When I looked at the wide variety of responses to Vincent Maher’s posting on the state of Thought Leader — in response to Dominic Tweedie’s criticisms of it on the Debate list serve last week — I decided that it would be best to write a piece that responds directly to his criticisms. This was partly also done because I noticed that respondents had either not read or chose not respond to some of his criticisms, which in fact demanded a response.
The Mail & Guardian rightly prides itself on being probably the most critical, open, forthright and progressive newspaper in this country, with all its limitations. Therefore, in the spirit of such qualities we need to discuss and debate this important matter.
Tweedie makes some serious allegations and criticisms of the paper and the bloggers, which requires a constructive discussion and debate. To ignore the criticisms and fail or refuse to respond will certainly not be in keeping with the qualities the paper has championed over the years, which is why the editorial decision to respond to Tweedie was correct. A former editor of the paper, Phillip van Niekerk, argued that we must have the right to be wrong. This was said in a spirit of self-criticism that I certainly think we have little of today generally. Instead a trenchant defensiveness and self-righteousness pervades many “debates”.
Tweedie states that in contrast to Mark Gevisser’s description of a paper as the “house organ of the white left there is nothing ‘left’ about the average young white ‘entrepreneur’”, whom he claims “is the typical Thought Leader blogger”. I think he is right in this regard. But he furthermore appears to say that this contradicts the description of the paper as leftist.
There are two things that we need to discuss here. One, is the racial and gender composition of the bloggers. If Tweedie’s statistics are correct — and they appear to be — the question that arises is this: What significance do these facts have for both the paper and Thought Leader, and does it not deserve our serious attention, especially against our historical background, what the paper stands for and within the broader media transformative context? It certainly does warrant serious attention.
However, he goes on to say that “the Mail & Guardian is an anti-communist rag, but they used to have enough savvy to disguise themselves behind black anti-communists. With these blogs they have thrown caution to the winds.” Firstly, I wish to strongly take issue with him. The description of the paper as an “anti-communist rag” is a flagrantly false and I believe deliberate misrepresentation. Partly, this is because the SACP has had and shown much disdain for the paper, probably because it doesn’t like the many criticisms it has had to face in the M&G‘s pages over the years.
And because Tweedie is always terribly defensive about the party he belongs to, I was not surprised by his criticism. What Tweedie gets fundamentally wrong is that he interprets the space the paper has given to criticism of the party as being tantamount to being itself “anti-communist”. Had the SACP received more favourable coverage he certainly would not have levelled such criticism at it.
Besides, I have pointed out many times in this paper that the SACP has in fact never really played the role of a true communist party, which requires that it provide strong and independent leadership to working-class struggles and not play second fiddle to a ruling party to which it has been subordinated for decades (and a ruling party that has itself become increasingly anti-communist in its policies and action since 1994). In fact, the ANC has been far more anti-communist than the paper could ever be. That is why it is with great relief that we have seen the party play a more assertive role of late.
Secondly, from a political and ideological standpoint, the fact that the paper has given me much space over the years to espouse a leftist perspective is itself a sold refutation of Tweedie’s anti-communist characterisation of it. On the whole the paper is rather best described as “social democratic”, though many who use this description these days fail to analyse the wide-ranging negative impact neo-liberalism has had on “social democracy” around the world over the past two to three decades.
Thirdly, Tweedie’s claim that the paper has disguised itself with “black anti-communists” is another serious problem. This is a wrongful attack on both black journalists and commentators for the paper. I don’t see anti-communism at all but a mixture of liberal, social democratic and even sometimes left-leaning views coming from them. But certainly not what I would call “anti-communist”.
Even at times when I strongly differ with editorials of the paper and the views of some of its journalists and commentators, I cannot simply describe them as anti-communist. Tweedie’s approach is less politically scientific and much more influenced by the strong dislike the SACP has had for the paper.
