Mobile culture* and Net/digital culture has become indistinguishable, because the later is now the dominant form dictating and shaping the norms, the affordances, the aesthetics, the central debates, the politics of Net culture. Some key pointers that supports this:

* Culture is not quite the right word here, it’s more an overarching influence of mobile tech and practices we are speaking of here.

Related deployments:

1. The desktop activists are restless – could they become mobile? – SpeakZA

Helping the not so well off is off course core message of socialism. (At this point I will have to point out that I do not think a totally state directed economy can work. When I talk about socialism I am thinking a market economy with a strong state that smoothes over the edges of market failure and makes sure people have opportunity and do not fall through the cracks.)

But as I tweeted recently (see below), there are reasons to doubt if a socialist inspired movement will work.

The South African left and working class have low skills and perhaps even more importantly, even less drive. To effect this kind of change would require a huge social project and very committed people. To move people on that scale to take action, you need an effective story. An ideology.

It just does not seem when looking at several countries including our own, that the ideology of socialism is very effective in bringing people together to make a real change, especially in developing countries.

But in my tweets (again below) I mention how developing countries like Turkey and Malaysia have been effective in both growing their economy and helping the poor through Nationalism.

A recent discussion with friends made me think. Afrikaner Nationalism worked because it provided the ideological glue for educated Afrikaners to make common cause with poor Afrikaners. Why can nationalism achieve this level of commitment from elites that socialism struggles to do?

Perhaps, because unlike socialism, nationalism asks a lot of elites, but gives them ample recognition? Recognition of great individual achievement for the sake of the community is built into nationalism, but frowned upon by socialists. And although elites can often be persuaded to work for less than their market value in nationalistic systems, it’s more flexible.

Perhaps and unfortunately it’s also easier to mobilise an ‘us’ if there’s a ‘them’. That’s where the danger lies.

Related deployments:

1. Between a rock & a hard place – On South Africa’s strikes, inequality & crisis
2. Where the English have football the South Africans have politics

Today I can reveal that Die Antwoord, in an email (below), promised one Anton Duitsman rights to and proceeds for their first album $O$. That was for use of his words (and in one his voice). On the song $COPIE Duitsman would be credited with 20% of the lyrics and therefor the publishing rights as the Dutchman or NE0 SA. And on the song My best friend he would be credited for 100% of the lyrics.

I have written a previous blog post where I mentioned that I could spot at least five of the early Die Antwoord tracks that had references from one of Anton’s videos, The Matrix SA style. That video is a bizarre stream of extremely prurient consciousness, overlayed on top of visual cuts from The Matrix and Justin Timberlake.

And according to Anton, Ninja (Tudor Jones) told him that his video actually was the inspiration for the creation of Die Antwoord. So impressed was Ninja that he asked Anton if he could help come up with the next album. “We would love to collaborate” he wrote.

In an early email, Ninja calls Anton THE ONE, and expresses incredulity that Anton is not in fact coloured. Much of Anton’s video is in Afrikaans, and delivered in what Cape Town writer Rustum Kozain calls kak-praat: It’s extremely offensive, but disarmingly funny in its delivery.

So what exactly happened? The clip was created in 2004. But it was only in 2007 that Anton uploaded it to YouTube under the name NE0 SA. At a braai in November 2009 a friend played him some Die Antwoord tracks. It was then that Anton recognised his work. He made contact the next Monday.

Things started off amicably (See the photos). Bear in mind this was the time that Die Antwoord was bubling along nicely on the award winning Watkykjy blog. People were downloading the free tracks by the dozen and starting to take notice. Their second video called Zef Side had caused a particular stir. But nobody knew how big they would become. Just before they blew an arrangement appears to have been made where Anton would get the rights to the two tracks. To bring out their first album $O$, Die Antwoord were just signing with a respected but relatively small Dutch hip hop label, Magnatron Records in Amsterdam. Daan de Boer of Magnatron sent Anton a contract.

It was then, in January 2010, when their third music video Enter the Ninja hit YouTube that Die Antwoord blew. I knew because my blog Mhambi got a 1,000, then 4,000, then 9,000 and then 40,000 visits per day. All were from people seeking information about Die Antwoord. Most of them from outside South Africa.

The overseas sat up and took notice. First it was music forums and blogs like Boing Boing. Next came the sign that they had really arrived. Die Antwoord were approached by Lady Gaga’s Interscope label. They promptly dumped Magnatron and signed with Interscope. According to Anton at first Interscope communicated with Anton told him his royalties would be paid. Then they referred him to their local distributor Sony ATV, who avoided his calls.

And from that point no more communication came from Die Antwoord either.

This is of course not the first time Die Antwoord has been accused of appropriation or misuse of other artists work. Most famously it’s unclear how and when they worked with Rodger Ballen. Jane Alexander was furious when they clearly copied Butcher Boys, an artwork that represents the brutality of apartheid, without her permission.

