Impact of Sanef's exceptionalism on journalism and democracy

INDONESIAN humanitarian Abie Zai-dannas reminds us that “media plays important roles in a democratic society and cannot be separated from the democracy itself. Ideally, the media is a tool to educate voters, giving them facts, news and balanced opinions about how the government is run and managed. Well-informed voters ensure accountable governance. Media also acts as a watchdog, facilitating people to articulate their views, demands and aspirations, keeping politicians and public officials in check.”

- CLYDE NS RAMALAINE

THE media in South Africa often functions within webs of political, commercial or personal interests, eroding its impartiality and diminishing its capacity to act as a genuine pillar of accountability, says the writer. Pexels

(Pexels)

Zaidannas’s perspective captures the aspirational vision of the media as democracy’s conscience, educating citizens, restraining power and preserving public trust. Yet in South Africa, this ideal remains increasingly distant.

The press often functions within webs of political, commercial or personal interests, eroding its impartiality and diminishing its capacity to act as a genuine pillar of accountability. Theoretically, the Fourth Estate stands for integrity and independence. In practice, the lived reality often betrays this noble promise.

To understand the depth of this departure, one must revisit the moral standard that once defined South African journalism.

On October 19, 1977, remembered as Black Wednesday, the apartheid regime banned The World and Weekend World newspapers, alongside 19 Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) organisations.

The crackdown came barely a month after the death of Steve Biko in police detention. It was a deliberate strike against dissent, an effort to extinguish the radical conscience of a nation awakening to its oppression.

Journalists such as Percy Qoboza, Joe Thloloe, Mathatha Tsedu and Don Mattera were detained without charge, punished for giving voice to black thought and pain. That day marked not just the silencing of papers, but the betrayal of truth by a government that feared words more than weapons. Black Wednesday thus became a moral benchmark for journalistic integrity: the refusal to serve power, even at great personal cost.

Yet nearly five decades later, the struggle is no longer against overt censorship but against a more insidious form of capture, from within the media itself.