Following the careers of former Sowetan columnist and political writer Mathata Tsedu and outspoken journalist Jon Qwelane, for example, one begins to understand the role of black journalists in fighting racism and the needto decolonise the black mind and imagination. Tsedu, for instance, has, in his column, Black Eye , exposed the myriad ways white supremacy and racism have assaulted our self-concept and our self-esteem as black people.

It is an indictment of black journalism that few of our editors have had the guts to establish policies that firmly root, integrate, and critique ideals of ‘black is beautiful’ on their publications’ agendas. More often, the editorial slant and orientation of most so-called black publications and broadcasting outfits are informed by racist standards based on a system whose criteria devalues everything that is black, and especially African.

In segregated black newsrooms a caste system exists wherein the more white one’s accent, social mannerism and intellectual orientation, the greater one’s individual social value. What is surprising is the reluctance of black editors and journalists themselves to expose the extent to which they remain willfully addicted to upholding and promoting this kind of racism among themselves.

Indeed, black editors and journalists themselves have helped establish and maintain white racism and supremacy in southern Africa. Their role and responsibility in constructing a white-obsessed hierarchy is deliberately overlooked. Most black editors and journalists will pretend to be ignorant or unaware of their role in perpetuating racism. This pretence of ignorance has made them unaccountable for their actions, behaviours and attitudes and has made it easy for them to blame white editors for racism, as if the latter are the only guilty party.

All black journalists – including those working for black publications – know very well that graduates who come from white universities like Cape Town, Wits, Natal and Rhodes, and speak with a white accent are often given first preference over their contemporaries who come from black campuses. Meanwhile into the homes of millions of our people are beamed news-readers on commercial television and radio stations whose accents have that ‘twang’, as we call it in the townships. But the likes of Khanyi Dlhomo-Mkhize, Alyce Chavanduka, Tumi Makgabo, Arthur Mlambo, for instance, may be familiar with the resentment within the black community of white/black people, derogatorily referred to as coconuts, who are paraded as role models of success and achievement in the media. SAfm talk show host Tim Modise, if he were honest, could tell us very well how racist white folks have often treated him with disdain and contempt simply because he did not have the right accent.

Indeed, one of the primary achievements of racism in the media has been the dismantling of black self-confidence and dignity. This naked brutality goes either unnoticed or undiscussed because of the major psychological shift it has created in the consciousness of black journalists, particularly those who desire material success and achievement. There are no platforms – not even in the company cafeteria – for black editors and journalists to discuss the phenomenon of angels of white privilege: those black journalists who deny their obligations just to make headway in white society.

Bringing a Black Consciousness perspective into journalism, I have grown aware of how a black journalist who embraces this perspective is devalued and condemned to neglect and marginalisation in the newsroom. To be a truly black and proud journalist is to be handicapped. A BC position and writing slant places serious limitations on career growth, while projecting a white view ensures recognition and promotion.

Even in the era of the African Renaissance, black journalists who espouse Black Consciousness are condemned and ridiculed for being ‘angry, frustrated and outdated’ people who have nothing to offer except to complain about imaginary racism. We have non-black colleagues among us who insist on calling attention to our obsession with racism, and in the process undermine our position and weaken our integrity amongst our peers. There is an urgent need for black editors and journalists themselves to challenge this sensibility.

Not long ago, there was a debate among some black journalists about the revival of Nat Nakasa as a legendary South African journalist. The debate centred around Nakasa being recognised as a great journalist simply because he aspired to whiteness. Although as a black man he was wronged by white racism, and finally forced to abandon his motherland , he sought to devalue urban black Africans and their experience and embraced a white editorial slant in his commentary. Yet, because he was a major hit in white liberal circles, he has been exhumed from the grave and made an an icon of black journalism.

When the militant and charismatic Steve Biko chose to espouse Black Consciousness in the following decade, he sought different standards. Biko’s perspective had a profound impact on black journalism. He highlighted the needs of black journalists who suffered various forms of discrimination and were psychologically wounded in newsrooms because they did not have the correct accent, good command of English or project the world through white eyes.

Biko made a true distinction between black people and non-whites. Throughout his writings, he calls for the rendering of black as beautiful. Large numbers of black journalists heeded the call and stopped being non-white fighting instead against the stigma attached to being black and proud. Journalists who had stood passively while other black folks were being ridiculed about their pronunciation, must have felt for the first time that it was politically appropriate to intervene.

In the 1970s I read stories of defiance and commitment to the struggle to uphold blackness from a few journalists who had been detained, banned or condemned to house arrest. Names that come to mind include Percy Qoboza, Don Mattera, Thami Mazwai, Duma Ndlovu, Phil Mthimkhulu, Joe Tlholoe and Zwelakhe Sisulu, to name a few.

