2011 INTERNATIONAL GOLDEN JUBILEE CONFERENCE

The conference was the highlight of the Golden Jubilee celebrations in 2011 as it resonates with the key aim of the Academy to stimulate interest in the English language and its literatures as well as promote the effective use of English as a national resource. The conference invited established and emerging researchers, teachers and policy makers to engage with challenges and issues in the areas of literature, literacy and language. The area of English Literature included both papers on texts and theoretical analyses, especially in the areas of postcoloniality and global literature. The range of papers within the theme of literacy was also wide. The potential that English has in literacy education in a multilingual society, with particular emphasis on reading and critical educational approaches in English teaching, is of pressing concern for contemporary southern Africa. The concept of literacy used here goes far beyond acquiring a set of technical skills for reading and writing, focusing on a capacity to use these skills in making sense of the world. Literacy is at the heart of basic education for all, and is essential for eradicating poverty and ensuring sustainable development, peace and democracy. Within the theme of language education, papers addressed the repertoire of challenges and innovations in educational/work contexts (schools, colleges, universities, workplaces).

The opening of the conference took place at the cocktail and awards evening held on 6 September 2011. The conference was opened by the President of the English Academy, Professor Stanley Ridge, and the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic) at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Professor Anthony Staak. A full house attended Athol Fugard‘s plenary lecture, ‘Millstones or milestones? The journey of a South African bastard‘. Professor Mastin Prinsloo and Professor Stanley Ridge delivered the other two plenary lectures.

Five English Academy awards were made during the cocktail evening: the Olive Schreiner Prize for Poetry to Finuala Dowling, the Thomas Pringle Award for Reviews to Michiel Heyns, the Thomas Pringle Award for a Literary Article to Leon de Kock, the Thomas Pringle Award for a Short Story to Stephen Watson (received by Tanya Wilson), and the Percy FitzPatrick Prize for Youth Literature to Andy Petersen.

The programme consisted of 114 paper presentations and delegates from 23 countries attended. The papers addressed a wide range of issues: Literacy and work/community/diversity; Inequalities and epistemologies: exploring knowledges, oracies and literacies; Literacy in schools and higher education; Multimodal literacies; Postcolonial and global writings; Literature in schools and universities; English language education; and English and Englishes.

The panel discussion on South African Literature included presentations by Sindiwe Magona, Ronnie Govender, Finuala Dowling and Andy Petersen. The participants in the Translation panel discussion were Christine Marshall Cloete, Andrew Foley, Nonzuko Gxekwa and Michiel Heyns.

The English Academy Golden Jubilee dinner was held at the Bloemendal Restaurant in Durbanville and the highlight of the evening was the award of the Academy Gold Medal to Athol Fugard.

The conference was very successful and we are grateful to the National Lotteries Distribution Trust Fund for their generous sponsorship.

Two issues of the English Academy Review have been set aside for the publication of peer reviewed, revised articles emerging from the conference.

IN CELEBRATION OF ENGLISH: GOLDEN JUBILEE SEMINAR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VENDA

At a meeting of the Academy‘s Council in 2010, regional Vice Presidents were presented with a challenge to organize various events in their regions to celebrate the Academy‘s Golden Jubilee. The number of events that have been hosted in various regions this year proves that the Vice Presidents took the challenge to heart. Representing the Limpopo Province, regional Vice President Dr Nande Neeta organized a Golden Jubilee Seminar at the University of Limpopo. The seminar took place on 04 August 2011 in the University‘s Council Chambers and was attended by staff and students of various departments within the university, including the departments of English and Anthropology. The theme of the seminar was ‘The pervasiveness of language across disciplines: The challenge for second language education‘.

The seminar was dovetailed with the Academy‘s Commemorative Lecture in honour of Es‘kia Mphahlele. With Limpopo being the birth place of this literary icon, it was considered ideal to merge the two events and thus give the Academy a resounding presence in the Limpopo region

The proceedings for the day were conducted by the Dean of the School of Human and social Sciences at the University of Venda, Professor MA Makgopa. After a brief welcome, the Dean invited the Vice Chancellor of the University, Professor PA Mbati, to give the official opening. In his heartwarming speech, the Vice Chancellor thanked the Academy for choosing the University of Venda to host its prestigious event. He also underscored the importance of having extended discussions on language in higher education institutions. Speaking on behalf of the Academy and representing the President, Professor Rosemary Gray enlightened the audience on the activities of the Academy in its 50 years of existence. Audience members were pleased to hear of the Academy‘s successes over the years in stirring useful debates in the public sphere.

The highlight of this first part of the day‘s proceedings was the Commemorative Lecture presented by Professor Nhlanhla Maake, an Academy Council member and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Limpopo. In his lecture titled ‘The new postcolonial threat: The crossroads of metaphor and reality‘, Professor Maake gave a brave exposition of the mediocre power politics that has infested higher education institutions across the country. His lucid discussion of the phenomenon of white collar crimes and blue collar crimes was as fascinating to the audience as his comprehensive exemplification of their manifestations. Whether it was for his excellent speaking skills or for his profound intellectualism or both, Professor Maake received a standing ovation at the conclusion of his delivery

The second part of the programme consisted of four presentations on the seminar theme as well as a discussion session. In a paper entitled ‘Academic literacy‘, Dr Phyllis Kaburise of the Department of English addressed current debates in the media and other fora about the state of academic literacy in higher education institutions. Following on her cue, Dr Neeta in her presentation on teachers‘ professional knowledge in the teaching of English as a second language probed into current debates on proposed solutions for the problems plaguing the South African education system. Moving away slightly from the focus on English in academic institutions, Ms H Mulaudzi from the University‘s Committee Section spoke about English as a basic necessity for people in a globalised world. The last speaker for the day was Mr IPE Ndhambi from the Department of Anthropology who got the audience enthralled with his lighthearted discussion on the need for recognizing the relevance of English in all disciplines across the university.