Yet often they did acknowledge the influence of these artists and even collaborated, even if the hat tip or collaboration was in part backdated. The I FINK YOU FREEKY video was made in collaboration with Ballen. And so does NE0 SA get a mention, not only in a track on $O$, but on the sleeve of the album as well.

Hip-hop and rap in particular are genres of urban music born on sampling and reappropriating rifs and lyrics. Still each time news of Die Antwoord transgressions have come out a massive debate has kicked off on blogs across the internet. The legitimacy of sampling and using others work have been argued ad nauseum, with neither side of the debate emerging a clear winner. In my opinion being inspired by others and even using their work is how artists work today. Anton’s own video was part a remix of other’s work. This is a cut and paste world.

But not asking, acknowledging or paying dues when doing so is problematic. And the legal position might be more clear cut. In particular in this case because it appears Ninja sent Anton an email (see below) offering him rights to the lyrics to two songs.

Previously when I wrote about this I went on to defend Die Antwoord. “To make sense of and mash together the phenomenal complexities of South African culture, in word, visually and in music requires phenomenal talent, genius even. That while navigating treacherous political ground, and humungous stereo-types.

And what everybody seems to forget in these rather academic discussions is that in rap and in rave and a whole slew of other urban genres they sample, they do so with utmost street savvy and musical nous. It’s not only tight, it’s slick, sophisticated, and it’s on the button musically. That’s Die Antwoord.

If true it does cast some aspersions over the their ethics. But in line with his now more arrogant and aggressive persona, I’m sure Ninja will just shrug, and tune us we’re jaloers.”

I used to be their biggest fan. Yes, they were fre$h. I don’t feel so inclined to defend them now. What a pity.

I emailed Die Antwoord for reaction three times but have yet to receive any.

Anton Duitsman told me that he now plans to pursue the matter with lawyers.

How did the video come about?

That was the first clip I ever made. I had never done it before but luckily I’m pretty good at learning software packages so it didn’t take me long to find my feet.

I was working at Vodacom at the time. A week before creating the video I saw a spoof clip of the Simpsons and I wanted to make my own. So I set out to make the first bit at work (you hear the call centre beep as a call came in while I was on shift in the begining of the clip) I finished the first section (until they go through the first door with the Chinese man) and it was sent out in the call centre. It quickly went viral and a day later people on other continents were already asking for more so I finished the entire clip in a week.

Are you coloured?

Ha ha ha No I’m a white guy. The funny thing is Ninja asked me that exact same question.

I grew up in the Cape and I’m classically a culture fitter as it is part of my job to be likeable so I made it my mission to seamlessly fuse myself into various cultures. I guess you could call me the original “zeffling”. My coloured friends always said “die is my enigste wit vrin” when refferring to me. My ability to relate to people is what has made me successful in business so I’m very thankful for it.

A while ago I recognised 5 songs with some of your shit going down, do you have a list of those songs and passages?

The obvious ones are $copie, My Best Friend and Jou ma se P__s in a fish paste jar.

They also pay tribute to me in Wat Kyk Jy.

That The Matric SA style Video, it is not just the accent but the prurient left field humour is – how shall I say, next level. I mean, where did that come from? It’s like some bizarre surrealist stream of consciousness. But it touches a familiar chord. It sounds like Cape Town. Can you explain?

The jargon in the wording was a mixed bag. Some of it comes from mainstream coloured slang but there is also a large amount that I created myself. But I strung them all together in unconventional ways thus it is my own interpretation of South African culture.

The smoking gun

yo nEo
did the text from my other mail come fru?
i sent this 2 U also
tjekkit:

