THE STES DE NECKER FOUNDATION FOR POLITICAL AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS WEBSITE AND BLOG: International misconceptions about Africa and South Africa in particular

International misconceptions about Africa and South Africa in particular

The media industry’s practice of consistently committing journalistic misconduct is deeply troubling

Stes de Necker

I have met many people from all over the world and I’m still meeting more people every day.

The one thing that has always fascinated me is that whenever you tell someone you’re from South Africa, in so many cases their initial response is, “Whaat..! Africa ...?”

Most western perception of South Africa and Africa in general, is that of a continent ravaged by disease, savagery, animism, pestilence, war, famine, despotism, primitivism, poverty, and ubiquitous images of children, flies in their food and faces, their stomachs distended.

The life ways of approximately 700 million peoples in fifty-four countries representing, for non-Africans, unimaginable multicultural, poly-ethnic, poly-religious, multi-political, and mega-economic groups are perpetually denigrated.

Western News Media employ a myriad of malicious practices to dump negative news materials and information when reporting, communicating, or disseminating anything concerning Africa.

These "universal" but powerfully subliminal message units, beamed to global television audiences, connote something not good, perennially problematic unworthiness, deplorability, black, foreboding, loathing, sub humanity, etc.

Little is said about Africa's strategic importance to the so called industrialized nations; her indispensability and relevance to world development, global technology, and the wealth of nations, derived from involuntary African largesse. Without access to certain raw materials from Africa, Western industrial capacity would wither much like raisins in the sun.

Western Media treat the African continent as a malignant appendage rather than as an integral, systemic part of the earth and all its natural functions in accordance with universal laws. Its indigenous populations are depicted as without value. One needs surgical removal while the other should quietly accept his biblical destiny: the curse of Ham.

Western Media moguls, who can find only the negative when Africa is the subject, create Africa's world image almost entirely to serve their capitalistic greed while simultaneously denigrating the continent's global image. It is an image again that is put on Africa and more specific South Africa by outsiders, primarily Europeans, whose abiding motivation is profit.

Africa's negative and contrived image, promoted in the Western Media, pervades the psyche, pre-empts behaviours, infers worthlessness, disregards African humanity and hospitality and devalues the mind, while it attenuates human spirituality and connectivity: key ingredients in equitable planetary wealth sharing.

How do the media justify perpetrating disparities, circumvention of objectivity, and sometimes questionable journalistic and professional ethics in reporting critical newsworthy African events for domestic and global consumption.

The media industry’s practice of consistently committing journalistic misconduct is deeply troubling. Continual portrayals of Africa and in particular South Africa, in a bad light only perpetuates ignorance in a world much closer in proximity than ever before a media industry that thrives on the negative.

In almost all areas, plants, animals, birds, people, language, climate, minerals, South Africa remains the country with the world's richest and largest diversities in these areas.

When one looks at Southern Africa, which include the areas Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana, there is no other country in the world where you can, within an area of approximately 2.5 million. Km² find 18500 different plant species, 750 types of Butterflies, 336 mammal species, 800 different bird species, and more than 60 types of minerals.

According to the international classification of the world's six major floral kingdoms, South Africa's “fynbos” region, an area that stretches from the Olifants River 250 km. Northwest of Cape Town to Port Elizabeth on the east coast, is the smallest of the six regions. Although the smallest, this region has 8500 different plant species of which 73% can be found nowhere else in the world. Table Mountain alone has more plant species than can be found in the whole of Britain. Compared to South Africa's 750 Butterfly species, only 75 species can be found in the whole of England. Compared to the total of 125 kinds of land animals found in Western Europe, South Africa has no less than 240 different kinds of mammals. No less than 29 different antelope species can be found in South Africa.

Add to this, 11 different indigenous peoples, 3 million Hectares natural reserves and a shoreline where already 65 types of the world’s Whales and dolphins species have been spotted, then it is understandable why many foreign visitors have expressed the view that South Africa has the potential to become the economic wonder of the western world.

As for as gold and diamonds are concerned, South Africa accounts for 80% of the world's gold production while the bulk of the world's diamonds currently come from South Africa. More than 60 minerals are mined in South Africa, while about 90% of the world's vanadium, 89% of the platinum metal group, 84% of the chrome ore, 93% of manganese and 64% of the gold reserves, are concentrated in South Africa. Coal provides 80% of the country's energy needs while great progress has already been made in the area of additional nuclear power and wind power. Sasol currently supply more than 30% of the country's liquid petroleum needs while the agricultural sector still succeeds to feed approx. 45 mill. people daily.

South Africa’s major metropoles, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth/Utenhage, Durban/Pinetown, Johannesburg/Witwatersrand and Pretoria, are major economic centres buzzing with activity that can compete favourably with most Western centres in the world.

South Africa is the most advanced economy on the African continent, and has already established itself as the gateway to the rest of Africa for investors who want to invest in Africa.

Unfortunately there currently exists a culture that embraces a variety of ills, most of which are aimed at the erosion of our constitutional democracy and the maintenance of an unscrupulous and incompetent group of politicians in their fortified palaces, wood-panelled offices and luxury limousines.

Like any other country in the world, South Africa too has its fair share of problems. But nothing remotely as deleterious as portrayed by the world news media. South Africa can, and will, solve its own problems. Without the hypocritical help of the west.

Fortunately however, the vast majority of citizens of this country are learning fast that political survival and economic prosperity cannot be created by plundering accumulated reserves. Economic prosperity can only be achieved by innovative thinking, sound economic principles, hard work and strict personal earnings.