On the whole, the papers were rich, insightful and provocative. The discussions that followed the presentations attest to this. Key points raised during the presentations were picked up and further debated during this time. Among the many issues that were identified as problematic was the discrepancy between the advocacy of the use of indigenous languages in higher education institutions and the increasing demand for knowledge of English in the corporate world. Of course, in a forum of this nature it is not unexpected that opinions on topical issues would vary. One point, however, met with general consensus: the need to reinstitute a culture of regular critical debates in higher education institutions as a way of arriving at needed resolutions. There was great enthusiasm by all present to carry on with the discussions after the official closing. In his vote of thanks, Dr TD Thobejane from the Institute for Gender and Youth Studies extended heartfelt gratitude to all &emdash both organizers and participants &emdash who had contributed in making the event the resounding success that it was.

Tribute to Tagore Conference

A conference, entitled A TRIBUTE TO TAGORE, was held at the Indian Consulate on Wednesday 15th June 2011. The conference was a joint venture of the Indian Consulate in Durban and The English Academy of Southern Africa, which celebrates its Golden Jubilee this year.

Rabindranath Tagore, one of the intellectual giants of all time, was born on 7 May 1861, and passed away on 7 August 1941. He was an eclectic and prolific writer, and produced poetry, plays, musical plays, novels, short stories, songs, as well as works of art. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, a singular honour at the time for a nonwestern.

It is not surprising that there have been commemorations in different parts of the world, to mark Tagore‘s 150th birth anniversary. Apart from the subcontinent, celebrations have been held in the United Kingdom, South Korea, Bosnia, Canada, Mauritius, and in different parts of the United States.

Earlier in June a symposium was held in honour of Tagore at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC. It is interesting to note that UNESCO is celebrating Tagore, Pablo Neruda [the Chilean poet and Nobel Prize winner] and Aime Cesaire (the wellknown figure from the African diapora) in a project that UNESCO has termed the “RECONCILED UNIVERSAL”.

Inspired by Tagore, the theme of the Durban conference was LITERATURE AND SOCIETY, with all the sessions being planned to reflect on the role that literature plays in society.

Apart from selected Readings from Tagore, the conference, held on the eve of Youth or Soweto Day, included reflections on South African apartheid writing. It featured local playwrights, such as Ronnie Govender, Rajesh Gopie and Ashwin Singh, and Durban novelists, such as Aziz Hassim and Shireen Ahmed. Noted social commentators such as Dr Ashwin Desai and Mr Ami Nanakchand made valuable contributions to the deliberations.

Among others who attended and participated were Mrs Ela Gandhi, Prof Priya Narismulu, Mr Mervin Ogle, Prof Lindy Stiebe, Dr T P Naidoo of the Indian Academy of South Africa and Mr Farouk Khan, a noted media personality.

The programme was coordinated by Dr Devarakshanam [Betty] Govinden and Mr Thayalan Reddy, from the English Academy, in collaboration with the Consul General of India.

In welcoming the guests, His Excellency, Mr Anil K Sharan, the Consul General of India, Durban, stated that the Consulate was offering a platform for ongoing conversations among members of the wider community on a range of relevant issues. He also hoped to see further commemorations of Tagore and other luminaries.

Professor Stanley Ridge, President of the English Academy of Southern Africa in his welcome address, outlined the mission and vision of the Academy, which is actively engaged in projects fostering linguistic growth and excellence in a multilingual society.

The various sessions inspired lively debate and comment on the dynamics of literature and culture in South Africa. There was critical interest in the way new writing could reflect contemporary issues and not focus solely on the past. A slide presentation featuring Tagore and a variety of South African writers formed part of the evening‘s proceedings.

The evening proceedings also provided the Academy with an opportunity to acknowledge one of its most senior members, a worldrenowned conservationist, Dr Ian Player, whose philosophy, activism and writings on the wilderness resonate closely with Tagore‘s writings on the forest in particular, and Earth Democracy in general.

Golden Jubilee Function: KwaZuluNatal

Seminar: ‘Newspapers Today: their Role in Society’

Time: 8.30 am to 12.30 am on Saturday 3 September 2011

Venue: St Nicholas Diocesan School, Jabu Ndlovu Street, Pietermaritzburg

The seminar aimed, within the Academy‘s broad vision of “South Africa as a democratic society in which effective English is available to all who wish to use it,” to emphasise the vital role that newspapers can play in promoting the values and imperatives of the South African Constitution, and to examine the ways (political, economic, social, technological) in which newspapers find themselves challenged.

The organising committee had hoped for an audience of about 60 people, but gratifyingly 85 turned up. Many sectors of society were represented: university and school teachers, newspaper people, social activists of various kinds, as well as concerned members of the public.

There were five speakers, each of whom spoke for between 15 and 20 minutes. The programme was arranged in such a way as to allow for a good deal of discussion, and participants did indeed contribute a great deal to the value of the occasion.

The keynote speech was given by Professor Elwyn Jenkins, who during the seminar was presented by Professor Stanley Ridge, the President of the Academy, with the certificate which confirmed his status as an Honorary Life Vice President. Professor Jenkins offered a wideranging and perceptive survey of the main topics of the seminar. Three of the speakers were newspaper editors: Yves Vanderhaegen, the acting editor of The Witness; Deon Delport, the editor of The Independent on Saturday; and Aakash Bramdeo, the editor of The Post. They spoke with the full knowledge and experience of accomplished and thoughtful professional journalists. The final address was given by Professor Martin Prozesky, who is wellknown as a writer and speaker on ethical issues. He stressed the strengths and weaknesses, in ethical terms, of both the English language and of the media. At the end Professor Colin Gardner made a few summarising remarks.

