It’s great that the FM will continue as a print artefact you can hold in your hands. When I heard that the magazine was going to cease printing after an illustrious — and I use the word advisedly — 65 years, I was moved to ponder my own minor contribution to its history.
Though we now have a welcome stay of execution, I would imagine that this is still an opportunity for the magazine’s stakeholders to take stock, and to chart a new course that will help them survive for what one hopes is a lengthy second life. In the same spirit, it’s interesting for me to look back at what my regular weekly column has accomplished.
Since 2019, I have written more than 300 columns for the FM. That’s one every week for almost six years. It seems impossible, especially since the very first one was a one-off commission, about the #ImStaying movement. Does anyone remember it? It’s probably still around, for all I know.
In that column, I wrote: “The movement might not be, at heart, based on a negative impulse, but at its ideological core it perpetuates a division that might be inescapable. The major intellectual problem with the #ImStaying movement is that it posits a place that isn’t South Africa — an alternative place where you could choose to go. For the vast majority of South Africans, there is no ‘not South Africa’, no standing on the outside looking in. As many have pointed out, being able to choose to stay is a sign of privilege. Most South Africans don’t even have the luxury of that decision.”
I’d like to think that all my columns have been pretty much true to that first philosophical framing, in that I’ve tried to keep them resolutely South African and to always look at local and world issues through a South African lens. At the same time, I’ve always tried to foreground that there is no agreed-upon definition for what it means to be South African, or even for what South Africa is. I think that, paradoxically, that’s what makes us South African: the fact that we can’t agree on what we are.
As with most regular columnists, I’ve managed to attract the ire of people from all parts of the political and cultural spectrum. There have been letters or rights of reply from the DA, for example, which appears to believe that I am particularly nasty to it.
I received a particularly large amount of hate when I wrote: “There’s an argument to be made that Helen Zille is a worse threat to our democracy than Julius Malema. At least he’s upfront about his prejudices and doesn’t cloak them in the guise of ‘centre-left-leaning’ philosophy. And while Malema is presiding over the conscious marginalisation of the EFF into a populist party, Zille is blithely devolving what used to be a fairly credible opposition party into a foil for the stunted ideologies of the edgelords of the reactionary right.”
Mind you, my very next column started with the paragraph: “There’s an argument to be made that Julius Malema is a worse threat to our democracy than Helen Zille. At least she is only threatening to destroy the DA, pretty much the sole opposition party that could provide an alternative to the unbridled corruption and self-serving incompetence that is much of the ANC governing apparatus. And perhaps, before she has turned the DA into what will basically be a dunce cap converted into a cheap megaphone for the reactionary remoras she has chosen to swim with, someone will save the party’s credibility. But Malema actually advocates hatred and violence against people.” So you can see that I was an equal-opportunities columnist.
There has been the odd Slapp lawsuit too. The lawyers of Independent Media’s chief popinjay, Iqbal Survé, have issued four lawsuits and orders to cease writing on me, as Survé believes I’m unnecessarily mean about the way he has destroyed Independent Media in his quest to make it all about how great he is, and to use it as a public platform to launch counter-messaging about his relationship with the Public Investment Corp.
My second column was about the EFF, and specifically Malema’s attacks on the media and the impact this had in terms of journalists having to be careful what they wrote. “It’s not a great place for journalism to find itself: having to self-censor, and to second-guess every interaction with politicians and audience. Journalists will have to learn to write and publish defensively …
“Unfortunately, there is no neutral ground in this fight, and no place for spectators to watch from the sidelines. In the new world of social media platforms and networks, if you consume media, you are part of the media. The same vigilance that is demanded of journalists is demanded of you. The great victory of the peddlers of disinformation is that they have made us doubt that there is a truth. It’s up to us to redefine what truth is, and help it to spread.”
Disinformation is one of the fundamental existential threats to our information integrity; so many of the topical news events I wrote about were affected by it in one way or another
I looked at the topic of disinformation in more than 55 of the 300-plus columns, and probably more if I dig into them deeply. It’s one of the fundamental existential threats to our information integrity; so many of the topical news events I wrote about were affected by it in one way or another.
If I look at the top 10 entities that I wrote about, it’s the people or organisations you’d expect. I wrote about Jacob Zuma 34 times, including a column that started: “Say what you want about Jacob Zuma, but you have to admit he’s not an easy man to poison.” Malema featured in 26 columns, Donald Trump in 25, President Cyril Ramaphosa in 23, Elon Musk in 17, John Steenhuisen in 16 and Vladimir Putin in 15. Poor old Survé got only 10 mentions, closely followed by that other puffed-up clown, Carl Niehaus, on eight. For some reason, the top 10 is rounded out by Ferial Haffajee, but I think that’s because she’s a personal journalism hero of mine.
The runners-up in terms of popularity as a topic for a column are a funny bunch, who all share messianic characteristics I probably don’t need to point out. They were Nelson Mandela, Fikile Mbalula, Jesus Christ, Jordan Peterson and Mmusi Maimane. Now there’s a boy band to look out for.
Of Peterson, I said this: “Basically, as dad-jokes are to comedy, so is Peterson’s dad-philosophy to actual critical thinking. Nobody wants to deny their dear old dad the right to try to achieve humour, and in the same way, I see no reason to deny Peterson his right to try to promote a version of thought in his readers. Teaching people to think can never be a bad thing, even if what they think is bad.”
When I got AI to tell me what my major topics have been, it spat out some examples: “He writes about the terrible cost of conflict, and the global impact of warzones, cautioning readers against becoming apathetic to the suffering and instability caused by conflict.”
I also apparently spent a lot of time writing about digital activism and Africa’s evolving place in global digital shifts, arguing for the need to proactively join the digital struggle to shape narratives, innovate and resist exploitative tech systems. Ditto for media ethics, where I critiqued the South African media landscape, using the example of high-profile figures to discuss bias, self-importance and the tension between journalism and business interests. And there were quite a few columns scrutinising South African politics, calling out ineffective opposition, populist posturing and the awkwardness in the country’s political discourse, with an emphasis on issues impacting democracy and social justice.
And I quite like the AI’s pithy summation of my style in general: “Roper’s writing often pivots between global crises, new technological threats, social taboos and reflections on how these issues intersect with law, ethics and daily life. His columns are recognised for being wide-ranging, thought-provoking and consistently engaging with urgent contemporary issues.”
Are they, though? I guess that judgement is entirely up to you, the person who has read them. I know I’ve had fun writing them.
Before the news that the FM will continue in print, I initially wrote this column as a sort of goodbye, though only a goodbye to print. I’m glad that this has proved premature. I like the retro vibe print gives me, and the discipline of having to stick to a fixed word count.
Even though I’ve written more than 300 columns for a magazine that appeared in print every week, I’ve only ever seen about 10 or so physical copies in that time. I think we can agree that if an actual writer for a weekly magazine can’t be bothered to read his own stuff in print, we’re in a dizzy downward spiral. The gargantuan task of the FM is now to take the lessons learnt, and to invent a new model for the survival of its print product.
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