: Fifteen years of city improvement districts in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Antipode 45(1): 121–139 Fraser N (1992) Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. In C Calhoun (Ed.) Habermas and the public sphere. Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press

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Gumede WM (2005) Thabo Mbeki and the battle for the soul of the ANC. Cape Town: Zebra Press Habermas J (1989) The structural transformation of the public sphere: An introduction into a category of bourgeois society (Trans. T Burger & F Lawrence). Cambridge: Polity Press Halsey M & Pederick B (2010) The game of fame: Mural, graffiti, erasure. City 14(1–2): 82–98 Hardin G (1968) The tragedy of the commons. Science 162: 1243–1248 Hardt M & Negri A (2000) Empire. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press Hart J (1997) Translating and resisting empire: Cultural appropriation and postcolonial studies. In B Ziff and PV Roa (Eds) Borrowed power: Essays on cultural appropriation. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press Haupt A (2008) Stealing Eempire: P2P, intellectual property and hip-hop subversion. Cape Town: HSRC Press: Cape Town, 2008. Haupt A (2012) Static: Race and representation in post-apartheid music, media and film. Cape Town: HSRC Press Haupt A (2014) Parody, politics and democracy in South Africa. In T Meyiwa et al. (Eds) State of the nation: South Africa 1994–2014. Cape Town: HSRC Press Hebdige D (1979) Subculture: The meaning of style. London and New York: Routledge Humphreys J (1990) Enclosures, common rights, and women: The proletarianization of families in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Journal of Economic History 50(1): 17–42 Kidd D (2003) Indymedia.org: A new communications commons. In M McCaughey and MD Ayers (Eds) Cyberactivism: Online activism in theory and practice. London and New York: Routledge Klein N (2000) No logo. London: Flamingo Lemanski C (2014) Hybrid gentrification in South Africa: Theorising across southern and northern cities. Urban Studies 51(14): 2943–2960 Lucas P (2015) ‘UCT statement on graffiti on campus’. University of Cape Town, 17 August. Accessed June 2017, https://www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2015-08-17-uct-statement-on-graffiti-on-campus McAuliffe C & Iveson K (2011) Art and crime (and other things besides …): Conceptualising graffiti in the city. Geography Compass 5(3): 128–143 McDonald M (2006) Why race matters in South Africa. Pietermaritzburg: University of Kwazulu-Natal Press Miraftab F (2007) Governing post-apartheid spatiality: Implementing city improvement districts in Cape Town. Antipode 39(4): 602–626 One Small Seed (2014a) In rainbows with Michael Elion. 25 September. Accessed August 2015, http://www.onesmallseed.com/2012/09/in-rainbows-with-michael-elion/ One Small Seed (2014b) Share the love: Secret Love Project. 20 March. Accessed August 2015, http://www.onesmallseed.com/2014/03/share-the-love-secret-love-project-2014/ Pilger J (2006) Apartheid did not die. In Freedom next time. London, Toronto, Sydney, Auckland and Johannesburg: Bantam Press Said E (1978/2000) ‘Orientalism’. In M Bayoumi and A Rubin (Eds) The Edward Said reader. New York: Vintage Books Tate G (2003) Nigs R us, or how blackfolk became fetish objects. In G Tate (Ed.) Everything but the burden: What white people are taking from black culture. New York: Broadway Books Tokolos Stencils (2014) More photographs of our intervention. 18 November. Accessed August 2015, http://tokolosstencils.tumblr.com/post/102949447484/more-photographs-of-our-intervention Van der Westhuizen C (2007) White power and the rise and the fall of the National Party. Cape Town: Zebra Press Warner M (2002) Publics and counterpublics. Public culture, 14(1), pp. 49–90

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part 3 Acts of citizenship

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10 Could a ‘Noongarpedia’ form the basis for an emerging form of citizenship in the age of new media? Len Collard, John Hartley, Kim Scott, Niall Lucy and Clint Bracknell, with Jennifer Buchanan and Ingrid Cumming

‘Kaya, nitja kwop noonook ngalang Noongar maya waanginy kaditjiny!’ (It’s good to have you reading our Noongar language!) This chapter approaches the question of media and citizenship from a new perspective. Instead of allowing ‘media’ simply to signify ‘broadcasting’ or one of its technological successors, we take a view on the media that is much broader than that, encompassing language as a whole, via one culture – Noongar – in particular; and at the same time much more targeted, focusing on Wikipedia, a venture that is a ‘digital native’ but not always included as an instance of ‘media’. Here, we depart from a view of ‘the media’ where news and entertainment predominate as communicative values. Our perspective is based on two larger, more encompassing communication domains: not news but knowledge; and not entertainment (pop culture) but culture. We take the social effort to ‘mediate’ (share among citizens) knowledge and culture to be self-evidently civic, whereas the relationship to citizenship of mass-mediated news-entertainment content has to be argued.1 In this chapter, we discuss how knowledge is shared (mediated) within a culture and between its own people and those from other cultures. This approach opens up a slightly different route to understanding media citizenship in the digital era: one that works through the activism of citizens themselves, using ‘new media’ affordances (Hartley et al. 2013), in a ‘bottom-up’ process of knowledge-sharing. This process not only communicates a particular culture, but simultaneously helps to constitute that culture, incidentally providing a framework of rules of conduct for those who choose to participate, whether they identify with it as insiders or outsiders.

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Noongar (and Wales) Of course, we didn’t want to make this job too easy, so we have chosen a testing example of ‘citizenship’. ‘Noongar’ (with various alternative spellings) denotes both the Indigenous people of the south west corner of Western Australia,2 and their language (including localised forms: see Fig. 10.2).3 Belonging to the Noongar nation, speaking Noongar and practising Noongar culture are all realities, but Noongar citizenship, which would express the sum of these activities, does not officially exist, as Noongar sovereignty is not recognised in law. Because of the difficulties resulting from colonisation and its destructive legacy, Australian citizenship (which was only conferred on Indigenous people after the 1967 Referendum) has proven to be a mixed blessing. That kind of representative citizenship does not recognise the collective identity of the Noongar nation (including its language, knowledge and culture); and at the same time reduces Indigenous people to a small minority in their own land. Here’s how Noongar people have chosen to represent the problem, through the website of the SW Aboriginal Land & Sea Council (SWALSC):4 Through the 1800s and up to the mid-20th century, Noongar children weren’t allowed to speak their language in schools and missions. While missions set out to break the chain of learning Noongar culture and language, grouping Noongar people together allowed parents and Elders to continue to pass language on to the younger generation. In this way, Noongar language has been kept alive. In the 20th century, if a Noongar person wanted to become a citizen, he or she had to renounce their Noongar identity and were not permitted to speak their language or communicate with family or friends. This was orchestrated by the government of the day to abolish Noongar language and identity. Many people however, rejected citizenship because they were not prepared to give up their Noongar culture. (http://www.noongarculture.org.au/language/) Such a history is not unique to Australia. It characterises any ‘settler’ society, including South Africa. It even applies within the UK to the Celtic ‘nations’. Of these, Wales – a place that some call ‘England’s first colony’5 – has retained the largest number of native-language-speakers, at around half a million (out of a population of 3 million; i.e. about 20 per cent), despite being conquered militarily over 700 years ago (1284) and absorbed administratively nearly 500 years ago (1536). Like Noongar and other Aboriginal languages around the Empire, Welsh/ Cymraeg suffered the same effort to ‘modernise’ it out of existence in the 19th and 20th centuries. Like the Noongar people of Australia, the Welsh do not constitute a

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sovereign nation, and it is not possible to be a citizen in the usual way. Even so, after bitter political struggles from the 1960s to 1980s, the old language (yr hen iaith) is valued once again, with official recognition and support (albeit perennially subject to funding cuts). Language underpins a broader sense of nationhood, with not just civic but also directly political consequences – as the 2015 UK General Election demonstrated, where nationalists won 63 of 88 seats across the three ‘Celtic’ countries of Scotland (SNP: 56/59 seats), N. Ireland (Sinn Féin: 4/18 seats) and Wales (Plaid Cymru: 3/11 seats). Like the Welsh, Noongar people can only (currently) constitute themselves as Noongar citizens in discourse and media, through communicative practices and the cultural institutions that arise to support them, and not directly in civil rights or representation as a sovereign nation. It is therefore important to investigate how they may express their unique identity and communicate their language, knowledge and culture, among themselves and to others, not only by traditional means (story, song, ceremony) but also by using the affordances of contemporary global media technologies. Again, Welsh is a model: successful campaigns have ensured a Welshlanguage broadcasting service (S4C and BBC-Cymru), Welsh-medium schools, bilingual road-signs, bilingual commercial signage and official documentation (e.g. drivers’ licences), in addition to traditional language institutions such as family, chapel, the eisteddfod movement, music and the arts. Activists have moved on to ensure that the Welsh language features online, not least through a well-populated Welsh-language version of Wikipedia. However, among Noongar activists, the contemporary broadcast and online media meet a mixed response (Hartley & McKee 2000). Globalised networks, and the news-entertainment media that present as militantly monoglot and culturally Californian, are routinely seen as part of the problem for Aboriginal people in Australia, rather than being welcomed as part of the solution for their own culture and knowledge.

Wikipedia Here is where the present project came in. It brings together a diverse team of researchers, both Indigenous (Collard, Scott, Bracknell and Cumming) and non-Indigenous (Hartley, Lucy and Buchanan). We wanted to find out how local minority languages might thrive in the contemporary global environment by using readily accessible internet technologies (hardware and software). We address the role of digital media in the creation and circulation of cultural knowledge (encompassing meaningfulness, identity, social relationships) among people who are marked by difference, and by the mutual ‘untranslatability’ (Lotman 1990)

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of their knowledge systems and those routinely encountered in contemporary business, politics and popular culture. Drilling down from these general issues to a practical problem of how to grow and share Noongar knowledge (not just the language), we focus on Wikipedia as the most-accessed ‘medium’ for the communication of knowledge online. We were drawn to its democratic, bottom-up, non-commercial ethos and practices. We were also mindful that a considerable amount of Noongar knowledge is already present in the English-language version of Wikipedia, whether acknowledged or not. Wikipedia is quite a big ‘country’. The grand total in all language versions is impressive by any standard: at time of writing, 35 million articles across 134 million pages, with over 2 billion edits and nearly 55 million users (see Table 10.1). The total number of users compares favourably with some populous nations – by population count, ‘Wikipedia users’ amount to one of the world’s largest ‘countries’, pipping South Africa to the post at number 24 (RSA’s population is 54 million).6 There are currently 288 language versions of Wikipedia, many of them belonging to non-sovereign groups (e.g. Welsh, Upper Sorbian, Northern Sami, Latin) and some with fewer people than the Noongar, including American Indian tongues. Thus, ‘Wikipedia’ encompasses not just the English version, with nearly 5 million articles across 36 million pages, but also Mvskoke/Muscogee, with just one article.7 Muscogee is a native American language, spoken by about 5 000 people in Oklahoma and Florida. Their single Wikipedia article may seem a forlorn achievement. But it is nevertheless well ahead of the Australian Aboriginal languages. To our knowledge, there are no Aboriginal-language versions of Wikipedia in Australia,8 despite the existence of several hundred different languages across the continent at European settlement, and the continuing strength of some of them. See Figure 10.1, which shows that the ‘strong’ languages are concentrated in the least populated regions of Australia, and least evident in the capital cities.

Table 10.1 Grand total of  Wikipedias Articles

Total

Edits

Admins

Users

35 093 990

133 834 202

2 001 825 176

4 039

54 894 506

Source: Wikimedia Meta-Wiki: List of Wikipedias (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias) Note: Statistics at 11 May 2015. The ‘Total’ column refers to the number of pages in all namespaces, including both articles (the official article count of each wiki) and non-articles (user pages, images, talk pages, ‘project’ pages, categories and templates).

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Figure 10.1 Proportions of indigenous people who spoke an indigenous language or creole (1996), by percentage of population.

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics

Why is there no Noongar Wikipedia? Beyond our effort to create a ‘Noongarpedia’ of knowledge and culture in both Noongar and English (including Australian Aboriginal English),9 the project aims to achieve civic objectives. The recruitment of language-speakers to volunteer as editors, to create content, or simply to use the resulting pages means that the most important ‘product’ of the project is a community of ‘knowledge agents’, young and old, Noongar and non-Noongar, urban and rural or remote, to stimulate broad participation in an ongoing community enterprise that is designed to uplift and extend the cultural status of one of Australia’s biggest Aboriginal ‘nations’. We hope to achieve some theoretical goals too: to develop a new concept and model of ‘knowledge networks’ based on user-created systems, and to produce a new

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Figure 10.2 Indigenous Australian languages and dialects – SW Western Australia

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics. Noongar country is the region designated ‘Southwest’ on David Horton’s (1996) Map of Indigenous Australia.

model of cultural evolution based on uncertainty – diversity and difference among incommensurable (mutually untranslatable) knowledge systems. Wikipedia is one of the internet’s five most-visited websites. Co-founder Jimmy Wales has made a celebrated statement of his ambition for it: Wikipedia is first and foremost an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language. (Wales 2005; our emphasis) Our project takes up the challenge of that deceptively simple aspiration. Its universalism or ‘Californian optimism’ bespeaks a ‘solutionist’ approach to new technology, about which scholars are justly sceptical (Morozov 2013). We test that approach against the specific, diverse and hybrid realities of knowledge that are shared among people speaking ‘their own language’ and in the context of other – much more dominating – languages and knowledge systems. Noongar, the language,10 is ‘endangered’ or ‘threatened’ (Lewis et al. 2013; McConvell & Thieberger 2001: 59). Ethnologue recorded only 240 ‘first-language’

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speakers in 2006, and 8 000 who speak a mixture of English and Noongar (www. ethnologue.com/language/nys). Meanwhile, against those numbers, the Noongar people are ‘one of the largest Aboriginal cultural blocks in Australia’ (SWALSC 2013b), comprising around 30 000 people (indigenous.gov.au 2012). Most if not all of them know some Noongar words (e.g. places, flora and fauna), as do (Western) Australians at large (SWALSC 2013a). Thus the Noongar ‘knowledge network’ is not coterminous with the language as used by fluent speakers, but much more extensive. In that context, we cannot but explore the relations among languages in the context of global networked technology by asking, why is there no Noongar Wikipedia? This question encompasses the idea of people’s ‘own language’ being the appropriate vehicle for creating and circulating knowledge, but it also recognises that all languages are uncertain as to their extent, boundaries, and access to knowledge of various kinds, and their interaction with others. We recognise the dynamic nature of languages in general. We do not approach Noongar as a ‘heritage’ tongue, a trace of past culture or a repository to be ‘recovered’, despite the low number of users. It remains a language continually to be ‘invented’ by its users (SWALSC 2013a), including new ways of making sure that knowledge is passed from one generation to the next, using new media as well as traditional means. Like any language, Noongar faces the future, and Noongar people regard its further development as an important cultural issue.11 How does a minority language intersect with universalist and ‘solutionist’ ideas about the global distribution of knowledge? Since our objective is to understand the circulation of knowledge (i.e. cultural content, not simply language code), we must understand the problems and opportunities that ‘language communities’ (Laitin 2000) face in the era of digital, online, mobile and other forms of ‘new media’; and how such communities can use ‘digitally equipped’ culture (Papacharissi 2010a, 2010b), including identity tools, to face the future. It is at this interface that Noongar is invented, being remade anew in response to new media and circumstances, as well as to the evolving status of English. We note – and rely on – the existing and growing Web presence of Noongar language/culture, exemplified by the redesigned SWALSC site Kaartdijin Noongar – Noongar Knowledge (Figure 10.3) as evidence of such response. Figure 10.3: SWALSC’s Kaartdijin Noongar – Noongar Knowledge site

Source: www.noongarculture.org.au/language/

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Metanarratives or micronarratives? The influential evolutionary biologist and scientific thought-leader Mark Pagel, speaking in a TED talk about humanity as a whole, poses a blunt question that may seem to refute the idea of a future-facing minority language: ‘Can we afford to have all these different languages? … Is our destiny to be one world with one language?’ (Pagel 2011). At issue is whether some languages carry knowledge, culture and connectivity into the future, while others confine them – and their speakers – to the past. Does the accelerating globalisation of technology, trade and mediated communication mean that we are doomed to ‘one language’, or is there evolutionary as well as cultural value in diversity? In relation to language, Pagel lets the question hang, but the global extension of the internet and mobile telecoms suggest that technology as well as knowledge, traditionally carried in disparate cultures and locally evolved languages, may seem set to consolidate into a universal system where difference is much harder to maintain. The expansionist view of the growth of knowledge has grave implications for small languages, and poses a familiar threat. It can be seen as an updated version of Victorian (imperial) progressivism (Leerssen 2006: 65). The idea that our species is ‘destined’ towards a single language (a master-language, in fact) too easily authorises the neglect or suppression of Indigenous, regional and minority languages in favour of imperial ones, on the grounds that modernity can only be experienced and completed in Enlightenment tongues. The latter view was established as mere educated common sense by no less a cultural critic than Matthew Arnold (1867/1962). For Arnold, as a manifestation of the mystical ‘Celtic’ spirit, Welsh was valuable only as a literary language; not as an everyday language of affairs (Hartley & Potts 2014: 52–54). Thus, he sought to expunge its presence in the marketplace or in schools, and confine it to ‘culture’. Critiquing that view is the centrepiece of Jean-François Lyotard’s influential ‘report on knowledge’ (1984), which was published more than a century later. Lyotard sees the future of both culture and science to lie in the rule-generating and thus choice-enhancing potential of ‘micronarratives’ (Lyotard 1984). He argues that the routine reproduction of rule-hardened ‘metanarratives’ (an imperial language, for example, or established scientific method) leads to entropy. Thus, the best interests of culture and science (and, crucially, justice) can be served by the proliferation of difference (Lucy 2016). The invention of new rules, not the repetition of existing ones, may lead to greater knowledge; a view that is also axiomatic in evolutionary economics (Potts 2011). Thus it is necessary to treat visions of a one-language future with caution. But Pagel’s questions are also driven by his study of the evolution of culture as the ‘survival vehicle’ through which human cooperation is sustained:

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Like our physical body, this cultural body wraps us in a protective layer, not of muscles and skin but of knowledge and technologies, and … it gives us our language, cooperation, and a shared identity. (Pagel 2012: 12–13) Pagel sees knowledge and technology (e.g. Wikipedia) as the ‘protective layer’ for a culture’s language, co-operation and identity. But he seeks no such protection for individual languages. There is a radical asymmetry among them, in fact. According to one estimate, the five largest – Chinese, Spanish, English, Hindi, Arabic – boast a total of 2.4 billion speakers, while over 80 per cent of the world’s languages (5 766 of 7 105) have fewer than 10 000 speakers each (Lewis et al. 2013). Historically, most languages that have ever existed are extinct. So Pagel’s questions deserve a thoughtful response, especially among advocates for small languages. The idea that ‘we’ may not be able to ‘afford’ the world’s variety of languages may be directed to any one of them: what is gained by keeping it? How may it thrive and grow in modernity, rather than being confined to traditional ethnic identity or simple inefficiency before inevitable extinction? Given the number of languages remaining, despite recent ‘mass extinctions’ (Krauss 2007), how should cultural diversity be understood within global systems of knowledge and communication? In the digital era, how may the knowledge carried by oral and traditional ‘technologies’ (story, song, ceremony) be transmitted across populations, across time and among different languages? Is it indeed the case that the dynamic environment of digital technologies may come to the rescue of languages that have not fared well in print-culture (Ong 2012), assuring rather than threatening the emergence, transmission and development of knowledge that print-based modernism regards as ‘traditional’, but which may prove crucial for the future of particular communities, and enriching for an overall pattern of linguistic diversity and exchange in which difference is a driver of newness? Wikipedia’s vision of a single interoperable knowledge system for all humans regardless of language, itself symptomatic of wider scientific and technological assumptions, can most tellingly be tested via a small or ‘threatened’ language. If it should transpire that such a language generates new knowledge, of generalisable value to other languages as well as to native speakers, then the problem shifts from a question of survival (‘of the fittest’) to a broader one of how to use contemporary technologies to create and transmit knowledge across languages.

Systems and semiospheres Just because there are a few blockbuster languages and many minority ones, it does not follow that this is unfair; only that the world language system displays a ‘power law’ distribution (by numbers of speakers). Power law distribution is a feature of

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myriad complex systems including the Web itself (Barabási 2002). But its ‘winner takes all’ logic may not entail the extinction of the ‘long tail’ (Anderson 2006), since ‘the largest step function in a power law is between the #1 and #2 positions, by definition’ (Shirky 2003), i.e. between Chinese (1.2 billion speakers) and Spanish (400 million speakers). Yet few voices seem to be calling for the abandonment of Spanish or English (#3: 335 million speakers). Hence, there’s no ‘efficiency quotient’ to be gained in reducing the number of languages to one; and the ‘long tail’ may be almost infinitely long without damaging the system or its dynamics. Thus, we need to understand the dynamics of such systems (Hartley et al. 2013), where the ‘head’ and ‘tail’ items may be performing different functions. If so, applying the expectations of one to the other is not appropriate. For instance, in creative work, the item at the popularity ‘head’ of a power law curve (fiction or music by, say, J.K. Rowling or Psy) may be gauged in terms of attention, sales and impact in an anonymous market, measured in billions; while those along the tail (say, selfpublished blogs or music) may act more as a conversation among friends or kin, best construed as a ‘small world’ network (Ormerod 2012). Nevertheless, head and tail contain the same type of content – the difference is in the number of connections at each ‘end’, not in the nature of the creativity involved. It is almost impossible to pick in advance, or in principle, what item will end up in which position; and over time their positions may be reversed. It follows that apparently ‘unfair’ distributions – for instance, between the numbers of speakers of various languages – may need to be examined not as an affront to egalitarian principles but as part of a complex system of networked components that function differently at different scales, for different users, contexts and purposes, and whose position may change over time. How system-thinking works when applied to languages has been established by the Russian-Estonian semiotician Yuri Lotman (1990), with his concept of the ‘semiosphere’. Entire cultural systems (e.g. a national language and associated creative works such as literature and film) converse with each other. Over decades or centuries, neighbouring semiospheres – French, Italian and Russian – take turns to ‘transmit’ or ‘receive’ new knowledge across their own boundaries. Thus, Revolutionary France (1790–1810) was a strong transmitter of new ideas across Europe and beyond. At that time, Russia was not. A century later, in the Russian Revolutionary period, the transmitter/receiver roles were reversed (Lotman 1990: 144). Meanwhile, despite asymmetric scale, a semiosphere at one end of the scale spectrum (say, online English) can interact with and learn from a semiosphere at the other (e.g. Noongar). Here, a model of translation and conversation may be preferable to Pagel’s integration model (‘one world with one language’), especially as translation is itself going through rapid conceptual and technological change in the context of the internet (Petzold et al. 2012a, 2012b). Diversity rather than consolidation may better serve the growth of knowledge systems (Hartley 2009).