All of the five papers were interesting, challenging and strongly delivered. They were appreciated by the participants and led to lively, sometimes impassioned discussion. Among the many issues that were raised were the following: current attempts to control the media and the probable reasons for this; the importance of press freedom and the history of it in South Africa; the threats and the opportunities offered to newspapers by the electronic media; the crucial fact that newspapers usually provide credible information; the uncertainty of the technological future; the need to appeal to young readers; the question of whether journalism itself is threatened by current developments; the need for newspapers to be relevant and to have focus and passion; the degree to which English is associated with “whiteness” and is therefore seen as having been complicit in apartheid; the value (perhaps doubtful) of newspapers as watchdogs; the problems of functioning in a multicultural and multilingual society; the often complex ethical issues that newspapers have to face; the problem of getting people with power to take ethical values seriously; the ways in which newspapers can be made use of in schools.

[The papers are attached to this report.]

Academy brochures and application forms were available on a table at the entrance to the hall. Whether the Academy gained any new members of not, the reputation of the Academy was certainly enhanced by the occasion.

Colin Gardner

Elwyn Jenkins

Keynote address: English Academy seminar, 3 September 2011

Keynote speaker, Professor Jenkins, with Academy President, Professor Stanley Ridge at the Pietermaritzburg Jubilee Seminar

This was the heritage of the English Academy of Southern Africa when it was founded 50 years ago, in 1961, and it is the heritage that we are celebrating today. Although an early statement of intent said, “The English Academy is not a ‘pressure group‘ and does not seek either controversy or publicity,” it did have as one of its ten Aims, “To oppose trends and policies inimical to a full and free education in English and a full and free use of English as an official language of the Republic of South Africa.” In 1979, Dr Ken Hartshorne summarized in his presidential address what he called the Academy‘s “fundamental values and principles”: “the rights of the individual (particularly the right to an education that will develop the individual‘s full potential), the rule of law, and the defence of free speech and free expression, whether in literature or in the press”.

Inevitably, the Academy took part in a number of public battles against the National Party government. For example, in May 1976, one month before the Soweto youth uprising, the Academy issued a desperate call, saying that “as a matter of urgency” the government should review the educational system. There is no time to go into details today, but the very names recall the constant threats to the freedoms that the Academy stood for: the National Education Council, the Undesirable Publications Bill, the Publications Control Board, the Publication and Entertainments Bill, the AdvocateGeneral Bill, the Steyn Commission of Inquiry into the Media, the Commission of Inquiry into the Creative Arts, the approved reading lists for schools, the1984 White Paper on Education, the stamp issuing policy of the Post Office, and &emdash yes &emdash the Verwoerd Prize for English Literature. No wonder the Protection of State Information Bill that is currently before Parliament brings a sense of déjà vu to some of us who lived through those oppressive years.

Control of the media

Formal threats to the media have attracted a lot of attention this year. One of the most notable achievements of the organized press was when the National Editors Forum, through the courts, forced a parliamentary select committee to open its proceedings to the public.

The Protection of State Information Bill bears a doublespeak title that assumes the public are gullible enough to accept anything the government tells them. Well, its promoters have learnt otherwise. It is the freedom of expression that we have enjoyed under our new Constitution &emdash far more than was tolerated by the Nationalist government &emdash that has given exposure to the opposition to this bill from prominent people, organisations of civil society such as Right2Know, and the public at large. The newspapers have given their efforts coverage and provided a forum for them to argue their case. The bill still poses various threats to our constitutional rights, and we, the members of the public, are relying on newspapers and other media to continue their ruthless exposure of its flaws.

The Media Appeals Tribunal that the ANC proposes has likewise been the subject of fierce debate. Its supporters have given serious, heartfelt accounts of why it is necessary to have an external control mechanism for the media and why it should not be feared. They point out that there have been some high profile cases of excesses by journalists in recent years. After a columnist in the Sowetan was fired last month for his personal attack on the editor of another newspaper, and the editor of the Sowetan resigned, the Mail & Guardian asked in an editorial where were the “internal checks and balances we have in newspapers”, and concluded, “Our industry has to start to be more reflective and take on board concerns about credibility and accountability.”

Whether or not the current organ of selfregulation, the Press Ombudsman, is effective, the question remains as to whether any extra checks are needed. For example, the ANC has not responded to a simple analysis by the South African Institute of Race Relations that of 365 complaints received by the Press Ombudsman in the last three years only 12 per cent &emdash 20 complaints &emdash came from the ANC and that of those, two thirds were decided in favour of the ANC or the government.

The call for a Media Appeals Tribunal is supported not by logic but hysteria. Julius Malema calls the media “the enemy”, and at a memorial service for Albertina Sisulu Jesse Duarte said, “We must remember that the media will never be on the side of the ANC.” If these views are representative of the ANC, the impartiality of its proposed Tribunal is immediately suspect. The prevailing ideologies of the Tripartite Alliance are nationalism and socialism, both of which are antithetical to freedom of expression. It seems that, just as in the days of apartheid, freedom of speech will have to be protected by liberal institutions. It is ironic that the liberal English Academy campaigned against the Nationalist government‘s silencing of a young poet named Jeremy Cronin.

The ANC‘s attacks on the newspapers are characterised by outrageous utterances and bullyboy tactics, such as the recent announcement by the government Communications Head, Jimmy Manyi, that the government would advertise only in newspapers whose coverage helped its communication strategy, or sending a posse of police to make a highly publicised arrest of a journalist. The assaults on journalists outside Luthuli House during the disciplinary hearing of Malema and other ANCYL leaders can be seen as a consequence of irresponsible utterances by ANC leaders.

It is therefore no wonder that the National Editors Forum and Print Media South Africa announced in July the formation of a Press Freedom Commission to investigate selfregulation mechanisms within South Africa‘s print media. Inevitably, the ANC sharply criticised the Commission, saying that it was already flawed because it focussed only on selfregulation. In his reply, the chairman of the Commission, former Chief Justice Pius Langa, adopted a temperate approach that is in keeping with the dignity of the rule of law that has characterised the country‘s highest aspirations since 1994. He said, “Let‘s push the boundaries of this selfregulation until it is found to fail; only then will people be entitled to look for something else more effective.”

