ari adi amus late ari adi amus da
ari a na tus late adoo a
are vare tue vate
are vare tue vate
are vare tue vate la tea
I sang this in the shower last night. It played in my head as I went to sleep. The whole office knows the words. We hum it as we absent-mindedly scribble on pink post-its.
The beautiful but earwormish “Adiemus” is but one of the theme tunes to a Johannesburg journalist’s life.
It is provincial government’s ”hold” tone.
But the song is not all that regular callers learn: when frustration ebbs, and brooding sets in, red-faced writers gain clarity about what makes government’s media machine so effective. Effective, that is, when it comes to snubbing queries and avoiding accountability.
Let me provide some context.
Given the clandestine tendencies of the apartheid government’s (non-) communications department, the post-1994 state apparatus was in dire need of a make-over: clear the fog of the past, and set a crystal-clear democratic precedent.
To this end, 1995 saw the commissioning of Comtask by then Deputy President Thabo Mbeki: a body established to review government communications at every level of government. In short, a committee to improve communication between the people and the State.
After a year’s investigation, Comtask’s report was released along with 86 recommendations which set the wheels in motion for the 1998 launch of the GCIS – the Government Communications and Information System.
This “strategic unit of The Presidency” describes its own mandate as being to “co-ordinate, guide and advise on government communication (including media liaison, development communication and marketing)”. (Emphasis added.)
The then Deputy Minister, Dr Essop Pahad, had a clear vision for the auspicious System:
Our task, hand in hand with partners in the communication industry, including the media, is to ensure that this right [to freedom of information] is indeed realised in practical life.
It is to see to it that all South Africans receive comment and information that enable them to make rational choices about their lives.They have got the right to know, and to be heard.
I wonder what the good doctor thinks of his successors.
Today’s GCIS fell far from the tree.
Today’s GCIS is a convoluted, secretive root system upon which a forest of corruption grows tall.
Walk into any newsroom in the country and you are bound to find at least one journalist bashing a cell phone in frustration because of an evasive spokesperson or a vital source silenced by the former’s existence.
Instead of facilitating this long-awaited freedom of information, government spokespeople – as a rule – equivocate, quibble, and as a last resort ignore.
For every politician who should be held to account, there is a recalcitrant representative to prevent it.
Over the years – or perhaps from the start – the institutionalisation of spokespeople in the State apparatus has had two repercussions of particular significance: the first is that those who should be answerable to citizens are not “allowed” to be – after all, that is someone else’s job now. The second is that, instead of having numerous ports of call to answer queries – mitigating the effect of dishonest answers – those in search of the truth must rely on a single reply.
So much for hearing all sides of the story.
So long, the horse’s mouth.
If you want an answer from government today, then you must settle for the end of the broken-down-telephone line. That is if you get an answer at all.
And this chain of eternal deferrals, which ends with the spokesperson, is government’s primary means of concealment.
An “Adiemus”-wearied journalist of over 40 years’ experience summed it up: “There is one main lesson of [news] journalism in this country: Spokespeople are especially positioned – not to facilitate the flow of communication – but to abort and disrupt it.
“They are there so that no one else can speak to you.”
It is a grim reality.
Our government has surpassed the best of the secretive rest; they sneer at Russia and the USA.
We don’t need complex, million-dollar information protection systems.
We have GCIS: ineffective bureaucracy trumps KGB-style complexity.
And although often inefficient for reasons more practical than conspiratorial, the existence of designated spokespeople is the perfect excuse for silence.
It is unaccountability mandated.
During a recent stint of mine as an investigative journalist in Johannesburg the situation was brought into stark relief: government spokespeople hate journalists. They despise investigative journalists.
And this animosity is damaging journalists’ work.
I’ll explain by means of an example.
An anonymous tip-off was recently received by the investigative unit where I was working. Mr Bureaucrat called in, offering information on a lucrative government tender “won” in a one-man race. Distressed by the untoward goings-on, Mr Bureaucrat had lodged formal complaints with the department concerned, but his complaints – like the competitive bidding process – were brushed aside.
So Mr Bureaucrat phoned the media to spill the beans, and he said friends in his department were equally eager to speak.
Now in investigative work it is not unusual to cite at least one “confidential source”: the Deep Throat of the “Watergate”, as it were.
Two anonymous sources is not unheard of. Three is suspicious and four is rumour.
So when Mr Bureaucrat offers colleagues to confirm his facts, the story needs at least one of them to have a name.
Keen to uncover foul play we call source one. Of course he can help. No, we can’t put his name.
We call source two: yes, she knows about it, but she will speak only unofficially.
Source three won’t talk at all.
By source four we’re desperate: the story needs legs, and no one is prepared to go on record.
The reason for silence is not the fear of reprisals which gag our northern neighbours; it is the fact that they are not allowed to.
It is the fact that there is an official spokesperson.
Ever tenacious investigators keep digging. Sourcing more sources and caller-IDing more calls.
The story took shape: a tender scam of epic proportions. Lists of questions were drawn up to put to the higher-ups. And then the real calling began.
“Please direct all queries to our media liaison officer,” says a deputy’s secretary.
“Ask the spokesman,” echoes a minister.
Even the private contractor involved issues a two-line e-mail advising recourse to the hardy GCIS shield:
Refer to the Ministerial spokesperson for particulars.
PS. [Insert name of dodgy tenderer] objects to your questioning.
At every turn we are rerouted back to point one.
And point one is not answering.
We ambush him on his cell. Nothing.
We try the office:“Adiemus” again. By the twentieth call I start swiping the phone past my ear at different rates to see if the Doppler effect works at close range.
It doesn’t.
The next morning I go to his office. His secretary smiles sweetly: he’s not in, and no, she cannot speak on his behalf. Try again tomorrow, please.
Dejected, I skulk in the halls for a while. I haunt the entrance to the men’s just in case, and do a recce in the boardroom, just in case.
In the passages I run into Mr Bureaucrat. He smiles, and beckons me closer. I explain my predicament: only one person can speak officially, and he’s mute.
His eyes glint and he smiles coyly. He can cheer me up: he finally has the information I need to seal the story.
Brilliant. I’m ecstatic. So now it’s sure as sure. Will he put name to paper?
He shakes his head sadly, his smile disappears. “When I retire I will put my name to the truth. Until then, I’m just a little bird.”
“Now,” he says, eyes glistening with mischief, “let the little bird whisper.”
And he gives the information, and he proves the story true. But when time came to write the story up, it read like a salon rumour. He said. She said. Someone else said.
It did not sound credible, despite its truth.
And that is the problem of the spokesperson strategy: those who do not want to speak do not have to. Those who do, cannot.
And our truths sound like fiction, because the spokesperson won’t speak.
This contribution was produced as part of a collaboration between LitNet and the University of Stellenbosch's Department of Journalism in 2013. An amended version of this article also appeared in The Agenda.