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Thus, in relation to Noongar culture and knowledge, we explore how the heterogeneous effects of ‘postmodern’ language games undermine the power of narrative monopolies or ‘metanarratives’ (e.g. technological solutionism) to explain history and shape the future while remaining oblivious to the truth claims of other stories and the different interests they may represent. Such exclusion of others forges a centralising ‘consensus’ that leads to what Lyotard (1984) calls ‘terror’. Counter-intuitively, instead, a just society – a civic goal if ever there was one – is governed by dissensus about knowledge, contrary to the views of Habermas (1971). A multiplicity of rules of judgement – i.e. ‘micronarratives’ – may lead not only to greater equity and more tolerance, but also to a more diverse spectrum of knowledge and many more active knowledge agents: this is the recipe for innovation. Testing these high-level theoretical and conceptual hypotheses about the dynamics of interlingual relations in a technological knowledge system has a practical purpose in relation to the future prospects of the Noongar language and its speech community. A strong online presence for the Noongar language, together with an engaged community of activists, volunteers, editors and users, will result in a measurable improvement in the visibility, use and promotion of Noongar itself, among and beyond the Noongar community, creating and linking a substantial body of texts (broadly defined; including oral-aural), and distributing knowledge that will be of permanent benefit to one of Australia’s most prominent native languages. It will, at the same time, advance knowledge about interlingual relations in globalised media systems (Petzold 2017) that will be of benefit to the architects and advocates of large-scale digital platforms such as Wikipedia, and offer some hard-won practical insights into the process of recruiting ‘knowledge agents’ from a wide social spectrum to participate in the work of cultural reproduction, using non-standard knowledge sources and domains. Thus, we are looking for both theoretical and practical innovations of international significance, and community benefits in relation to the demonstrated health and well-being value of ‘native’-language use by Indigenous people, especially youth (e.g. Hallett et al. 2007).

‘Threatened’ languages In order to test these general models of interlanguage and intercultural relations in the context of global complex networks of knowledge, technology and communication, we are both doing and documenting: using the development of a Noongarpedia to gain important new insights into how languages can coexist, cooperate and interact with others (users and languages) via the internet. There are numerous examples of ‘dying’ languages that have been revived and modernised using technological media affordances, including Welsh and Hebrew. Interestingly,

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the ‘aboriginal’ language that Matthew Arnold wanted to be rid of in the imperial era was Welsh – ‘the sooner the Welsh language disappears as an instrument of the practical, political, social life of Wales, the better’ – even as he argued in favour of an antiquarian revival of ‘Celtic’ literature (Arnold 1867/1962: 296–297). The ‘politics of language’ are thus a well-understood problem for Welsh, even if their most innovative solutions, including experiments in machine translation (Tyers & Donnelly 2009), have gone unnoticed elsewhere (May 2012: 269ff). Twentieth-century language activism has done much to revive and stabilise Welsh across broadcast and online media, including a thriving Wicipedia Cymraeg with over 60 000 articles (in 2015).12 How might such experience assist language activists to improve the situation for the Noongar language, itself scarcely a stranger to the sort of political struggle exemplified by Welsh? The dispossession of Aboriginal peoples’ languages was a key instrument of Australian assimilation policies stretching from the colonial era through to the 1970s and beyond. But now, both UK and Australian policy admits the value to all citizens of recognising minority-group cultural and linguistic rights (https://www.reconciliation.org.au/about). In this context, one of the lessons of Welsh is that such laudable aims are realised not only in the domain of high policy but also beyond that in the everyday life of family, home, freedom and comfort (Hartley 1996), where such matters are best nurtured. Thus, for the highest policy purposes, Welsh-language broadcasting has devoted public resources to populist and fun initiatives designed to boost the use of the Welsh language in the home and to improve its profile and reputation among non-native speakers, from soap opera to SuperTed, the latter being Welsh-language TV channel S4C’s first-ever show (www.amgueddfacymru.ac.uk/cy/3807/), since translated into many languages and distributed worldwide. The significance of the development of a Noongarpedia – devoted to informal or popular as well as formal knowledge networks – is that it yields this direct national benefit in itself, and also that it models the process for other Indigenouslanguage knowledge networks. Internationally, it offers improved models of interlingual knowledge relations to those working in digital systems. Minoritylanguage Wikipedias may be few, and often they are emergent rather than fully established. In this respect the development of a Noongar Wikipedia is a ‘natural experiment’ that will yield rich information to others.

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Making a Noongarpedia: A community not a thing In order to make the attempt, three aspects of knowledge networking must be addressed, each emphasising the civic nature of cultural communication and knowledge sharing. These are: knowledge domains, sources and agents.

Knowledge domains For practical reasons we limit our project to number of broad knowledge domains. These are expected to cover popular preoccupations and therefore user-searches and development. Without seeking to be comprehensive or exclusive, they will model how the work can be done across other domains. The categories are: ◆ country – places, landscapes, f lora, fauna; tribal groups and trading patterns; ◆ narrative – stories from everyday life, including suburban domestic, urban industrial and regional traditions; literature and other art-forms; ◆ popular culture and music – including lyrics, traditional and modern and popular culture broadly defined, including ‘Gen Next’ and emergent knowledge; and ◆ citizenship – public knowledge and exchange, from ‘welcome to country’ to international first-peoples forums. This is the most obviously ‘civic’ part of the project in terms of content. Data are collected from two principal ‘traditional’ sources (see below): family (kinship knowledge); and country – including landscape (topography and wildlife) and geography (place and culture). Since Noongar does not simply belong to the pre-colonial past, where an antiquarian approach might seek to preserve and archive it, further domains need to be acknowledged: ‘popular’ Noongar, the language of everyday use, and of entertainment. How is Noongar used in modern city and domestic environments, and how might we find out? Given that each new generation of teenagers is defined by consumption practices, and increasingly by the use of new media, what are ‘Gen Next’ Noongar kids doing with new technologies, and what new knowledge domains are emergent from that? Once the project was under way, we were able to identify another mode of ‘knowledge domain’ classification, this time based on Noongar itself: ◆ Noongar (the people and language); ◆ boodjar (country); ◆ moort (people, family or culture-group); and ◆ katitjin (knowledge).

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This classification has been claimed as the foundation of ‘Noongar theory’: As Nyungar [alternative spelling of Noongar] writing about the Nyungar world, we engaged a set of propositions as our guiding principles to develop a Nyungar theoretical framework. This theory enabled us to put into context how Nyungar knowledge is constructed, passed on and supported. The foundation of our theory is the trilogy of boodjar (country), moort (family or relations) and katitjin (knowledge). This trilogy provides the structure for our Cosmology. (Collard et al. 2004: 15)

Knowledge sources We have identified a number of ‘sources’ for the trial version of the Noongarpedia: ◆ archives – existing archives in Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums; informal archives (e.g. individual collections of papers etc.); ◆ family – the family as an archival resource for knowledge (Scott & Brown 2005), and with that the attendant problems of recording, verifying, accessing and disseminating such knowledge, much of it oral (Ong 2012) or in the form of artefacts whose meanings may not be readily apparent to others (Miller 2009); ◆ media – old and new media, from colonial newspapers to YouTube; and ◆ public institutions – official and unofficial, including schools, government departments, workplaces, and so on. In addition to materials collected by volunteers, the project relies on existing databases in various stages of evolution, such as: ◆ L en Collard’s Nyungar Boodjera Wangkiny – The People’s Land is Speaking: Nyungar Place Nomenclature of the Southwest of Western Australia, which currently holds 12 000 terms and associated meanings (see wwwmcc. murdoch.edu.au/multimedia/nyungar/); ◆ K im Scott’s The Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories Project Incorporated (a collection of language, stories, music, illustrations, song and dance: http:// wirlomin.com.au/) (Scott, Roberts et al. 2011; Scott, Woods et al. 2011); ◆ Natj Walanginy (What Singing?): Nyungar Song from the South-West of Western Australia (a project investigating the aesthetics and sustainability of Noongar-language song traditions); ◆ SWALSC and other organisations’ and individuals’ databases (e.g. at www. noongar.org.au). We have collaborated with SWALSC to identify language/ knowledge sources in their archive, with the assistance of Denise Cook, to whom we offer our thanks.

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Part of the work of this project is to explore and extend such sources, and where possible to make their materials accessible, albeit with appropriate access and usage protocols.

Knowledge agents The project’s aims require extensive community enterprise in the execution of the ‘natural experiment’ of creating a Noongarpedia. Our role here is not only as experts in domain knowledge and as language users (Collard, Scott and Bracknell), but also as facilitators and mentors of community agents (both persons and organisations), who need to be attracted to the project as volunteers and activists (not obliged as students, employees, etc.). This is in line with Wikipedia’s own practice, where ‘volunteers’ edit all entries; and it will also ensure sustainability after this project is completed. Thus, we will also work on active recruitment and mentoring of users as researchers and knowledge agents, from schoolchildren to elders. This is in some ways the most important part of the project, since it is effectively recruiting citizens to the Noongar online republic. Here, we depart from traditional knowledge-transfer techniques, as traditionally employed by Noongar: In the South-West, yeye or today, as in kura or the past, Nyungar boordier or elders play a role as custodians of all knowledges, and in particular ‘special’ knowledges, both theoretical and practical, which are to be passed on. (Collard et al. 2004: 15) The Noongarpedia project is not based strictly upon ‘Nyungar gerontocracies’ where, as Collard et al. (2004: 15) put it: ‘boordier or elders are still acknowledged as the custodians of knowledge and wisdom of their boodjar, moort and katitjin, and are responsible for the perpetuation through ongoing communications of Nyungar theories, knowledges and applications’. Although senior Noongar people are both conducting and assisting the project, it is equally true that young people with an interest in popular music and culture, in urban life and technology, and also non-Noongar sympathisers, share responsibility for uploading the language and its burden of knowledge into the digital environment. Indeed, difficulty is experienced that is potentially dangerous for the future of the language when Noongar people or groups (whether families or associations) retain proprietorial control over language as such (word hoards and usages; not including legitimate intellectual property in textual form), because refusal to open access to the language, by those who see themselves as its custodians, may hasten rather than prevent its further reduction as a speech community.

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An interlingual online idiom The project as a whole is an experiment in media citizenship, to facilitate the Noongarpedia’s ongoing development by self-directing knowledge agents. We are training, and relying on, students and other volunteers to create entries relating to individual words, place names, kinship and cultural practices, botanical and zoological names, youth culture slang, historical events, cultural narratives, etc., across the project’s domains of ‘country, narrative, music, pop culture and citizenship’. In relation to Noongar youngsters – the creators of the emergent future for Noongar language, knowledge and community – we have built into the research a reflexive element that asks: how might teenagers and children use such a project as this to learn the use of new technologies, and learn Noongar too? How might their limited opportunities for engagement with new media (owing to socio-economic disadvantage and the realities of the ‘digital divide’) be addressed, even as they explore their own knowledge and culture? Further, ‘Gen Next’ is a metropolitan category, but the widespread rural distribution of Noongar young people may mean that they cannot easily be collected as a distinctive group. We’ll need to remain sensitive to such urban and rural differences. A different kind of question arises about interlingual boundaries. Nowadays, Noongar-speakers are also English-speakers; and non-Noongars speak a little Noongar. Language-boundaries are uncertain and usage is hybrid. ‘Noongar English’ is also one of many Indigenised ‘dialects’ (some of which claim status as distinct languages). As Ian Malcolm has argued: ‘claims of ownership of a dialect of English entail questions of identity, authenticity, group membership and language rights’. Political and cultural stakes are high, and ‘the degree to which Aboriginal people have invested identity in varieties of English is directly related to the degree to which they have needed to transfer features of their self-expression into them’ (Malcolm 2013: 42, 54). Thus Noongar is an interlingual network including not only Noongar and English, but also ‘Australian’. Like ‘Australian’, it may not enjoy official or institutional status, but does not therefore lack identity. Our intention, though, is not to recover or standardise a ‘correct’ version of Noongar, but to enable its identity, however hybrid, to be expressed though its knowledge. The ‘differend’ (Lucy 2016; Lyotard 1988) here takes the form of a translation problem, where the problem is intensified by ‘translation’ between incommensurable systems (Lotman 1990, 2009). A Noongarpedia is likely to display hybridity, informality and linguistic variety, and should not be expected to respect formal boundaries between English and non-English. Given the uncertain interlingual relations in play, our research necessarily precipitates a need to rethink Wikipedia itself, not as a metanarrative (a knowledge monopoly), but as a collective term for public micronarratives (multiple sites)

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ungoverned by a fixed set of user-interface protocols. Our research thereby seeks the discovery or continuing invention of Lyotard’s ‘idiom’, by which we don’t mean simply a langue (Saussure 1974) or set of rules for the expression of Noongar knowledge. The idiom we have in mind is inseparable from users and user-interfaces.

Governance and community uptake If internal restrictions and protocols are maintained, not all Noongar knowledge ‘wants to be free’. A Noongarpedia could not, therefore, be for ‘every single person on the planet’, as Wikipedia’s co-founder wishes, if it is deemed culturally necessary to restrict some knowledge from some users. Thus, its ‘idiom’ needs to negotiate important questions of kinship and gender hierarchies (including their contestation and transformation over time), as well as generational, personal, regional and other differences. Given the restricted nature of certain forms of Noongar knowledge, collection as well as publication processes involve not only formal but also cultural considerations. But further questions arise: authority, governance and ‘ownership’ are all potentially fraught. Can a public site such as a Noongarpedia restrict access to knowledge, especially when Wikipedia itself is dedicated to unlimited dissemination and interoperability of knowledge? Also, how can Wikipedia be adapted to source oral data in order to generate reliable and checkable citations? Does anyone in the community have a power of veto? Are gender and generation differences and separations in respect of knowledge domains to be respected? Negotiating the different expectations and aims of the internet community (Wikipedia) on the one hand and the speech community (Noongar) on the other is fraught with uncertainties for both parties. Resolving them according to Wikipedia practice, from deciding who has the right to edit entries up to what ‘counts’ as a new language-version, is not straightforward. At the very least, these tensions constitute ‘findings’ for the research, no matter which way they are resolved. But somehow, Noongar has to be able to ‘speak truth to’ Wikipedia, as well as vice versa. An online Noongar ‘knowledge network’ – a contemporary version of the ‘republic of letters’ – does not have to be invented from scratch. It exists already, albeit in nascent, partial, dispersed and informal forms, extending from broadcasters to social media. These are ‘nodes’ that can be linked into a connected network, not least through the protocols of multiple Wikipedia entries and their system of cross-referencing. Developing such resources and links is a means by which knowledge agents can immerse themselves in a hybrid, dispersed, multiorigin Noongar ‘idiom’, thereby aiding generational knowledge transmission/ translation, enhancing Noongar self-identity among volunteers and communicating

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Noongar knowledge more widely. That idiom can only be developed through – and as – community enterprise (it cannot remain as an expert or academic project). For the site to become self-sufficient in the long term, and for users to feel comfortable in uploading information to it, usage protocols (more formal than those associated with social media) need to be established from the outset. Hence the project will coordinate and consolidate existing elements of the Noongar knowledge network by collecting these in a single site, the collection process to be undertaken initially by trained volunteers and thereafter by members of the Noongar and the wider community. We cannot assume in advance that a Noongarpedia, or even a Noongar-language version of Wikipedia, can simply reproduce Wikipedia’s existing rules and procedures, even though its universally recognised template is exactly what makes the project worth attempting. Many of the insights gained in the process will apply to the development of other Indigenous-language Wikipedias. They will also help to elucidate uncertainties facing the Wikipedia userinterface itself: ◆ What is the role of authority – social and traditional – in conducting an open knowledge-creating and -distributing venture such as this? ◆ How will disputes about cultural protocols be handled (online or off)? ◆ What will be the response to demands for censorship, control of entries by elders or experts, and editing by non-Noongar volunteers? ◆ What are the implications of the internet’s scale-free characteristics, where items may go viral and achieve global scale (e.g. Gangnam-style), while others remain relatively invisible (e.g. YouTube examples of Noongar language in use)? ◆ How to negotiate issues of profiling, showcasing, signalling (i.e. language branding and marketing) versus controlling access and use of commonly held materials (community rights)?

Conclusion: Citizens of media In the end, this is a work in progress, so we can’t tell you yet whether or not the experiment is successful, but it is already clear that it has both practical outcomes and theoretical implications of high importance for the future of languages, knowledge and cultures in ‘threatened’ circumstances, and thus for the emergence of new forms of citizenship. It takes the global-technical environment as an opportunity (not simply as a risk), and it seeks to draw together the realities of ‘at risk’ cultures and people with the affordances of tech-based ‘solutionism’, so that each may learn from the other. In this way, ‘emerging forms of citizenship’ are not necessarily to be found in the relations of obligation between individuals and states,

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as in traditional citizenship theory, but in the discursive and mediated relations between local small-scale language-knowledge-culture systems (like Noongar) and global giants of techno-mediated meaningfulness (like the Wikipedia/Wikimedia complex). If so, then ‘citizenship’ involves collective, system- and group-level work as a ‘knowledge agent’ for a language-knowledge-culture as a whole, not just the performance of individual ‘rational-choice’ actions like voting. Interlingual online relations remain a relatively unexplored domain of civic action, but it is already clear that a kind of ‘national service’ to assist a ‘threatened’ language is vital for the wellbeing of both its speakers and their cultures and knowledge. Thus we see this project as very much a ‘civic’ initiative, bringing Noongar youth and young people, especially, into contact with their ancient language through the medium of global media technologies, for knowledge sharing, and thence cultural and civic renewal. This is especially necessary for those living in an urban setting, where mobile devices, apps and internet affordances are more familiar than the native language. Of course, there are many pitfalls ahead and some bitter experience in the past to deal with, so ‘civic renewal’ may not occur, or it may work out in unexpected ways, but we think the attempt does represent one way to address a theme of this book: that of ‘emerging forms of citizenship in the age of new media’. Indeed, it may be that developing a ‘citizenship of media’ and ‘digital citizenship’ is more real (realisable in practice) for subnational nations like the Noongar than some aspects of formal citizenship itself, such as sovereignty; and in the end it may contribute just as much to the wellbeing of citizens, Noongar and non-Noongar alike. Boodawan djinang! (See you later!)

Notes 1 John Hartley has argued for links between citizenship and media entertainment in numerous publications, for example Hartley (1996) and (2009). 2 Noongar country reaches roughly from Geraldton to Esperance; including State capital Perth and some of the most developed and urbanised parts of WA. A Noongar (Collard) way of ‘mapping’ their country is to say that it extends where the Balga (Xanthorrhoea preissii, or grass tree) grows. 3 For more information about Noongar people, culture, history and circumstances, explore the SWALSC website: http://www.noongarculture.org.au/noongar/. 4 SWALSC is the Native Title Representative Body of the Noongar People, who are the traditional owners of the south west of Australia. SWALSC works with members to progress resolution of the Noongar native title claims, while also advancing and strengthening Noongar culture, language, heritage and society. See: http://www.noongar.org.au/. 5 See, for instance, the speech Adam Price, MP for Dinefwr and East Carmarthenshire, presented to the Institute of Welsh Politics (16 November 2009): http://www.walesonline. co.uk/news/wales-news/wales-first-final-colony---2070487; and this article in the New

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Statesman by Niall Griffiths: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2007/04/welshlanguage-wales-england. 6 List of countries by population: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_ dependencies_by_population. 7 For the full list, see https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias. For Mvskoke/ Muscogee, an American Indian language, whose own-language Wikipedia version is now closed, although the domain remains, see: https://mus.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mvskoke and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscogee_language. 8 Australasia is a different matter: there is a Maori Wikipedia: http://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Reo_Māori. 9 See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aboriginal_English. 10 Noongar (roughly, ‘human being’) is an uncertain word in both orthography and application. In this chapter we have settled on one spelling, which is the one used by education authorities in Western Australia (DET.WA 2013). We use the word to refer equally to the Noongar language and Noongar people, although doubt and debate surround the components, extent and thus meaning of both usages. 11 See AIATSIS: www.fatsilc.org.au/languages/reports/nils-report-2005. 12 See http://cy.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicipedia_Cymraeg.

Acknowledgement The co-authors of this chapter are the original project team. Niall Lucy died in 2014. Jennie Buchanan and Ingrid Cumming are the project’s salaried research associates. We would also like to thank Sandra Harben (SWALSC), Gideon Digby (Wikimedia Australia) and Denise Cook, who worked as a research associate with us on SWALSC’s ‘knowledge sources’. This research is supported under Australian Research Council’s Indigenous Discovery Project funding scheme (IN140100017).