zik my blaar
fok so you are
THE ONE
jissis ons het gedink jys n coloured
hoe kan jy van joberg wees en so mooi coloured praat?
so luister, fok, ons het nou n poes klomp van jou woorde en brainwaves gebruik op Die Antwoord $O$ album.
ons het eintlik VANDAG die hele fokken ding klaar genaai
ons het selfs n hele lietjie genoem MY BEST FRIEND oppie album gesteek wat net jou stem is oor n vet gang$ta rap beat
we are even always using this track as the intro to our live rap-rave concerts.
DJ HI-TEK het net jou stem n bietjie ge EQ om n bietjie meer laany te klink
want you mic is eintlik heavy kak
maar ons gee nie n fokkie
jys die fokken bizniz
so oppie album kredits sal dit so staan:
MY BEST FRIEND featuring THE FLYING DUTCHMAN aka NEO SA
n ander ding is, DIE ANTWOORD have just been signed to n poes groot record label in the overseas.
It are a label from Amsterdam called Magnetron music.
We are even touring the overseas in april 2010.
Maar die fokken ding is, we have to sign some heavy publishing contracts wif Magnetron which state ‘who wrote what’ of all the lyrics on the album.
THE FLYING DUTCHMAN aka NEO SA’s lyrics features pretty fokken heavy op $COPIE.
En soos jy kan hoor, is jy die enigste naai wat op MY BEST FRIEND gooi.
So Magnetron music are going to send you a ‘featured artist’ publishing contract soon that you must sign if you want to get n royalty off the sales/licensing of the $O$ album.
Spif ne?
Here are the official details we have submitted to Magnetron.
$COPIE
Lyrics:
Ninja- 40%
Yo-landi- 40%
The Flying Dutchman aka Neo SA- 20%
Music:
DJ Hi-Tek- 100%
MY BEST FRIEND ft The Flying Dutchman aka Neo SA
Lyrics-
The Flying Dutchman aka Neo SA: 100%
Music-
DJ Hi-Tek: 100%
En ja we would LOVE to collaborate wif you on our new album.
it are called TEN$ION.
Ons weet nie presies hoe nie, maar I’m sure it will come to us like a vision.
One more thing:
Me and Yo-landi are writing, directing, producing and starring in a full-length movie called THE ANSWER soon. (the story of how DIE ANTWOORD started)
But before we shoot the full movie we are going to make a small 15 minute version of this film. (to show to the people that must give us money to make the big ster kinekor movie)
The short film are going to be called DRIVE FAST PLAY KAK MUSIC LOUD!
Can we send you the script for this soon to read maybe?
Then maybe you can think of some spif dialogue to add to the script.
Maar die ding is, jy moet jou stem record, so we can copy the way you speak it.
It can just be on your kak mic.
Then we can direct the actors to gooi like you.
DIE ANTWOORD are gooing a live DAGGA PUFF party in Pretoria at TingsnTimes on Sunday the 29th of November (next weekend).
It will be spif if you can get a baby sitter, then you and your cherrie, can come out for n lekker row jol, VIP nigga.
Laat ons weet ne
Once
NY
oor en fokken uit

Related deployments:

1. I’m a Ninja – Die Antwoord
2. Die Antwoord offers some rude solutions

As I have indicated many times before, South Africa is a desperately unequal society. This inequality is a moral, social and economic problem. On the other hand as I indicated in a recent blog post, South African workers, particularly mine workers are well paid compared to developing country workers. Will our mines survive these strikes?

First you may well wonder why if as I say South African mine workers are comparatively well paid, the country suffers from some of the highest levels of inequality in the world? An enormous part of the SA population is either not working at all, or if they are, they are in the informal economy where wages are low. Some formal workers (some farm workers for example) get paid similar amounts to Indian and Chinese workers (around R1500 per month). So they get much less compared to unionised factory and especially mine workers. Couple this with the high to enormous salaries that skilled workers and executive South Africans get and you get one of the world’s worst income distributions.

This inequality is – to be sure – worse than at the end of apartheid. While 10% of South Africans took 55% of the income in 1994, the top 10% now take 60% of the countries’s income. The bottom 50% of the population take only 8% of the income of South Africa. That number is incidentally the same as during apartheid. So it is the lower middle and upper working classes that have given up 5% of their income to the upper middle and rich 10% of the population.

Why has inequality increased? It’s not just the ANCs fault. During this period increasing inequality was a global phenomena as capital had more opportunity to move freely across the world. It was only a partial free market of course, since labour was not at liberty to move. South African bus drivers were not able to go work in the UK for example, where they would be much better paid.

In this brave new world South African factory workers suddenly found themselves competing with China’s low wage non unionised workers, not only for a share of exports but also domestically (South Africa’s industrial sector was rather incredibly bigger than China’s within living memory). In the Cape for example the large clothing, textile and shoe manufacturing sector was decimated. Factories that produced shoes for the likes of Puma, now only supply the Botswana and South African police rather unsexy military type boots. The mines, in particular the platinum mines were spared this competition, as South Africa has more than 85% of the world’s platinum reserves. This probably explains why South African mine workers have been able to command better salaries than other workers.

Only a few countries managed to be – notable – exceptions from this phenomena of increasing inequality. Brazil being one of them. Where in Brazil good government and clever pro poor policies has not only made it a more equal society without damaging economic growth, in South Africa it is arguable that the mismanagement of government exacerbated these global structural problems. Poor regulation, a lack of investment in research and infrastructure, a long period of denialism on Aids, poor public hospitals and police, and the promotion of workers to jobs to meet racial quotas that were clearly not skilled enough to do the work, has been a drag on South African productivity.

The wealthy and the favoured were in general in a better position to weather these storms. You can buy security and very good health services in South Africa. Pervasive corruption in government and the private sector did not help equality either. And to top it off years of increasingly poor education in state schools are also slowly feeding through the arteries of the body politic and destroying the prospects of a generation of South Africans.

