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Abstract
The post‐repressive‐regime South African government has actively convened a public sphere bristling with institutions and policies designed to facilitate public deliberation. However, certain apartheid legacies and contemporary political compromises facilitate the reach of power into the convened public sphere, leading to the corralling of public deliberation and the attempted silencing of critical voices. By the end of the Mbeki presidency, a cacophony of public dissent erupted, some of it insisting on the importance of open public critique and some of it seeking to limit and shape dissent itself. The article discusses ongoing contests over the meaning of publicness, locating the roots of these different ideas of publicness in different political and intellectual traditions, each with different understandings of the deliberative citizen. It suggests that participation in public debate is increasingly confined to the exertion of a narrowly defined notion of national democratic citizenship. Arguing that the formation of counterpublic spheres in South Africa is inhibited, the article considers the role of what it terms ‘capillaries’ of public deliberation, in which various kinds of radical critiques of cultural values, norms, identities and the fragmentation of historical consciousness take place.
Notes
1. This article draws on a project of collaborative research by the Core Group of the Constitution of Public Intellectual Life Research Project, viz. Rory Bester, Lesley Cowling, Anthea Garman, Carolyn Hamilton, Litheko Modisane, Pascal Mwale, Alan Finlay and, in its first phase, Yvette Greslé and Windsor Leroke. The article is one of a cluster of linked, and sometimes overlapping, research essays emanating from the Project and its successor structure, the Public Life of Ideas Network. Thanks are due to Oliver Barstow for research support in the preparation of the article.
2. Calhoun's overview of Habermas's argument offers useful and well‐formulated condensations on which I rely here.
3. See, for example, the essays on deliberative democracy in Seyla Benhabib (Citation1996).
4. The application – which succeeded – was originally brought against the Speaker of the National Assembly and the Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces, while the Minister of Health and the Speakers of the nine provincial legislatures were subsequently joined as respondents in the matter. I am grateful to Carol Steinberg for help in developing this point.
5. See, for example, the work of the Media Development and Diversity Agency (www.mdda.org.za) and the media programmes of the Open Society Foundation (www.osf.org.za).
6. See, for example, the contributions of Vusi Gumede (Citation2002), Alan Hirsch (Citation2005) and Bheki Khumalo (Citation2006).
7. My formulation here intentionally echoes that of Habermas (Citation1996, p. 176).
8. See the 2006 HSRC survey which found a significant discrepancy between ideals enshrined in the Constitution and the values of ordinary citizens.
9. See, for example, the 2003 HSRC (Human Rights Research Council) Review Report, which drew attention to the tension between the organisation's public‐interest mandate and commercial pressures.
10. See the partner to this article by Lesley Cowling and Carolyn Hamilton, in the second part of this symposium, for a fuller discussion of factors at play, and tensions within, the public broadcaster's understanding of the notion of public interest.
11. Both texts were reproduced in full in New African, 436, January 2005.
12. See, for example, Zizi Kodwa (Citation2006).
13. Summary and translation of Jacob Zuma's speech to his supporters, Nomfundo Xulu, Johncom Digital, Media Division.
14. Fraser (Citation1992b) effectively exposes the way in which these kinds of tactics were used to discredit the testimony of Anita Hill in the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court Justice, USA, confirmation hearings.
15. For further information, see: http://www.tac.org.za.
16. This concept, with roots in Michel Foucault's formulation regarding power, was originally proposed by Lesley Cowling.
17. See also ‘Is fiction facing a gender crisis?’ in The Weekender, 9–10 September 2006.
18. See the work of Anthea Garman (Citation2009) on the way in which the poet Antje Krog deliberates in public in this register.
19. The work of Michael Warner (Citation2002) provides an entry point into the notion of public subjectivity and the desire to participate vicariously in public bodies through certain kinds of media genres.