References Australian Bureau of Statistics: http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]/ Previousproducts/AADB12E0BBEC2820CA2570EC001117A5 Anderson C (2006) The long tail: How endless choice is creating unlimited demand. London: Random House Arnold M (1867/1962) On the study of Celtic literature (1867). Complete Prose Works 3. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Accessed July 2017, https://archive. org/details/onstudycelticli03arnogoog; 1891 edition: http://archive.org/stream/ celticliterature05159gut/celt10.txt Barabási AL (2002) Linked: The new science of networks. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing DET.WA (Department of Education & Training Western Australia) (2013) A note on terminology. Accessed July 2017, www.det.wa.edu.au/aboriginaleducation/apac/ detcms/aboriginal-education/apac/regions/beechboro/a-note-on-terminology. en?oid=MultiPartArticle-id-9429533 Collard L, Harben S & Van den Berg R (2004) Noonookurt Nyininy: A Nyungar interpretive history of the use of Boodjar (country) in the vicinity of Murdoch University. Perth: Murdoch

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University. Accessed July 2017, http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/multimedia/nyungar/ info/nyungar.doc Habermas J (1971) Toward a rational society: Student protest, science, and politics (trans. J Shapiro). Boston: Beacon Press Hallett D, Chandler M & Lalonde C (2007) Aboriginal language knowledge and youth suicide. Cognitive Development 22(3): 392–399 Hartley J (1996) Popular reality: Journalism, modernity, popular culture. London: Arnold/ Bloomsbury Hartley J (2009) The uses of digital literacy. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press; New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers Hartley J, Burgess J & Bruns A (Eds) (2013) A companion to new media dynamics. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Hartley J & McKee A (2000) The indigenous public sphere: The reporting and reception of Aboriginal issues in the media. Oxford: Oxford University Press Hartley J & Potts J (2014) Cultural science: A natural history of stories, demes, knowledge and innovation. London: Bloomsbury Horton D (1996) AIATSIS map of Aboriginal Australian languages. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Indigenous.gov.au (2012) Western view: Perth’s Noongar Community. Australian Government, 4 September. Accessed July 2017, www.indigenous.gov.au/western-viewperths-noongar-community/ Krauss M (2007) Mass language extinction and documentation: The race against time. In O Miyaoka, O Sakiyama & M Krauss (Eds) The vanishing languages of the Pacific Rim. Oxford: Oxford University Press Laitin D (2000) What is a language community? American Journal of Political Science 44(1): 142–155 Leerssen J (2006) Englishness, ethnicity and Matthew Arnold. European Journal of English Studies 10(1): 63–79 Lewis P, Simons G & Fennig C (Eds) (2013) Ethnologue: Languages of the world (17th edition). Dallas, TX: SIL International. Accessed July 2017, www.ethnologue.com Lotman Y (1990) Universe of the mind: A semiotic theory of culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press; London: IB Tauris Lotman Y (2009) Culture and explosion. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter Lucy N (2016) A dictionary of postmodernism. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Lyotard JF (1984) The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press Lyotard JF (1988) The differend: Phrases in dispute (trans. GV Den Abbeele). Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press Malcolm I (2013) The ownership of Aboriginal English in Australia. World Englishes 32(1): 42–53 May S (2012) Language and minority rights: Ethnicity, nationalism and the politics of language. London: Routledge McConvell P & Thieberger N (2001) State of indigenous languages in Australia, 2001. Canberra: Department of Environment & Heritage. Accessed July 2017, http://155.187.2.69/soe/2001/ publications/technical/pubs/indigenous-languages.pdf

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Miller D (2009) Stuff. Cambridge: Polity Press Morozov E (2013) To save everything, click here: The folly of technological solutionism. New York: PublicAffairs Books Ong W (2012) Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word (30th anniversary edition with additional chapters by John Hartley). London: Routledge Ormerod P (2012) Positive linking: How networks can revolutionise the world. London: Faber and Faber Pagel M (2011) How language transformed humanity. TED Talk. Accessed July 2017, www.ted. com/talks/mark_pagel_how_language_transformed_humanity.html (and see the debate at www.ted.com/conversations/4770/is_our_destiny_to_be_one_world.html) Pagel M (2012) Wired for culture: The natural history of human cooperation. London: Allen Lane Papacharissi Z (2010a) A private sphere: Democracy in a digital age. Cambridge: Polity Press Papacharissi Z (Ed.) (2010b) A networked self: Identity, community, and culture on social network sites. New York: Routledge Petzold T, Liao HT, Hartley J & Potts J (2012a) Inter-language linking in Wikipedia: A global dependency explorer for languages and content. Leonardo: Art, Science and Technology 45(3): 284 Petzold, T, Liao HT, Hartley J & Potts J (2012b) A world map of knowledge in the making: Wikipedia’s inter-language linking as a dependency explorer of global knowledge accumulation. In M Schich, R Malina & I Meirelles (Eds) Arts, humanities and complex networks. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press E-Book: www.AHCNcompanion.info Petzold T (2017) Global knowledge dynamics and social technology. London: Palgrave Macmillan/Springer Nature Potts J (2011) Creative industries and economic evolution. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Saussure F de (1974) Course in general linguistics (trans. W Baskin). London: Fontana Scott K & Brown H (2005) Kayang and me. Fremantle WA: Fremantle Press Scott K, Roberts L, Woods G, Roberts A & Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories Project (2011) Noongar Mambara Bakitj. Perth: University of Western Australia Press Scott K, Woods I, Farmer J, Nelly H, Winmar R & Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories Project (2011) Mamang. Perth: University of Western Australia Press Shirky C (2003) Power laws, weblogs, and inequality. In Clay Shirky’s writings about the internet: Economics & culture, media & community, open source. Accessed July 2017, www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/powerlaw_weblog.html SWALSC (South West Aboriginal Land & Sea Council) (2013a) Language. Accessed July 2017, www.noongarculture.org.au/language/ SWALSC (South West Aboriginal Land & Sea Council) (2013b) Noongar. Accessed July 2017, www.noongarculture.org.au/noongar/ Tyers, F & Donnelly K (2009) apertium-cy – a collaboratively-developed free RBMT system for Welsh to English. Prague Bulletin of Mathematical Linguistics 91: 57–66 Wales J (2005) Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Accessed July 2017, http://lists.wikimedia.org/ pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-March/020469.html Wikimedia Meta-Wiki: List of Wikipedias, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias

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11 The media, Equal Education and school learners: ‘Political listening’ in the South African education crisis Azwihangwisi Mufamadi and Anthea Garman

This chapter investigates the work that Equal Education (EE), a South African social movement focused on the education crisis in public schools, does in collaboration with learners as an example of how marginalised citizens can practise their citizenship and get a ‘voice’ and ‘hearing’ in matters that relate to basic education. EE is ‘a movement of learners, parents, teachers and community members working for quality and equality in South African education, through analysis and activism’ (EE 2013). This movement’s headquarters are in Khayelitsha, a township just outside of Cape Town, with regional offices in Johannesburg and King William’s Town, and a network of members across South Africa. It consists of eight units: a Secretariat; a Policy, Communication and Research Department; a Community Department; a Youth Department; a Fundraising Department; Campaigns, Camps and Projects; Operations and Finance and an Administration and Logistics Department. It was founded in 2008 by members of the Treatment Action Campaign, the social movement which forced the government to make antiretroviral drugs widely available to the country’s HIV-positive population. EE started with research on the condition of school infrastructure across public schools in the Western Cape. This research revealed the post-apartheid government’s failure to equalise infrastructure between schools that were formerly reserved for white learners and those that were meant for their black counterparts during the apartheid era. EE is grounded in the communities where it operates. In Khayelitsha where its headquarters are located, EE has organised learners into youth groups which meet weekly to discuss and plan campaigns on issues that affect them as South African youth (EE 2012). These spaces also offer learners an opportunity to develop their leadership skills through leadership training with youth group leaders. This includes weekly activities such as meetings, and occasional camps and outings. EE’s role is not just that of providing space for the discussions to take place, but it is also to listen to what the learners are discussing or planning and offer support

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and advice on how to amplify these activities. So far the interaction between EE and learners has led to marches, litigation (with its sister organisation the Equal Education Law Centre) through the courts, and direct encounters with education officials and politicians to protest against lack of government action on minimum norms and standards for schools, textbooks and the lack of proper infrastructure in schools. EE’s continuous engagement with learners ensures that it remains relevant. It employs a range of strategies and approaches depending on the circumstances and its objectives around those circumstances. Like most successful social movements EE focuses on a single cause, but this particular cause has multiple complex components such as inequality in education, learners being expelled, textbook delivery, teachers who do not teach and school infrastructure, among others. It is considered to be one of the most successful social movements in the country (Fleisch & Robins 2014: 128) in that it has not only challenged government but it has also forced government to address basic education problems. EE has also been successful in getting newspapers to pay attention to its activities and the movement is often given editorial space to publish its ideas in the form of op-eds, notably in the Cape Times and the Mail & Guardian. EE allows young people who are seriously disadvantaged by the public education system to speak out and act as citizens. The damage caused by the education system on these young people happens on two levels, their education and their capacity to act as citizens later in life. It is this role of EE that this study focused on. We are particularly interested in EE as a vehicle for learners to practise their citizenship in the South African basic education system within the context of democratic processes that do not favour the marginalised.

Status versus practice of citizenship in South Africa Sociologist Patrick Heller (2009) argues that the quality of a democracy is not dependent on formal processes such as voting, but it is determined by the extent to which citizens, especially those who are marginalised, have the capacity to have a say and participate. He draws a distinction between the status and practice of citizenship. By status Heller refers to the guarantee of the basic structures of electoral democracy and basic rights, free will, freedom of association and a vote. The practice of citizenship, on the other hand, is realised when citizens can participate in decision-making processes about issues that affect them and impact on public policy issues. Participation is possible when there is a strong civil society that can hold government accountable to its citizens (Habib 2005, 2013). Although the status of citizenship is guaranteed in South Africa – in the sense that all citizens

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are guaranteed all rights, can vote and electoral democracy is guaranteed – the practice of citizenship is not (Heller 2009). Ordinary citizens find it difficult to engage with the state in a manner that translates into having an effect on decisionmaking processes about issues that affect their lives. It is because of this inability of participation by the poor and marginalised that Habib (2013) has argued a viable democratic system does not yet exist in South Africa. There is a ‘bifurcation of civil society’ in South Africa between those who are organised, into labour movements, non-governmental organisations and social movements, and those who are not (Heller 2009: 144). Citizens who are affiliated with organised groups have a better chance of engaging the state as there are fewer points of contact for the unorganised citizens to connect with the State which is organised along lines that don’t allow for direct representation at national level and representation at municipal level by councillors is notoriously fraught and inattentive. With a narrow possibility for voice or intervention many South African citizens ‘have increasingly resorted to contentious action, including widespread ‘services protest’ that have become South Africa’s most challenging political problem’ (Heller 2012: 658). As a result the transition to democracy in South Africa has resulted in a transformation of ‘an ostensibly homogenous, progressive, anti-apartheid civil society into one composed of at least three distinct blocs, non-governmental organisations, survivalist agencies and social movements’ (Habib 2013: 676). Non-governmental organisations are single cause and/or charity organisations acting on behalf of, or in solidarity with, ‘the poor and disadvantaged, and for those who are thought to be, and perhaps are, unable to speak for themselves, or at least to whose voices those in power do not listen’ (Morrow 2004: 327). Survivalist agencies are informal, community-based networks and agencies ‘that enable poor and marginalised communities to simply survive the daily ravages of neoliberalism’ (Habib 2013: 682). Social movements are defined by Ballard et al. (2005: 617) as ‘politically and/or socially directed collectives, often involving multiple organisations and networks, focused on changing one or more elements of the social, political and economic system within which they are located’. These segments of civil society have the potential to force government to be accountable to its citizens or to at least point out the lack of accountability. Glaser (1997) argues that the importance of such civil society organisations or formations is not based on the number of constituents each organisation represents but the issues they campaign for, since civil society is plural in nature. Some of these social movements have already started empowering citizens to challenge the status quo through grassroots uprisings.

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Media and the practice of citizenship The practice of citizenship in South Africa requires support from the media, which have an ethical obligation not only to provide a ‘platform for citizens to speak to each other’ but also to ‘connect horizontal discussions between citizens to the vertical axis of political power’ (Wasserman 2013: 79). In this context, the media can play an important role in informing citizens of their rights, providing citizens with information that enables them to make informed decisions and by serving as a conduit through which citizens can construct their identities as citizens. It is through the representation of their audiences and readers as having a stake in society alongside business and government that ‘media contribute to their readers’ identity as citizens, who are valued for their contribution to making democracy real’ (Steenveld 2004: 104). Media theorist Peter Dahlgren (2009) pays attention to the role of the media in citizen participation and argues that the dimension of interaction is crucial for the public sphere, which is a central feature of democracy. There are two parts to interaction that he argues for: interaction between citizens and the media and interaction between ordinary citizens and those who hold power in society. The role of the media should be to allow citizens, who talk about political issues, to make a ‘transition from the private realm into the public one, making use of and further developing their cultures of citizenship’ (Dahlgren 2009: 74). It is this potential to facilitate and promote the various aspects of citizenship practices that the media’s contribution to democracy should be assessed. But, as Tanja Dreher points out, the power that the media exercise in supporting democracy ‘might entail the privilege of choosing to listen or not, the power to enter into dialogue or not, to seek to comprehend the other or not, the privilege of demanding answers and explanations and justifications’ (2010: 101). Challenging the news media to listen to voices other than those of powerful people can be seen as a challenge to the privilege these institutions have. Refusal to listen on the part of the news media can be understood as an active refusal to ‘open up the possibility of active engagement with the other’ (2010: 100). This view is important in acknowledging the role of reporters in news production, which should be aimed at supporting democracy and citizens’ interaction with it, as well as the daily routines and procedures which keep the marginalised silenced. In the case of a highly unequal society like South Africa, Dreher (2009: 454) argues that ‘the politics of recognition demands a shift in entrenched patterns of cultural value and social esteem, pulling focus and interventions to the institutions that produce and maintain inequalities of attention and respect, including media institutions and their hierarchies of news value, entertainment value, interest and credibility’. This means a shift from looking at the media simply as a platform for

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everyone to speak, to exploring the nature of relations between those who speak and those who listen as mediated by the media (Dreher 2009: 454). There is an unequal distribution of power in both ‘voice’ and ‘listening’, and often those who hold positions of power are given a voice and are listened to by mainstream media to the detriment of those who are marginalised. Steven Friedman (2011: 111) points out that although the South African mainstream press in particular claims that it speaks truth to power, it does so on behalf of middle-class interests. It has shown very little interest in South African grassroots activities and gravitates towards what is happening in the suburbs and what interests its middle-class readership. Friedman argues that the mainstream press only started reporting about protests in 2009 even though these protests started in 2004. He explains that ‘a press which takes five years to notice that the poor across the country have taken to the streets in protest at the quality of government service is entirely unaware of the world beyond the suburbs’ (2011: 111). This grassroots dissatisfaction is covered in the mainstream press as mysterious and spontaneous acts of violence without any attempt to understand the underlying reasons behind them. This, argues Friedman, is in stark contrast to ‘ratepayers’ revolts’ by suburban residents which are covered extensively (2011: 112). Berger (2007: 601) holds a similar view about media in developing countries. He argues that the media in these areas carry the perceptions and thoughts of the elite class and do not reach the masses. This study focused on South African mainstream press/newspapers because although they might not give marginalised and poor citizens a ‘voice’ or a ‘hearing’, they remain authoritative and are able to get government to pay attention to issues they raise. Van Dijk (1995: 9) points out that the power that these media hold ‘is not restricted to the influence of the media on their audiences, but also involves the role of the media within the broader framework of the social, cultural, political, or economic power structures of society’. However, newspapers have been under pressure to make profit as readers continue to dwindle due to competition from social media and other online news platforms. Wasserman and De Beer (2005: 39) argue that the opening of the South African media to global players in the industry had a negative impact on South African mainstream newspapers. The entry of global players meant that South African media companies faced the same commercial pressures that other media outlets owned by the same foreign investors faced. These commercial pressures led to ‘a reduction of staff, a ‘juniorisation’ of newsrooms, a preference for commercial imperatives when making editorial judgements and an erosion of specialised reporting’ (Wasserman & De Beer 2005: 39). The era of the specialist reporter seems to have come to an end, while senior journalists seem to also be disappearing from the newsroom making way for young, inexperienced reporters. Furthermore,

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in a survey of South African newsrooms, Daniels (2014: 3) found that the country’s newsrooms faced three challenges – engagement with audience, economic pressures and political repression. These are common in many democratic countries in the age of social media and declining political engagement with the exception of political repression. This has been the case for South Africa’s Independent Newspapers which was owned by the Irish media mogul, Tony O’Reilly, who also owned Independent Newspapers in the United Kingdom. Profits from South Africa’s Independent Newspapers were also repatriated back to Ireland,1 without any attempt at investing on further training for journalists employed at the company. Instead under O’Reilly’s ownership, Independent Newspapers reduced its 5 000 staff to fewer than 1 500 by 2011, before it was sold to Sekunjalo Investments Limited-led consortium (De Vos 2016). This shrinkage of the newsroom meant that the 1 500 journalists who were still employed by the company had to produce the same number of stories that the company used to produce with its 5 000. This meant writing three or more stories a day which often led to telephone journalism, repurposing press statements from organisations for publication and an over-reliance on professional sources to the detriment of ordinary citizens. Independent Media Group boasts several English daily newspapers, including the Cape Town-based Cape Times. Being owned by foreign investors had very little impact on the operation of the paper and its training of staff although the paper is ‘operating under the same economic conditions as the rest of the industry’.2 The Mail & Guardian newspaper specialises in in-depth, mostly investigative reporting published on both printed paper and its website. In describing the newspaper’s award-winning reporting on Nkandla, Prinsloo (2014: 47) described the coverage as ‘highly critical’ but advanced democracy. This seems to be the role that the Mail & Guardian has adopted, that of facilitating democracy by holding government to account on behalf of citizens.

Political listening Although the media has the potential to strengthen democracy by communicating citizens’ concerns and issues to government and by communicating information that helps citizens practise their citizenship, they are often unable or unwilling to perform these functions. Susan Bickford’s (1996) theory of ‘political listening’ speaks directly to such problems of lack of representation and lack of inclusiveness. Bickford (1996: 2) argues that politics in general and democratic politics, in particular, require ‘political listening’ in order to work properly and to be truly representative of all citizens. This is the type of listening that allows actors to pay attention to one another. Unlike psychological conceptions of listening which

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invoke notions of compassion and empathy, political listening is ‘not primarily a caring or amicable practice’ (Bickford 1996: 2). This is because political actors are not sympathetic to each other in situations of conflict. It is precisely in conflictual contexts where communicative interaction is important, not necessarily for resolving the conflict, but for actors to engage with each other’s thoughts and ideas. This interaction enables political actors to democratically decide on the best way to deal with the conflict at hand and to spell out a solution. It is in these conflictual contexts where Bickford’s conception of listening functions as ‘a central activity of citizenship’, because she argues that the willingness to listen in a communicative process is the only way which guarantees the possibility of continuous engagement or discussion (1996: 2). This study used the theory of political listening because it is a flexible and useful way to unpack the problem of youth citizenship identity and practice and the actual and potential role of the media. This theory also presents an opportunity to test another approach to citizenship practice and democratic participation which does not focus solely on structures of participation but rather the point of intersection between different parties and their interactions. It is also fitting to use this theory given South Africa’s history and its population with their widely divergent (political) views.

Methodology Data collection for this study was conducted in three steps. First, the researcher conducted a preliminary content analysis to see who gets to speak in the coverage of EE’s activities from the two local mainstream papers, Cape Argus and Cape Times. Second, the researcher conducted observations of three EE youth group meetings in Khayelitsha schools and 13 in-depth semi-structured interviews; seven with learners who are members of EE, four interviews with youth group facilitators and two interviews with senior EE staff members who deal with media queries. The purpose of the observations and interviews was to understand EE’s internal processes when it comes to engaging with learners and to investigate the attitude of the social movement’s staff members and learners towards mainstream press coverage. Third, the researcher then relayed learners’ and EE staff members’ insights to two mainstream newspaper journalists who have reported extensively on EE’s activities. Initially it was hoped that the two education journalists from the Cape Townbased mainstream newspapers, Cape Argus and Cape Times would be available for interview but the Cape Argus journalist was on maternity leave and could not take part in the study. She was replaced with the Mail & Guardian journalist because she is particularly interesting as a journalist and she wrote an article for the Rhodes

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Journalism Review about her experience reporting on education and how she gives learners a ‘voice’. The categories that show signs of listening that the Australian researchers have identified, as part of the Listening Project, were used to make sense of the various interactions. The Listening Project is a media research project which ran from 2008 to 2010 (Listening Project 2013). This project used Bickford’s concept of ‘political listening’ to assess and investigate how members of minority groups are reported about in mainstream media, and how they can speak and be listened to by mainstream media. The researchers in this project came up with the following categories which will be used in this study: ‘backgrounding of the self’ (Thill 2009: 539); ‘foregrounding of the other’ (Thill 2009: 539); ‘broader notion of responsiveness’ (Thill 2009: 540); ‘response and recognition’ (Dreher 2012: 157); ‘attention and response’ (Dreher 2012: 159); ‘openness and recognition’ (Dreher 2012: 159); being ‘treated as a resource’ (Dreher 2012: 160); and being ‘given recognition and authority’ (Dreher 2012: 160). Bernstein (in Maton 2011: 72) argues that ‘the development of theory is of little consequence if the results are unable to engage with empirical problems’. For Bernstein, engaging with empirical data is not synonymous with painting the picture of the phenomena that the data emanated from or representing the reality of the context in which the data was produced. He argues that ‘concepts and data must be able to speak to one another, a dialogic relation between theories and things’. For Bernstein, in order for theory to be translated into empirical description and empirical descriptions to be translated into theoretical concepts, an external language of description is required. A theory that is difficult to apply to empirical circumstances has a strong internal language of description and a weak external language of description because it makes more sense as abstract concepts rather than empirically. Once the external language of description is ‘established for the specific object being studied, then the basis for analysis is visible for other researchers to engage with’ (in Maton 2011: 72). In terms of Bernstein’s distinction, the theory of ‘political listening’ that is used in this study would be classified as having a strong internal language of description and a weak external language of description. On an abstract level this theory seems well thought out and its theoretical concepts speak to each other and fit together. It lacks a fully developed external language to translate the theoretical concepts into the empirical circumstances and the empirical circumstances into theoretical concepts (Maton 2011). In an attempt to use the theory of ‘political listening’, the study attempted to develop its own external language of description for ‘political listening’ detailed in Tables 11.1 and 11.2. As this is a first attempt, it is open to change and shift.

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Table 11.1 An external language of description for ‘political listening’ Indicator of the presence of political listening/concept

Definition

Response

When there is evidence of reaction, follow-up, plans or actions that are reaction to something

Recognition

Evidence of seeing from another’s perspective and understanding their view

Openness

Where there is plurality of individuals, backgrounding of self, foregrounding of other and empathy

Resource

Being treated as having something to contribute

Authority

When all participants or individuals have equality in a specific context (not related to position, role or power outside of this context)

Table 11.2 Other concepts used in the analysis Concept

Definition

Representative thinking

When individuals are able to represent multiple interests without losing their uniqueness and individuality

Uniqueness

This is ‘who’ individuals are rather than ‘what’ they are

Stereotyping

When the distorted image of individuals is presented in the public realm. It is when ‘masks’ that present a false face and prevent what the mask covers from being audible and visible are imposed on individuals

Rational way of speaking

The ability to speak dispassionately in an objective and logical manner

Emotional way of speaking

Passionate expression of ideas without any adherence to rationality

Checking the performance of news media

Monitoring mainstream news media for irresponsible reporting and to commend them for fair and balanced reporting

Learning the game

When citizens learn media skills and news conventions in order to get better coverage of their issues from mainstream media

Building networks

Building networks with journalists

Talking back to news media

When community or groups affected by a certain issue create media (and media events) to address this issue

Purposeful listening spaces

When media take a conscious decision to listen to alternative voices

Hearing dissent

When mainstream media grant space to radical messages from interest or marginalised groups

Analysis This section will discuss two types of interactions: internal interactions and interaction with the media. Internal interactions are interactions that take place among learners, which will be discussed under the learner-to-learner interaction section, and interaction between learners and youth group facilitators and EE

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staff members at large, which will be discussed under interaction between EE and learners. Interaction with the media will include learners’ perceptions of the role of the local press, EE’s perceptions of the role of the local press and journalists’ response to EE’s and learners’ perceptions of the role of the local press.