But why then you may ask has the bottom 50% not also given up income to the top 10%? The South African government should be commended that they introduced in the early 2000′s a big social grant program. This serves to keep the wolf from the door for the poorest of the poor. But their prospects have not improved. In fact there is evidence that they are now instead of working as before, dependent on hands outs form the state.

This is a gloomy picture I just painted. Can the invisible hand of the market save us?

Orthodox economic theory will have it that as South African productivity decreases, as its institutions break down and its infrastructure creeks without investment, as it exports less as a percentage of its GDP, as its workers become less healthy and less educated, international markets will react to this. And it will find expression in South Africa’s freely floating currency as less investment money finds its way here. The Rand will fall. This of course will give South African companies a breather and help them to compete against China’s now rising currency.

Sorted.

And true to form, South Africa has found precious little foreign direct investment. Even its mining sector has had a dearth of investment during the commodities boom… But still our currency is strong?!

You see there’s one small problem. South Africa’s Rand happens to be one of the most traded currencies in the world. In the wisdom of our governments slavish adherence to market liberalisation South Africa is apparently more open than other developing countries’ (like India and China) markets.

And our financial sector is sophisticated and developed (A developed financial sector can be a boon and a bain of many a country, as the Brits are now discovering). Because of the financial crisis, but even before then, South African interest rates are higher than in the struggling west (where rates are near zero today). So called hot money, short term inflows looking for a higher return are flooding into South Africa, pushing up the value of the Rand.

So we have a situation where manual labourers that are poorly educated are striking for wages that are effectively £1000′s per month, (or 1200 Euro, $1500). Compare that to salaries in Spain, where a 1000 euros per month is standard wage of the employed for large sectors of the society. Being one of the many so-called mileurista’s used to be a frowned upon ceiling, but now many Spanish can only dream of earning that.

We also have a situation where the top South African CEO’s get salaries in Rand equal to those of CEO’s listed on the UK’s Footsie 100 (and the light touch British business environment was notorious in recent years for its lack of restraint in CEO remuneration). So for example the CEO of MTN gets around £3 million per year, but of course in Rands. Many other top South African CEO’s pocket around £1 million. Our President, meanwhile earns a larger salary than that of the British Prime Minister, the leader of a country with an economy more than six times the size of our own.

In principle I am for South African workers earning more, especially if it helps make for a more equal income distribution in the country. But the important question is, in an economy that is so integrated in the global economy, are these increases sustainable? Even before these strikes South African Gold mines were of the most expensive mines in the world.

To produce a single ounce of gold in South Africa on average costs $958/oz, compared with Australia at $864/oz, North America at $665/oz and Latin America where one ounce can be produced for $563…

I am told that wages make up a large chunk of South African mining costs. For mining companies huge increases in wages would be justified by fewer and better trained miners using better equipment – like in Australia. But that would also require investment in expensive machines and people. It would not surprise me if mines chose to close rather than take this risk. There are less risky opportunities elsewhere.

Conclusion

I have to say my prognosis for South Africa has never been more negative. To solve these problems would require a raft of measures. The problem is that its easy to prescribe policies. But I fear the South African state no longer has the capacity to implement the best laid plans. South Africa needs very many skilled, honest and patriotic bureaucrats, civil servants, teachers, police and health workers to pull it out of the mire. On top of that it needs social solidarity because many – in particularly the wealthy – will need to make sacrifices.

We are I suspect in one of those moments portrayed in Roadrunner cartoons where the cartoon character runs off a cliff but does not fall – at first. Until it realises that it has no terra firma under it. South Africa is just about realising that its left a cliff a few years ago. I fear the fall will be long.

Related deployments:

1. Are South African miners getting a fair wage?
2. Can an appeal to socialism help mobilise South Africans against inequality?

Compared to major developing world countries, South African workers, and platinum mine workers in particular, are earning not too badly, R5000 pm (just over $600 pm) vs a median** SA wage of R3000 pm. They beat Chinese mine workers ($174 pm) and Indian ($102 pm) ones even more so.

South African factory workers are earning less than platinum miners, but still more than their counter parts in China. Anecdotal evidence suggets that India and Bangladeshi factory workers earn even less. (Clothing and textile jobs, particularly in the Cape has been decimated as a result).

Why do our platinum mineworkers earn more than SA factory workers? South Africa has more than 80% of the world’s proven platinum reserves. Our platinum miners don’t face the same kind of international competition that workers in other sectors experience might be one answer.

But how does South Africa stack up against developed countries’ miners? So off I went to research Australian miners’ wages. What I found was surprising. Incredibly Australian miners earn almost 10 times what our platinum miners earn (round $6000 pm). How can Australian mining companies afford this?

