Two fascinating lessons this week from our politicians on how, and how not, to deal with the media.
The first came from South Africa’s current media master, EFF leader Julius Malema, as he announced his deal with SARS. I’ve seen it described by one commentator as a “grovel” to the tax collector, and, in media terms, so it should have been. Malema has done spectacularly well out of the recent election, and also pulled off an absolute coup de theatre by appearing in Parliament in his red overalls and hard hat. No other politician of the current crop has his courage or media instincts, irrespective of whether or not you agree with his views.
But he has two very severe problems that have to be overcome, because voters, ultimately, are not stupid. If Malema’s current media trajectory is to stick, he needs to sort out his affairs with the tax man, and also to clear his name in court. Were either of those not to happen, he’d stand exposed as a fraud and a cheat.
Leaders in other spheres contemplating a media strategy should pay heed. You can’t live a lie. Ultimately, you will be found out, like the would-be Republican/Tea Party candidate in the US a couple of years ago, who was preaching conservatism, family values and Christianity, until it emerged that he had been forcing his wife to perform public sex acts in some extremely seedy clubs. His lie was exposed and, needless to say, he was not elected.
Gone are the days – even in France – of politicians or business moguls being able to hide behind a shield of privacy, whilst getting up to no good. If you aspire to office – whether it’s in Tuynhuys or just the Corner Office in the Big Building, you’d better get used to it.
So Malema’s grovel to SARS was absolutely right and necessary, although of course it could have come a little sooner. Another golden rule, when dealing with the media, is that if you’re caught doing something even vaguely shady, confess immediately, hold your hand to your breast, say mea culpa, and hope you can survive.
That’s an example of how to deal with the media. It’s grudging, it was forced on him, but ultimately Malema understood that this had to happen for him to move on.
Which is in stark contrast to the ham-fisted attempt by Jacob Zuma and his cabinet to establish a Ministry of Propaganda, headed by an obscure MP who has made her views on media very clear. The government is calling it a Ministry of Communication, but with the SABC, GCIS, ICASA and Brand South Africa all under one roof, its purpose is plain to see.
The thinking is just as I described it in a blog post last week – Stalinist, which is to say totalitarian. Control the message, control the media and you control the minds of your subjects. Hitler and his propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels, used the technique to chilling effect in Germany in the 1930s. But it doesn’t work in the modern age, as even the post-Stalinists who run China are discovering. Not even the Great Firewall of China can halt the spread of ideas, thought and information via the internet.
Which brings me back to living the lie. If you do it, you will be exposed. In government terms, this means very simply that if you want good media, you not only have to do good things, but also stop doing bad things.
If you want favourable headlines, get your act together over service delivery, electricity supply, corruption and politicians helping themselves to tax-payers’ cash in areas like ministerial limos and housing. (Did someone say Nkandla?) If you do that, there’s nothing for the media to investigate and write about.
But if you continue to do the bad stuff, it will be found out and it will be written and talked about. And when that happens, no matter how big your Ministry of Propaganda, you won’t be able to hide it or dress it up. As Julius Malema has discovered the hard way, you can’t put lipstick on a pig.