Freedom of speech

South Africa is endowed with an astonishing number of bodies and laws to guarantee civic liberties and also ensure that anyone whose rights have been impinged upon has redress. Do we need a Media Appeals Tribunal when we have, in addition to common law, to name only a few, the Broadcasting Complaints Commission, the Advertising Standards Authority, the Public Protector, the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act, the Consumer Protection Act, the Equality Courts, and, as a final resort, the Constitutional Court?

Media freedom flourishes in this environment, and in return the free press actively promotes a public climate in which civic freedoms are taken as the norm. The South African public hardly notices nowadays that we enjoy the rule of law, free and peaceful elections, academic freedom, religious freedom, independent civil society, an autonomous legal profession and prosecution service, independent courts, the free market system, private enterprise and entrepreneurship. We just take it for granted that the Witness can run an extended debate in its correspondence columns over atheism, evolution and Christianity. Would a local paper in the American Bible Belt dare to do this? Just listen to radio talk shows and read the blogs! Young South African addicts of the social media have no idea what it is to live in a less free country.

Of course these grandsounding institutions do not always work in practice. The media have not always been as alert to infringements of rights as they could have been. Following the government‘s backing down over the Protection of Information Bill, John KaneBerman, CEO of the South African Institute of Race Relations, remarked: “The media had previously been willing to support the steady stream of intrusive legislation emanating from the ANC since it came to power in 1994. Newspapers were now getting a taste of the medicine they had been happy to see prescribed to others. Perhaps in future they would defend the freedom of others as vigorously as they were now defending their own.”

Internet publishing

So far I have concentrated on the oldfashioned, but everpertinent, debate on the freedom of the press, but I am sure that in today‘s discussions we are also going to hear more about the major revolution in the publishing of newspapers that has taken place in the last twenty years, namely the advent of online publishing on the Internet. As I will explain, the two are not unconnected.

The term “print media”, although still used, is an anachronism. The publishing of traditional newspapers online, and access to uptothe minute news from nontraditional news sources available online and through cellphone and television, can be regarded as a challenge to traditional print media. Evidence for this is the dramatic drop in sales of print newspapers and the closure of some papers in the UK and US.

To the reader, one effect of online publishing that is apparent is that news is now immediately available. But the temptation &emdash or drive &emdash for newspapers to go public straight away holds threats for the standard of journalism.

A second effect, according to gloomy friends of mine, is that noone will read the background articles and opinion pieces that used to give newspapers the edge over shallow radio and television news. I know that you can select these items from the newspapers‘ website menus, but the temptation is to click on the sensational headlines or take the easy way out by clicking on the “most read articles” icon. Since quality background journalism is an important feature of newspapers, and one that I hope teachers use in the classroom, it is to be hoped that it will continue to be published.

The third effect of online publishing is what will happen to newspapers as the place of record. Researchers will continue to depend on newspapers. Digital records can, in theory, be better than microfilm archives because of the ease of search and retrieval. I only hope that newspapers will be assiduous in ensuring that the public have access to full records of back copies of their electronic publications.

Social media

A striking feature of a web page of a newspaper is the immediate interaction with readers. They are encouraged to respond to every article simply by clicking on an icon and adding their tuppence ha‘penny‘s worth. Radio stations and television channels also have their Facebook and Twitter sites and encourage the public to contribute. This interaction is so much faster and less formal than the old letters to the editor. And yet it would appear to have stimulated the traditional correspondence as well, judging from the letters to the editors in our newspapers today.

Any government trying to control the media today is operating in a very different world to the Nationalists in the apartheid era. The social media are rampant. We can‘t talk any more about “the press” as separate from “the media” &emdash the printed press has dissolved into cyberspace. The social media can scoop the newspapers. In this country, cellphone images of a drunken judge were reproduced in the media and a cellphone sequence showing a pop star and his friend preparing for a drag race that would kill four schoolboys was shown in court, and a video on the Internet exposed the Reitz Four at the University of the Free State. Thanks to the social media, there is little the South African government can do to suppress debate, even should it wish to, but, as the Protection of Information Bill indicates, it can suppress the actual information that the media can provide.

Ethical issues

Electronic communications offer the press possibilities and temptations. The UK was shaken recently by the hacking scandal at the News of the World, where a journalist paid an investigator to listen in to, among others, the cell phone of an abducted and murdered girl. Another newspaper, the Guardian, exposed the scandal. Writing in the Guardian, Simon Jenkins observed that what had happened reflected the pressure being exerted on the print media by the “trillions of signals flooding the web”. In other words, the developments that I have been talking about are not just technological advances, but profound social changes that bring with them moral and ethical challenges.

In South Africa, there have been some high profile leaks this year that serious commentators have questioned. I have been celebrating this morning the civil freedoms that we enjoy. The right to know is in tension with the individual‘s right to privacy and the need for confidentiality in certain aspects of government, and newspapers are where the public can see this tension played out.

Newspapers in schools

I close with some remarks about the role of newspapers in education. The English Academy has, since its inception, been involved in education. Among other projects, it ran an English Language Teaching Information Centre in Johannesburg and speech festivals in township schools. It publishes an online magazine on English teaching for teachers called Teaching English Today, and funds prizes for learners and bursaries for English teachers. We believe that newspapers offer a readily available and cheap resource for use in many aspects of the curriculum such as English and literacy, history, economics and Life Orientation. We urge teachers to make use of the educational supplements that newspapers publish and independent initiatives such as the “Learn the News” project, which is on display here today.

If our young people learn to read newspapers critically under the guidance of their teachers they will learn better than anywhere else what civil society in South African is about and how to participate in making this country, as Professor Gardner wrote in The Witness last week, a more humane society.

Conscience, Ethical Intelligence and Newspapers

Martin Prozesky

Presented at the Golden Jubilee Function, Pietermaritzburg

3 September 2011

Good morning everyone. My paper will be in three sections: I shall talk about the English Academy, about conscience and ethical intelligence at this time, and about newspapers and ethics.