Currently SA Platinum miners are not doing too badly

It’s all about productivity

‘Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run it is almost everything’. Paul Krugman

As Krugman noted, a country’s ability to improve its standard of living over time depends almost entirely on its ability to raise its output per worker (or productivity).

This report on Australian productivity points to some answers as to why their miners are so well paid. Bear in mind that the US is seen as the standard of productivity, one of the most productive economies in the world. It is in the US where new technologies and management techniques – the stuff that improve productivity – are usually first felt. In fact, the Australian report describes it as “the world’s productivity frontier”.

Australia as a whole is on average about 20% less productive than the USA. Mining was until recently the only sector of the Australian economy that was more productive than that of the USA. Australian mine workers were at one point producing 70% more than US ones for the same amount of work. Australia has done this through introducing new methods and technologies of mining that’s made it easier and cheaper to produce goods:

“An increase in the use of open-cut mining has been a key development, along with a general increase in the scale and automation of mining equipment.” Productivity in the (Australian) mining sector.

South African mining is in dire straits

Even in the midst of a global mining boom South African mining has declined in output. This is also true of platinum mines. Direct empolyment in mining has shrunk by a third since from 1970 to 2004 (660,000 to 440,000). Tim Cohen outlines in today’s Business Day the extent of the problem:

During the commodity boom from 2001 to 2008, the mining industry shrank by 1% a year, compared to growth of 5% a year among the world’s 20 mining exporting countries. This is despite the gold price, for example, going from about $400 an ounce in 1994 to $1,800 /oz.

South Africa’s state research body the CSIR wrote a report in 2011 called State Intervention in the Mining Industry that claimed the problems besetting South Africa’s mines were due to a number of factors that included poor skills and safety, which translates into poor productivity.

I will just pull out a few quotes from the report:

State mediated funding for health and safety research, through the Mine Health and Safety Council, measured in 2011 Rand, has fallen from R80-million in 1996 to under R20-million in 2010.

South Africa’s mining accident and fatality record is unacceptably high. Responsible multi-nationals are reluctant to establish or continue operating here as they cannot accept the consequences in human life. As one example, BHP Billiton will not mine platinum in South Africa, as it does not believe it can do so safely.

As mining has gone from shallow to deep, productivity has become poorer and costs have risen.

In platinum, there are extensive, relatively shallow resources available, but South African production has fallen since 2006 despite the global commodities boom in 2007 and 2008. Analysts list a number of contributing factors, including the role of technical challenges: “it is clear that mining is becoming more complicated than it used to be”.

There is a worldwide shortage of technical skills particularly in mining. High-level technical skills are particularly useful in the conceptualization, design and implementation stages of a new mining project. It is at these stages that most value is created, and that require the most innovative, high level and experienced skills that can be brought to bear on the project. If high-level skills are not available, the value that will be created from a mineral resource will be reduced.

Many technical areas where the country had an international reputation, for ex-ample rock engineering, have been weakened by a lack of investment in new capacity and by the aging of the researcher population. Researchers participating in mining research have fallen in number from over 600 in 1988 to less than 80 currently.

The industry is constrained by a lack of skills in many areas, particularly in artisan skills, but also by a widespread lack of literacy, and lack of a common language on many mines.

To get back to the question I originally asked. Do SA miners get a fair wage? Unfortunately I don’t think I have enough information to answer that yet. The numbers above do not factor in South Africa’s cost of living (which is higher than India’s for example).

But I do think my search shows us – once gain – who the main culprit has been. There are many actors involved in the current South African mining crisis, and there are many guilty parties. But none more so than the SA government. On its watch the country is deskilling. And on its watch a small elite is enriching itself. On its watch South Africa’s Gini coefficient – the measure of inequality, has shot up even further since apartheid (10% of the population is raking in 60% of the countries income).

South Africa is thick with the perils of moral hazard. It’s pretty clear that getting ahead is not about merit or hard work but rather who you know and how much of a fuss you can create.

How do we apportion blame to only miners in this dystopian environment?

* PS: When I get a moment I will have a look at the pay of wealthy South africans, comparatively.
** The median wage in South Africa is much lower than one would expect, considering the size of the countries’ GDP. That’s because income is so unevenly distributed, with the bottom 50% of the population taking home less than 8% of the countries income, and the top 10% taking 60%.

Surprisingly coal is the biggest earner for South Africa in terms of mining. Source: SAPA

Related deployments:

1. Between a rock & a hard place – On South Africa’s strikes, inequality & crisis
2. UK Guardian on South African ‘corrective rape’

So what are the Marikana claims? An article in the UK based Socialist Worker by Thapelo Lekgowa, Botsang Mmope and Peter Alexander claims that: It was the police that attacked the miners. It also claims that many people were shot and killed not in the place where the TV cameras were, but while they were running away or hiding. It claims some were crushed by armoured vehicles.