He seems to lack in his criticisms the important element of proportionate balance, meaning he displays a one-sided and blatantly biased approach to the paper, and thereby totally ignores the many positive contributions it has made to the South African media scene. That is the reason why, alongside the Sunday Times, it is the most cited newspaper in the country. He also totally ignores many important and interesting articles bloggers — black and white — have posted on Thought Leader.
But I think we need to be more careful because we cannot lump the bloggers and the paper together. This is a fundamental mistake. In fact, I have much stronger differences with many bloggers than I have had with both editorials and columnists — black and white — of the paper. This is precisely because bloggers come from very different backgrounds and political-ideological standpoints. Interestingly, in this regard I have had some very strong differences with some black bloggers on their understandings and views of racism in this country.
The question that may then arise for the editors to consider is this: Should bloggers not become more representative of the population and society and the struggles within it, and therefore should they not invite clear, strong and articulate voices — of which there are many — from important constituencies in this country, such as the trade unions and social movements? They clearly should.
In conclusion, it is no surprise that white males dominate Thought Leader. They also dominate scholarship and every academic discipline in the country and intellectual production generally. The real historical roots of these enduring realities go back centuries.
But despite these realities, since 1994 we have seen the clear ascendancy of class over race, to the extent where today I have much more in common with much of the “white left” than hundreds of my former fellow black comrades whose only interest today is how big their bank balance is. That is why, in the final analysis, it is the nature of the ideas, views and values of people that have come to matter much more than whether they are white or black.
We should approach Thought Leader in a similar fashion, with the one proviso that there be a conscious and concerted editorial move to draw in other black thinkers in civil society. There is no contradiction in this approach. But it would be ridiculous to exclude other white thinkers/intellectuals who have a meaningful contribution to make. However, I do think that the editors should not invite any further “voices” — white or black — from the business/commercial world, because there seems to be enough “entrepreneurial” interests already.
maslow’s theory of needs .
i won;t say much after that .
depends where u as person , black or white are on that chart .
to me that explains the dominance of a particular race at certain activities .
level the playing field and then write that paper again and see what results you will get .
So, Mr. Harvey, the answer to your question is “Yes, this is a white weblog.”. Took you a lot of twists and turns to get there; I suppose you are a bit embarrassed.
More importantly, it is a rich people’s weblog.
The Mail and Guardian is a capitalist newspaper. Some of the people writing for it claim to be social democrats, because that is a good way to win over the left-wing majority. Maybe some of them actually are social democrats, but since the newspaper provides virtually no economic or political analysis outside the framework of conservative capitalism, it is difficult to say.
It is probably true that the newspaper is anti-communist. Nobody in the Mail and Guardian, or any other newspaper, supports communism, although a few pretend to. Actually, as far as I can see, the SACP is opposed to communism in practice, despite its rhetoric. It is also opposed to socialism, since it is dominated by capitalist entrepreneurs, mainly financiers. So, no surprise.
However, it is safe to say that the Mail and Guardian is staunchly anti-ANC, vaguely pro-Democratic Alliance, and generally sympathetic to the interests of big business and the ruling class, who happen to be mostly whites with a few coloureds, indians and a tiny handful of africans (mostly stooges). I suppose you can call that social democracy if you like.
Shall i comment, or is this also mostly for pro-white, anti-black, anti-BEE, and anti-AA supporters? If i do comment, should i not say that i am pro-AA, pro-BEE, pro-Black, pro-Mbeki and pro-ANC? I was thinking about trying to get a job as a columnist in one of our reputable publications like Mail and Gaurdian. Should i strongly suppress my need to heap praise on a great black global strategist, Thabo Mbeki?
I’m thinking of asking permission to blog on TL. Should i aggressively pursue an agenda to appease the white man at the cost of alienating and sidelining black progress?
I don’t know really. I have to ask these thing cause I don’t know what Vincent Maher wants from me. I am afraid that I may type out this very long response and then have it deleted probably because it has too much pro-black and not enough pro-white. I mean, I have noticed that it’s okay to say that black rule is bad, but it’s not okay to say that you disagree and aggressively defend black empowerment. I don’t quite know what the rules are. Vincent, maybe you could assist me here. What should I do, my dear good white saviour?