Learner-to-learner interaction The discussions that take place in youth groups are characterised by a sense of ‘authority’ (Dreher 2012) that both facilitators and learners have over different activities within this space. Facilitators have authority when it comes to explaining the information that is required from learners to complete different sections of the survey that was distributed that week. Learners’ authority was over the information required for the survey. This seems to be an example of learners being used as a resource when it comes to information about the state of school infrastructure. In this situation, learners are given the ‘recognition’ (Dreher 2012) of being the principal knowers/sources of information that are required by the survey. Facilitators would often leave learners to discuss their plans and issues among themselves as they wrote down what learners were saying. They would ask learners to talk among themselves about how they would go about carrying out sanitation campaigns in their schools. This may be an example of Bickford’s (1996: 153) concept of ‘silence’, which is evidence of listening. This was productive silence in that it encouraged learners to take over the process and discuss issues rather than awkward silence which discourages participants from interacting. It seemed to be the kind of silence that is empowering in the sense that it gave learners an opportunity to control their interaction and speak to one another directly without any mediators or interruptions. In these youth groups, learners interacted in a respectful manner and within the context of equality for all participants. When these learners discussed how they would carry out campaigns in their schools, they all had a chance to add their inputs. They communicated different views and often ruled out each other’s suggestions. They appeared to separate the individual from their statements. When criticising the value of a suggestion, they made it explicit that they were not criticising an individual but the idea. They would offer ‘better’ suggestions which were supported with more ideas even from learners whose ideas were rejected. The facilitators would interject to ask a question about a learner’s contribution in order to get clarity. These questions may be a form of Bickford’s (1996) ‘question-posing’. Although ‘question-posing’ can either encourage or discourage interaction, the facilitators in these youth groups used it as a technique to encourage continuous interaction and engage with all the issues relating to the topic.

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Interaction between EE and learners Facilitators also probed learners to think more deeply about the issues they are raising and their potential solutions. Here, learners are ‘treated as a resource’ (Dreher 2012) on basic education-related issues and problems, which they experience on a daily basis. This treatment of learners as a resource is also a recognition of their level of maturity. Facilitator 3 explains: … they are good in standing up for what they believe in. They need me as their assistant but they can do everything by themselves without me. Seeing these learners as being capable of ‘standing up for what they believe in’ and as being able to ‘do everything by themselves’, as Facilitator 3 explains above, is an example of recognising the ‘authority’ (Dreher 2012) of these learners. This facilitator elevates learners to the same level as her own. In this context both learners and facilitators are ‘equalised’ (Bickford 1996). They are partners within this context. These facilitators write down the inputs that learners make and follow-up on the ones that stand out and the ones that are common among youth groups. This act of following-up on issues and suggestions voiced by learners could be seen as a kind of ‘response’ (Dreher 2012) to learners’ issues. This response took the form of looking at the issues and problems that learners raised to ‘come up with ideas on how we are going to tackle it’, as Facilitator 4 explains: When a learner raises an issue, let’s say a sanitation problem at their school or a late-coming campaign at their schools for instance, my duty as a facilitator is to take that information and report it to the Head of Facilitators. The deliberation by learners leaves facilitators with a lot of key information that they recorded during the process. It is a facilitator’s duty to ensure that the problems, issues and suggestions that learners make in youth groups are communicated to the Head of Facilitators, who reports this information to the rest of EE staff members during a weekly staff meeting. The Department of Policy, Communication and Research (PCR) decides on issues that have the potential to be turned into campaigns. These are usually compiled in the form of a story or an anecdote accompanied by a survey for learners to complete. The story is used as a reading during youth group and the survey is also distributed during youth group for learners to assess different aspects of the schools. The information that is collected through surveys, which are completed by learners, forms the basis for a statistical report on the issue in question. For example, in the case of sanitation, the survey formed the basis of a report on how many toilets different schools had in Khayelitsha, how many worked, how many had doors and how many were clean. This is information that members of EE’s PCR department communicate

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with government and members of the public through the media. The final stage of this back-and-forth communication is the execution of a campaign on the issue in question by learners in their respective schools.

The role of the local press Learners’ perceptions of the role of the local press Most of the learners who were interviewed believe that the media have a role to play in their activities with EE. For many of these learners, the media’s role is that of publicising their activities with EE. They believe that if it was not for the media their activities would remain unknown to the rest of South Africa and the world. Learner 2 explains: Media play a significant role; they broadcast our marches so that the world can see that learners were not happy at this specific march about the education they are receiving. The world can see that South Africa has a poor education because learners march every year for equal education. The comment above seems to suggest that media’s role in learners’ activities with EE is that of facilitating politics through ‘the amplification of voices needed to take local struggles to the national or global arena’ (Wasserman 2013: 79). It is through the media that ‘the world can see that South Africa has a poor education because learners march every year for equal education’. Learners also feel that the media take them seriously because journalists attend all the events they organise with EE. Learner 2 explains: I think the media treat us seriously because whenever we have an event they are always involved. The media takes us seriously because whenever they see a bunch of learners in a meeting they want to know what the meeting is about because they know education in South Africa is in a crisis. This comment seems to suggest that learners perceive members of the media as giving them ‘attention’ (Dreher 2012). It suggests that journalists seem to put aside their position as ‘principal knowers’, which is what Couldry (in O’Donnell et al. 2009: 431) argues journalists should do to become better listeners. These journalists background themselves and foreground learners. They treat these learners as a resource for information during marches. However, all the learners who were interviewed in this study had only experienced the media at an event, mostly during a protest. None of these learners have ever been interviewed or knew someone who had been interviewed in their schools or outside their events with EE. It might very well be the case that news values play an important role in terms of journalists

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choosing to speak to EE rather than learners themselves, but the researcher was interested in finding out why this is the case. Michelle Jones, a journalist from the Cape Times, explains: I would love to [interview learners at their schools] but unfortunately I am unable to because most principals don’t allow members of the media in their schools. Some of the learners interviewed mentioned the lack of cooperation or reluctance by principals that Jones is referring to when it comes to activities planned with EE in schools. Some of these learners have even talked about having to conceal their membership of EE when pitching campaigns they have planned with the social movement to get a buy-in from their principals.

EE’s perceptions of the role of the press Most of EE staff members’ and learners’ comments on the media seems to relate to Dreher’s (2010) five interventions that an issue group can adopt to improve their chances of getting heard by the mainstream media. These are ‘checking the performance of news media’, ‘learning the game’, ‘building networks’, ‘talking back to news media’ and ‘activities that work outside the news’. EE monitors coverage of its activities by the news media to see how its activities are reported. Yoliswa Dwane, the head of PCR at EE, explains: The only thing I have seen is the laziness from journalists, not all of them. The lazy ones will just copy and paste your press statement, they don’t bother calling the department and verifying whatever you said. The statement above is an example of ‘checking the performance of the news’ (Dreher 2010: 89), where social groups monitor the news media for ‘irresponsible reporting’ and to commend the news media for fair and balanced reporting. ‘Irresponsible reporting’ is represented by what Dwane refers to as ‘laziness’ on the part of journalists. This laziness seems to be a failure of journalists to offer the preferred ‘response’ to press releases or statements issued by EE. Dwane explains that some of the journalists’ ‘response’ is to ‘just copy and paste your press statement’ instead of ‘calling the department and verifying whatever you said’, which is the preferred ‘response’ (Dreher 2012). For EE a good coverage of the issues seems to be one that contains the social movement’s preferred response. Dwane explains: A brilliant journalist will have their own angle and that is what is missing in some articles. They should take one paragraph or one statement or read the statement and follow up. This is what they are supposed to do.

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Dwane’s comment seems to suggest that the social movement is not just interested in being given space to publish (‘voice’) but instead they require listening journalists who will respond by the kind of ‘question-posing’ (Bickford 1996) that allows these journalists to get more information from EE and the Department of Basic Education, beyond what is in the press statements. This ‘irresponsible reporting’ takes many forms based on what some journalists perceive EE to be. Dwane comments: Sometimes I get the feeling that journalists want to sensationalise everything. They ask you a random question and what they want from you is to say you will take this matter further or you will go to court. The statement by Dwane above seems to be in line with Couldry’s argument about news media institutions not being so good at reporting on new forms of political cooperation and political acts that could arguably be considered as ordinary democratic acts. Victoria John, an education journalist from the Mail & Guardian, explains why some journalists would try to get the social movement to commit to the possibility of engaging on certain activities: I understand why journalists would want to say that because it would be a nice story to say that EE would probably be going to court over this matter. The social movement seems to have ‘learned the game’ (Dreher 2010: 90). Its staff members have learned media skills and news conversation to improve the organisation’s chances of getting media coverage. EE uses press releases or statements to get the media to pay attention to their activities. John explains: I think they are more in tune to what the media wants. They know that we like facts and figures, so they include that in their press releases. They know that we like to go to the Department [of Basic Education] and say on this date of this year you promised this. So they will give us that information. They are also very creative in their campaigns, so they have great signs and their presence on the streets and outside parliament and their march is very colourful and it’s very loud and full of singing and dancing, which makes for great photos and good descriptions in our stories. From the articles that the researcher looked at as background information to the study, it is clear from the large number of articles about EE’s activities that the social movement is used as a ‘resource’ (Dreher 2012) on basic education-related issues. In 2011, the Cape Argus published 16 articles on EE’s activities, while the Cape Times published 24. The social movement has also received coverage from national newspapers, like the Mail & Guardian, City Press, Sunday Times and The Star. Dwane credits this high media-coverage rate to the nature of the campaigns run by EE.

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You will not only have a media campaign on its own but you have an actual campaign, you can march, you can go to parliament and a dialogue continues even without a media campaign triggering a discussion. Dwane’s statement above seems to suggest the adoption of what Dreher calls the intervention of ‘talking back’ to the news media. The difference in application is that EE’s form of ‘talking back’ is not primarily aimed at the media but it is aimed at the general public and contains multiple activities. Unlike in Dreher’s conception, the talking back is not a once-off event; it may continue for months and even years in issues that involve court cases. An example of these kinds of activities would be the Minimum Norms and Standards for Schools campaign, which has been ongoing since 2011. EE also gets space to publish commentary pieces in a number of mainstream newspapers. These are often longer than 750 words. In particular the social movement seems to get a lot of space to publish commentary pieces and op-eds in the Cape Times. This newspaper seems to be engaging in the practices of ‘hearing dissent’, one of O’Donnell’s listening practices. This is an act of giving issue groups space to publish their ideas in the pages that carry the so-called major stories. Dwane explains: The body of those op-eds will mainly be about experiences. You go to schools and find some of the letters that the learners wrote and they are around the same circumstance and you take those quotes and put them within your op-eds. This act of including learners’ quotes in op-eds by EE’s staff members can be considered an attempt at ‘representative thinking’ (Bickford 1996). In representing learners the quotes help, as Dwane explains, to ‘illustrate the impact of whatever we asking for’, attaching their arguments to genuine human experience. Here, ‘representative thinking’ is used to evoke an emotional response. However, although EE gets enormous coverage of its activities and its staff members are given a space to publish, learners’ voices are left out in most of the coverage by the media despite these learners being the fundamental participants in EE’s activities. There seems to be a lack of ‘recognition’ (Dreher 2012) of learners’ role in EE’s activities, which (according to Dreher 2009) can only be remedied by giving respect and esteem to voices of the marginalised. The social movement also uses the media as a ‘resource’ (Dreher 2012) in getting its messages to specific audiences. Dwane explains: For each and every issue you have to think about who is important here and who the target group is and who your audience is. When you want to speak to

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government officials or government the Mail & Guardian is the paper because that is the main paper that they are worried about or they will take note of. If something goes into the Mail & Guardian they will notice it. For EE, the Mail & Guardian enables EE to get heard by government officials which is difficult for the social movement acting alone. EE also engages in Dreher’s (2010: 91) strategy of ‘building networks’ with journalists who report on education issues in South Africa. Dwane explains: Throughout the years we have compiled a list of media contacts. In some cases when they want to follow up a story they give you their contact numbers and you keep that number in your media list. EE staff’s and learners’ thoughts on the media seem to suggest that the media are effective in listening to EE though not so successful in listening to the learners themselves. The analysis in this section has shown that Dreher’s (2009) interventions appear strongly when EE staff members talk about their strategies to get media coverage. Those journalists who report on EE’s activities seem to take on the role of ‘listening’ journalists (Wasserman 2013: 79). Although tools such as media statements or press releases are used to attract the attention of the media, they don’t seem to work in terms of directing media to learners except in the case of the Mail & Guardian newspaper.

Journalists’ response to EE’s and learners’ perceptions of the role of the local press The two journalists interviewed for this study believe that they have a role to play in improving the state of education in South Africa. Victoria John explains: I expose problems and I raise awareness on them in the hope that South Africa will become involved and active and offer their help to fix these problems and also in the hope that the public will be loud and voice their concerns, which would increase pressure on the Minister to take action where she should to improve the system. John’s comment is in line with Wasserman’s argument about the role that a ‘listening’ should play in society. He argues that ‘listening’ journalists and media should facilitate politics through ‘the amplification of voices needed to take local struggles to the national and global arena’ (Wasserman 2013: 79), although John only seems to be interested in the local arena. Her role is more than just reporting; she also has to ensure that whatever claims that EE and learners make get a ‘response’ (Dreher 2012). John explains:

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I think it is absolutely crucial that South Africa hears what the Department of Basic Education has to say about these problems and right now they are not getting any answers, which is very unfair to our citizens. John’s reports contain evidence of her conscious effort to give every participant a voice and to present those views to government in an attempt to hold it accountable to its citizens. She is aware of EE’s processes with learners. Her reportage contains evidence of acknowledging learners’ ‘authority’ and ‘recognition’ (Dreher 2010) of learners not only as participants but also as active citizens who are making claims and demands in issues relating to basic education. It becomes the journalist’s duty within this approach to ensure that these citizens get a ‘response’ from government. The Mail & Guardian’s role in reporting on basic education issues seems to also be that of encouraging citizens to exercise their citizenship and demand their rights. This approach makes a significant contribution to the democratic project. The Cape Times, on the other hand, seems to have a different approach, which seems to be that of giving EE ‘recognition’, ‘voice’ (Couldry 2010) and ‘authority’ (Dreher 2010) by allowing the social movement space to publish its thoughts and ideas and by reporting on its activities. This role of keeping the public informed on issues relating to basic education is also a significant contribution to the democratic project.

Conclusion The most effective ‘political listening’ that takes place seems to be among learners and between learners and their facilitators. The behaviour and attitudes of participants in these contexts are exemplary of the attitudes and behaviours which provide fertile ground for politics to be more inclusive. All participants get a chance to participate and voice their claims in these situations. They all pay attention to each other and respect one another even though they might not agree with everything that is said. These situations show how useful ‘political listening’ is in complex circumstances and how it leads to direct engagement in the political situation on behalf of some of South Africa’s most marginalised people. They are also suggestive for further application of the theory of political listening. EE’s internal ‘listening’ processes empower learners to act as citizens. In fact, these processes have provided a highly needed form of citizenship education, which is not part of the formal school curriculum in South Africa (Mattes 2002). They have also enabled learners to have a ‘voice’ and to get a ‘hearing’ from the media, government officials and the public at large. EE is also effective in its engagement with the media and getting the media to pay attention to its activities. The social movement’s success seems to align with

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Dreher’s (2010: 89–94) intervention strategies of getting media coverage; which are ‘checking the performance of news media’, ‘learning the game’, ‘building networks’, ‘talking back to news media’ and ‘activities that work outside the news’. The kind of journalism that is produced by the two journalists interviewed for this study is indicative of the different approaches the two newspapers have adopted. The approach of the Cape Times is to give EE a voice by providing a platform to publish its activities and ideas. The Mail & Guardian’s approach facilitates the democratic project by including multiple voices of citizens on issues of citizen participation and by holding government accountable to its citizens. Learners in this reportage are constituted as capable, claims-making citizens. ‘Listening’, as a practice, can enable journalists to play an active role in deepening democracy by giving poor and marginalised citizens a ‘voice’ and more importantly, a ‘hearing’ with government officials and policymakers.

Notes 1 De Vos D, Payouts, facts and profits: Odd media threesome share an uncomfortable bed. Daily Maverick, 13 May 2016. Accessed July 2016, http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/ opinionista/2016-05-13-payouts-facts-and-profits-odd-media-threesome-share-anuncomfortable-bed/#.V5x_Jvl97IU 2 Ncube T, M&G’s Trevor Ncube responds to accusations. Mail & Guardian, 22 July 2014. Accessed July 2016, http://mg.co.za/article/2014-07-22-11-reasons-why-the-stars-reportson-mg-and-amh-dont-fly

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Dreher T (2012) A partial promise of voice? Digital storytelling and the limits of listening. Media International Australia 142: 157–166 Equal Education (2012) Equal Education annual report 2010–2011. Khayelitsha: Equal Education Equal Education (2013) About Equal Education. Accessed April 2013, www.equaleducation.org.za Fleisch B & Robins R (2014) Mediating active citizenship and social mobility in workingclass schools: The case of Equal Education in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. In B von Lieres & L Piper (Eds) Mediated citizenship: The informal politics of speaking for citizens in the Global South. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Friedman S (2011) Whose freedom? South Africa’s press, middle-class bias and the threat of control. Ecquid Novi: African Journalism Studies 32(2): 106–121 Glaser D (1997) South Africa and the limits of civil society. Journal of Southern African Studies 23(1): 5–25 Habib A (2005) State­– civil society relations in post-apartheid South Africa. Social Research 72(3): 671–692 Habib A (2013) South Africa’s suspended revolution: Hopes and prospects. Johannesburg: Wits University Press Heller P (2009) Democratic deepening in India and South Africa. Journal of Asian and African Studies 44(1): 123–149 Heller P (2012) Democracy, participatory politics and development: Some Comparative lessons from Brazil, India and South Africa. Polity 44(4): 643–665 Listening Project (2013) Accessed June 2013, http://www.thelisteningprojecct.net/ Maton K (2011) Theories and things: The semantics of disciplinarity. In F Christie & K Maton (Eds) Disciplinarity: Functional linguistic and sociological perspectives. London: Continuum International Publishing Group Mattes R (2002) South Africa: Democracy without the people? Journal of Democracy 13(1): 22–36 Morrow S (2004) Don’t bite the hand that feeds you: South African education NGOs in a period of change. In L Chisholm (Ed.) Changing class: Education and social change in postapartheid South Africa. Cape Town: HSRC Press O’Donnell P, Lloyd J & Dreher T (2009) Listening, pathbuilding and continuations: A research agenda for the analysis of listening. Continuum 23(4): 423–439 Prinsloo J (2014) ‘Nkandlagate’ – a critical textual analysis of the press coverage. Media Policy and Democracy Project Research Report, 21 January. Accessed July 2016, http://www.mediaanddemocracy.com/uploads/1/6/5/7/16577624/mpdp_nkandla_ research_report_21jan_2014.pdf Steenveld L (2004) Transforming the media: A cultural approach. Critical Arts 18(1): 92–115 Thill C (2009) Courageous listening, responsibility for the other and the Northern Territory Intervention. Continuum 23(4): 537–548 Van Dijk TA (1995) Power and the news media. In D Paletz (Ed.) Political communication and action. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press Wasserman H (2013) Journalism in a new democracy: The ethics of listening. Communicatio 39(1): 67 ­– 84 Wasserman H & De Beer A (2005) Which public? Whose interest? The South African media and its role during the first ten years of democracy. Critical Arts 19(1–2): 36–51

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12 Innocence: A free pass into the moral commonweal Yves Vanderhaeghen

Crime not only creates victims, but constructs innocence in contestations of a ‘worthy’ Afrikaner identity. Innocence, in turn, is minted as just one discursive element in establishing the good standing of Afrikaners, as model citizens who are civic-minded, skilled and economically productive and therefore politically legitimate. However, just as ‘blackness and whiteness are co-constructions’ in processes of othering (Van der Westhuizen 2016), this construction is a countervailing one. It speaks against a Liberation Narrative in which moral authority derives from anti-apartheid credentials largely unavailable to Afrikaners. It does so by iterating an exemplariness which, simultaneously, reinscribes the liberated ‘other’ as an ‘unworthy’ citizen. This chapter argues that the construction of Afrikaners as innocent, in their representation as victims of crime in Beeld newspaper, serves as a rebuttal of their historically defined identity as perpetrators. This constitutes not so much denial of culpability in apartheid history, which would entail a direct engagement with guilt, as an effacement of history and moral disgrace, thereby obviating questions of rehabilitation and transformation in processes of reconciliation. Underpinning this argument is the assumption that moral citizenship rests to a large extent on the moral standing granted by at least an absence of blameworthiness, if not the presence of virtue. This understanding draws on Judith Butler’s (2010) notion of ‘grievability’. Up to a point Butler reiterates the propaganda model thesis of Herman and Chomsky (1988) in which the process of manufacturing an elite consensus establishes ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy victims’. In Butler’s formulation there is still an instrumentalism in how assent is cultivated, but she goes further in thinking about the ‘interpretive maneuver’ that is required in ‘giving an account of whose life is a life, and whose life is effectively transformed into an instrument, a target, or a number, or is effaced with only a trace remaining or none at all’ (Butler 2010: ix–x). She postulates that this framing takes place within an ontology of ‘generalized

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precariousness’, and the ethical responsiveness to such conditions – which ‘may include a wide range of affects: pleasure, rage, suffering, hope …’– ‘must focus not just on the value of this or that life, or on the question of survivability in the abstract, but on the sustaining conditions of social life – especially when they fail’ (Butler 2010: 34, 35). Recognising that full interpersonal exposure to others is impossible, but takes place through processes of mediation in a mediatised social and technological environment, Butler notes that ‘the claim upon me takes place, when it takes place, through the senses, which are crafted in part through various forms of media: the social organization of sound and voice, of image and text, of tactility and smell’ (Butler 2010: 180). She adds that ‘we do not need to know in advance what “a life” will be, but only to find and support those modes of representation and appearance that allow the claim of life to be made and heard (in this way, media and survival are linked)’ (2010: 181). Butler’s challenge is engaged variously by Bickford (1996) in her emphasis on ‘listening’ in democratic iteration, Couldry (2010) in his elaboration of ‘voice’ and the imperative of reflexivity in the exchange of narratives, and Isin’s (2008: 38) insights into acts and enactments of citizenship which draw on ‘solidaristic, agonistic or alienating modes of being with each other’. (These notions are important not only in social environments of oppression or subordination, but also in the case of what Erving Goffman (1963) called ‘spoiled identities’, compromised by taboos or moral conduct.) All three are concerned with the proper role of citizens as citoyens engagés, as agents not subsumed by, for example, in the case of Couldry, the neoliberal logic of the market, or limited to the ritual aspects of citizenship such as voting, or excluded from the polis purely by formal definitions of citizenship or by societal modes of alienation and othering that undermine the ‘depth’ of citizenship. Citizenship, according to Isin (2008), is ‘enacted’, and our modes of being with each other, the manner in which our social groups are formed, our coming into being as political and social beings, can be analysed in technologies of communication, which are central to the democratic functioning of a ‘networked society’ (Castells 1997). Couldry (2010: 123) cautions that we should ‘interpret media not as open systems for representing our world back to us but as highly particular concentrations of narrative and other resources’ and that such concentrations generate ‘hidden injuries for those who are less well placed in the distribution of symbolic power’. This injuriousness comes from the dynamics and processes of silencing and rendering invisible the other in a plural environment. It may be intentional or unintentional, or from not recognising that ‘Spaces for voice are … inherently spaces of power’ (Couldry 2010: 130). To mitigate this power, and to respond to the responsibility of active citizenship, requires, for Couldry, a

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recognition that ‘Voice is a form of agency’, and that ‘A key part of that agency is reflexivity. Since taking responsibility for one’s voice involves telling an additional story – of oneself as the person who did say this or do that – voice necessarily involves us in an ongoing process of reflection, exchanging narratives back and forth between our past and present selves, and between us and others’ (Couldry 2010: 8). For Bickford (1996: 4), this back and forth is integral to democratic politics in that ‘… both speaking and listening are central activities of citizenship’. She goes further, by noting that ‘Communication is an effort that acknowledges a morethan-one, a separateness, a difference that may be the source of conflict, and at the same time foregrounds the possibility of bridging that gap by devising a means of relatedness’. Recognising, as does Butler, the claims on the self in recognising the other, Bickford (1996: 83) notes that ‘The recognition that as a thinking self we are more than one makes it possible for us to be divided in thought without losing our self hood; in representative thinking, just one of the partners in the dialogue assumes the standpoints of the others. We do not exactly leave ourselves behind; rather, we let others in in order to be with them – not in a way that assumes identity, but in a way that gives voice to difference. We mimic – through the activity of thinking as a dialogue – the conditions of communication among plural beings, which is to say that we think as individuals in something like a public space.’ I argue in this chapter that the processes of recognition and listening are effectively spiked in Beeld through a representation, as the victim of crime, of the Afrikaner as exclusively ‘grievable’ and through making invisible ‘grievabilities’ in the lifeworlds of others, rendering especially Bickford’s injunction to listen, null. Since listening carries risk in that it may require change, a rescripting of claims and obligations, and since Isin’s active citizenship is based on creating such new possibilities, the nominally ‘transformed’ Afrikaner citizen cannot be said to have moved into a participatory partnership in the quest for moral and sociopolitical rehabilitation.