There are other claims in that article and more in another here.

Now, when I saw this article I was sceptical (**) about perhaps most of the claims. Partly because they appear in The Socialist Worker, which is regarded as a curious and not credible publication by many (including me – not that I have read them much mind). Michelle Solomon informed me that one of the people responsible, Peter Alexander is an academic. OK, that perked my interest a little. Upon a little more digging I discovered these tweets by Sipho Hlongwane who has been doing some otherwise excellent reporting from the scene.

@mishsolomon Yeah, the men kept saying that journalists were barred from seeing the worst of the killings.

— Sipho Hlongwane (@comradesipho) August 21, 2012

It struck me that the main actors in this event – the miners – they themselves are making these allegations, yet they have not been mentioned (as allegations) in any of the mainstream media (MSM). Only the throwaway tweet by @comradesipho. And a so-called @reply at that. Twitter has the peculiar affordance that only individuals following both the persons in a conversation will see a tweet in their stream. Hlongwane obviously did not not think these allegations deserved wider purchase.

That the MSM is stum about these claims is very odd. Is there an argument to be made that they should not have been aired?

I was the TRC investigator into several Vaal massacres like Boipatong. There were several wild accusations that came with each of these massacres. Often they contradicted each other. And often, on the face of it there was no evidence that indeed these claims were true. What’s more, more often than not these claims were actually false. But these claims did find their way into the media, at the very least as allegations.

And sometimes they had some truth in them. And even these partial truths were enough to shake the foundations of the whole country. It bears repeating that crucially and unlike now, at least some press like the Weekly Mail published these allegations as such. Thus changing the nature of public debate and the level of scrutiny under which the police and government had to operate.

Lets for the sake of argument presuppose these claims are false. Does it matter that the MSM did not mention them? Yes it does. For one if these allegations had been made prominently it would have been harder for the government to appoint a ministerial and not an independent commission of enquiry. Secondly, claims of torture against the police would have been taken more seriously. Thirdly a new level of scrutiny of the crime scene would have followed.

MSM media power

In a country like South Africa the MSM, and particularly the broadcast media is still by far the the most important way people get their news. More importantly the MSM get to decide what is news, and whether your news is everybody else’s news.

It’s not that the media ecology is not changing. Some of us can now go directly to the public, bypassing MSM. It’s a theme I’ve written on before, the new hierarchy of people created due to their status and ability to get their messages out via social media. The flipside to this attention riches is a new poor. They do not have an audience, or are unable to get attention if they need to. But in some developing countries like South Africa the situation is worse. A significant proportion of people are not  connected to the internet or even worse – illiterate.

And this ‘attention’ poor can not depend on the MSM. Our professional mainstream media unconsciously panders to the communities who pays it bills: The middle-classes, and corporate interests. (Eek – I’m sounding like Chomsky!) This is a new inequality, because many of the miners’ middle-class compatriots now have access to the media in ways they did not have before (I for example could speak to several editors of South African papers via Twitter the last two days). Some citizens wield considerable media power in and of themselves via social media.

So I’m left wondering. Is the South African media just holding its fire, investigating, before they publish? Perhaps, but I doubt it. From exchanges I had last night and this morning on Twitter (published below) they are aware of these allegations, I think they have already dismissed this line of enquiry. (Bar Ferial Haffajee that is.)

The Head of ETV (an independent news channel) news:

@mishsolomon @ferialhaffajee @nicdawes @rayjoe Initial view is all sides contributed to tragedy and should take responsibility.

— Patrick Conroy (@PatrickConroySA) August 21, 2012

@rayjoe @mishsolomon @ferialhaffajee @nicdawes article suggests police ‘planned’ massacre. Not convinced that is true.

— Patrick Conroy (@PatrickConroySA) August 21, 2012

This response of mine I’m not particularly proud of:

@wildebees what is your point? Journalists consider evidence all the time.

— Patrick Conroy (@PatrickConroySA) August 21, 2012

@patrickconroysa the socialist worker is not a publication with the highest standing, but if workers on the ground make these claims

— Wessel van Rensburg (@wildebees) August 21, 2012

@patrickconroysa …at least one could say its been alleged?

— Wessel van Rensburg (@wildebees) August 21, 2012

Ferial Haffajee the editor of City Press.

@mishsolomon laudable that activists went out but no allegations are verified and don’t accord with other eyewitness accounts.

— Ferial Haffajee (@ferialhaffajee) August 22, 2012

This morning other South Africans chimed in.

You have to be astonishingly simple-minded if you believe this piece over our local reportage: socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=294… #Lonmin

— Fiona Snyckers (@FionaSnyckers) August 22, 2012

This response is heartening:

@wildebees I was giving @mishsolomon my opinion. Will send to our news desk.