I am tired of this race thing … Are you not ?
I agree totally with Harvey when he says that: “That is why, in the final analysis, it is the nature of the ideas, views and values of people that have come to matter much more than whether they are white or black.” I suppose all you need to do is to have a look at my name in order to have a reliable indication of my pigmentation, right? The fact of the matter is that not all dark-skinned writers necessarily represent the views of all other dark-skinned writers. The same can be said of all other skin shades. While it is important to always remember where we come from as a country and as a people, it ridiculous, and almost an insult, to suggest that people will always agree with one another simply because they share skin tone. It is possible that they might share some sensitivities but this is not the same as saying that they will agree with how to react to different stimuli. The M&G should continue to invite and to encourage the expression of the widest possible spectrum of ideas and views, but it should be borne in mind that it would be a fallacy to assume that having the “right” number of what some would call “Black Views” necessarily sorts out the race issue!
I think Liansky should be given his space to write so we can find out what we have in common.
Hi Ebrahim,
Thanks for this post, which, I think, has the potential to simultaneously push this debate in a number of different directions, all of them productive. With your grace then, here are some of my thoughts.
Considering the subject of this debate, I find it a little ironic that you chose to announce your entry into the discussion with a riff against Tweedie’s bias against the M&G. It’s not that I don’t agree with you, Ebrahim. Clearly Tweedie is a hack, and it is a mistake to write off the M&G as ‘anti-communist rag’. But in focusing on Tweedie, you seem to be missing what is truly at stake here – the political character of the intellectual milieu that thought leader is helping to engender. But more about that later
First, while I think you are correct that Tweedie misrepresents the character of the M&G, I wonder if your defence of the ‘social democratic’ credentials of the M&G does not itself divert attention away from a far more important aspect of this debate – the rightward drift of the M&G over the last decade. It could of course be my imagination, but I think, just as we have seen the dumbing down and sensationalisation of news in the Sowetan and the Star as daily newspapers scramble to recapture their share of the market in the wake of the launch of daily sun, there has been a concomitant slide to the right amongst weekly papers as they attempt to shore up the middle class market (which itself breeds a particular form of sensationalist news coverage). In the case of the M&G, and considering the newspaper’s history, it is indeed ironic that the business day’s weekender often offers better coverage of left activities. In fact, one need only look at the coverage of the Polokwane conference, or the list of the M&G’s celebrated youth, to see that the paper seems comfortable to reduce the coverage of state politics to the intrigue of leadership and spectre of corruption, while treating civil society as nothing other than a site for the reproduction of the new model of self in the figure of the entrepreneur. This is not even to mention, the editorial comparison between Trevor Manuel and Che, or even the editor’s public attacks on the left (outside and inside the alliance).
But you are correct, and we should separate thought leader from M&G, or at least clarify their relationship. In response to Vincent’s post on thought leader I suggested that I problem with thought leader’s line up is partly to do with who determines who our thought leaders are:
Thing is, and I’m saying this with all respect Vincent, maybe you guys are the problem. This brings me to my third remark. If you look through the thought leader line up, one gets the sense of a particular intellectual milieu with a strong imprint of the ‘new media evangelist’ and ‘online entrepreneur’ community. Is this merely a reflection of present conjuncture in which the new entrepreneurial self eclipses the public intellectual? Back in August, when matt asked folks to give you a break, saying there was still a long list to go through, I responded: “I’m not invested in this either way. and i do hope you are able to get folks from across the spectrum to participate in this initiative…a cynic might however wonder how it was that the particular section of the list you started at was also the paler, more politically moderate, section of the list. but not me. the way i see it, you probably just started with the people you know.” Now, considering that things haven’t gotten any better, is part of the problem not perhaps that the intellectual milieu that you know and belong to is what is best represented by the thought leader line up?
