KHUSELA DIKO
Parliament passing the Budget of the Government Communications and Information System (GCIS) last week is a welcome step towards ensuring that communications is front and centre of the work of the seventh administration.
The new configuration, the Government of National Unity, will rely heavily on the GCIS to communicate unambiguously about its strategic objectives, spending priorities and implementation of the government’s programme of action.
It will be critical that the communication is aligned; to avoid a scenario of either victories being claimed or setbacks being disavowed as individual political parties instead of as a united government.
The right to information is enshrined in the Constitution and is key to democracy.
As the parliamentary portfolio committee on communications and digital technologies, we welcome all efforts to strengthen government communications as a tool to bridge the gap between the government and the public, ensuring that citizens are well-informed about policies, initiatives and progress across our nation.
We are keenly aware of the magnitude of such an undertaking in the heavily contested public space where a plurality of voices compete for the hearts and minds of citizens.
Ours is an ideological struggle, what the ANC calls the Battle of Ideas.
The reality is that each actor in the theatre of public opinion is neither an innocent conveyor of news nor devoid of subjective interest.
Our once-diverse and pluralistic media space has become an echo-chamber for the voices and opinions of the elites.
In the 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer country report, respondents expressed growing mistrust of media sources, especially on social media.
Biased reporting, sensationalism, opinion masquerading as fact and analysis in the place of hard news is fuelling the growing mistrust.
By way of example, this year marks 30 years since our democratic breakthrough. That is three decades of progress; of material conditions uplifted, opportunities created and lives transformed. Three decades of houses built, basic services extended and access to quality education and health care extended.
The ANC has been at the forefront of three decades of transformation, the pursuit of freedom and equality and the achievement of social justice.
The progress is tangible and measurable, as outlined in the 30-Year Review Report and reflected in the results of Census 2022.
And yet on the pages of our newspapers, on our television screens, on our airwaves and online, we would be hard-pressed to find the achievements reported on factually and impartially. Perhaps we need heed the warning of Noam Chomsky: those with vested interested will stop at nothing to manufacture consent.
It is incontrovertible that daily, media platforms are weaponised and used to cancel and bully all those who genuinely believe in the transformative policies and evidence-based delivery of successive ANC-led democratic administrations.
But nonetheless, a free and vibrant press is one of democracy’s greatest achievements – and indeed, to quote Mao Zedong, “let a hundred schools of thought contend”.
As the democratic state, we do not expect slavish reportage, praise-singing or propaganda. What we do expect is that our work is communicated faithfully, accurately and impartially. That is why the Government Communication and Information System is vital.
The portfolio committee remains concerned that the budgetary allocation to the GCISS is inadequate and that government communications, as a whole is under-resourced to fulfil its extremely broad mandate.
Advertising and marketing budgets routinely bear the harshest brunt of budget cuts as part of cost-containment measures.
Communications is severely underfunded across all three spheres of the government, with a resultant knock-on effect in the economy, evidenced by the challenges in the media industry that is heavily reliant on advertising revenue for its profitability.
The GCIS budget also does not reflect the need by the organisation to adapt in a rapidly evolving and dynamic communications landscape.
When the GCIS was launched in 1998, it was the age of newspapers, radio and the 8pm news.
This is the age of TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat. Of OpenAI, Gemini and Claude 3.5 – where video landscapes are being created from scratch by the likes of Midjourney, Sora and other generative AI tools.
The GCIS strives to retain its position as an accurate and credible source of information in the era of deepfakes, face-tuning, fake news, manipulated content and disinformation.
That voices, people and entire locations can be cloned and altered has serious implications for all facets of government communications, and we have to adapt accordingly.
Audiences have also rapidly evolved.
Gen Z has been overtaken by Generation Alpha, the first digital native generation. Gen Alpha “have known smartphones and tablets since infancy” and “is the most technologically infused generation to date”.
All proprietors of communications products and services, including the mainstream media, have to keep up or risk fading into obscurity.
For the GCIS to succeed in delivering its mandate, it has to push frontiers, innovate and move with the times.
This necessitates reskilling the GCIS workforce to equip them with the tools needed to communicate in the modern age. The GCIS has to be innovative, agile and adaptable, all the while not swerving from its clear ideological mandate and orientation, namely, to communicate the work of the government of the day.
As the portfolio committee in the seventh administration, we will continue to maintain constructive and robust oversight over the department and its entities. And in doing so, play our part in pushing the frontiers of communication in the modern age.
Khusela Diko is chairperson of the parliamentary portfolio committee on communications and digital technologies