The news coverage of a select few university protests undermines and devalues student movements across South Africa. News coverage is vital in highlighting the protest activities of student organizations and movements. Media houses in society serve as a centre of information for rapid protest developments, and as an archive for protest histories in South Africa. By Omhle Ntshingila
The Right2Protest Project (R2P) is a coalition of organisations promoting the right to protest which provides legal support to protesters and tracks protest-related statistics. R2P has noted with concern the disproportion of news coverage during protest action in historically Black universities as compared to historically white universities in South Africa. Despite the existence of the National Plan for higher education to redress inequalities, disparities are still clearly evident in our education system. News coverage has carried the narrative that student protests outside of historically white universities are violent and are a lost cause. This has further shaped prejudice against historically Black universities, as news coverage lacks depth and nuance when reporting on student protests.
In recent #FeesMustFall and #RhodesMustFall movements, media houses displayed biases by reporting largely on protest action in historically white universities in the country. This is not novel, however, as under the apartheid regime media houses used to inadequately or under report on student protest action in historically Black universities. Despite this, student movements consistently managed to highlight various socio-political issues such as systematic oppression and how it intertwined with access to higher learning institutions.
Today, in the current democratic dispensation, students are still the custodians of voicing out these intersectional socio-political issues of marginalized students whilst still creating awareness of human rights violations taking place in society. However, the division of media attention has made it harder for student movements to co-ordinate a collective voice as before in the midst of a repressive state, class struggle and populist politics within student movements.
During a time of heightened student protest, we should be witnessing a mobilized and impactful student movement, the opposite is instead taking place. News coverage has played a vital role in student movements being used by student leaders to climb political ranks and secure political deployment. Further, the disproportion has resulted in students from historically Black universities not receiving public support as compared to their counterparts in historically white universities, leaving student activists to rely on their own networks to carry out their activism in the arena of higher education.
This pattern of rendering student movements invisible has worked towards demobilizing and depoliticizing student activism. Further, this has made room for the arbitrary victimization through arrest, surveillance and silencing of student human rights defenders in South Africa, who do not receive news coverage and are without political protection. Could the media possibly be contributing to a basket of human rights violations by marginalizing protesting students who find themselves in the fringes of university rankings?
Although underreporting by media houses may not be unconstitutional, it plays a significant role in the invisibility of human rights violations that take place during student protests. Low ranking universities are at risk of being further neglected by the state and society at large due to a lack of news coverage. This does a disservice to the broader struggle of access to higher learning institutions, and may further contribute to institutions, public order policing and private security personnel having been acquitted of many human rights violations during protest action.
In the pursuit of the highest ethical standards, media houses should be focused on covering a holistic reporting on all institutions of higher learning that are facing a myriad of challenges. Underreporting is an invisible harm that continues to profile and invalidate student activism based on university hierarchy.
Omhle Ntshingila is the acting project co-ordinator of the Right2Protest Project, based at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies, Wits University.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policies of The Daily Vox.