And here, Ebrahim, is where the real stakes reside. My references to an intellectual milieu merely the indexes of a broader problem, which although no longer in vogue, remains decisive…hegemony. When a newspaper like the M&G launches a blogging platform called ‘thought leader’, it not only draws on existing intellectual/political contexts in order do so, but shapes and creates new ones. That is, in purporting to give expression to the national intellectual milieu it actually works to shape that milieu. As a materialist I am sure you agree such things are never politically neutral. By way of an example, think about Vincent’s response to Tweedie’s complaint (the hack that he is) that the ANC, SACP, YCL and ANCYL are denied space on Thought Leader. Overlooking tweedie’s sectarian fervour allows us to see that Vincent’s defence – that they tried to get “someone” from the ANC on board – is pathetic, even if, in the final analysis probably forgivable. It’s pathetic, not because of its complete lack of imagination, but because it betrays Vincent clueless about the intellectual milieu surrounding the left inside the alliance (let alone, that outside it). Canvassing phone calls to luthuli house is only the place to start if you don’t know anyone in luthuli house. Had Vincent known anything about that intellectual milieu, rather then searching the staff directories of universities for academics with African sounding names, he might have thought to give David Mosondo a call, who is not only a reasonably well published black academic working at Wits (and therefore not without expertise), but just happens to be the YCLs chairperson (and their are dozens of equally qualified people within that milieu, probably far more than could be found around most national political formations). In fact I would have thought that someone like Masondo would have been a natural choice, after all, he might have even made a previous issue of 100 young South African to take to lunch. In short had Vincent known anything of the black intellectual milieu surrounding the left, whether inside or outside the alliance, he might have had something more to say to Tweedie then we tried to get someone from the ANC. If it’s ultimately forgivable it is because Vincent can’t really be blamed for what he doesn’t know.
What however worries me, ebrahim, is thought leader works to hegemonize a particular idea of the public intellectual, which although not ideologically neutral attempts to obscure that figures organic location (is this not precisely what Vicent’s argument about the articulation between expertise and public intellectualism attempts to do). If, with the introduction of neoliberal forms of government, the idea, that the entrepreneurial self-activation of the poor is the basis of development, increasingly stands at the centre of state discourse, in civil society, the figure of the public intellectual seems to be entering a lasting eclipse under the weight new politics of self cast in the heroic figure of the entrepreneur (or rather they are rendered indistinguishable). Although this not about Vincent it is important to see how the thought leader line up – with a strong imprint of the new media evangelist and online entrepreneur community- representative of the particular intellectual milieu that he knows and belongs to. What is at stake here is how that milieu, and the political tendency it represents, solicits hegemony over the broader social milieu.
But even if you don’t buy that ebrahim, its rubbish that three white guys are given the task of determining not only who our thought leaders presently are, but who can be thought leaders (that is who has the expertise)
Thanks all of you for your comments, but I’m sorry I now only have the time to respond to “Ds”.
Thanks very much for your really thoughtful and useful comments.
I am not very sure of a “Rightward shift” by the M & G over the past decade but if truth be told and faced I think that the period when the paper had more space for leftist voices was undoubtedly when phillip van Niekerk was editor. I challenge anyone to go and see for themselves. Check the years 1997 – 2000. It is abundantly clear that under his editorship the paper was the most courageous in so far as space for leftist voices was concerned. And that is besides my own voice. The M & G has all the back copies to go and exam my contention for themselves. In fact, ironically, space for leftist voices declined significantly when Mondli Makhanya took over from Howard Barrel in 2003. What is interesting is that Phillip was a white Afrikaner.
and Mondli black.
I also agree with your following points:
1. At times Business day and Weekender appears more left than does the M & G, particularly the work of Karima Brown.
2. Thought Leader could pose a threat by a “new entrepreneurial self eclipsing the public intellectual”. However, we need to have a big debate about what exactly is a public intellectual because the topic is under-theorised.
