Flintlocks & Knobkerries

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 14:29

Flintlocks & Knobkerries – Notes from the New Frontier

 

Sweeping Back the Information Sea

 

Well, that didn’t take very long. No sooner have the international guests departed the house than the neighbours are rolling their eyes at the sound of raised voices and breaking crockery as South Africans indulge in their favourite pastime: accusing each other of being ‘bloody agents’. 

 

It’s only early August and already we’ve had a full dose of xenophobic outbursts, public sector wage strikes, the Springboks being comprehensively donnered and an enthusiastic return to the vitriol, slander and back-biting that passes for our public discourse. And to think that a mere month ago we were basking in the glory of having hosted one of the most successful sporting events in history? Such is the character of our charmingly bi-polar nation.

 

Amidst all of this, it is almost unbelievable that the government has chosen now, of all times, to pick a fight with the media. Here at the New Frontier, we have little sympathy for the established mainstream media, which is guilty of many of the things it has been accused of by its detractors, and even at the best of times, doesn’t exactly cover itself in glory when it comes to accuracy, probity, morality or sheer likeability.

 

But you have to ask yourself: what on earth are the media strategy people in the Union Buildings thinking? Do they really believe that the press would take such a ham-fisted attempt at clipping its wings lying down? Can it be that they have completely misunderstood the pivotal roles played by media and communications in a transitional society such as ours? And why are they picking a fight with mainstream media when they should surely know that in the age of Facebook, Youtube, Wikileaks and Twitter, plugging leaks in the name of the so-called national interest is about as effective as trying to sweep back the sea?

 

The people advising the President should also know (without needing to be told) that during historical periods of political and economic transition, the role of new communication technologies is often decisive. For example, the invention of the printing press laid the foundation for the Reformation and eventually resulted in the Revolutionary Period of the late eighteenth century. The first newspapers were disseminated as political pamphlets in the coffee houses of Europe and North America, specifically aimed at spreading the ideas of liberty and democracy – culminating in the American (1776) and French (1789) revolutions.

 

These political transitions were also accompanied by changes in the structure and organisation of the economy – both revolutions coincided with the first industrial revolution – the transition from agricultural (feudal and rural) society to manufacture driven (modern and urban) society. Similarly, the continent wide European revolutions of 1848 coincided with the invention of the steam engine and the telegraph and set the stage for the second industrial revolution. The Russian revolution of 1917 and the fascist reaction to it during the 1930s coincided with the advent of radio and the transition from the age of steam to the age of the combustion engine and the hydrocarbon economy.

 

In every single case, attempts to suppress information were not only unsuccessful but also severely damaged the societies in which such experiments took place – in some cases leading directly to the failure of the revolution.

 

 

 

The impact of communication technologies can also be seen in the internal political changes that have taken place within the democracies since the revolutionary period. Thus, for example, Franklin Roosevelt was the first President of the United States to effectively make use of the radio as a communications tool with his weekly “Fireside Chats” where he won voter support for the New Deal. John F Kennedy achieved similar results with television and Barack Obama’s entire election campaign was built around social media, particularly Facebook

While we are busy making a spectacle of ourselves for all the wrong reasons, the Democrats in America and the Tories in Britain are demonstrating the non-ideological nature of the new era. To read the speeches of Barack Obama or David Cameron is to be reminded of the arguments made by the United Democratic Front when it was organising communities against apartheid. Neither of them seems to be able to move without declaring their commitment to openness, transparency, accountability and the principles of community organisation and participatory democracy as applied to government in the twenty-first century.

 

Having been elected on Facebook, Obama lost no time in issuing what is now known as the transparency and accountability memorandum, instructing federal government officials to adopt a default position of making data available to the citizens of the republic. The result has been an explosion of citizen-based initiatives to improve government efficiency and effectiveness. Then he established the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation in the White House to coordinate partnerships between government, private capital, social entrepreneurs and the public. A Social Innovation Fund is financing several pilot healthcare, education, poverty alleviation and job creation initiatives, and there are plans to adopt similar approaches to delivery throughout the federal government.

 

Not to be outdone, David Cameron has also instructed government departments to make data available to citizens and he recently made a speech where he outlined his vision for what he called “Big Society”, thereby demonstrating how far we have come since Maggie Thatcher famously doubted whether society even exists. There are plans to establish a Big Society Bank, which will finance social entrepreneurs, voluntary groups and charities. Mr Cameron was quoted recently in the Economist as saying that the government wants to create “communities with oomph”.

 

 

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