Beeld While news tends to emphasise by exceptionalising, the ‘secondary’, or ‘soft’, stories tend to contribute to what Taylor (1989: 23) calls the ‘sense of the importance of the everyday in human life’. Due to the affective resonance of news stories, which create a bond between reader and newspaper, it is the recognisability of this ‘everydayness’ that carves out what Appadurai (1991) calls an ‘ethnoscape’ from the broader

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socioscape, whose correspondences may be greater or smaller depending on the level of hegemony and the flow of power through social institutions and groups. The launch of Beeld in 1974 was motivated (apart from commercial reasons) by the need for verligte Afrikaners to be given a voice (Hachten & Giffard 1984), and the paper adapted quickly to the changing political terrain and the eventual birth of democracy (Wasserman 2009). As such it engaged energetically, and continues to do so, with the position and role of Afrikaners in the dispensation of the day. Readership is, in brief, white (90 per cent) and, as reflected in story choices, Afrikaans-speaking, high-earning (48 per cent earning more than R20 000/ month), well-educated, and with a mean age of 44. In addition, at 57 per cent, Beeld has a higher percentage of reader loyalty (readers who read 4–5 copies out of 5) than, for example, The Star (45 per cent), Business Day (44 per cent), The Times (50 per cent) or Citizen (52 per cent), which may be an indicator of a sense of group or community identity.1 The statistical breakdown of stories (by beat) suggests the interpellative orientation of the paper. For example, the single biggest category of news is crime (20 per cent of all stories), suggesting that the reader is being hailed as a possible victim. ‘Labour’ stories make up only 3 per cent of all stories, suggesting that the reader is not being hailed as a worker. ‘Social’ stories (at 16 per cent) make up the second biggest category, followed by ‘politics’ (at 12 per cent), suggesting a level of interpellation of the reader as a private individual rather than as a citizen. Beeld, sold in six of the country’s nine provinces, is the biggest-circulation Afrikaans-language daily newspaper: 14 years after its launch in 1974, it reached a circulation of 100 000, but by the end of 2015 circulation was under 50 000. The reasons for the decline are complex and beyond the scope of this chapter, but the demise of Afrikanerdom, a fraying of Afrikaner identity, and the mediated identification of the group are inevitably factors.

Afrikaners A consideration of how Afrikaners are discursively constructed (and therefore how they are ‘known’) suggests some insights into their ‘positionality’, as well as that of Beeld, within the power/knowledge conjunction, following Foucault’s observation that ‘it is not possible for power to be exercised without knowledge, it is not possible for knowledge not to engender power’ (Foucault 1980: 52). In public discourse the taint of apartheid attaches tenaciously to South African whites in general and Afrikaners in particular. Apartheid was the creation of white Afrikaners, and it is by no means dead. For example, in rebutting the international perceptions of South Africa as a violent society,

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President Jacob Zuma2 stated that ‘South Africans didn’t just become violent. It was planted by apartheid.’ Dave Steward, the executive director of the FW de Klerk Foundation, argues that the ruling African National Congress ‘consistently characterises whites as “the other”’ through the routine rhetorical invocation of terms such as ‘apartheid colonialism’, the effect of which is to ‘reinforce perceptions of white moral inferiority and black entitlement’.3 The liberal Afrikaner historian Herman Giliomee (2000: 98) also notes on the part of the ANC ‘an insistence that from the start, European settlement here on the tip of Africa was immoral’ and that there is an ‘assumption that whites have no right to defend their interests’. President Jacob Zuma’s comment during his State of the Nation Address in January 2015 that South Africa’s problems started with the arrival of Jan van Riebeek at the Cape was interpreted in the same vein by Freedom Front Plus leader Pieter Mulder. Mulder lodged a complaint with the SA Human Rights Commission that Zuma’s comment amounted to hate speech, and asked during the debate on the president’s speech: ‘What is the understanding of ordinary ANC supporters? They understand that if one gets rid of the white man, all problems are solved. Get rid of the cockroaches4 and all problems go away.’ Zuma’s attribution of blame to Van Riebeek struck at Afrikaner origins. Another foundational myth on which Afrikaner identity rests, the Great Trek, also finds itself under threat. For one thing, during its 175th anniversary in 2013 one was hard-pressed to find any reference to it in the general (English) media. A Google News search threw up ‘Star Trek’, but no other kind of trek.5 What remains of the romantic narrative of the trekboers, as rugged, independent, anti-colonial protofreedom fighters who ventured into a harsh but empty hinterland, is under attack not just through being ignored but also in the historiography. Jeff Guy, for example, in his book on Theophilus Shepstone, characterises them as ‘seeking out fresh land, dispersing or capturing the African inhabitants, killing the wild and depasturing the stock … Their economy was parasitical: when the land and its resources were exhausted and their numbers had become unwieldy, new land was sought out beyond the formal frontier’ (Guy 2013: 16). In this characterisation there is none of the headiness with which Schalk Pienaar, future founding editor of Beeld, would write of the 1938 centenary celebrations that ‘One can say that the entire volk celebrated as one … And the volk realized that it was a volk’ (Mouton 2002: 30). Of this legacy, the author Dana Snyman writes, in Beeld, that ‘All over the country you can indeed still see the monuments [erected in 1938]. Some are badly damaged. Never again will Afrikaners stand together like that. We are now on a different, most likely more difficult, trek – the great trek through the empty spaces that stretch between people.’6

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Those empty spaces are filled with ghosts. Charles Smith, writing in Volksblad about the TV series Donkerland, asks ‘why the ghosts of land, forbidden love, blood, war and [concentration] camps will not stop boiling in our blood … the fever is passed on from generation to generation … but we wait in vain for an antidote to the fever: The apology that the English have owed us for 113 years.’7 This expectation elides the outstanding apology for 1948–94, the TRC and the unravelling of the rainbow which depended on it. Bornman (2010: 237) notes in her research that ‘[w]hile national and African identities have apparently strengthened among Blacks since 1994, national identification seems to have diminished among Afrikaans-speaking Whites in favor of ethnic identification’. And with the gap between rich and poor growing, those spaces are not getting any smaller. Clearly all is not well. But is there even a ‘we’ that Snyman refers to? Giliomee suggested at the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees8 in 2013 that whatever it is that we’re seeing when we think we’re seeing Afrikaners is crumbling away before our eyes. Addressing an audience of about 60 people, he mused that those in the hall were in all probability ‘the last of the Afrikaners’ (Giliomee 2013: 14). So that’s it, no more Afrikaners. Why bother talking about them then? Charles Leonard, a reviewer at the Mail & Guardian, felt the need repeatedly to justify why he should even be writing anything about them. ‘Readers may want to ask why one should bother with this slew of books about the Afrikaners,’ writes Leonard.9 As a linguistic community Afrikaans speakers make up 13.5 per cent of the population (6.9 million people). Of these only 2.7 million are white (as opposed to the 1.6 million white English speakers). But even so, according to Leonard, the subject is redundant: ‘I lost my appetite for Afrikaner soul-searching, identity interrogation and navel-gazing back in the lecture halls and think-scrums of the Rand Afrikaans University of the mid-1980s. I have since identified myself as a progressive South African, not a conservative Afrikaner. My home language is English.’ Leonard thus establishes the measure of being a good South African through (a) assuming a national identity; (b) adopting a ‘progressive’ politics; and (c) speaking English. Presumably only subjects fulfilling these criteria merit scrutiny, and Afrikaners, however defined, are emphatically the irrelevant ‘other’. Any membership of a South African ‘people’ would, under these terms, require a bartering away of one’s Afrikanerness. A spontaneously pejorative characterisation of Afrikaners is deployed by the editor of the Star, Makhudu Sefara, in a column on the subject of racism in the media: Granted, there are white families who go out of their way to ensure that racial integration is achieved. Good people, these. But the truth is there will also be those like Afrikaans author Annelise Botes, whose dislike, hatred even,

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of black people is no secret. What about that racist musician Steve Hofmeyr? What about the young white boys who kill vagrants in Waterkloof for fun? Are these kids not raised in families? Do they not attend the same schools as many of us? The same churches? Their views may not be shared publicly, but they are supported.10 While a conditional acknowledgement is granted that there are ‘good whites’, by which is implied that it is ‘some’ whites, Afrikaners as a group are taken to support not only racism but the murder of blacks. This refrain is not uncommon. Women, Children and People with Disabilities Minister Lulu Xingwana, seeking to explain the Oscar Pistorius case in terms of domestic violence, told an Australian TV station: ‘Young Afrikaner men are brought up in the Calvinist religion believing that they own a woman, they own a child, they own everything and therefore they can take that life because they own it’.11 Julius Malema, in his dispute with the South African Revenue Service, blamed his woes on an ‘Afrikaner institutionalised political and racist onslaught against me due to the views I hold about the direction of our country’.12 These are all examples, in different media and from different sources, of a public discourse of denigration, disparagement and diminution in which Afrikaners are held by definition to be violent, racist, unscrupulous, deceiving and corrupt. Apartheid and the legacy of National Party rule lend themselves to this, as do systemic racism and egregious examples of racist violence. But the result is a construction of a people who do not dare speak their name, and an underlying question is whether self-denial on the part of Afrikaners is a prerequisite for their moral admission as citizens of South Africa. Dan Roodt, from a right-wing perspective, argues that Afrikaners are a metonym for apartheid, and that self-declaration as Afrikaners is read as synonymous with support for apartheid and its legacy. As Roodt (2013) sees it, ‘A statement like “apartheid destroyed black wealth” decodes as “Afrikaners destroyed black wealth”’, and he concludes that ‘[w]ithin the metonymic logic of South African ethnic discourse, eliminating apartheid is easy: you have just to eliminate Afrikaners’. The question ‘Who are The People?’ leads into improbable badlands of paranoia, where the loss of state, volk, language and power is conceived not as the unavoidable, and so desirable, consequence of a broad democracy, but the conditions of genocide. What might otherwise be seen metaphorically took on a literal dimension in the free speech versus hate speech debate in the ‘Shoot the Boer’ legal challenge of 2011, in which the high court ruled that the chant, originally an anti-apartheid slogan, constituted hate speech. The anxieties it stirs up among Afrikaners are

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evident in the question of farm murders, highlighted in the book Treurgrond 13 (Herman et al. 2013), and the invocation of the spectre of genocide in a column and a feature in Rapport and a column in City Press in the same week in September 2013. On the subject of farm murders, Claudi Mailovich writes in Rapport: ‘Farm murder. For many South Africans this loaded word means the extermination of a people.’ 14 Frans Cronjé, CEO of the SA Institute of Race Relations, picks up this refrain when he writes about what he calls ‘Bitter wittes’15 who complain about not wanting to pay tax because they get nothing in return, who ‘… must understand and accept that the tax that they pay – and that their children will have to pay in decades to come – is the price of the sins of their fathers. They must also understand that in exchange for this they will draw a great benefit by preventing a Second Revolution.’16 This formulation highlights that paying tax is conceived as a punitive compensation for a crime, not as the dues of a citizen, in exchange for which are promised not the rights of citizenship but by implication the prevention of a revolutionary bloodbath. Discourses of culpability, belligerence, guilt (or denial) and persecution find their extremes in Roodt and Malema. Roodt wishes to render the term Afrikaner speakable by stripping it of its historical context. Malema, on the other hand, wants to preserve its contagious force by fusing it to its historical context. The naming of the Afrikaner as ‘Afrikaner’ with its pejorative connotations is to foreclose the constitution of the subject in any other way. Afrikaner strategy has ‘variously’ been to attempt to change its existential referent (through discourses of reconciliation, ‘new’ South Africanism, and so on); its categorial content (by stripping out nationalism, conservatism and volk identity and emphasising geographic or activity indicators); or name (as in Afrikaan or Afrikaanses). Nevertheless, all these terms refer back to ‘Afrikaner’, the utterance of which is to bring into being not just the spectre of oppression, but to enact it. ‘It is the name itself, the signifier, which supports the identity of the object’, as Zizek (1989: 95) puts it, even when it ceases to have any linguistic use in cases when its relationship to its stereotypical referent can be tenuous. As De Vries (2012: 194) noted of his encounter with Eugene Terre’Blanche: ‘I found him more pitiful than fearsome. Here sits the man whom you know only from television where he carries on like a roaring fanatic. And then you sit and talk to him and you see those sad little eyes and you think: man, go back to your farm and your cows, you don’t have the strength anymore, you don’t have the charisma.’ However, Wiida Fourie, in her analysis of letters to Beeld, finds that while Afrikaans letter writers ‘have managed to negotiate for themselves a reasonably acceptable place in the new South Africa … it is doubtful whether any fundamental revision of their perception of the Other has taken place’ (Fourie 2008: 281).

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The discourse of diminution, on the one hand, of the irrelevance of Afrikaners, of their ‘non-being’, is met with a discourse of extinction. This could be seen as symptomatic of a radical inability to adjust the white imaginary to find a comfortable accommodation within a plural, multicultural landscape. The discourse of extinction, of genocide, is hyperbolic, hysterical. To invoke the word ‘genocide’ (volksmoord) in relation to farm murders specifically and Afrikaners generally, can, however, be seen as an attempt to appropriate the discourse of suffering by displacing it from its position in the dominant narrative of liberation and oppression (thereby diminishing the moral valency of apartheid) and establishing at least an equivalence of suffering and innocence. But it is also of a kind with the pattern of content in Beeld, which, taken together, represents a disintegrating world. The focus on crime (in some editions up to 30 per cent of all news stories) is consistent with findings of other studies (Knol & Roberts 2008; Snyman 2007), with victims predominantly not only white but Afrikaners. The level of crime is generally seen as indexical of social dysfunction and government failure. (And because of the special role that farm murders occupy to the extent that they are understood as genocidal, Afrikaners are still considered as bearing the brunt of government dysfunction.) Corruption stories are ubiquitous, and fulfil a double role – as pure crime stories as well as stories of corrupt governance. These themes are carried through in extensive coverage of social delivery protests, where incompetence and corruption fuse to produce extreme dysfunction. While social structures are shown to be coming apart at the seams, the physical environment also falls victim to neglect, pollution and contamination (generally as a consequence of the same combination of corruption and incompetence). This is the life that is ‘grievable’. If, in other words, Afrikaners’ own circumstances/predicament/losses are not ‘grievable’ to others, then there is an urgency to promote the ‘grievability’ of their ‘own’, seeking recognition (and so legitimation), not only through alterity (minority rights under constitution), but through establishing an equivalence of suffering. Othered by dominant social discourse as racists and right-wingers, Afrikaners flip the dynamic around: they are indeed the new ‘other’, not because they occupy a position of former oppressors, but through appropriating the traditional position of minorities. They offer up their dead and maimed to the world to bear witness to their grief, to assert that their loss is not a question of numerical technicalities, of a history disowned, but of life itself. This is a delicate discursive manoeuvre, and it abounds with ambiguities. For example, Beeld, in its features, columns and leading articles, has embraced neoliberal economics, a rights-based, democratic form of government, and the need for reconciliation.17 Success, one might say, for the ANC’s project of hegemonisation.

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This takes place simultaneously with a desire to keep the group together. This occurs overtly through an appeal for the strengthening of Afrikaans as a language, for the healing of the schism in the church, and the promotion of linguistic and cultural events and organisations. However, from the typifications of Beeld readers, they are clearly a fractious lot, and the newspaper takes upon itself the role of shepherd to guide the flock. But it also has to do the job of a sheepdog, darting back and forth to make sure that the tail-enders don’t fall off the back of the bunch into their dark past. So, for example, one sees the paper lead on the death of General Magnus Malan (where other papers relegate him to inside pages), portraying him not as an apartheid strategist for the maintenance of white supremacy, but as a brilliant military tactician, professional to his core. In this case loyalty to the group trumps the overt ideological repositioning that has taken place over the years, and ‘grievability’ is joined together with celebration (of skill, leadership, achievement) in a brew that valorises the ethnic particular over the broader (new South African) general. Newspapers present information through events in the form of news.18 Forefronted in news stories are individuals, embodied validations of ‘whose life is a life’ (Butler 2010: ix). The discourse of loss may draw on historical narratives to weave an imaginary that makes sense of altered or dislocated states, but the awareness of fragility that it expresses relates to the biological vulnerability of the self to physical harm, and the harm to which ‘naked self’ is exposed in relation to the sovereignty of the state, which enables conditions that create, mitigate or obviate fear or hope. In Beeld, the life of the Afrikaner subject is presented as vulnerable at every level – that is, ‘othered’ in every aspect of public life (beyond the influence of the group where loss of power is felt most acutely). This vulnerability finds expression in a number of ways, which collectively establish a chain of difference (in that the theme of vulnerability is self-reflexive) that binds the meaning of Afrikaner coexistence in a way that tends to preclude an articulation of a broader chain of equivalence (a requirement of which would be a sense of non-exclusivism). Vulnerability is nowhere as forcefully expressed as in crime stories, especially as presented within prevailing disorder. Within a discourse of dysfunction in which affective resonance is established through discourses of fear and loss,19 categories of the ‘grievable’ range from economic, cultural (language, art and church) and environmental to institutional (including politics) collapse. Crime is the salient category in this discussion. Most of the crime stories deal with the murder of blameless victims at the hands of an external (usually unknown) aggressor. For example, ‘Father shot in front of son’, ‘Torture attack’, ‘Elders stuffed in freezer’, ‘Under thug-siege’.20

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Crime/murder leads (apart from the farm murders, which tap into the ‘Afrikaner genocide’ theme which, although explicitly rejected in the newspaper’s leaders, is an implied logic behind these farm murders21) sometimes place the responsibility for the murders, through commentary by victim-family and -friends, on the ANC government. The ‘Torture attack’ lead serves as an example, combining the elements of the Afrikaner as the (helpless) victim of extreme brutality directly and indirectly at the hands of the ANC. The story deals with the torture of a 94-yearold woman who is burned with a hot pan, whose great-grandchild is burned with an iron, and whose son is killed. The pull-quote from his brother, ‘My brother is a hunting trophy for the ANC and criminals’, establishes the ANC as a criminally minded hunter (of Afrikaners) in league with common criminals. The discourses of loss, fear, dysfunction and privilege are not discrete, nor are they comprehensive elements in the discourse of the Afrikaner. Furthermore, even though the discourses will tend towards an assertion of hegemony, discursive flows can switch this way or that, depending on specific articulations. For example, the lead story headlined ‘The end of “Shoot The Boer”’, dealing with a court ruling that this ‘Struggle song’ constitutes ‘hate speech’, binds a number of discourses together. It establishes an equivalence between ‘human rights’ and ‘minority rights’ and Afrikaners. It establishes the hegemonic discourse about Afrikaners as being ‘othered’, articulating in difference the ‘other’ of ‘ANC’, ‘Julius Malema’, ‘new dispensation’, ‘black government’. The headline registers both relief and triumph. As triumphal, the discursive flow is outward, ‘writing back’ against the hegemony of ‘black hate’. As relieved, the discursive flow is inward, reflexive. The registers are in equipoise. By contrast, in the headline ‘State threatens Anglo’, the flow is entirely outward in its ‘othering’ of the state as malevolent, while in ‘It’s raining A’s for grade 12’s’ the flow is inward, self-congratulatory (although there is an implied ‘against’ when considering ‘who’ is being celebrated as successful). The ‘who’ constructed in newspaper representations is always tightly bounded, and in Beeld this boundary is inescapably ethnic. The articulation of an ethnic ‘minority’ to notions of ‘the People’ is precarious at best and unsuccessful at worst, and a discourse of the ‘citizen’ provides better purchase. The ‘citizen’, however, is not only the citizen who can claim rights, but also the ‘model citizen’ (and so the ‘authentic citizen’), as Chipkin (2007) observes, who performs the duties required of them. High-achieving matriculants are exemplary in this regard, as having demonstrated their potential to embark on careers and so be economically productive. The farmers who fill in potholes are models of civic-mindedness. The wine farmers in the Western Cape are pillars of the economy. The police captain contesting being overlooked for promotion

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due to affirmative action argues not only her rights but the value to society of her professional skills and dedication to duty. Crime constitutes one of a range of threats in discourses of fear and loss, and crime reports have an acute ‘affective force’ (Couldry 2000) in that it is the survival of the biological subject that is threatened. Agamben (1998, 2002) argues that political action is based on the survival of the biological being, rather than necessarily, as Marx argued, on class, and the discourse of crime articulates most readily to discourses of governance (and dysfunction) and race. Knol and Roberts (2008) show how reports of crime in Beeld (and The Star) are overwhelmingly about white victims, while in the Sowetan they are almost exclusively black. The historical editorial stance of the Sowetan would tend to locate the discourse of crime in a liberation narrative, in which the extent of crime is seen as being rooted in apartheid, even when a sense of ‘betrayal’ by the ANC government is evoked. In Beeld, however, it fits in with the settler narrative in which crime is not attributable to the legacy of apartheid, but to the destruction/implosion/erosion of policing under the current government. Official discourses about alleviating the lot of the ‘poorest of the poor’ construct, at a rhetorical level, priorities of entitlement in which ‘poor’ and ‘black’ are articulated as ‘deserving’, and ‘wealthy’ and ‘white/Afrikaner’ as not, the result of, as argued by Afrikaner activist Dan Roodt (2013), ‘apartheid’ serving as ‘metonym for Afrikaners’. The narrative of crime in Beeld ‘speaks to’ this exclusion by giving prominence to crime stories in which Afrikaners (almost exclusively) are the victims. The presentation of these crimes is informed by an understanding that crime is pervasive and therefore viewed as a serious social issue, and also by an understanding that Afrikaners/whites are targeted not because they are relatively wealthy and tend to have assets that tempt criminals, but because of ‘who’ they are as whites/Afrikaners. The explanatory logic of this understanding renders the victims of crimes as not only victims, but as victimised.