3. That it is definitely a problem for 3 white guys to have been appointed as the editorial team of Thought Leader, given our history we only shakily emerging from since 1994. Proper conceptualisation of this project should have necessarily included sensitivity to questions of colour and race, which has evidently not happened, with both the composition of the editorial team and not sufficiently with the bloggers who were invited.
4. Yes, as I pointed out, there are many credible black leftist voices who could have been invited. I also raised this last year, shortly after being invited. David Masondo is just one example.
5. I also think that the editorial team may not have the requisite political knowledge and experience to handle a very complex and fluid
political situation.
6. Finally, if the editors cannot take constructive criticism and attend to the valid concerns raised this thing may not last long. But it is always so much easier to dish out criticism of others than to be big enough to take maturely and gracefully criticism of oneself. Let us hope the editors rise above this trend. I think they will. For it to have any future Thought Leader depends on it.
I admire your courage to speak out. This is exactly what Thought Leader is suppose to encourage.
hi ebrahim,
thanks for responding to my comment. since we mostly seem to be agreement, maybe the future of this debate is a discussion about the public intellectual in south africa (that might also help clarify some of the issues around the thought leader initiative). anyway if you post something, i promise i will respond.
btw, since we haven’t been formally introduced, “ds” stands for dionysus stoned…but most folk just call me ds
keep well ebrahim
Frankly, writing as a so-called “white” [elderly]libertarian, free market, zennish Jedi schoolteacher of free market economics i would have thought that the recent event at Polokwane conclusively demonstrated that all us [so-called] “whiteys” have beconme completely irrelevant to anything of any importance whatsoever in our formerly beloved country, and that therefore we are the only people [being as we are at the bottom of the new social scale] that have the time inclination or energy to write crap on blogs that no one really cares about and that neither add to nor subtract from the some total of human happiness… and fuck dominic tweedie anyway he’s an old wanker living in a philosophy that no self-respecting nouveau riche [sic] darkie would have the remotest interest in following.
Oh shit. Someone just pointed out to me that the guy i was responding isnt jewish. Please forgive me if that statement sounded derogatory. I confused jedi with jew. Sorry, my bad.
Khadija, a few things quickly about some of my concerns:
1. How can the matter not be about race when it clearly is all along the line: from Tweedie, Maher and everyone else who responded? This sounds a little ridiculous. Don’t we have white and black people in this country?
2. I cannot in the slighest degree understand what makes you say that according to me, ethnic quota defines content material. Please refer me to a single sentence where I either explicitly or implicitly state that?
3. Historical materialism has got nothing at all to do with historical determinism. This is ABC stuff of Marxist theory.
4. Who is saying that anyone should “live for an economic system or die for it”? In fact millions are indeed dying FROM the capitalist system because it lives FOR the capitalists.
You do know that apartheid happened right? And you are aware of it’s psychological implications, right? Um, you like, know that geographical boundaries create like, differences in opinion and you do like, know that if a belief like racism and a heightened awareness of race becomes part of a culture, then that facets of a culture is hard to erase, right?
So, what exactly is WRONG if three white men decided who the “Thought Leader” bloggers are? Are white men ipso facto wrong? Why?
When I signed up for Thought Leader I was never asked my race but for my ideas.
It is crass/crap analysis by people or those with a specific political agenda that dismiss ‘white’ writers just on the basis of their skin colour. Those incapable of addressing the ideas in our writing resort to name calling.
The re-racialisation of South Africa is used by black elites to benefit themselves and deflect criticism of their own class position. The Communists in South Africa are a joke as they jetset around in business class and BMWs and talk about ‘the people’.
A similar thing occurs with the labeling of the Mail and Guardian as a right wing paper for white elites. Those doing this can then fall back on ideological claims as opposed to fact based critique and analysis.
And for those who wish to dismiss me as ‘white’ should realise I never been white until that identity was forced upon me here in South Africa. South Africa is using external phenotypic criteria for assigning race as opposed to self ascribed identity. The categories assigned are the same as under Apartheid as are the criteria – pencil test anyone?