Jonny Steinberg: Were the government's proposed media appeals tribunal to be traced to its deepest roots, how far back would we go? I'd hazard that we would end up in the Eastern Cape town of Alice in 1850, when, for the first time in that territory, a black person sued a white for defamation.
The plaintiff's name was Jacob Bokwe, and he took action after a white man publicly called him "a gross liar". Bokwe told the magistrate he wanted compensation for the damage done to his reputation.
Anyone familiar with the history of the Eastern Cape's grandee families will recognise the name Bokwe. Jacob was among the first graduates of Lovedale College and the founder of a dynasty of distinguished black professionals. Among his descendants were John Knox Bokwe, ground-breaking musicology scholar and accomplished composer, and Roseberry Bokwe, who studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and became a district surgeon.
That the Bokwe family patriarch was the first black to sue a white for defamation is exquisitely symbolic. It is as if Jacob were suing on behalf of his descendants, indeed, on behalf of all the subsequent generations of black professionals who would seek dignity in a land ruled by whites. By the time his grandson, Roseberry, came of age, the idea that a white court might give a black person redress seemed positively quaint. Roseberry joined the ANC and became its provincial chairman. He understood that there would be no redress without political power.
Which brings us to the proposed media appeals tribunal. Many of its proponents would like to see it as the latest instalment of Jacob Bokwe's struggle. Bokwe wanted the respectability one acquires through the study of law, the arts and science. White South Africa told him that such respectability did not belong to him, that the professions were for whites.
Today, according to some of the tribunal's proponents, the reputations of Bokwe's descendants are still being sullied, only this time, it is not just lawyering and doctoring that are at stake, but governance: black people are being told they cannot run a country because they are gross liars.
Deputy minister of transport Jeremy Cronin, for instance, complained of the liberal media some years ago: "Week after week after week of exposing another black scandal ... frankly, it looks like racism to a lot of ordinary people." Jacob Zuma, when he defends the tribunal, speaks of the "respect" and "dignity" that the media habitually violates.
Were Jacob Bokwe to be woken from the dead to read these lines, what would he say? I suspect his first response would be annoyance. "We have been in power for 16 years," he might say. "And yet they're still at it, calling us liars and belittling us?"
"Well," the tribunal's proponents might reply, "we struggled all those years for political power, only to discover, once we acquired it, that real power had dispersed to other places: the media, the corporations, the banks, the professions. To be black is to be under assault. We are going to have to defend ourselves for a long time; perhaps forever."
When Bokwe went to court in 1850, he wanted whites publicly to acknowledge that the things they most valued - education, Victorian respectability - were not theirs to hoard; that he, as a black man, embodied them too.
Now he is being told that the quest for black dignity is in fact never won. It is a special case and requires ongoing measures. The laws against defamation that protect white politicians in Europe and North America are not strong enough to protect our politicians: here, we need more. If this means that government is less transparent than in countries with white majorities, if it means that those who hold public office will be held less accountable, then so be it: the quest for black dignity requires more.
The more I think about it, the less I want to apologise for presuming to read Bokwe's thoughts. I know that he would feel deeply uncomfortable. That black dignity might forever require special measures would leave him wondering. When he went to court in 1850, he could surely not have imagined that the holders of political power might one day censor free speech in the name of the very dignity for which he strived.
- Steinberg is with the Institute for Humanities in Africa, University of Cape Town
