What is (really) wrong with our media: Juan Duval Uys and Badih Chabaan

The ANC government has been bashing the media, arguing that they are part of the dark forces out to destroy the ANC and hence also the country. According to Frank Chikane, Director-General in the Office of the President, the media does not know how to work with the government – unlike the Dutch Reformed Church who has always brown-nosed government and therefore knows how to be good lapdogs.

Of course we have learnt many years ago from the apartheid state that when one is in trouble the easiest way to divert attention from one’s troubles is to create a bogy man and the media seems to do for the moment. I suspect compared to other healthy democracies (therefore not the USA), our media is rather complacent and benign. Imagine what a torrid time President Thabo Mbeki would have been given by the British Press for saying and doing the things he does.

For me the real problem with our media is that many journalists are far too credulous or lazy and therefore do not question even the most preposterous assertions made by known charlatans - as long as it will sell newspapers.

This morning in the Cape Times (and now also carried on News24), for example, a story about disarray in the National People’s Party (the creation of Cape Town con business-man and city council member Badih Chabaan) quotes as facts several assertions made by Mr Chabaan. The introductory paragraph boldly states:

Two leaders of the National People's Party have been expelled, the party's financial accounts are to be audited by KPMG and its new leader, Badih Chaaban, is to lodge complaints of embezzlement against some members.

The newspaper also publishes without comment or question claims by Mr Chabaan that he had two members of the party followed while they were meant to be recruiting members in George and that instead of meeting members, the two were seen in a local nightclub.

Now, I will bet at least one month of my salary that no KPMG auditors will ever see the books of this new party, that a complaint of embezzlement will never be followed up, and that no one was ever hired to follow the two members of the party in George. Over the past two months almost none of the claims made by Mr. Chabaan have come true and most claims have been shown to be outrageous lies. Why would these claims be different?

Yet the Cape Times publishes these wild assertions as if they were true. One must also remember that Mr. Chabaan had hired another charlatan of note, Juan Duval Uys (pictured), as his media liaison officer. This is a match made in heaven: two epic shysters finally get together to tell the most outrageous lies to the gullible media.

Mr. Uys has long entertained and bamboozled the media with completely false but sensationalist claims about his “hugely popular” Gay and Lesbian Alliance. Every time he made a new claim it was patently obvious for all of us with more than two brain cells that these claims were completely false. If, say, Mr. Juan Duval Uys claimed to be the head of a Gay and Lesbian organisation with hundreds of thousands of members and no one in the gay community has ever met anyone being a member, one would think the media would at least put such claims in scare quotes.

But no, everything these guys say is reported as fact and worse, never followed up. No one at the Cape Times is going to phone Mr. Chabaan in two weeks to ask how that KPMG report is coming along and at what police station embezzlement charges were laid.

And in a month or two Mr. Chabaan or Mr. Uys will hold a press conference and claim to have met Jesus Christ in a bar in Putsonderwater and that Jesus had told them that Helen Zille is the anti-Christ and, lo and behold, the next day it will be reported as fact in the Cape Times.

In that sense Mr Chikane does have a point when he complains about the media. The only time the media shows any scepticism or any eagerness to follow up claims is when government representatives make those outrageously false claims. What Mr. Chikane is asking for is that the same leeway given by the media to shysters like Chabaan and Uys should also be shown to the ANC. If that had happened, we would all now have believed that HIV does not cause AIDS and that dear uncle Thabo needs a third term to save South Africa.

Another boot-licker shows contempt for the people

Sandile Memela, spokesperson for the ministry of arts and culture, is at it again, attacking those handy old scapegoats, the non-government media and the so called “coconut intellectuals” for being too critical of the government. Writing in the Mail & Guardian, Mr. Memela seems to suggest that the private media and all the black commentators and intellectuals should follow the government line set by His Masters Voice and the Government Communications Service.

He argues that by criticizing the President and other (black) leaders, the media is racist because it perpetuates or further entrenches racist views about the ability of black people to govern.

Ironically, since 1994 - especially with the advent of Thabo Mbeki to the presidency - the media have created a sociocultural context in which it becomes possible to show disdain and utter contempt for legitimate African political leadership. This is displayed in the coverage of the Manto Tshabalala-Msimang story. The single-minded purpose is to get the public to internalise racist thinking about blackness as what colonialism has always portrayed as meaning unfit to self-govern.

Say what? I think what Mr. Memela is trying to say is that we should not criticize President Mbeki or Minister Manto Tshabalala Msimang because if we do we would be showing contempt for something called “legitimate African political leadership”. I think this implies that once a Minister is appointed by the President, we have no right to criticize that leader (if he or she is black) because if we did, we would really be undermining the legitimately elected leaders of the country. And we would also really just be showing what nasty racist pigs we are.

But this is not all. Mr. Memela got his knickers in an even bigger knot because:

more and more people are asking themselves about the media’s commitment to bolstering confidence and trust in government.

These statements show a rather embarrassing lack of understanding of the nature of a constitutional democracy and the role of the media and intellectuals in such a democracy. It scarily assumes that it is the role of the media to bolster confidence in the government or act as praise singers for the President and his cronies.

But the media has exactly the opposite duty in a democracy based on respect for the dignity not of the self-important leaders but of those people who are rather more important in a democracy – the voters.

The media has a duty to report on both the good things and the bad things that happen in our country, both the good things and bad things our leaders do, so that we as the voters can decide whether we want to vote for this government again the next time we have an election. The government does not have a divine right to rule and therefore does not have a right to be bolstered by the media – regardless of their actual track record.

To suggest that the media should lie to the electorate so that they do not present negative images of black people, is to show contempt for the very people that are supposed to be at the heart of the government’s concern.

In a democracy trust and confidence is earned by leaders and should not manufactured by state media who hear or see no evil and try to mislead the people by claiming that they have a patriotic duty to bolster confidence in the government.

It is a sad day when a government spokesperson inadvertently shows such contempt for the masses of our people and argue with such a utter lack of shame in favour of boot-licking and a suppression of the facts that should influence the choices we make come the next election.

"Juan Duval Uys" finally arrested

Sometimes the wheels of justice grinds slowly, but it is heartening to read that Juan Duval Uys, the alleged mastermind behind a controversial anti-crime website and a slanderous male prostitute blog in which he "outed" a number of prominent South African men, was arrested at his mother's house in Kroonstad on Saturday.

He was a creature of his fax machine and lazy journalists who never checked any of the outlandish claims he regularly made until he finally went too far by claiming that members of his non-existent Gay and Lesbian Alliance were going to donate blood and give false information about their sexual histories and orientation.

He did many stupid and bad things but he would not have been able to do it all and get the attention he so obviously craves, if he was not enabled by the media. Despite warnings from many of us, they kept quoting him as if there really was a Gay and Lesbian Alliance and as if he was credible person. Quoting Uys was like quoting Max the Gorilla - highly entertaining and good for circulation but with no relation to reality.

It makes one wonder about all the stories that appear in the papers regarding the ANC succession race and the alleged conspiracies on all sides. It seems if one has a contact at the newspaper one could get almost anything published no matter how preposterous or untrue.

UPDATE: Die Volksblad reports that Juan Duval Uys is really Lodewikus Uys later called Ludi Uys and that he might be connected with a murder committed in Kroonstad in 1993. Lodewikus just does not have the same right to it as all the aliases Mr. Uys came up with.