— Ferial Haffajee (@ferialhaffajee) August 22, 2012

Some closing thoughts from me. It could be that the South African poor, no longer hitched via an Africanist elite to the grand project of the struggle has even less of a voice in media than they had during apartheid.

Or could it be that the SA media thinks the situation in the country is so volatile that its irresponsible to publish these allegations before they have more information?

Some possible pointers that the media might be scared of fanning flames in a tinder box. None of the South African broadcasters (independent or state) carried Julius Malema’s speech live at Marikana the other day, which is significant in recent SA media history. And some evidence that the SA media now defer to the police, Phillip De Wet, the Mail and Guardian reporter at the scene was asked to delete his pictures of shot miners because “it was a crime scene” – and he did!

What does this say about the place of media in today’s South Africa? Not only are they reporting, investigating, they are the guardians of civil order while the state flails or looks the other way? This requires some hard decisions from editors. Or have the SA media just drunk the New South Africa cool aid? Or perhaps the allegations of poor miners are to the minds of the SA journalists just less credible than what they themselves witness, or what the police say happened. Miners’ point of view don’t even get a mention.

Fear, complacency or dismissiveness? It could of course be a combination of these factors that makes the media shy to publish these allegations.

Lets for the sake of argument presuppose these claims are false. Does it matter that the MSM did not mention them? Yes it does. For one if these allegations had been made prominently it would have been harder for the government to appoint a ministerial and not an independent commission of enquiry. Secondly, claims of torture against the police would have been taken more seriously. Thirdly a new level of scrutiny of the crime scene would have followed.

There is one lesson to learn. The miners’ invisibility in media, and the fact that they don’t publish their own or have access to the MSM, is an incredible disadvantage. If one of them was mildly eloquent, had a smartphone (there’s 3G where the massacre happened) and a Twitter user, then they would have had their own channel to put forth their version of events.

They are disenfranchised in more ways then they might have thought.

UPDATE: 8 days after I wrote this blog post the independent online only publication the Daily Maverick posted these same allegations. One day later the first established publications, the Mail & Guardian published them. Also see News 24.

* I contacted Peter Alexander and he sent me one of the pictures the Socialist Worker did not publish.

** Perhaps not the ones you imagine. The police in 1990 ran over a far rightwing Tukkies student – Jurgen Globelaar – with a Caspir , when he stole rifles and tried to flee across the Botswana border. My point being the violence in the SA police can be intitutional, not ideological, and quite unreflective.

Related deployments:

1. The Smarteez are starting to get noticed

For example – The photo attached to this post I found on Pinterest. It came with the following caption.

Distinguished sociologist Erving Goffman noted that women in photographs are often portrayed in compromising or submissive situations such as having the head turned upwards to expose the neck or in a contorted stances often with light self-touching. Such poses invite the gaze of the viewer and make the subject of the photograph seem vulnerable and exposed to sexualization.

I have been creating a board, The Wildebees Gaze. A catalogue of images I could quickly find that I found sexy. A caveat is in order. Undoubtedly the fact that Pinterest is public has affected what I have Pinned. I do seek approval. The images are therefor influenced partly by what I think the broader public and the people I care about would not frown upon. So it’s not wholly a personal or pure sexual preference. But I think that downside actually makes a wider point I will try to make (later) rather well.

One of the often cited criticisms one hears of male sexuality is that it objectifies women.

I stand guilty as charged. I find women endlessly beautiful, as do I several parts of their anatomy. Talk about not seeing the whole person and the personality! Punish me.

No seriously. What I find fascinating, is that even in the female dominated world of Pinterest (apparently over 80% of US users are female), there are so few sexualised images of men on there. Actually I am incorrect. There are plenty of boards of hot sexy men, but they show men being broody, moodish, arrogant, and almost always clothed. When the men are naked, and cock their heads slightly a-la Goffman, invariably the boards are created by gay men.

Straight women are apparently turned on by these pictures. Why don’t women objectify men in a similar fashion? And is that a good thing?

On the other hand, there is allot of pictures of women on Pinterest, women looking gorgeous, dominant, submissive, wanton, reclining, straddling, naked. Even the racy ones have women more as the subject than men. And most of them have been created by women themselves. My bet is that these are straight women.

This brings me to something else I have noticed on social media sites. First on Flickr and now on sites like Instagram: Women objectifying themselves via sexy pictures. In other words, gilrs taking semi-naked sexualised pics of themselves. What does this say about the male and female gaze in Western countries?

No related posts.

Last night I was in the The Dove Pub on Broadway Market. We sat in a small side room, with no thoroughfare, and I felt safe putting two bags (one with two laptops) and another with an iPad next to our wooden bench.

That is until a middle-eastern looking chap asked to squeezed right past everybody and sit quite close to our bags, on his own. It immediately struck me as odd. Our little room was packed and I saw nobody else seemed to care, but I thought I’d better keep an eye on him.