The English Academy

Thank you and congratulations to the English Academy for 50 years of service to English in South Africa. Its vision is one that I certainly support.

Now a word or two about English in connection with ethics:

• English is a major ally of ethics because of its global reach and its importance in South Africa
• But it is also a burden to ethics in South Africa and globally because it is a bloodstained language, like others that have been the language of invaders, conquerors, exploiters and imperialists
• That makes the Academy‘s commitment to ethical, social values essential and redemptive

Conscience and Ethical Intelligence

Firstly, ethics. Living on the basis of the good is the only basis for a worthwhile global and local future.

Why? Because it is the only power (even in religion) that can control the crocodile within us and overcome its appetite for lies and violence.

[Brain scientists accept that evolution has given us three levels of brain: the reptilian brain, concerned only with survival; the mammalian brain, which involves care and social values; and the specifically human brain, which among other things brings in the element of choice.]

But ethics is also in deep trouble:

• Often it is maledominated and thus genderbiased
• Ethical people are also often wellmeaning but somewhat unintelligent (e.g. Jimmy Manyi‘s call for national demographics as the basis for where people should live and work in South Africa, calls for the 10 Commandments to be on school classroom walls in a plural society, or opposition to a secular state)
• Ethics is also very fragmented and atomised
• Lacking dedicated, largescale organisational support and power
• Plagued amongst the highly educated by cultural relativism
• At times captive to religious and political agendas
• Still too much in obedience mode (e.g the 10 Commandments)
• 
  

In South Africa ethics is deeply threatened by the Information Bill; damaged by apartheid (homes, families, schooling, even religion); and by today‘s cultural fundamentalism.

Newspapers and Ethics

As the writer of nearly 200 press articles, my thanks to the editors of The Witness, The Sunday Tribune and other South African papers.

A key point is that newspapers are both friend and foe to ethics, and thus to the human future.

Why a “foe”?

• Captive to owners and shareholders, with the profit motive as a priority
• The Murdoch factor
• Captive to political parties (e.g. Zimbabwe‘s Herald, Pravda)
• Threatened by the electronic media and by environmentalism (trees)

• Very important defender of the separation of powers
• Essential allies of the quest for truth
• Strong ethic of editorial independence by many papers (as against the Murdoch factor)
• Willingness to run ethics columns and articles (but not City Press for my latest ethics article)
• Far more important than occasional ethics articles (“ethics in addon mode”) is the reality of the best newspapers as themselves important forms of ethical intelligence, in their:
• • news coverage
  • accuracy
  • fairness (not always!)
  • editorials
  • letters
  • even, at times, sport (remember FIFA)

Remember: ethics can be taught!

Finally, if there is to be a global and South African ethic, much of it must for practical reasons be in English &emdash the English of the majority of second language speakers. Newspapers can help greatly.

But in South Africa advocacy of the values of the Constitution is a necessary goal, but it is not enough!

Newspapers and their role

Aakash Bramdeo

Presented at Golden Jubilee Function, Pitermaritzburg, 3 September 2011

There is a difference between the role newspapers should play and the role they currently play.

The Golden Circle concept:

• the outer circle is represents what we do
• the circle in the middle how we do it
• and the inner circle why we do it

In the case of newspapers, the why question has become very simple — we make money. Newspapers are owned by companies that want to maximise profits.

Some of our colleagues, notably those in the UK, have become so obsessed with driving up newspaper sales that they‘re prepared to act illegally and unethically.

In principle, there is nothing wrong with running a business to make money — lots of it. But it does not inspire people. After all, people don‘t buy what you do. They buy why you do it.

An example here is that of the Mail and Guardian.

The Mail and Guardian is not a cheap newspaper. But it is the one newspaper that is showing an increase of circulation at a time when a few newspapers are holding steady but most are losing readers.

What does the Mail and Guardian do? They produce a newspaper. How they do they it. Well, in pretty much the same way we all do. But why do they it? It seems to me they are driven by a cause.

They‘ve positioned themselves as a watch dog. They‘re a check on the abuse of power by government. They‘re prepared to take on Big Brother. Consumers are buying into this higher ideal and in the process, the Mail and Guardian is making money.

Let‘s look at the New Age.

Taking up the fight against government is not a new role. In fact, it is a pretty boring one that‘s been going for a while. Remember Watergate in the States? Our very own Information Scandal?

What about the fight against crime, pollution or corruption in private companies. After all, where there is a corruptor there must be a corruptee? Schabir Shaik may argue not but it is a principle that is generally accepted.

When the New Age was first launched there was talk that they would champion the fight against corruption in the private sector. I somehow get the sense that they‘re not sure what cause they are now championing.

Newspaper function in the context of new sources of information.

The first email I received on my first day as a newspaper editor was a newspaper extinction timeline. The author predicted when newspapers in their current form would become outdated. In the USA 2017. That‘s six years from now. In the UK 2019. The good news for me was that newspapers in most developing countries, South Africa included, had a lifespan beyond 2040.

The reality is that newspapers need to be relevant. If we are not, people are not going to buy them. But how do we remain relevant when the very thing we peddle &emdash information &emdash is so easily available? Let‘s be honest - why would someone spend R14 to buy a copy of the Sunday Tribune when they can get most of the information for free on a number of news websites?

The “Eagle” example

The eagle has a long life of up to about 70 years.

It‘s talons work well until the age of about 40. Then they become weak and can‘t grab prey. The eagle‘s beak also starts to weaken and bend at around this age.

The eagle has two choices &emdash to ie or undergo a process of painful change that could last for up to six months.

The process of change starts with the eagle flying to the top of a mountain. It makes a nest and then bangs its beak against the rock. It then sits and waits for a new beak to grow. Once this happens it uses its beak to pull out its old talons. New ones grow.

And as a result the eagle can live for another 30 years.

The moral of the story:

Some change is needed to survive in difficulty. In miserable conditions, we have to change our life style. That process may be very painful. Sometimes we have to throw our old habits, memories and our daily routines. We can‘t go ahead with all our past burdens. Then we have to free our burdens and sorrows.