Farm murders Farm murders are the most powerful symbol of the theme of targeted victimisation, as suggested by numerous reports on murders designated as ‘farm murders’, as opposed to, for example, plain ‘murder’ or ‘murder on a farm’.22 The victim narrative is evident from the breakdown of story categories: while 53 stories (over a three-month period of study) present Afrikaners as being victimised because they are Afrikaners (e.g. farm murders), only three report on the targeting of other groups (e.g. xenophobic attacks).

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One lead, ‘Farm murders: “They are more cruel than others”’, reports on research findings by Solidarity that ‘[f]arm murders are accompanied by more violence and torture than the public23 is ever informed about’ (in the intro), and that ‘[e]ven though farmers of different race groups are victims, white farmers have a greater chance of being victims’ (second-last line). Examples of torture are presented by the authors as ‘[v]ictims are also tortured by being dragged behind vehicles or mutilated with boiling water’. A criminologist emphasises that the torture is ‘unnecessary’, ‘extraordinary’ and ‘extreme’ especially since it is performed after money, guns or other property have been taken. He also attributes the reason (apart from standard social triggers such as alcohol and poor economic prospects) for the ‘sadism’ as a ‘culture of violence and violence towards a specific group such as hatred towards the white farming community’. The report establishes these murders as politically inspired genocide, through quoting a Solidarity spokesperson as saying that politicians responsible for not taking strong action ‘will one day most likely face charges of crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing’.24 Neither the ANC nor government ministers nor any other politicians are quoted; the table listing the number of farm murders per year shows numbers declining (from 140 murders in 2001–02 to 86 in 2006–07); the number of farm attacks is not related to overall figures for murder and no statistical analysis is conducted. The resultant story is ideologically ‘loaded’ in its deviation from ethical requirements of ‘fairness’, unless the injunction to be fair is understood as ‘fair to’ – for example, fair to Afrikaners who feel mis- or under-represented in public discourse. The manner of ‘loading’ identifies this public as the public whose interests determine the ‘national interest’, a refrain that is articulated in this farm murder report by the head of the Institute for Strategic Studies, who is quoted as saying ‘[t]he situation must be a national crisis’. The page 1 lead of three editions after the Solidarity research report, headlined ‘Torture-Attack’, corroborates the findings (which are cited in the story) through example.25 It emphasises, in the main headline and the subhead (‘94-year old burnt with [frying] pan; son dies’), the apparently sadistic assault over the murder, which in the intro, too, is listed as secondary to the torture: ‘A helpless 94-year-old woman was burnt with a frying pan by four robbers on a farm; her 74-year-old son was killed by three shots from behind; her 64-year-old son was wounded in the stomach; and her great-grandson was stabbed in the head with a knife.’ The great-grandson was also burnt on the thigh with a clothes iron. The nature of the attack is depicted as sadistic and gratuitous, its victims helpless (in that they are all old and elderly apart from one teenager) and ‘undeserving’: ‘What did grandma and Hekkie do to them?’ asks a son. The son interprets the

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attack in explicitly political terms: ‘My brother was a hunting trophy for the ANC and criminals.’ The hunting image is evocative in contradictory ways. First, it articulates the perception of hegemonic power that relegates Afrikaners to the status of animals, who lack control over their own destiny and whose purpose is to be hunted at the pleasure of the new rulers. A second level of evocation is suggested by the image of humans as hunting prey: first, the hunting of the San in the Cape during the early colonial period (Adhikari 2011); second, the killing of indigenous populations by the Voortrekkers, for whom ‘the distinction between hunting and raiding parties was often blurred … Killing and looting were their business, land and labour their spoils’ (‘The Voortrekkers,’ SA History Online);26 and third, the Border War trophies of ‘terrorists’ ears’ brought home by SADF conscripts after service on the SWA–Angola border in the 1970s and 1980s.27 The state of ‘innocence’ of the plea ‘What did grandma and Hekkie do to them?’ is articulated in a discourse of privilege which silences the history of oppression and extermination of indigenous populations. Isolated from historical context, the statement can be read as a ‘speaking against’ by a victim to perpetrators who have no justification for their actions. Read in context, however, it paradoxically opens up an interpretation of farm murders as acts of vengeance for past wrongs, an interpretation that would affirm those grievances as valid but in the process undermining any moral claim to ‘innocence’.

Conclusion This manoeuvre of ‘innocence’ addresses whether the broad group of Afrikaners (as Afrikaners) can be accommodated within mainstream political processes; whether it can articulate itself within a national identity, or whether it constructs itself as marginal, which lays down the basis for social and political engagement. This engagement is weakened by a public discourse which excludes Afrikaners as monstrous ‘others’, fixed inextricably in a discourse of oppression. Discourses of redress, truth and reconciliation appear to have done little to rehabilitate the legitimacy of the Afrikaner as citizen. I suggest that crime stories in Beeld represent a discursive reclamation of ‘grievability’ from what public discourse makes ungrievable, or impermissible, by enacting an innocence that disarticulates Afrikaner/guilt, and rearticulates an Afrikaner identity in discourses of victimhood, which includes murder, discrimination and political and social exclusion. This establishes a clean slate not through an explicit denial of history or culpability, but through a rhetorical

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displacement in which Afrikaner ceases to be the ‘metonym of apartheid’, but the synonym of victim. The innocent victim is the other of the monster.

Notes 1 Data derived from AMPS and Beeld. 2 Sapa, Don’t rubbish SA over violence –­ Zuma. News24, 7 March 2013. Accessed March 2013 at http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Dont-rubbish-SA-over-violenceZuma-20130307 3 Steward D, The end of non-racialism? Politicsweb, 6 March 2013. Accessed March 2013 at http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/ page72308?oid=362634&sn=Marketingweb+detail&pid=90389 4 A reference to the characterisation of Tutsis as ‘cockroaches’ during the Rwanda genocide in 1994. 5 A migration or expedition. Term associated with the migration the Voortrekkers, or boer agriculturalists, from the Cape colony in the 1830s. 6 Snyman D, Afrikaners op nuwe Groot Trek in die land. Beeld, 14 January 2014 7 Smith C, Ons wag steeds vir die Engelse se Verskoning. Volksblad, 12 September 2013 8 The Little Karoo National Arts Festival, the pre-eminent Afrikaans festival of arts and culture. 9 Leonard C, Oh broeder, where is the volk now? Mail & Guardian, 12 April 2013 10 Sefara M, Media racism alive and well in SA. The Star, 17 May 2013 11 Davids N, Fury over Calvinist ‘slur’. TimesLive, 28 February 2013. Accessed February 2013 at http://m.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/?articleId=8275824 12 Joubert JJ, Juju comes out fighting over tax. The Witness, 6 August 2013 13 Land of sorrow/grief. 14 Mailovich C, Lewe na die aanval. Rapport, 23 September 2013 15 ‘Bitter whites’. 16 Cronjé F, Bitter wittes tart ’n tweede revolusie. Rapport, 22 September 2013 17 Beeld’s editorial opinion (20 November 2012) holds that ‘Reconciliation is in the hearts of people’, and that it requires a sound economic policy to eliminate inequality. It concludes that ordinary people have the responsibility of promoting reconciliation ‘in the little streets and corridors of everyday life, by breaking down stereotypes and prejudices which, in their own hearts and minds continue stubbornly to exist’. 18 Opinion and features tend to follow from news, engaging in issues in a way that presumes some familiarity on the part of the reader with the context of the debates sparked by news events. 19 These discourses of loss, fear and (precarious) privilege are, as Alden and Anseeuw (2009) argue, typical features of settler narratives. They operate in tandem, and their implicit putative addressee may be considered to be the ‘Otherers’, that is those responsible for the state of affairs afflicting Afrikaners in particular: the government, the ruling party, fellow (non-Afrikaans-speaking) citizens, fellow (black) citizens. The explicit addressee is the Afrikaner. 20 All the murder examples cited are page 1 leads. 21 Explicitly articulated in the lead: ‘Farm murders: “They’re more cruel than others”’.

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22 ‘Farm’ tends to be fairly loosely used in reports and can refer equally to large farms, small farms, or large peri-urban properties, where there may be no animals or crops. The symbolic valency appears to be more a matter of an historic association between farmers and the land (as captured by the term Boer), and the personal or family control of the land, rather than evoking agriculture as a business. The De Doorns reports are ambivalent in this regard, establishing the protests in a personal relation to farmers (who are characterised by strikers as cruel or exploitive) and the farmers in relation to the agricultural economy. 23 Beeld reports regularly on violence and torture in farm murders, and so the ‘public’ to which the authors of the report refer must be seen as distinct from the ‘public’ of which Beeld readers form a part. 24 Beeld is ambivalent towards the terms ‘genocide’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’. It mainstreams the genocide discourse by drawing on Solidarity as an authoritative source, bolstering it with corroborating analysis from criminologists and researchers. In this regard, it represents the ‘ontology’ of its readers. On the other hand, it ‘others’ the ‘Red October’ campaign against Afrikaner genocide as marginal, unrepresentative and ‘right-wing’, largely due to its association with right-wing campaigner Steve Hofmeyr. Beeld also endorses, in its editorial opinion, the call by Afrikaner-interest groups to ‘prioritise’ farm murders, reinforcing the genocide discourse. 25 Other examples presented as page 1 leads are: ‘He fell over mother’s body’, a farm murder of a 60-year-old woman who her son says ‘was killed for nothing’; ‘Elderly (couple) stuffed into freezer’, a suburban murder in which a couple, described by their daughter as ‘My mother was small as a bird and my father a feeble person’, suffocates to death after being locked in a freezer by robbers; and ‘Under Thug Siege’, about a criminal ‘siege’ of smallholdings where seven residents were murdered in five months. Other examples occur on inside pages, such as the report cited in the section above on dogs in which a woman is murdered, her husband assaulted, their son drowned in a boiling bath and their dog disemboweled. 26 Jeff Guy (2013) makes a similar observation about the Voortrekkers. 27 Personal recollection of the dried and formaldehyde-preserved ears of guerrillas shown off by conscript friends on their return home from border duty.

References Adhikari M (2011) Anatomy of a South African genocide: The extermination of the Cape San peoples. Athens: Ohio University Press. Agamben G (1998) Homo Sacer. California: Stanford University Press Agamben G (2002) Remnants of Auschwitz: The witness and the archive. New York: Zone Books Alden C and Anseeuw W (2009) Land, liberation and compromise in southern Africa. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan Appadurai A (1991) Global ethnoscapes: Notes and queries for a transnational anthropology. In R Fox (Ed.) Recapturing anthropology: Working in the present. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press Bickford S (1996) The dissonance of democracy: Listening, conflict and citizenship. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press

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Bornman E (2010) Emerging patterns of social identification in post-apartheid South Africa. Journal of Social Issues 66(2): 237–254 Butler J (2010) Frames of war: When is life grievable? London and New York: Verso Castells M (1997) The power of identity (Vol. 2). Oxford: Blackwell Castells M (2011) Communication power. Oxford: Oxford University Press Chipkin I (2007) Do South Africans exist? Nationalism, democracy and the identity of ‘The People’. Johannesburg: Wits University Press Couldry N (2000) Inside Culture. London: Sage Publications Couldry N (2010) Why voice matters: Culture and politics after neoliberalism. Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore: Sage De Vries F (2012) Rigting Bedonnerd: Op die spoor van die Afrikaner post-’94. Cape Town: Tafelberg Foucault M (1980) Prison talk. In C Gordon (Ed) Power/Knowledge. Brighton: Harvester Fourie W (2008) Afrikaner identity in post-apartheid South Africa: The self in terms of the other. In A Hadland, E Louw, S Sesanti & H Wasserman (Eds) Power, politics and identity in South African media. Cape Town: HSRC Press Giliomee H (2000) Manipulating the past. In R Erkens & J Kane-Berman (Eds) Political correctness in South Africa. Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations Goffman E (1963) The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Doubleday Guy J (2013) Theophilus Shepstone and the forging of Natal. Pietermaritzburg: UKZN Press Hachten WA & Giffard CA (1984) Total onslaught: The South African press under attack. Johannesburg: Macmillan Herman D, Van Zyl C & Niewoudt I (2013) Treurgrond: Die realiteit van plaasaanvalle, 1990–2012. Pretoria: Kraal Uitgewers Herman ES & Chomsky N (1988) Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media. New York: Pantheon Isin EF (2008) Theorizing acts of citizenship. In EF Isin & GM Nielsen (Eds) Acts of citizenship. London and New York: Zed Knol B & Roberts S (2008) Crime according to Beeld: Fear in black and white. Media Monitoring Project, July. Accessed September 2014 at www.mediamonitoring.org.za Mouton A (2002) Voorloper: Die lewe van Schalk Pienaar. Cape Town: Tafelberg Roodt D (2013) ‘Apartheid’ as metonym for Afrikaners. Accessed http://praag.org/?p=4270 Snyman M (2007) Misdaadberiggewing in die pers: ’n Weerspieëling van die werklikheid? Tydskrif vir Geesteswetenskappe 7(4): 103–118 Taylor C (1989) Sources of the self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Van der Westhuizen C (2016) Anti-democratic element in student movements holds warnings for South Africa. The Conversation, 30 June. Accessed June 2016 at https://theconversation. com/anti-democratic-element-in-student-movements-holds-warnings-for-south-africa-61448 The Voortrekkers (n.d.) Great Trek: Colonisation and supremacy. SA History Online. Accessed March 2014 at http://www.v1.sahistory.org.za/pages/governence-projects/great-trek/greattrek1.htm Wasserman H (2009) Learning a new language: Culture, ideology and economics in Afrikaans media after apartheid. International Journal of Cultural Studies 12(1): 61–80 Zizek S (1989) The sublime object of ideology. London and New York: Verso

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13 We are not the ‘born frees’: The real political and civic lives of eight young South Africans Vanessa Malila

The Born-Free tag has an obvious appeal to journalists looking for an easy hook on which to hang a story. It is an easy synonym for freedom, choice, and a population with its eyes on the future. Any party that could lay claim to the largest chunk of the Born-Free vote could also appropriate these concepts.1 The ‘born frees’ refer to young South Africans born around 1994, the year of South Africa’s first democratic elections, and who thus grew up in a free society. Despite some positive connotations by calling young people ‘born frees’, society is using apartheid as a reference point to identify a post-apartheid generation. This reference point (the transition to a ‘free’ society) unfortunately does not resonate with many of the young people who participated in this research and many feel insulted by the implications of this term which does not apply to them in any way. Should South African society really be using this transition from apartheid to define its young people? Are they really born free – free from what, free to do what, free individuals or free as a collective? This chapter examines the individual stories of eight young South Africans, with the aim of better understanding youth and politics outside of the ‘born free’ label. After more than three years of researching and working with young South Africans, broad trends in the behaviour, attitudes and actions of young people towards politics, the media and civic engagement emerged. While the research provided a general understanding of what young people were doing politically, civically and socially, I was often left wondering why the trends which emerged in the research did not align with the media images of young South Africans. Mainstream media stereotypes of the ‘born frees’ portray them as disengaged from political behaviour, and shirking their responsibilities as the new custodians of a recently democratised country as a result of not engaging in formal political structures such as voting. Headlines such as these dominated the media sphere

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around the May 2014 national elections: ‘Apathetic born-frees are tomorrows politicians’2; ‘Over 1m “born frees” not registered to vote’3; ‘South African “born frees” uninterested in 2014 elections’ (Mbatha 2013); and ‘Mandela link and youth apathy likely to help ANC to South African election win’4. Reading these kinds of headlines and their accompanying stories portrays a collective, overgeneralised perspective of young South Africans, where stories often failed to engage with the youth. If one considers the way in which young people are regarded, the kinds of labels they are given (such as ‘born frees’), it is easy to understand why they fail to occupy a space for being heard in political and civic engagement. If, as Susan Bickford argues (1996: 146), listening requires an ‘openness’ and a willingness to engage with the other, it is easy to see how there is ‘closedness’ in South African society’s engagement with young people. They are immediately dismissed as disengaged, and therefore not worthy of being listened to. They have not taken up their freedoms, and are therefore not allowed into spaces of public debate. There is an implication, based on our history that those born into a ‘free’ society will have the responsibility to use and act upon this freedom, but the majority of youth feel ill-equipped to do this: they are politically and socially restricted by their history and their structural reality, and as such have no voice and no space for being listened to. But what if they are listened to? That is, what if by opening up spaces for listening we are able to better understand how young people think about themselves, about their own attitudes towards being ‘youngizens’5 and how they are worthy of an engaged listening space? The research profiled in this chapter aims to provide a space for understanding how some young people regard the world and how this is different to the stereotypes encountered in the media about young South Africans. By allowing them to tell their stories (through diaries and in-depth interviews), I hoped to get inside the lives, heads and hearts of eight young people from the Eastern Cape in South Africa, where poverty, unemployment, crime and corruption are a daily reality. ‘Humans are storytelling organisms who, individually and socially, lead storied lives’ (Connelly & Clandinin 1990: 2). Presented in this chapter are the stories of Sibusiso, Sihle, Sindi, Edumisa, Thando, Thabiso, Sboniso and Shepherd:6 eight young South Africans, ordinary youngizens who are living in South Africa in a very particular historical and political moment. All were born around 1994; all are black and living in the Eastern Cape. They share many similarities – being born and growing up in townships, and all were old enough to vote in the May 2014 national elections. However, they are each individuals; they have unique perceptions and attitudes towards politics, political engagement, being young and living in South Africa. This chapter aims to share some of these perceptions and attitudes in a way that highlights their individuality. These are

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not the ‘born frees’ – these are eight individuals who each have something to say, and each deserves a space for being heard. In a context of stereotyping and generalisations about young people, this chapter aims to do the very opposite by delving into the individual lives of these eight young citizens.

Who are the ‘born frees’? Young people in South Africa are often called the ‘born frees’ by the media and society. The term evokes the idea of a generation of young people who are politically free from the burdens of living in an apartheid system, free from the injustices which came with that system, and who in turn enjoy the freedoms associated with democracy. These include the freedoms which one gains from accessing the rights afforded by South Africa’s Constitution, such as education, which brings economic freedom; voting which brings political freedom; and movement, which brings social freedom. It should also include basic freedoms and rights such as housing, water and safety, which should have been afforded by the political freedom of transitioning to a democratic society. However, voting numbers for young people during the May 2014 elections were surprisingly low considering that many were voting for the first time – what is often considered a hallmark of taking up active citizenship, part of what Dahlgren (2009: 59) argues are our civic duties. ‘Only 31% of 18 and 19 year olds eligible to vote in the 2014 election actually registered to vote‘ (Institute of Race Relations 2015: 2). Those elections saw an immense amount of pressure being put on the so-called born frees to vote and engage in formal politics. The City Press, for example, led a story with the headline ‘Elections: Where are the born-frees?’ in which it reported that ‘the IEC was running television and radio campaigns featuring musicians and other “celebrities” in a bid to appeal to young voters and was also running current affairs shows. Other campaigns to rope in the youth included visits to youth organisations, schools, universities and the use of social media to reach out to young voters.’7 The mainstream media were particularly dismissive of ‘born frees’ during key moments in the election process such as during registration weekends and voting days. Mokone (2013), for example, cites a statement by Chief Electoral Officer Mosotho Moepya who said: “That represents a 12% registration. It is a big gap in this age group that we need to deal with. There’s quite a large chunk of youth that we need to deal with.”’8 The ‘born frees’ were scolded for not taking up their right to vote and for not recognising their freedoms and the importance of the times in which they live, freely.