There was a thought in the back of my mind that I should watch him because of our bags. But there was – I am ashamed to admit – another reason I watched him. Everybody else were very festive drunk even, and he appeared to be completely sober. The thought crossed my mind, what if this guy was a religious fanatic? What if he had a bomb? I felt guilty for having these thoughts. Oh prejudice!

For the same reason I did not move my bags. It would be a clear inference that I thought him untrustworthy if I moved my bags. And that was probably partly based on how he looked. Not cool at all I thought, and rude.

So instead I decided to keep an eye on him. And he did nothing, except chat on his phone. Then the jazz band struck up and I thought, ah! That must be why he was sitting there. Where he sat he had a clear view on the musicians in the back room. His worst crime was probably that he liked his rhythms syncopated.

That is when I relaxed and stopped watching him carefully. I drifted off into conversations about relationships with a friend. Until the guy suddenly stood up. I realised he was carrying his coat in such a way that I could not tell what he was carrying under it. Alarm bells. I asked Laura to check whether both our bags were there. No she said, just the one with the iPad was there.

I bolted through the bar. Outside he was just a few paces ahead of me. I ran up to the briskly walking man and gave him a shove. I shouted where are my laptops! He dropped to the ground and dropped the bag. Instinctively I reached for the bag. But I could have penned him to the ground. I was much stronger than him.

I chose to pick up the bag and the man scampered off.

All around people congratulated me. Good show!

Now I feel violated, stupid and conflicted. This minefield called prejudice handed me a traitors heart.

When we checked, it became obvious that the man had already helped himself to the iPad in the other bag. And he ran away with that. If I had not thought ah ok, I got my laptops, and if I had rather done my civic duty and held him down until the police came, not only would I have my iPad, I would also have done society a favour.

On Friday evening a South African friend told me how wonderfully tolerant they found the UK. Ja. Fan-fucking-tastic. That tolerance has a flip-side. Much that passes for tolerance is indifference.

PS: Having so much coms tech on me I was probably due for some redistribution.

No related posts.

But the album title itself was incendiary. To many Afrikaner Nationalists it was literally an article of faith that all of South Africa had been given by God to Afrikaners.

I was reminded of how things have changed this week with the outrage that greeted Afrikaner politician Pieter Mulder, who proclaimed in parliament:

Africans never in the past lived in the whole of South Africa. The Bantu-speaking people moved from the equator down while the white people moved from the Cape up, to meet each other at the Kei River.

Now. First things first. I’m not sure the last word on this subject has been spoken by researchers. But what do we know now? On the face of it, that statement is more or less correct. By the time the first whites settled in the Cape, Nguni and other tribes (Bantu tribes) were indeed already settled in what today is known as Natal and the Eastern Cape, but not in the region known as Boland.

So 1 – 0 to Mulder? Yeah, a hollow victory mind.

Cape Town and surrounds was empty? Nope, certainly not. These areas were settled by the hunter gatherer Khoi and the San. And these people’s were on occasion massacred, and yes Giliomee says the word hunted would not be out of place.

Mulder is technically right though, they were not Bantu. And if academics are to be believed the Khoi and San were squeezed and exterminated by both the Bantu in the North and the whites in the South. Tragic.

South Africans should look at the bright side however. Implicit in Mulder’s statement is a worldview that colonisation is bad. This worldview is by and large not shared in the same way or acknowledged by whites in the US or Australia (to name but a few). The answer for this is rather simple. The many run-ins Afrikaners had with the two ton truck that was the British Empire, have instilled a group consciousness – a dim view of taking other people’s land by way of violence. Afrikaners’ literature, poetry and songs echo to this anti-colonial strain, over and over again.

Responsible politicians should aim to harness this worldview as an asset, rather than exploit or for that matter – ignore it.

Picture description – Members of New Zealand’s Sixth Contingent burn a Boer farm, 1901.

This photograph was possibly taken by Private William Raynes.

During the second phase of the war Boer farms were often cleared of their inhabitants: houses and possessions were burned and the livestock either taken by the British or destroyed. As a result of this method, more than 30,000 farms were burnt and up to 3.6 million sheep were destroyed.

Miserable scenes are to be seen on the travel, at farm houses men, women & children are to be seen almost starving, I have seen women & children crying terribly when we would burn down their wagons & take away everything that would be of use to the enemy, you cannot think what a horrible thing war is unless you have seen it with your own eyes, but the brutes still hold out.

Private Frank Swanwick, Fourth Contingent, in Gavin McLean, Ian McGibbon & Kynan Gentry (eds), The Penguin Book of New Zealanders at War (2009)

Related deployments:

1. The Boers & the making of modern Britain

See my Storify below.

Related deployments:

1. The Victim race