It is an interesting story with a good moral. But anyone who knows anything about eagles will tell you the story is a pack of lies. Yet on the internet it takes on a truth by virtue of being on the net.

Credible Information

Newspapers play an important role because they should be an important source of credible information. In fact some define journalism as a discipline of verification. In our modern world, there is information a plenty. But credible information &emdash that‘s a different story.

The same holds true for those who spread information but are not necessarily journalists. Way before journalists got to know of an attack in Pakistan that led to Osama Bin Laden being killed, a local was tweeted about helicopters in the area.

The problem is that this type of information obtained in this way can often be biased. What newspapers do is provide filters and meaning.

Conclusion:

Newspapers continue to play an important role in modern society. I‘ve highlighted two:

1. The aspect of advocacy journalism where a cause is taken up.
2. And important role they play in distributing credible information

How could we possibly make sense of our world if we do not understand it? And newspapers help us do that.

Are there challenges? Of course there are. But they‘re not insurmountable.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your time. My best wishes also to the English Academy of Southern Africa in their 50th year of existence. I hope that in 50 years from now those that come after us can revisit this topic.

Thank you.

How we see our newspaper‘s role in society

Yves Vanderhaegen

Presented at the Jubilee Seminar in Pietermaritzburg on 3 September

The standard, obvious answer to the question of how we see a newspaper’s role in society is that it is a forum in which to sift through and provide information in a coherent and comprehensible context, for those who prefer to consume their news and views in this particular way. We also, traditionally, have held that we have a responsibility to hold authority to account, and so to be a social watchdog.

Is this relevant?

Many observers, journalists among them, have presumed that the carnage that has taken place in the world of newspapers signals not only the demise of the physical artefact, that is the newspaper, but of journalism itself. I do not agree with this view. Journalism will not only exist, but thrive, for as long as there are concerned citizens eager to connect the dots between the things they see happening in the world, or between what they see and what they guess at or maybe never even have dreamed of. There will always be those who feel in their bones that something is amiss, and who, through what they read, feel validated that others share their concerns, are attempting to make sense of what’s going on, and are trying to assist the proper functioning of society.

But there is a problem. In fact, there are many, but let me touch on a couple.

First, the legacy of whiteness and its complicity in Apartheid. Perhaps we, in the English-language newspapers, speak from a vantage point of historical whiteness which carries no moral, and consequently no factual, social or political legitimacy. It is possible that our very enterprise is delegitimised by a residual perception that a newspaper such as the Witness, which is tenaciously viewed “out there” as “white” and “colonial” and “English”, is trying to manage the public stage from precisely this compromised position (if we accept the formulation put forward by the much-maligned Samantha Vice).

For regular readers, a newspaper is a home. It is a place where one feels within one’s comfort zone, even when disturbances of content or opinion take place. For many black Africans, a paper like the Witness (and some other English-language newspapers) is not home. It is hostile territory. Bad things happen there. It cannot be trusted. This matters to us, not just because we want readers, but because it affects the nature of public debate. In this province, the vernacular papers, Ilanga and Isolezwe, have provided a home to Zulu-speaking, black readers.

This question of legitimacy is compounded by another very important factor, and that is that information as information has no currency, partly because of the online revolution, partly because of “spin”. We are so surrounded by, so enmeshed in information, that we do not value it for its own sake, and because of its abundance we often fail to know what to do with it. Information (as fact and opinion) blends into a blancmange of background noise. A newspaper or other medium that has authority, is able to perform a role in composing a picture, in making sense, out of all the stuff out there. But for a host of reasons -- erosion of skills, readership, proliferation of electronic and social media -- newspapers generally do not wield the authority once attributed to them.

A third factor that I’d like to touch on relates to what many would consider as the core role of a newspaper in a democracy -- that of watchdog. There is an expectation, explicit and implicit, that publication of corruption or abuse of power will have a direct result. Once journalists have done their job and drawn a picture, put a face to malfeasance, it is up to others to recognise what it is they are looking at, and, we, as journalists, would hope that something be done about it.

But let me share a couple of anecdotes from the Witness archives.

In June 1999, on the eve of the second democratic elections, we devoted our front page to an expose of corruption in our city council. It wasn’t the first, nor was it the last. Collectively, at the time, the evidence pointed to the now familiar litany of offences: councillors charged with assault, nepotism, officials appointed to key posts with no or little qualification, and massive corruption in the awarding of security contracts. The poison was pumping through the system. Eleven years later an Administrator was appointed to investigate why the municipality was bankrupt and endemically corrupt. Go figure. And some of the characters from 1999 are still in the system. Go figure.

In early 2007 we carried the first of what would prove to be a long series of articles about the menace of so-called blue-light convoys. The culprit in that case was Sbu Ndebele, now Transport Minister, whose convoy was accused of endangering another motorist, travelling at speeds of over 160km/h, on the way to the funeral service of David Rattray at Michaelhouse school. We hammered away at the issue, and on the strength of our coverage one of our reporters won the Mondi reporter of the year award, and the matter was later raised in parliament. In the meantime the paper was accused of being racist (by politicians and readers), the editor was given a dressing down at a special meeting convened by the premier at the legislature between journalists and politicians, and menacing convoys continue to play Mad Max on the highways.

So are we doing something wrong? The dog’s been yapping, raising the alarm that the castle of democracy is being burgled, but the owner hasn’t shown up to chase off the intruders. If the political elite are impervious to criticism, what is the point of criticising? In a climate of impunity, how does one hold the powerful to account? If readers do not see the value of this type of journalism, should it be pursued?

I think yes. I think the institutional role of newspapers (and of their ultimate successors, and of journalists) is a long-haul one. It is not a choice for papers such as ours, given their genealogy, to opt out of these particular responsibilities. To shirk these responsibilities is to be complicit in whatever aberrations, abuses and atrocities are carried out in our name as citizens.

