I represent the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), where I serve as its national spokesperson. As the largest trade union in South Africa, NUMSA represents over 300,000 metalworkers, and I extend greetings on behalf of all 350,000 of them. It is an honor to be one of the guest panelists at this very important communication conference, and I am especially excited to be here in China. This is my first visit to China, and I am very impressed; it has been a wonderful experience so far. For me, this conference comes at a crucial time because it focuses on communication as a tool for solidarity. By the end of the conference, we must be able to answer what the best strategy is to achieve solidarity and how we can implement it. For this panel, I will be focusing on media and the class struggle in South Africa. The purpose of my presentation is to discuss the challenges we face as an organization and our efforts to expand the voices of the working class. This is a topic that is close to my heart.
Before joining NUMSA, I worked as a journalist in corporate media for 10 years, including for some very well-known media organizations, such as Eyewitness News (EWN) and eNCA. I mention Eyewitness News (EWN) because it was through this organization that I first heard of Paula Slier; she was a correspondent for EWN, and I was and still am a great admirer of her work. It is truly wonderful for me to be on this platform discussing this issue. I remember my first day on the job as a journalist at EWN. My editor asked me what I thought my job was. My response was to "defend the defenseless, to be a voice to the voiceless." I was so excited. She looked at me and said, "No, that’s not your job. Your job is to get content for the benefit of advertisers." For her to be so explicit—that media operates to defend and advance the interests of advertisers and corporate entities—was a real eye-opening experience for me.
What she said largely defines the attitude of the media in South Africa. South African media is extremely corporate and neoliberal, and it unashamedly advances the interests of Western imperialism. This is the case across the board, whether you are looking at public corporations, such as the massive South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). Across the South African media landscape, no matter which radio station you turn on or TV channel you watch, you will encounter a narrative that advances imperialism, neocapitalism, and neocolonialism. It is a narrative that is particularly anti-working class, anti-Black, and very hostile to any alternative viewpoint.
This issue was highlighted in 2012 when mineworkers in Marikana, a very poor area in the North West of South Africa, embarked on an unprotected wildcat strike. Lonmin, a platinum producer, is based there. In August 2012, the strike ended with 34 of the workers being shot dead on live TV by members of the South African Police Service. The Marikana massacre has come to define what South Africa is today: a country that was liberated by the progressive ANC government, but which now actively oppresses the working class.
What is ironic about what happened in Marikana is that the decision by the police to shoot at unarmed workers was triggered by an email sent by Cyril Ramaphosa, who is our current president. Cyril, who was sitting on the board of Lonmin, wrote an email to members of the security cluster, and they responded with heavy-handedness to these unarmed workers. The narrative that emerged from the media about the Marikana massacre was one that blamed the workers for the protest and positioned them as violent savages. In the media's view, if they were massacred, it was their own fault.
South African media never views capitalism as violent. If you had gone to Marikana at that time—and as a practicing journalist, I spent a lot of time there—the violence of capitalism was expressed in the area's underdevelopment; there was no sanitation, no decent housing, and no electricity. And yet one of the biggest platinum firms extracts wealth from that area and gives nothing back to the community. That is ultimately what the workers in Marikana were fighting for: a better life. It is ironic that a man like Ramaphosa, who was a trade unionist and helped form the National Union of Mineworkers, was the one who inspired the security forces to react with such violence. I would urge you to read an analysis by Ilva Gómez de, of the University of Johannesburg, who researched the reporting on Marikana. She found that it was characterized by "embedded journalism, sensationalism, and polarization of views." She says it showed that the media was a powerful loudspeaker for the interests of the South African political and socioeconomic nexus, neglecting the fundamental problems underlying labor relations in South Africa.
Another classic example of the hostility and intolerance the South African media has toward alternative views is their coverage of the conflict in Ukraine. It is a completely one-sided narrative, with absolutely no tolerance for dissenting views on the issue in South Africa. Almost all media platforms, especially the so-called independents, have described it as an invasion by Russia. They criticize the South African government for being neutral and will not tolerate any dissenting voices. Part of the reason I am so exhausted is that I was engaged in a Twitter debate last night with one of these right-wing journalists who was so offended by my comments when I said that South Africa should not get involved in this war, that we should advance our own interests, and that at the end of the day, this is not neutral; this is about North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) aggression. His response to me was, "Oh, it means that NUMSA supports the slaughtering of babies."
This is the kind of mentality you deal with in the South African media discourse, where you cannot even engage in a nuanced debate on issues because the framework that dominates South African media is a framework defined by the West and Bretton Woods institutions, which are advancing the continuation of imperialism in all of these newsrooms. At the same time, there is a real fear and hatred of communism, and the fact that Russia is involved has raised these issues again because during the apartheid era, communism was something that the apartheid government was obsessed with. This is why it is so important that we are here discussing these issues. I really enjoyed the input from Professor Vijay Prashad, who spoke about the suffocating nature of corporate media, which is a perfect description, because there is no space for alternative views. Even if you offer a different opinion, you will be labeled.
Briefly, the media landscape in South Africa consists of 40 commercial and public broadcast stations. The largest media house by far is the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), which has over 30 million viewers in the country. They remain the most popular news platform, and of course, they also have many very popular radio stations. However, unfortunately, even though the SABC is a public broadcaster, its narrative has been heavily influenced by these right-wing, so-called independent media houses, so they also churn out the same propaganda that many of these organizations do.
So how has NUMSA managed in this environment? NUMSA's strategy has been to unashamedly promote the working class and our message of Marxism-Leninism. The reason we are able to get to a point where, whether they like it or not, they broadcast our message every day and every statement we issue is because NUMSA's power is not just in the media; its power is on the ground. Its power is in the 350,000 metalworkers who can shut down the economy when they go on strike. So, even if they cannot stand us, they cannot ignore us. I think that whatever media strategy we are going to build, we must ensure that we take the movements with us. We must ensure that the working class is the one actually driving that agenda and message, because that is where the real power lies.
Part of the work we have been doing to advance this agenda is the training we have been conducting at the Nkrumah School in Bela-Bela. For us, this work is key to tackling the suffocating narrative we see in the media. Dr. M'membe was absolutely right when he said you cannot rely on imperialists to drive your message; we must build our own platforms. That is exactly what the Nkrumah School is doing. The school is in Bela-Bela, but this year we actually held it in Ghana, which was really exciting. I love Ghana and always enjoy my visits there. It was a very interesting experience to engage with the students. We get students from all over the continent and places like Brazil, where we have relationships, and we take them through media training. In that process, we learn a lot about the conditions facing the working class in those different parts of the world. We have also established partnerships with organizations like People’s Dispatch and have been working very closely with Pan African TV. We have also done some work with teleSUR in the past, and we hope to build on that at this conference.
I believe the key to our ability to defeat this crisis is to continue this work—to build this platform and this alternative. As the majority, we should dominate. We should not spend our time begging for airtime from right-wingers. We should be the ones who dominate the narrative, and ultimately that is what we should be striving for. I am grateful that we have the opportunity to do this, that we can find solutions, and I really look forward to hearing from some of you about other ways we can deepen this interaction. At the end of the day, when we walk away from this conference, we must strengthen these networks so that as we go into the future, it is the voice of the majority that dominates our media discourse and not the voice of the elite minority that is responsible for our suffering.
(Transcribed from recording and edited.)