» End of the saga of the president’s girlfriends

End of the saga of the president’s girlfriends

February 10th, 2009

I was struck by how dignified and appropriate was the President’s response to the collapse of the story of his pregnant, young girlfriend. He chose his words carefully, and he chose them well.

“I will drop a line to the Press Ombudsman,” he said.

It is not often that a leader emerges with heightened stature from a sordid affair like this. Indeed, his silence for a week raised some eyebrows. Retrospectively, he was presidential in his decision to stay quiet and give a measured response only when it appeared to be all over.

And he has chosen exactly the right path. The Press Ombudsman is a self-regulatory tool for quick investigation and resolution of conflicts over media coverage, and it is the way for the president to go on this. So often, the government and the ANC have been lambasting the press and its accountability without taking the matter up with the Ombudsman. They dismiss the effectiveness of the Ombudsman without testing it.

Motlanthe’s response stood in marked contrast to that of ANC spokesman Carl Niehaus’, who was quoted saying that the coverage showed “a lack of objectivity, bias and an intent to harm the good image of respected leaders”. What a load of hogwash! Take a lead from the president on the power of understatement, Carl.

Also, realise who your friends are. The Star is hardly hostile to the government and the ANC.

It also stands in contrast to the ANC president’s flurry of legal actions against editors and cartoonists. To enter the election period, and thereafter the presidency, by conducting your relationship with the media through the courts is wholly inappropriate and self-destructive. Zuma needs to rise above this as he ascends to the presidency.

But to return to the Motlanthe case, there is no doubt that the Star is embarrassed by having been led up the creak by some strange woman making wild allegations. But I defended their right to publish and I still would, though I am sure that everyone, particularly the Star, regrets not having found a way to double-check this woman’s story.

Entry Filed under: Anton Harber, Journalism, Media regulation, Print

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Anton Harber: Media

Professor Anton Harber directs the Journalism and Media Studies Programme at Wits University. He is former editor of the Mail & Guardian.
Full bio

Daily newspaper sales, South Africa
(Ave sales Jul-Dec)
1960 - 681 053 (Population 17,3m)
1970 - 723 566 (22m)
1980 - 803 229 (27,5m)
1990 - 1 214 396 (35,2m)
2000 - 1 117 886 (44m)
2006 - 1 600 000 (47,3m)
2011 - 1 310 000 (49m)

(Sources: ABC and nationmaster.com)

“It was pure political theatre. The excited room was filled with government officials, government consultants, quasi-government agencies, politicians and pupils from government schools. As if on cue, the room rang with applause as one education victory after another was claimed. This was, after all, the annual drama in which the minister of basic education appears on stage to announce the Grade 12 National Senior Certificate (NSC) results …” - Educationist Jonathan Jansen, one of the few with the credibility to look critically at this “celebratory orgy of mediocrity”.

“The (Incwala) ceremony is cloaked in secrecy and marks the (Swaziland) king’s return to public life after a period of withdrawal and spiritual contemplation. Among its highlights is a symbolic demonstration by the king of his power and dominance in a process involving his penetration of a black bull … But last year’s selected bull, according to a recent account from a whistle-blowing Incwala initiate, objected strongly, and threw off Africa’s last absolute monarch.” - Some surprises in this (un-bylined) account of Swaziland politics in Southern African Report

“When the Great Zucchini arrived that Saturday morning, Don had no idea who he was. Frankly, he didn’t look like a great anything. He looked like a house painter, Don thought, with some justification. He wears no costume. He was in painter’s pants, a coffee-stained shirt and a two-day growth of beard. He toted his beat-up props in beat-up steamer trunks, with ripped faux leather and broken hinges hanging askew.” - A classic of magazine profiling, by Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post.

Diepsloot (Jonathan Ball, 2011)

Diesploot: Of Frogs and Fractals, a public lecture at the University of Johannesburg, 4 August 2011

Troublemakers - The Best of South Africa’s Investigative Journalism (Jacana, 2101), edited by Anton Harber and Margaret Renn

Introduction - The Troublemakers: An account of the rise of a new wave of investigative journalism in South Africa.

What is Left Unsaid: Reporting the South African HIV Epidemic, edited by Kristin Palitza, Natalie Ridgard, Helen Struthers and Anton Harber (Fanele, 2010)