But our circulations are collapsing. That means, in short, that what is on offer is not appealing enough to pay for. I believe we are doing great stories. But we’re not getting that message across. Technology, money and changing habits have a lot to do with it. But that’s not the full story.

Let me suggest a way of looking at the difficulty as a way of offering a solution, at least at a theoretical level.

I share with Antjie Krog a belief that we should incessantly be translating things, ourselves (to ourselves and others), and others (to themselves and to us), and that each of us needs, as she puts it, to have our own personal interpreter in any engagement with someone else.

So, first things first. We are an English-language newspaper, and so the perceptions of it, expectations of what it should do, and its capacity to do so, are fundamentally defined by its Englishness (and I use the term to describe both a language and a culture, because in spite of our best efforts on the Witness, there is a prevailing sense that we are “English” and colonial). But working in English is both a limitation and an opportunity.

As Krog tells an interviewer:

You must remember that it’s a whole country that actually cannot speak English although this is the language in which we try to find one another … it’s impossible for us to speak to one another because we are all in a second, third tongue that we have not mastered completely and battle to express ourselves in and cannot be subtle and complex in. Ja, so it’s a huge mess. So if one is angry and you want to change things, you know, no word should have more than three syllables and the sentence should not have more than eight words. You know: ‘injury to one is an injury to all’. It shouldn’t be more complex than that.

What does this mean in practice? Consider that on any given day in the Witness newsroom, a Xhosa-speaking reporter will be briefed by an English-speaking news editor, in English, on a story that may involve interviewing a Zulu-speaking official in English. Then what comes out at the end of that process is panel-beaten into shape by sub-editors (two of whom have Afrikaans backgrounds, and one Xhosa) who will also be editing copy, originating from our sister publications Beeld or Volksblad or Burger, that has been translated from Afrikaans into English, some of which may have been translated from English into Afrikaans in the first place. If the language we use appears flat, this is partly why. Expressing nuances, many of them contested, about our shared existence, becomes rare if not impossible, and who we are, and who we see others as, gets massacred in the process.

Is the language we use up to what is required of it? Does the English we use, on the Witness, for example, underpinned as it is by an aggressive rationalism, serve its purpose in an environment of broken expression, contested meaning, consensualism and concern for individual dignity? Does it help when, for example, the Hogarth column in the Sunday Times routinely mocks the spelling and grammar of politicians and officials expressing themselves in their second or third language? This, in a country where literacy itself is not an abundant skill.

So we also need to be considering the manner in which we engage in debate. Krog, again, sums it up by saying: “The forcefulness and the unsubtlety of it is part of the fact that we don’t know how we sound. You don’t know, ‘now I’m being offensive, and now I’m too harsh’.” Can we do this in an environment that seems to require newspapers to be louder, cruder, brasher?

What examples can I use to illustrate why, beyond the level of language, we need to translate ourselves and each other? This week the Witness ran a story about the police launching a campaign to combat ukuthwala. We present the story as self-evident. We cannot, in the 21st century, under a liberal constitution that guarantees gender rights, have young girls being kidnapped into marriage. But nothing happens in a vacuum. People don’t always act in offensive, even illegal, ways just because they are evil or don’t know any better. Ukuthwala, as I understand it, is embedded in a long sequence of ritual and custom, which has a logic rooted in history and circumstance. I look at it with city eyes, with white eyes, with liberal eyes, and see patriarchy run criminally riot. But that cannot be the full story. I have more questions than answers about what’s going on. I wish I could read those answers in my own paper. Sometimes I can. I wish, in the absence of this, that I could go and seek those answers in Ilanga or Isolezwe, but I don’t speak Zulu. Some of my reporters, who are black and speak Xhosa, also cannot look there for answers because they have difficulty reading Zulu. So an entire conversation is taking place, I presume, right next to me, and around me, in which I cannot participate or derive understanding from. The issue is not whether ukuthwala is right or wrong, whether it is a custom, a perversion of custom, or a colonially introduced abomination. The issue is whether the world in which it takes place is adequately situated for me, as a reader, to be able to understand it in a way that illuminates common hopes, constraints and dreams.

One role we can adopt more consciously, perhaps, is to embrace an ethics of translation. And through that, to prevent a drifting off of groupings into their own language zones, or class niches, or cultural redoubts. By the time market forces have finished with us, and we are thoroughly separated by our differences, and by language, will we even know anyone but ourselves? If there is an overriding role for newspapers, it is to prevent this.

Sarah Nuttall, in her book Entanglement, notes that even with our history of separateness, we are entangled at every level of our existence, and that what we need to engage with is the nature of these entanglements in a positive manner, and not be lazily obsessed with difference only.

So, yes, we are purveyors of information and opinion. Yes, we are watchdogs: we expose corruption and abuse, and these stories roar like a tsunami through our pages. And yes, we play a role in shaping social change through debate. But we also have to bring the Other into our home, so that those Others are not mindless, immoral denizens of the periphery of our existence. We need, not just to describe and analyse, but to translate them into linguistically, morally and socially real and valid subjects.

That has always been our role as newspapers. Perhaps we have just forgotten it as we try to save ourselves from drowning.

Some notes on “Newspapers, their role in society.”

Deon Delport

Presented at the Jubilee Seminar, Pietermaritzburg,3 September

Newspapers are under threat, in South Africa and other countries. In the US and UK many papers have closed or in some cases ceased printing and instead focus on web editions.

In this country, generally circulations are down. This is not surprising, considering the effects of the global economic downturn and the loss of over 1 million jobs in the local economy in the last two years.

Newspapers have also faced the challenge of competing against the internet. There is a challenge in getting the younger generation to buy newspapers when they can get information from the internet or via Facebook or Twitter.

On the positive side a whole new market of newspaper readers has been uncovered in recent years. Within the Independent Newspapers stable the launching of a daily Zulu paper, Isolezwe, and two sister titles, published on Saturdays and Sundays have been very successful.