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This unguarded stereotyping of young people disregards their individual circumstances, context and the structures which influence their agency or possibilities for agency. Bickford argues that stereotyping is the result of a lack of attention and in particular a lack of active listening to individuals rather than to a collective. She notes, drawing on the work of Arendt, that it becomes difficult to perceive others in public as individuals – as a ‘who’ – with their own identities and their own attributes, but rather that we tend to perceive others as collectives – as a ‘what’ – with a group identity and group attributes (1996: 60–61). By ‘focusing on the “what,” the qualities shared with others, “entangles” us and “leads us astray”’ (Bickford 1996: 60). I would argue that the South African media and the political sphere have failed to pay active attention to individual youth and rather are failing to listen to their ‘whoness’ and in doing so are representing them as a collective stereotype. The media in South Africa have been criticised for representing the elite spheres of society, and failing to provide a voice for the marginalised. Friedman argues that the South African media are biased as a result of not actively seeking out the perspectives, experiences and stories of those ‘outside its suburban world’ (2011: 110) – one could argue that their bias is a result of a lack of listening. Too often there is an emphasis by the media on providing voice, which Friedman argues is really the voice of the powerful speaking to other powerful elites, rather than an emphasis on active listening, which Lacey argues should be a responsibility of the media today. She argues in fact that the media have an ethical responsibility ‘to listen to the variety of ways in which stories are told’ (2013: 191). She points to Coles, who notes that ‘learning how to listen is dependent on listening to different voices in different locations and contexts: “to move beyond the limits of one’s familiar spaces, faces and primary associations”’ (Coles 2004: 688). The stereotyping of young people points to a failure by the media in South Africa of not only a lack of representation of individuals beyond the collective, but also a lack of moving beyond their comfortable suburban neighbourhoods to engage with young people who are marginalised and sit on the outskirts of society. By listening to the young people who participated in this research, this chapter aims to share their ‘lived experience of plurality, not merely an imaginative act of representative thinking’ (Lacey 2013: 190). This chapter is born out of an exercise of active listening, of an attempt to engage with the ‘whoness’ of eight individuals, and in doing so engage the reader in a process ‘listening out’, ‘the practice of being open to the multiplicity of texts and voices and thinking of texts in the context of and in relation to difference and how they resonate across time and in different spaces’ (Lacey 2013: 198). The stories in this chapter of these eight young people go some way towards explaining why these individuals did or did not vote, why they do or do not get involved in political or civic activities, and what they think and feel about their identities as citizens.

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Context The Eastern Cape of South Africa is the second-poorest province in the country (Statistics South Africa 2014: 31). It is largely rural, has high unemployment and high levels of poverty, and is renowned for its poor educational infrastructure, resources and delivery. The majority of people (65 per cent) live in rural areas (Provide Project 2005: 4), which means that access to economic structures that promote development and advantage are not accessible to most people who live in the Eastern Cape. Of those living in the Eastern Cape in 2014 between 15 and 34 years of age, 40.7 per cent were unemployed, only 15.7 per cent of youth held skilled occupations in the province, and 60 per cent had experienced long-term unemployment (Statistics South Africa 2014). In addition to geographic barriers to development, the limitations of education in the province are clearly illustrated by the fact that one in 10 young people in the Eastern Cape had decided not to pursue education as a means to improve their job prospects (Statistics South Africa 2014). The barriers to economic freedom grow more vast and insurmountable the more one digs into the statistics of those living in the Eastern Cape. The Eastern Cape also has a strong political history that is closely associated with the ANC and is widely considered to be an ANC stronghold as a result of its historical links to the political party and influential members of the party. … major leaders, including Nelson Mandela, Govan and Thabo Mbeki, Chris Hani and Walter Sisulu have all viewed the area as their ancestral home; Fort Hare ‘Native College’ in Alice served as a cradle for African nationalism; and the region developed a particular reputation for militance throughout the struggle against apartheid. Hence it was that in a province where Africans constituted 84 per cent of the electorate and over 90 per cent of these were Xhosa, that the ANC won a landslide victory, taking 84 per cent of the vote in the provincial contest in the ‘liberation election’ of 1994. (Southall 1999: 155) This historical connection to the most powerful political party is not only felt by those who fought the atrocities of apartheid, but continue in the traditions and structures of modern contemporary politics and political processes in the province today. Understanding that voting against the ANC means being stigmatised, and disadvantaged in terms of services provided to you, and having less access to powerful people within your community is the reality for many Eastern Cape youth. In addition, South Africans continue to vote based on identity politics and the majority of black South Africans identify with the ANC. ‘This is their default position, so come an election campaign, the ANC works hard to ensure that identity turns into votes’ (Southall 2014: 83).

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In the Eastern Cape, the term ‘born free’ is perhaps less relevant and appropriate than in many other South African contexts. Young people in the Eastern Cape struggle with the legacy of apartheid as a result of the former bantustans (Ciskei and Transkei) situated in the province. Their lasting effects on the social, economic and political landscape are inescapable for young people who live here and have been widely researched (De Wet 2010; Hyslop 2005; Jones 1999). Denial of a lasting burden, particularly on young people, such as that declared by members of the ruling party is misguided and misinformed.

Listening to the youngizens: The stories of eight young South Africans The stories told in this chapter emerged through diaries kept by the eight young people, which were then followed up by in-depth interviews. These young people were asked to keep a diary for a period of eight days during which they were tasked with recording any media they consumed, conversations they had, and interactions that emerged during that time. They were also sent a series of questions during those eight days via instant messaging which were targeted at specific topics such as voting, political participation, engagement with particular media, and interaction with family or friends. All the participants are between 18 and 35 years old, and all live in the Eastern Cape. They are all black African youth, and while all have finished secondary school, most are attending a higher education institution. There is an equal mix of male and female participants, as well as a mixture of participants who live in rural and urban areas. Sibusiso is a young black woman who grew up and still lives in Grahamstown (a semi-rural town) in the Eastern Cape. She was raised in a township and attended township schools. She is, however, fortunate enough to have received a scholarship to attend Rhodes University, one of the most expensive and prestigious universities in South Africa (also situated in Grahamstown). She has an interest in politics, but is disillusioned with the reality of living in a place where she thinks little has changed since the end of apartheid. Sihle is a young black woman who lives in Peddie, a small rural town in the Eastern Cape. She lives with her parents, and at the time of the interview was looking forward to moving to Grahamstown so she could attend a vocational college and continue her studies. She does not consider herself to be a ‘born free’. Sindi is a young black mother who lives in a township in Grahamstown, attended township schools and is trying very hard to better her own situation. She is involved in a number of civic organisations, volunteers and does community work in the hope of getting employment and contributing to her community. She has a

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strong interest in the media and strong opinions about politics and the role of young people in society. Edumisa is a young black woman who is a student at Rhodes University in Grahamtown but grew up in a township called Mdtansane, which lies in the surrounds of East London, the second-largest city in the Eastern Cape. She has a strong sense of community and an unbreakable connection to her family, particularly her grandmother, with whom she grew up. Thando is a young black man who lives in Port Elizabeth, the largest city in the Eastern Cape, and studies at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU). He is very interested in politics, strongly critical of politicians and disappointed by political processes he’s been involved in. This disappointment and disillusionment have led him and some friends to form a civic movement called the African Consciousness Movement. Thabiso is a young black man who also studies at NMMU and is very involved in politics as a member of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), a party started in 2013 by Julius Malema, the former leader of the ANC Youth League. He lives in a university hostel located in Port Elizabeth’s CBD, and uses the university transport system to move between campuses and classes. Although he didn’t say it directly, the impression he gives as a confident young man is that because he has chosen to support the EFF, he feels empowered to make a change. Unlike many of the other young people in the study, he does not lament the state of politics in the same way, but rather has the sort of attitude which exudes a kind of DIY perspective. Shepherd is a black man who is a student at NMMU. Much like Thabiso, he is highly critical of the media, which he regards as spreading propaganda. Sboniso is a young black man who grew up in KwaZulu-Natal but currently lives in the Port Elizabeth CBD while he attends NMMU. He has worked hard to elevate himself from a poor township upbringing to obtain a bursary to study at university. Part of his attitude towards the idea of being a ‘born free’ is strongly linked to his struggle to move out of a poor township structure.

Listening to history Most of the young people who participated in the research did vote in the 2014 elections. Very often their reasons for voting were the result of strong pressure by family members reminding them to listen to their history and to follow a tradition of voting for the ANC. For many black South Africans, the ANC is not only a government of social grants and welfare, but is the government of the liberation movement which freed them from apartheid. As such, there is still (more than

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20 years after democracy) a need by this young generation to show support for the ANC during elections. As a young woman growing up in a township, Edumisa felt increasing levels of pressure to vote for the ANC and stay loyal to the ruling party: People will tell you that you are so lucky that you are born in 1994, after the ANC freed us and the ANC has done this for us, especially as a person that has been watching SABC 1 for almost all my life, so things you hear from TV and you hear from the people then you conclude that ANC is the best because there is nothing else you have ever heard. (Edumisa) She adds: ‘From my gran, it has always been “you are going to vote for ANC my child, that is why we are still in South Africa, they did this for us, that is why you are free, that is why everyone gets social grants, so you must vote for ANC, they did a lot for you”’. Sibusiso relates her experience during our interview, saying: … if you are an ANC member you will get the job, so in my home they are all ANC and they have got the job … first preferences is people who are ANC members, who goes to the meetings and they even take register in the meeting to see who is here and when there is a job available the first preference is people from the ANC, so that’s why my mom encourages us to vote for ANC because she knows that if you vote for ANC then there will be jobs, so that is what is happening in my location. (Sibusiso) This is not simply a matter of legacy, but very much a matter of current political structures. Sibusiso’s biggest influence is her mother, and despite enormous pressure from her mother to vote, she did not vote in the national elections. She recounts a story about why her mother thought it was important for her to vote: ‘My mom was like, no, you must vote, if there is a bursary they will give it to you … they wouldn’t give it to you because you didn’t vote … she called and asked if I went [to vote] and I told her yes.’ As a result of her strong influence, she felt the need to lie to her mother about having gone to vote when in fact she had not. This reliance on the ANC as a source of welfare and the strong link between voting for the ANC and benefiting from their patronage is further emphasised when Sibusiso relays the following: ‘The thing is with the locations … the jobs, projects – most of the time people that are hired there are people from the ANC because the councillor is ANC so there is that favouritism, if you are an ANC member, you will get the job.’ Shepherd is not directly involved in a political party, nor does he regard himself as being ‘political’, but he did vote during the May 2014 elections. His reasons, however, were less to do with active change:

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If ever you look at history, in order to go forward you must be able to know where you were coming from, now in terms of politics we are coming from the ANC who fought for the struggle, and now we are at the junction – these same people that fought for us now they can’t deliver services to us, so what do you do? If you don’t vote, then you are simply saying ‘okay, now whatever the politics do I don’t care’. So that is why you rather participate, and maybe not be directly involved in politics, but you must be aware of what is happening. (Shepherd)

Failing to listen to the youth It seems that the younger generation are placed under great pressure from family to support the ANC, and while some do engage with voting as a result of this, some were critical of the role of the ANC post-1994 despite its history as the liberation government. A key theme which emerged during the diaries and interviews was a lack of listening on the part of two institutions in South Africa. The first is politicians and political parties which are not listening to young people. The second is the media which are failing to listen to young people as individuals and rather engage them as a collective, branding them the ‘born frees’ and stereotyping their behaviour and attitudes negatively. While the young people involved in this research did not use the language of listening, their words do illustrate a key lack of attentive engagement by politicians. Sibusiso is well informed about politics and she takes an interest, but is looking for political leadership in those who claim to lead. Her priorities are structural – she wants tangible outcomes from her vote, and does not feel that this is the case with the May 2014 election. Perhaps as a result of her privileged position at a university, she is curious and seeks out information that will broaden her horizons – she refuses to simply be a young black woman from the township, but is rather open to new experiences, different cultures, and so on. Her ability to question her own political position led her to question the motives of others in voting, when she herself had decided not to vote: ‘So I ended up with all these questions about whether a person votes because they want to or do they vote because they are scared that there will be no RDP houses, or do they vote just because they have to?’ Another reason for her not having voted was the lack of options for her as a young black woman, who obviously has connections to the ANC (whether historical, familial, cultural or social), and therefore cannot consider who else would be a viable option. She notes: ‘I feel like if I vote, it is a real waste of time because obviously the ANC will win and there is no better party that I can vote for.’ Her disdain for politicians is evident in much of her negative language towards politics

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and politicians from different political parties, and when asked if she has role models, she points out: ‘Don’t tell me a role model is someone in the Parliament who is getting life easier and getting money. I believe it should be someone who works hard and you can see their achievements.’ Thando’s relationship with politics is related more to a lack of trust in political parties, than a clear indication of his steering away from formal political processes, such as voting. Despite initially seeming off-hand about his lack of voting as a result of not having time ‘to stand in the long queue [to] wait to register’, he feels strongly about the importance of voting. On the day I managed to accompany friends who were going there even though they were doubtful, I had to encourage them to vote because at least they managed to register, so they were legible to vote … they need to get their voice across … voting is very important because I think that is the only voice that we have … I think this is the ground in getting our voices across to men in power. (Thando) While Sboniso identifies himself as an ‘active citizen’, he also distances himself from active political engagement in formal political structures. He did not vote in the national election in May 2014. He regards politicians as selfish, and believes that power corrupts. He noted that he was worried about some of his friends who were deeply political and involved in party political structures, because even they may forget the causes they are now fighting for once they obtain political power. He told me that he hopes he can change them for the better by debating with them, and telling them that they ‘should focus more on people … and try to make sense out of the problem that we have in this country’. Of the current political cohort, he is critical of their ability to focus on the real issues impacting communities: ‘What I see is that our politicians, once they are in power, I don’t think they care much about the citizens themselves, they just focus on themselves and then improving.’ The failure of the media to engage with young people was closely related to the portrayal by the media of this generation, the ‘born frees’. Sibusiso speaks honestly about her reality and how this is so vastly different from the conception of being a ‘born free’ that is often stereotyped in the media: Born frees are people who were born like with freedom, things become easier than back in the days. I’m not a born free if that is the case … I wouldn’t say I was a born free. Like having to struggle, like up to Grade 12 … and having to live in you know in township areas … I would say I’m a born free if I went to a school where there are resources, like at home we flush. But now I’m not a born free, I don’t call myself a born free. (Sibusiso)

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Sihle argues that while the media sometimes portray young people in a positive way (she uses the example of a TV show which focused on the ‘born frees’), that it also made her realise that while some people are ‘on the right track’, that others faced more challenging situations (teenage pregnancy, not finishing school). I asked Shepherd about being a ‘born free’ on two occasions, and his responses made it clear that his attitude towards the term was wholly negative. It is useful to read his response in its entirety: ‘A born free’ … How does one have the guts to call someone something that is not there, so I don’t relate to the term ‘a born free’ because it’s a myth, it’s only imaginary … to begin with, what is free about us? Is being able to go and vote freedom? Ability to take a taxi to Summerstrand only to walk around boardwalk not even having the money to have lunch? What’s free about this situation??? I strongly feel that such a concept should be stopped until we arrive in the destination of a born free … What is free about cultural distortion, degrading of black people and their values, I feel nothing about this concept because it does not exist. (Shepherd) His attitude towards the term and the idea of being called a ‘born free’ had not changed later when we conducted our interview. He made a strong link between economic poverty, which he clearly identifies with despite being at university because of where he is from, and a lack of freedom both economically and politically. For Shepherd, without economic freedom and the freedom that is associated with some economic stability, there is no political freedom and there is no sense in thus relating to such a term. Sboniso’s attitude towards the label of ‘born free’ is juxtaposed with that of his experience of moving beyond the marginalised stereotype: I do not believe or see myself as a born free. What I see now in this country is that we are being oppressed by a system that only favours those that are rich … there can never be a black child in this country who is a born free … I am not a born free as I grew up in a township while there is another child who was growing up in a suburb. I had to be on top of the class with the marks for me to get a bursary and go to university … so this term of being a born free to me is a word that is used to mock us, the poor, which the majority are black. (Sboniso) In addition to the failure by the media to represent young people adequately, the media were also taken to task by Edumisa, who feels ‘misled’ and confused by what she encounters in the media: ‘I realised there is a lot more to politics than ANC and the DA, because if you watch SABC news that is the only things you will ever hear – ANC and the DA, which is quite narrow information, and for a person who doesn’t

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know anything else would quickly conclude that politics are about ANC and DA, and that is all there is.’ She adds: Now we are exposed to so much more, and we feel like we have been misled from the time we were born up until now, especially the fact that we were born in 1994, so ANC did this and did that through all our lives, so it has even made it difficult for us to be able to vote for a political party that we feel represents us more because throughout our lives it has been ANC has done this and ANC has done that and we haven’t seen what other political parties have done in the contribution to the freedom in South Africa. (Edumisa) While Thabiso exudes an air of confidence regarding his political identity and his power to make change through his actions, he is less certain about the media in South Africa, and in fact was largely critical of the way in which the media operate in this country. He was reluctant to express an opinion about whether he felt the media informed him as a young South African, but instead critiqued the political economy of the media landscape in South Africa: The problem with the media is that it is owned by certain people, so which means you only get to hear what they want you to hear, for instance what is happening in the [parliamentary] ad hoc committee – we only hear that certain political parties pulled out, if you never went to the Parliamentary channel, you will never know why. (Thabiso) He was particularly critical of the SABC, and uses an example of an interview conducted with the secretary general of the ANC, Gwede Mantashe, on a programme called Question Time. Interestingly, he discussed the event with his friends: We were discussing how unhappy the interviewer was to do that kind of job, he was told what to do … Gwede already knew the questions that were going to be asked … it was more like a play. So we were saying that we live in a very [messed] up society whereby the government controls the media and the police, so how do we have justice and such, as the separation of power does not come into play effectively? (Thabiso) Shepherd is critical of the media and particularly the SABC: ‘The SABC can never report anything that is going to be bad about the ANC, because they are all out to protect the ANC, because that is where they are controlled.’ Despite his criticism of the media, he is a high media consumer, constantly interacting with news, entertainment and other forms of information on traditional, new and social media. I don’t watch news on SABC 1. If I am lucky I watch news on the dish [satellite TV] … I watch sport and movies, and also I interact a lot with the newspaper

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and also the radio, that is where I hear news, although they are propaganda, but I get to be selective of what I take into account when I listen to news on the radio and what not to listen to. (Shepherd)

Listening to the voice inside Despite her sense of confusion about voting, Sihle also illustrated a strong sense of knowing how to take charge of her life. Although she relayed some hesitation about voting, she also confessed that ‘I wasn’t THAT confused, because I knew who I was going to vote for’. She conveyed a strong sense of taking charge of her destiny and not relying on others. She notes: ‘I noticed that all a person needs to do is to focus on their lives, that is all young people need to do. Because you will see a 22-year-old graduate, she has a degree and she is working, and the media will show you that if ever you want to grab something, you will grab it.’ As a voracious media consumer, Sihle found many spaces where issues that are important to her are discussed and debated, and where she can weigh in on conversations and feel listened to. Sindi reflected some confusion about voting and the choices she made during the election, but despite the confusion, she continued to promote the importance of voting – not only for herself (‘for me voting means that I have a say in the running of my country and I can bring change through my vote’), but also for her family. She stated a number of times that despite the confusion and what she called the ‘political drama’, not voting was not an option for her because she regarded it as one step towards making a change in her life and in her community. Making a change is important to her because, as Sindi notes, she wants to leave a ‘legacy’ through changing her community, ‘even if the change is small, I want to make a change. I know I can’t change the world, but I’m willing to try and do it.’ Sboniso’s identity as a young citizen is strongly linked to his history, but also to his ability to move beyond the structural limitations of his position as a young black man. He regards himself as an active citizen and as a result of being able to attend university as an agent of change: ‘I think I can change my own situation and actually I have been changing because I am making sure that I’m getting a good education … then maybe I will find a good job.’ Sboniso has a positive attitude about his own future as a result of the changes he has made in his own life ‘from being just a township kid to something in this community’.

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Conclusion This chapter has been an exercise in showcasing the lives of eight individual youngizens placed in a particular political, social and geographic moment in South Africa. It has also been an exercise in active listening, an awareness of voice, but, beyond that, an acceptance of taking time to listen to young people. This chapter has detailed some aspects of these young people’s lives in order to contrast the stereotyped images of ‘born frees’ that the mainstream media find so convenient, and in doing so, brings an understanding of citizenship, identity and youth from the perspective of the youth. What this exercise in listening has illustrated is that there is not enough listening and active acknowledgement of the lives of youngizens as individuals by the media and political elite. As a result of not being able to listen actively, the media in South Africa have stereotyped the youth as the ‘born frees’ and in doing so measure their political engagement (or lack thereof) in relation to those first iconic and unforgettable 1994 elections – a measure they can never live up to. If, instead, the media were willing to listen to young people, to actively engage with them by ‘identifying with and feeling the suffering of’ them (Bickford 1996: 76), perhaps their representation would more adequately resonate with the lived experiences of South Africa’s youngizens. In the same vein, politicians and political parties might undertake more opportunities to engage and listen to young people, rather than regard them as a collective problem to be solved. Arendt promotes the idea of equality in the political sphere and argues that ‘political equality is an equalizing of unequals; it gives equal standing to those who may otherwise be unequal’ (in Bickford 1996: 57), and this requires real listening. Without the ability of politicians to engage in a process of political equality through listening, young people in South Africa will continue to be politically marginalised and economically bound by their structural, historic and geographical limitations.