Though I was a teenager, I was deeply affected by the work of these courageous journalists to encourage self-love and determination among black people. In contemporary South African newsrooms, similar struggles to assert black perspectives and viewpoints have waned. White racism continues to flourish with the co-operation and collaboration of black professionals themselves. Increasingly there is a selling out by black editors and journalists to the mainstream. The fate of black editors rests with white power, which functions behind the scenes. If a black editor or journalist wants to be on the fast track, have a column or even be given a good beat that commands respect like politics or business reporting, s/he must not be a troublemaker. For many black editors and journalists, this is a legitimate reason to go soft, and not to rock the boat or challenge authority.

And of course, numbers of black and white journalists believe that the lifting of official apartheid in the newsroom means that the struggle to uphold black dignity is no longer needed. For example, there are increasing numbers of black media workers who now bed white women. In the process they have assumed white (capitalist) values and consider it a big deal to gain an economic standing that reflects the lifestyle of white privileged classes.

As a result, a new wave of internalised racism has emerged. The dangers of buying into whiteness and its resultant racism has been hidden, obscured, even downplayed by the assumption that there is nothing white about being filthy rich or ‘making it’ at the expense of the African majority.

Moreover, depoliticised and apathetic black journalists have rationalised their lack of intuitive contact with the problems of the black majority by convincing themselves that they do not need to live in the townships, among the poor and downtrodden to report passionately about their problems. But a journalist who is idling with a cocktail glass in her/his hand at Melrose Arch has a different take on the crime problem to one who squeezes into a taxi everyday and listens to the rat-ta-tat of a machine gun at night in Hillbrow or the townships. High-flying black journalists do not emphasise a black African perspective and viewpoint in their reportage or analysis. They assume that it is perfectly fine to live up to standards that have been set by The London Sunday Times or The Washington Post.

Few black journalists are vigilant enough to see the terrible rewards for assimilation to white thinking and lifestyle and how this undermines the struggle to transform journalism to one that reflects and upholds the perspective of the majority. Many black journalists reject living among their own or even speaking their language and thus observing the social norms and tendencies that were crucial for survival during Apartheid. Now the suburb they choose to live in, where they send their kids to school and the language they speak at home is not a political matter but simply a measure of achievement. Some have justified their decision to compromise and assimilate white standards by saying: “Nelson Mandela is free and Thabo Mbeki is the second black president of the country. We can dig our fingers into the white pie.”

An intellectually enlightened journalistic stance, one that seriously critiques the role and responsibility of African leadership across the spectrum, is no longer the message that black media consumers internalise. The ‘miracle’ of a liberated South Africa remains an enigma to the ordinary folks and is the prerogative of black bourgeois academics and professionals.

Yet, black editors and journalists have failed to give us a sober critique and interrogation of Nepad, for instance, and how the new African Renaissance can warmly accept whites as Africans without requiring them to confess their sins and commit themselves to reparations for what they have done to Black Africa’s children.

The few black editors who show promise in terms of analysing this new intellectual phenomenon have been co-opted to serve on various committees or deliver intelligent sounding papers at conferences. While some of them have made a tremendous contribution to making the new philosophy accessible to the majority, they have not necessarily made the decolonisation of the mind – as Ngugi wa Thiong’o calls it – central to their political agenda.

At the height of the Black Power Movement, black journalists were wary of professionals who studied abroad as they posed a danger of upholding foreign institutions and values that made everything that emanates from the white experience to be desirable. But today, black journalists who do a brief stint in America or Britain are upheld as the standard for black performance The accepted norm now is that a black editor or journalist who has not had a taste of what the white world has to offer cannot be world-class material. Such hypocrisy plays a major role in marginalising what the African continent has to teach and ensuring that the frame of reference is always foreign.

White supremacy has waged war on efforts for black self-determination, most effectively through affirmative action. The politics of ‘fast-track’ black advancement has produced a cadre of black journalists and editors who pose no threat to their white bosses and the status quo. When it comes to publications themselves, black newspapers or magazines occupy a devalued position – except when there is a white editorial director or managing editor. We see this phenomenon in both print and broadcasting environments where black journalists and bourgeois consumers devalue black run media. I was shocked recently when an industry colleague expressed the desire that the Sowetan Sunday World should be more like the Mail & Guardian. Many so-called sophisticated black newspapers readers have already learned that white publications are better. They have in the process learned to negate blackness and to internalise racist attitudes and values.

Black journalists and editors must resist the efforts of their contemporaries, especially in white publications, to devalue and berate them. It is only when there is a shift in consciousness among black journalists that special attention can be paid to the reality of blackness. Change will come only when the media is forced to address the problem of racism, when political orientation and racial background are not criteria for advancement. Black media practitioners must collectively critique and question their role in creating and perpetuating images and representations that devalue blackness. Already, influential practitioners in the media who pass for black claim to erase racism by suggesting that it does not really exist.

We do need to get media practitioners who are committed to decolonising minds and imaginations. Black journalists and their anti-racist counterparts must remain critically vigilant and interrogate each other’s work as well as their subconscious habits of perpetuating racism.

There will be no transformation until the definition and portrayal of the black image has been positively affirmed.

Sandile Memela is Assistant Editor of City Press, where he writes a weekly column called Mamelang. He has written for various newspapers and magazines in South Africa for the past 15 years.