I foresee that in the future, as these readers become more urbanized and middle-class, they will turn to English-language newspapers for news, information, entertainment and business opportunities. Certainly their children would turn to English as the world’s major business and information language.

As for the challenge of the internet age, the print media need to view this medium as an ally. Many publications are also publishing their editions on the web, with the aim of attracting younger readers.

Media companies are businesses. Newspapers make money in two ways, through the sale of their products and through carrying advertising.

The challenge of also creating the same newspapers on the web is how to make money from the web. Traditionally information on the internet was freely available but this is not practical for the media. We hire journalists and photographers to go out and report on stories and pay contributors for their analysis. If these reports are available on the web version of any newspaper, the reader need not pay to buy the printed version of the paper.

Several economic models are being investigated by media organizations to find a way of making the web profitable.

Bob Giles, curator of the Nieman Foundation for journalism at Harvard University, spoke about these challenges when he spoke at an event to mark the 50th anniversary of the South African Nieman Fellows earlier this year.

The second force shaping the next 50 years of journalism here will be technological innovations. If you want a snapshot of the future, look no further than Egypt and Tunisia, where citizens engaging in protest were connected by the internet to Facebook, Twitter, laptops and smartphones that gave focus and energy to demonstrations.

Media analyst Clay Shirky, a professor at New York University, explains that in revolutions, “the old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in place. The importance of any experiment isn’t apparent at the moment: big changes stall, small changes spread. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen.”

Gutenberg’s invention of movable type in the 1500s is a frequent reference point for how long it takes for revolutions to play out. It took more than a century for the public to have wide access to books.

Looking 50 years in the future, we understand the challenges of journalism, but it is hard to anticipate where technology will take us and how it will shape the way news is gathered and delivered.

For now, the US seems to be ahead of South Africa and the rest of the world on two major benchmarks: the decline of its mainstream news organisations and the creativity driving new ways of gathering and transmitting news.

Lesley Cowling of Wits University wrote recently that South Africa “is starting to experience what the US and other countries have already seen – the decline of print audiences in favour of an enormous array of free online options. This is not just because people can now get their news free from the internet or e-mail; it’s because many people are changing the ways in which they relate to the news and information.”

Cowling cites the growth of Facebook and Twitter as examples of “changing ways of connecting with the world out there”.

Speed is a priority. People listen to podcasts, check for news updates on their cellphones, follow live video newsfeeds and read and comment on blogs. Wireless, especially, is putting the news consumer in charge.

A little more than a year ago, Apple introduced the iPad. Its instant popularity had publishers scrambling to experiment with tablets and create apps to see where they fit into the lives of customers and the budgets of advertisers.

Now the game is changing again. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has just unveiled its iPad newspaper, The Daily. Interest is high in The Daily because it is the first of a kind built especially for the iPad.

Murdoch expects tablets to be in the hands of hundreds of millions around the world, creating new opportunities for news delivery. He described it as a “real game changer in the presentation of news”.

Ken Doctor, a news industry analyst who writes for the Nieman Journalism Lab, describes apps as a wonder, a come-out-of-nowhere phenomenon.

He says Apple has just passed the threshold of 10 billion app downloads and has spawned an entire new industry of entrepreneurs and rival stores by Android, BlackBerry and Amazon. And yet, he says: “If you talk to tech people at the top of news companies, they don’t focus mainly on apps. They talk about HTML5, which is the new standard for structuring and presenting content on the world wide web. “If apps are the popular phenomenon of 2011, HTML5 is the future to getting readers to pay for access to content.”

Doctor says Apple not only created an unexpected revolution with apps, but also proved that people would pay for them. Analysts say the app industry generated $5.2 billion last year and could hit $15bn (R108bn) this year. Most of that revenue is non-news, of course, but news publishers have begun to build their “paid content” hopes on apps nonetheless..

The Washington Post, The Guardian and CNN are among those charging small subscription prices for smartphone apps, but the big expected pay-off is coming this year, as many news publishers see tablet apps as the route to cementing paying digital relationships.

Three types of so-called “paywalls” are being experimented with:

• The hybrid, in which some content will be free and some charged.
• Duelling, which the Boston Globe is trying; it has long had Boston.com as a free site with the Boston Globe embedded. The Globe is soon to become a pay site.
• A metered site that is being created by The New York Times, which is said to be investing $50 million in the project. The paper will offer non-subscribers access to some articles free and will charge for additional access.

Bloomberg reports that developing the technology for paywalls is challenging because publishers are trying to strike the most profitable balance between charging some online readers and letting others in free to generate advertising.

The introduction of a pay-to-view model after many years of free access has consequences for online audiences.

The Guardian reported last year that Murdoch’s Times of London website had lost two-thirds of its audience after the implementation of a paywall.

The quest for an economic model that will sustain serious journalism remains elusive.

Past Conferences

Every three years the English Academy has held a conference. These are the conferences we have held up to now:

• The Need for an English Academy in Southern Africa (inaugural conference); Johannesburg 1961
• English as Communication; Johannesburg 1966
• South African Writing in English and its Place in School and University; Grahamstown 1969
• Teaching English in African Schools; Roma (Lesotho) 1973
• Teaching English in Afrikaans Schools, Colleges and Universities; Pretoria 1975
• The Teaching of English as First Language in Schools; Pietermaritzburg 1977
• English in a Multilingual Society: Planning for the Future; Johannesburg 1979
• English for Everyman; Grahamstown 1980
• English Language and Literature in South African Society, 1961 to 1986; Johannesburg 1986
• English at Tertiary Level; Pretoria 1989
• Access to English; Cape Town 1992
• English in Africa; Grahamstown 1995
• English at the Turn of the Millennium; Johannesburg 1998
• Mother Tongue, Other Tongue: Law, Learning and Literature; Pretoria 2002.
• Africa in Literature; Cape Town, 2005
• Language, the Creative Arts and the Media; Pretoria, 2008
• Literature, Literacy and language; Cape Town, 2011