Notes 1 Berkowitz P, If you register them, will they vote? Daily Maverick, 2 July 2013. Accessed July 2013, http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-07-02-if-you-register-them-willthey-vote/#.VYKY9UZrKFk 2 Mitchley A, Apathetic born-frees are tomorrows politicians. The Citizen, 24 April 2014. Accessed April 2014, http://citizen.co.za/165008/apathetic-born-frees-tomorrowspoliticians/ 3 News24, Over 1m ‘born frees’ not registered to vote. News24, 22 April 2014. Accessed April 2014, http://www.news24.com/elections/news/over-1m-born-frees-not-registered-tovote-20140422

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4 Smith D, Mandela link and youth apathy likely to help ANC to South African election win. The Guardian, 7 May 2014. Accessed May 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/ may/07/mandela-apathy-anc-south-african-election-win 5 Young citizens, people aged between 18 and 35. 6 None of the stories have been told using pseudonyms. When asked whether they would prefer anonymity, these eight youngizens all stated that they wanted their real names used, they wanted that acknowledgment of their individual identity; they specifically requested their real identities in these accounts of their real lives. 7 City Press, Elections: Where are the born-frees? City Press, 9 February 2014. Accessed February 2014, http://www.news24.com/Archives/City-Press/Elections-where-are-theborn-frees-20150429 8 Mokone T, Born-frees bored stiff by voting. The Times, 14 August 2014. Accessed August 2013, http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2013/08/14/born-frees-bored-stiff-by-voting

References Bickford S (1996) The dissonance of democracy: Listening, conflict and citizenship. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press Coles R (2004) Moving democracy: Industrial areas foundation social movements and the political arts of listening, traveling, and tabling. Political Theory 32(5): 678–705 Connelly FM & Clandinin DJ (1990) Stories of experience and narrative inquiry. Educational Researcher 19(5): 2–14 Dahlgren P (2009) Media and political engagement: Citizens, communication and democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press De Wet C (2010) Where are they now? Welfare, development and marginalisation in a former bantustan settlement in the Eastern Cape, post-1994. In P Hebinck & C Shackleton (Eds) Reforming land and resource use in South Africa. London: Routledge Friedman S (2011) Whose freedom? South Africa’s press, middle-class bias and the threat of control. Ecquid Novi: African Journalism Studies 31(2): 106–121 Hyslop J (2005) Political corruption: Before and after apartheid. Journal of Southern African Studies 31(4): 773–789 Institute of Race Relations (2015) Born free, but still in chains: South Africa’s first post-apartheid generation. Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations. Accessed April 2015, http://irr.org.za/reports-and-publications/media-releases/born-free-but-still-in-chains/view Jones PS (1999) ‘To come together for progress’: Modernization and nation-building in South Africa’s bantustan periphery – the case of Bophuthatswana. Journal of Southern African Studies 25(4): 579–605 Lacey K (2013) Listening publics: The politics and experience of listening in the media age. Cambridge: Polity Press. Mbatha A (2013) South African ‘born frees’ uninterested in 2014 elections. Bloomberg, 13 November. Accessed April 2015, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-11-12/ south-african-born-frees-disinterested-in-2014-election Provide Project (2005) A profile of the Eastern Cape province: Demographics, poverty, inequality and unemployment. Provide Project Background Paper 2005, 1(2)

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Southall R (1999) The struggle for a place called home: The ANC versus the UDM in the Eastern Cape. Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies 26(2): 155–166 Southall R (2014) The South African election of 2014: Retrospect and prospect. Strategic Review for Southern Africa 36(2): 80–95 Statistics South Africa (2014) National and provincial labour market: Youth. Statistical Release PO211.4.2. Pretoria: Statistics South Africa. Accessed September 2014, http://beta2.statssa.gov.za/publications/P02114.2/P02114.22014.pdf

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About the volume editors Anthea Garman is associate professor and deputy head of the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University and editor of the Rhodes Journalism Review. Herman Wasserman is professor of Media Studies and director of the Centre for Film and Media Studies at the University of Cape Town.

About the contributors Fiona Anciano is senior lecturer in the Department of Political Studies at the University of the Western Cape. Harry C Boyte is senior fellow at the Sabo Center for Democracy and Citizenship at Augsburg College. Clint Bracknell is a Wirlomin Nyungar from the south coast of Western Australia and senior lecturer in Ethnomusicology and Contemporary Music at the University of Sydney. Jennifer Buchanan is ARC research associate in the School of Indigenous Studies at the University of Western Australia. Len Collard is a Whadjuck Nyungar and Professor in the School of Indigenous Studies at the University of Western Australia. Ingrid Cumming is a Whadjuk Noongar from Fremantle, Western Australia, and ARC research associate in the School of Media Culture & Creative Arts at Curtin University. Peter Dahlgren is professor emeritus at the Department of Communication and Media, Lund University, Sweden. Tanja Dreher is ARC future fellow at the University of Wollongong (UOW), and senior lecturer in Media and Communications in the Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts at UOW. Steven Friedman is research professor in the Politics Department at the University of Johannesburg. John Hartley is John Curtin Distinguished Professor and professor of Cultural Science at Curtin University. Adam Haupt is associate professor in the Centre for Film and Media Studies at the University of Cape Town. Mehita Iqani is associate professor in Media Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. Niall Lucy was professor in Cultural Theory at Curtin University. Vanessa Malila was a postdoc research fellow within the Media and Citizenship Project based in the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University between 2012 and February 2016. Azwihangwisi Mufamadi is a media practitioner with the Faculty of Humanities, University of Cape Town, and a doctoral candidate within the Media and Citizenship Project in the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University. Laurence Piper is professor in the Department of Political Studies at the University of the Western Cape. Steven Robins is professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the University of Stellenbosch.

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Kim Scott is an Australian novelist and descendant of the Noongar people of Western Australia. He is professor of Writing at Curtin University and is the founder and chair of the Wirlomin Noongar Language and Story Project. Yves Vanderhaeghen is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He has been a journalist for over 30 years, serving as deputy editor of The Witness newspaper and contributing articles to Noseweek and Daily Maverick, among others. Bettina von Lieres is a lecturer in the Centre for Critical Development Studies, University of Toronto, Scarborough.

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Index Note: Figures and tables are indicated in italics. A

Bickford, Susan

Addams, Jane 76, 79

emotion talk 106

affectivity / rationality and citizenship

listening in research 188, 190–191, 194, 195,

in digital media 43–46, 47, 48

198

and ways of participation 7, 10, 94–95,

political listening 18–19, 21, 25, 186–187,

105–119, 123, 140–141

202, 218

African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights 28 African National Congress (ANC)

what or who 9, 220 #BlackLivesMatter campaign 16, 31, 149, 150 born frees and participation 92–93, 217–230

and Amplats 59, 61–62

Breakey, Jessica (student activist) 116–117

and First National Bank 58–62

broken windows hypothesis 147–148, 151

and Nedbank 62–64

‘Buen Vivir’ 26–27

patronage politics 3, 125–126, 130–131, 133–134,

Butler, Judith (philosopher) 200–201, 209

221–222, 223–225 Afrikaners, in media 200–213 agency and citizenship 5–7, 83, 85–87, 124 and consumption 95, 96–99 political 3–4, 7–10, 38–39, 72–74, 77, 80–81 voice and listening 18–19, 202, 220 Alexievich, Svetlana (Nobel laureate journalist) 13–14 ‘American Century’ 78 Amplats (Anglo American Platinum) 59, 61–62 ANC see African National Congress (ANC) Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) 59, 61–62 Arab communities in Australian media 24 Arendt, Hannah (political theorist) 73, 111, 230 Arnold, Matthew (cultural critic) 166, 170 art54 (public art project) 143, 148 aspiration, politics of 90, 91, 93, 99–101

C Canclini, Néstor García (academic) 94–96 Cape Town Partnership 142, 147, 152 censorship 19, 46, 152 Central Improvement Districts (CIDs, Cape Town) 147, 148 ‘Century of the Common Man [and Woman]’ 78 Chikane, Rekgotsofetse (student activist) 116–117 CIDs (Central Improvement Districts, Cape Town) 147, 148 citizen journalism 21, 22 see also ‘back to the people’ journalism citizen politics 72–84 citizen professionals 76 citizens becoming 7–8, 181–182, 219, 226, 229–230 co-creating democracy 4, 72–73, 74, 86–87 citizenship

B

acts of 4–5, 108, 159, 171, 173–177

Back, Les (academic) 27

alienating modes of 200–202, 207, 210

‘back to the people’ journalism 74, 75–78

and listening 10–14, 17–23, 30–31, 196–197

Badsha, Farzana (art54 member) 143–144, 152

and media 5–10, 72–74, 81, 176–177

Beeld (newspaper) and Afrikaners 200,

narrow definitions of 74–86, 160–161

202–203, 204, 207–213 better life, aspiration to 90–93, 101

race, class and inequality 7–10, 139, 148, 152–153

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status and practice 93–96, 99–101, 181–186,

democracy

197–198

and born frees 217–218, 219, 225

and third-party representatives 120,

challenges 19, 78–82, 148, 152–153

122–126, 130–131, 135–136

citizens creating 4–10, 72–73, 74, 86–87

via the Web 35, 36–39, 40–50

elite / republican model 36–37

civic cultures / identity 38–39, 48–50, 159,

and listening 10–14, 17–23, 30–31, 186–187

171–177, 184

and media 55, 81, 159, 175–177, 184–186

civil rights movement 74, 80, 85, 108

via third-party representatives 120, 121–126,

clicktivism 46

130–131, 135–136

climate encyclical (Laudato Si) 79–80

via the Web 40–47

Coles, Raymond 19, 20–21, 220

see also participation; people, the

‘common sense’ and media 57, 60, 67, 68

‘democracy’s colleges’ 77

commons, information 40–42, 141–142, 146–153

Dhlomo-Khize, Khanyi (businesswoman) 92

community media, voice of the people 6, 30,

digital (media) citizenship 41–45, 159, 173–177,

120–136 community organising 82–87

176–177 digital media and participation 21–22, 35,

Connell, Raewyn (academic) 28

159–177

consumption

see also Web

and citizenship 90, 93–96, 99–101

‘Dirty Protests’, Northern Ireland 111

conspicuous 90–93

dissonance 19, 21, 44

politics of 96–99

Dlamini, Mcebo (student protester) 116

corporates influence of 37, 40–41, 139–140, 142, 147–148, 152–153 as victims 58–64

Dobson, Andrew (author) 11, 20–21, 23–24, 28 Donaldson, Andrew (journalist) 59–62 Drum (film) 72–73 Dwane, Yoliswa (Equal Education) 193–194,

Couldry, Nick (academic) 12, 19, 192, 194,

195–196

201–202 Crick, Bernard (political scientist) 81–82 crime and Afrikaner as victim 200, 202, 203, 207–213 and grafitti 147–148, 151 crowds / mobs 8, 73, 117–118 cultural appropriation 143–146 culture and new media 166–167, 173, 175–177 and participation 159, 160–161, 165, 169, 174–175 culture jamming and free speech 139–153 cyberbullying 47

E East Brooklyn Churches (EBC) 84–85 Eastern Cape province 221–222 eavesdropping 30 EBC (East Brooklyn Churches) 84–85 Eco-Ubuntu / Ubuntu 17, 26, 28–29 elections and citizenship 3, 5, 79, 100, 177, 182–183 and democracy 36–37, 38, 81, 86–87, 121, 122–123 and youth 217–218, 219, 221, 223–229 Elion, Michael (artist) 139, 143–147 elites and media 5–6, 146–151, 184–186

D

and public interest 75–76, 140–141, 153

dadirri 29

technocratic 78–82

Declaration of Independence, American 75

see also suburbs, media and power

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‘emotion talk’ as political expression 105–119 see also affectivity / rationality and

H Habermas, Jurgen (philosopher) 95, 111, 112, 115,

citizenship empowerment 28, 38–39, 45, 48, 123, 197–198

122–123, 140 Habib, Adam (vice-chancellor, Wits) 108–109,

see also listening

117

Equal Education 106, 181–198

Hangberg 126–130, 127, 128

expressive / instrumental participation 45–47,

Hangberg Peace and Mediation Forum (PMF)

48, 108

130 Harlem Renaissance 77 hashtag activism 31

F Facebook 40–41, 45–46, 49, 142, 143–145 farm murders 207–208, 210–213 feminism and listening 17, 19, 25 First National Bank (FNB) 58–62 Francis, Pope (Catholic pontiff) 74, 79–80 Fraser, Nancy (academic) 123, 141, 151 free spaces 73, 77, 122–124, 135–136 free speech and hate speech 47, 82, 204, 206, 210

hate speech 47, 82, 204, 206, 210 housing projects, community (Nehemiah Homes) 84–85 Hout Bay Civic Association 129–130, 136 Hout Bay communities 126–131, 127, 128 Hout Bay Ratepayers Association 134 Houtbay Speak (community newspaper) 120, 132–135, 134 Husband, Charles (academic) 24, 28

and power relations 55, 60, 64, 69 right to 5–6, 11, 139, 147, 149–153 freedom political and economic 97, 100, 217–218, 219, 221, 226–227 to listen 11–12, 21, 24

I Imizamo Yethu 126–131, 127, 128 Independent Newspapers 186 Indigenous communities (Australia) citizenship 160, 161 justice and land rights 17, 27 languages 162–165, 163, 164, 170

G Ganz, Marshall (academic) 73–74 gatekeepers / gate openers, journalists as 23, 30–31 GetUp! online campaign organisation 22 global attentiveness 27 Global Voices bridge-blogging project 22 Google 40–41 Gould, Debora B. (academic) 117 government / state business and media 58–64 local 3–4, 120–122, 125–126, 130–131, 183 and the people 7–8, 10, 75–76, 80–82 graffiti 142, 146–148, 151–152 grievability 200, 202, 208, 209, 213

listening to 16, 27–31 inequality and consumption 90–93, 99–101 and listening 22–24, 28, 31 and media 6, 8, 65–67, 184–185 in public spaces 139, 140–141, 148 information commons 141–142, 146–153 and social media 40–42, 44 see also knowledge Institute for a Democratic Alternative in South Africa 82 instrumental / expressive participation 45–47, 48, 108 intermediaries, third-party 120, 123–124, 129–136 Internet see Web / Internet Iran-Contra hearings 81

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Irish Republican Army (IRA) protests 111

Lincoln, Abraham (former USA president) 76,

Isin, E.F. (academic) 4–5, 11, 201 ‘izikhotane’ (conspicuous consumers) 92

80–81 Lipari, L. (academic) 11, 12–13 listening media and democracy 7, 10–14, 18–23,

J

184–186, 218, 225

jamming (cultural) and free speech 139–153

political 17, 18–23, 25, 28–31, 186–187

Jansen, Jonathan (former vice-chancellor, UFS)

as research tool 188–190, 189, 197–198

59, 61, 108, 115–117 Johannesburg Salon 26 journalism ‘back to the people’ 72–74, 75–78 consumerist view of citizens 81–82 as voice or listener 5, 8–9, 10–14, 21–23, 30–31, 196–198 see also media

voice and hearing 200–202 Listening Project 188 local government and citizenship 3–4, 120–122, 125–126, 130–131, 183 Lotman, Yuri (semiotician) 168 #Luister campaign 16 Lyotard, Jean-François (philosopher) 166, 169 M

K Khoza, Reuel (board chairman, Nedbank) 62–64 King, Martin Luther (civil rights activist) 85, 108 Klein, Naomi (author / activist) 140 knowledge agents 163, 169, 173 domains 171–172 and new media 49, 159–177 sharing 163–165, 167, 169, 174–176 sources 172–173 southern 17–18, 25–31 Kota, Ayanda (sanitation activist) 110–111

Madikizela-Mandela, Winnie (activist) 91, 97 mainstream media see media Malema, Julius (politician) 92, 99, 115, 206, 207 Mandela, Nelson (former SA president), media and power 139, 143–146 Mangcu, Xolela (academic) 113–114 Marcus, Gill (former Reserve Bank Governor) 66–67 marginalisation and consumption 90, 91, 96–99 and listening 16–17, 28–31, 184–186, 230 and media 3, 4–10, 14, 22–25, 123–124, 213 see also subalterns Marikana mine shootings (2012) 8, 65, 86,

L

149–150, 151

Lacey, Kate (academic) 11–12, 18, 19, 20, 23, 220

Maxwele, Chumani (poo protester) 105, 108,

Laclau, Ernesto (political theorist) 118 language by number of speakers 167, 168 knowledge and digital media 163–170, 174–176

109, 110 Mbembe, Achille (political theorist) 28–29, 112 media challenges 40–42, 47, 152, 193 and consumer culture 90–93, 95, 97–101, 133

politics of 160–161, 166, 169–170

and listening 10–14, 18–25, 29–31, 230

systems 167–169

middle-class bias 55–69, 105, 116–117

Laudato Si (Pope’s climate encyclical) 79–80 Le Bon, Gustave (scholar and author) 118

promoting citizenship 55, 81, 159, 175–177, 184–186

liberation nationalism 120, 122, 124, 125, 130, 135

and youth 181–182, 192–198, 217–220, 225–230

Lili, Andile (sanitation activist) 109, 110

see also Beeld; Web / Internet

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media (digital) citizenship 42–46, 159, 173–177, 176–177 meta- or micronarratives 166–169

youth 181–182, 187, 190–193, 197–198, 217–218 participatory governance 121, 124 party-society relations 81–82, 120, 125–126,

middle-class see suburbs mobs / crowds 8, 73, 117–118

129–136 patronage politics 3, 125–126, 130–131, 133–134,

Muslim communities in Australian media 24

221–222, 223–225 Peace and Mediation Forum (PMF), Hangberg 130 people, the

N narrative exchange of 201–202, 208–213 meta- or micronarratives 166–169 public 72, 73–75, 84–86 nationalism and citizenship 82, 120, 122, 124–126, 130 Natrass, Nicoli (academic) 112–113, 114–115 Nedbank 62–64 Nehemiah Homes (community housing project) 84–85 neoliberalism challenging 140, 142, 148 influence of 37, 94, 98, 99, 100–101 NGOs (non-governmental organisations) and participation 37, 126, 183 Nicaraguan guerilla-American arms deal 81 Nielsen, G.M. (academic) 4–5, 11 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and participation 37, 126, 183 Noongar people 159–161, 163–165, 165 Noongarpedia project 159, 163–165, 169–177 Northern Theory 26–27 Nxasana, Sizwe (FirstRand CEO) 58–59, 64

democracy and media 8, 72–78, 82–87, 122–123 and technocrats / experts 35, 78–82, 176–177 Perceiving Freedom (artwork) 139, 142, 143, 145 Piketty, Thomas (author) 65 political listening 17, 18–23, 25, 28–31, 186–187 used in research 188–190, 189, 197–198 politics of pain 112–117 poo protests 105, 108–112 ‘possessive individualism’ 57 power and civic participation 38–39 and cultural appropriation 143–146 and media 40–42, 55–69, 184–186, 201–202, 203, 220 voice and listening 8, 10, 23, 25, 27–28, 30 youth views of 226, 228 ‘power law’ in language systems 167–168 prepaid water metres, protest against 111 Price, Max (vice-chancellor, UCT) 107, 117, 149–150 privilege marginalization and listening 17, 23–25, 29, 30–31, 184 and media 57, 68–69 public narrative 72, 73–75, 84–86

O

public spaces

Obama, Barack (former US president) 74, 81

and corporate appropriation 139–142, 143,

P

participation and media 3–4, 11, 47, 95, 97

145–146, 148–149, 150–153 Pagel, Mark (academic) 166–167 participation consumption as 90, 93–96, 99–101 democracy and citizenship 3–7, 18–23, 34–38, 182–183 via the Web 21–22, 38–39, 40–50, 142, 169–170, 175–177

the private in 46, 108, 109–112 public sphere access and inclusivity 11–12, 120, 135–136, 141–142, 150–153 participation and media 3–4, 6, 23, 93, 95, 184 and rational participation 111–112, 115–117, 122–123, 140 and Web participation 35, 43, 46–47, 48

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public universities 76, 149

‘solo sphere’ 45–46

Pyle, Ernie (people’s journalist) 78

South African National Civic Organization (SANCO) 129, 131, 132, 136 South West Aboriginal Land & Sea Council

R race / racism and consumption 90, 91, 96, 98 continuing 16–17, 105–107, 113–115, 122, 139,

(SWALSC) 160, 165, 165, 172 Southern Theory 17–18, 25–31 spaces of appearance 95

205–206

free 73, 77, 122–124, 135–136

and media 120, 125, 135–136

for voice and listening 181, 189, 194, 195,

Ratcliffe, Krista (academic) 25, 30

201, 218

rationality and citizenship see affectivity / rationality Ray-Ban, controversial artwork 139, 142, 144, 145, 146

see also public spaces speaking / speech 11, 18–20, 23, 77, 122–124, 202 spectacle, use and usefulness of 106, 108–112, 115–117, 118

receptivity 19–20, 25 recognition applied in research 188, 189, 190, 191, 195, 197 in political listening 19–21, 23, 28, 184–185, 202, 208

see also graffiti state see government stereotyping 106, 189, 207, 217, 219–220, 230 storytelling media and audience 21, 203, 210, 211–213

reflexivity 29, 201–202, 209 representational politics 120–136, 183 #RhodesMustFall campaign 16, 31, 105, 107–117 ‘Right to be Understood’ 24, 28 ‘right to have rights’ 122 rugby tour, South Africa to Australia (1971) 17

and the people 72, 74, 75, 84–86, 218 student protests 105–119 subalterns 3, 27, 97, 99–101, 141, 151 suburbs, media and power 55–58, 58–67, 68–69, 105, 133, 184–186 survivalist agencies 183 SW Aboriginal Land & Sea Council (SWALSC)

S

160, 165, 165, 172

Sacks, Jared (activist) 114–115 SANCO (SA National Civic Organization) 129, 131, 132, 136 sanitation activism 109–112 scientific method 77 Seekings, Jeremy (academic) 112–113, 114–115 semiospheres 167–169 Shalala, Donna (head of Clinton Foundation) 79 silence, speech and listening 20, 29, 190 Silverstone, Roger (academic) 24 Slabbert, Frederik van Zyl (politician) 82 slacktivism 46 slow activism 106 social media and democracy 16, 31, 35, 40–42, 60, 142 see also Web / Internet social movements and participation 126, 183

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Media & Citizenship.indb 240

T technocracy / technological solutionism 35, 74, 78–82, 164–165, 169, 176–177 the people see people, the The Sentinel (community newspaper) 120, 132–135, 134 third parties and citizenship 120, 122–124, 130–131, 135–136 Tokolos Stencils Collective 139, 141, 142, 146–153 township entrepreneurs 92–93 TRC (Truth and Reconciliation Commission) 28, 73, 144 Treatment Action Campaign 106, 125, 181 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) 28, 73, 144

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U

problematic use 42–47

Ubuntu / Eco-Ubuntu 17, 26, 28–29

technical architecture 41–42, 142 see also Wikipedia Welsh language / culture 160–161, 166, 169–170

V Van Zyl Slabbert, Frederik (politician) 82 vandalism and free speech 146–150, 152 victims corporates as 58–64 creating 9, 200, 202, 203, 208, 209–214

what or who, and listening 9, 220 Wicipedia Cymraeg (Welsh Wikipedia) 170 Wikipedia 161–165, 162, 167, 169, 173, 174–177 Wisconsin Idea 79 Wolin, Sheldon (political theorist) 74–76, 80–81

media as 56, 61 and perpetrators 73, 82 Victorian (imperial) progressivism 166

Y Yengeni, Tony (former Chief Whip of

voice

Parliament) 92

and media 7, 8–10, 11–14, 30, 184–186

youth

media and youth 192, 196–198, 218, 220

civic participation 181–182, 187, 190–193,

participation and citizenship 18–24, 120,

197–198

125–126, 135–136, 201–202

conspicuous consumption 92–93 culture and new media 169, 171, 173, 174, 177 and mainstream media 6, 192–193, 217–220,

W

230

Wales, Jimmy (Wikipedia co-founder) 164, 175

voting behaviour 219, 223–229

water metres (prepaid), protest against 111 ‘We can’t breathe’ campaign (USA) 115 Web / Internet

Z

and knowledge sharing 163–165, 171–174

Zimbabwe, youth protests 107

and participation 21–22, 38–39, 40–50, 142,

Zuma, Jacob G. (SA president) 86, 92, 121,

169–170, 175–177

203–204

political economy of 40–41

Index

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