THE GATEKEEPERS ARE LOSING THE GATE
THE OLD VOICES ARE GETTING LOUDER BECAUSE THE NEW VOICES ARE NO LONGER ASKING FOR PERMISSION
By Thami akaMbongo Manzana
There is something uncomfortable happening in South Africa's Cultural and Creative Industries.
Something is shifting.
And perhaps the most uncomfortable part is that the people who have historically controlled the microphone are beginning to realise that they no longer control the conversation.
For decades, information within the Cultural and Creative Industries moved through established channels. Newspapers, magazines, broadcasters, institutions, conferences, universities, government structures and recognised industry bodies determined, to a large extent, what was important, who was credible, whose opinion mattered and which stories deserved attention.
That world is changing.
The microphone has been decentralised.
The gatekeepers are losing their monopoly.
And the new voices are not necessarily asking for permission to enter the room.
They are building their own rooms.
FROM LEGACY MEDIA TO DIGITAL MEDIA
The transition from legacy media to digital media is not simply a technological development.
It is a transfer of influence.
A person no longer needs a newsroom, a television station, a publishing house or an institutional title to reach thousands of people.
A smartphone, a platform, a camera, a microphone and the courage to ask uncomfortable questions can now create an audience.
That fundamentally changes the relationship between information and power.
The traditional question used to be:
"Who gave you permission to publish this?"
The new question is:
"Is the information accurate, relevant and in the public interest?"
Those are very different questions.
The first protects authority.
The second challenges it.
And that is why digital media has become so disruptive.
Platforms such as Imbizo Magazines, The Public Dispatch, The Creative Passport and many others are part of a broader transformation taking place in the information ecosystem.
They are not necessarily trying to reproduce the traditional publication model.
They are creating something different.
They are willing to go where conventional publications sometimes hesitate to go.
They ask questions.
They interrogate decisions.
They follow stories that may be inconvenient.
They amplify voices that might otherwise remain outside institutional spaces.
And, importantly, they can publish without waiting for a traditional institution to validate their existence.
That is powerful.
But power has never liked being decentralised.
FROM LEGAL INSTITUTIONS TO INDEPENDENT MEDIA
There is another transition taking place.
For many years, when people wanted accountability, they looked towards formal institutions: courts, government departments, regulatory bodies, boards, councils, professional associations and established media.
Those institutions remain important.
But they are no longer the only places where accountability happens.
Independent media has increasingly become part of the accountability ecosystem.
A journalist, blogger, podcaster, researcher, commentator or independent publication can identify a contradiction, ask a question, analyse a document and place information before the public.
Sometimes before an institution has even responded.
This should not be seen as an attack on institutions.
It should be seen as a challenge to institutions to become better.
Because institutions that are confident about their decisions should not fear scrutiny.
They should welcome it.
So we must ask an uncomfortable question:
Why does the arrival of information in the hands of ordinary people sometimes appear to frighten those who are supposed to serve those very people?
Why should transparency become dangerous simply because it is coming from outside the institution?
Why should questions be interpreted as hostility?
Why should criticism automatically be labelled as political interference, activism, disrespect or an attack?
Perhaps the real problem is not the question.
Perhaps the problem is that some institutions have become accustomed to not being questioned.
THE FEAR OF THE UNFUNDED VOICE
There is another uncomfortable reality.
Independent media is difficult to control when it is not dependent on institutional funding.
This is where the conversation becomes particularly sensitive.
If a publication depends entirely on advertising, sponsorship, grants or institutional relationships, there can be an obvious concern about editorial independence.
But what happens when a new generation of platforms begins building audiences without waiting for the traditional funding structures to approve them?
What happens when they are not seeking permission to ask questions?
What happens when they cannot easily be threatened with the withdrawal of funding because they were never dependent on that funding in the first place?
That is when the traditional power structure becomes nervous.
Because you cannot easily control a voice that does not need your approval to speak.
And perhaps this explains some of the hostility towards new media.
It is not always about the quality of the journalism.
Sometimes it is about who controls the microphone.
MACG AND THE CHANGING POLITICAL MOMENT
In responding to EFF leader CIC Julius Malema, MacG spoke about the times we are living in.
Whether one agrees with MacG, Malema or neither of them is beside the point.
The larger issue is the emergence of voices that do not fit neatly into the traditional political, media or institutional order.
Podcasters have become influential.
Independent commentators have become influential.
YouTubers have become influential.
TikTok creators have become influential.
Community publications have become influential.
And suddenly, people who were never invited to sit at the traditional table are influencing the conversation around that table.
That is not necessarily a crisis.
It is democracy evolving.
WHEN DOES A NEW WAY OF DOING THINGS BECOME A THREAT?
This is perhaps the question that institutions need to confront most honestly:
At what point does a new way of doing things become perceived as a threat to an institution?
Is it when the new voice becomes popular?
Is it when it asks uncomfortable questions?
Is it when it exposes contradictions?
Is it when it refuses to accept "this is how we have always done things"?
Or is it when people begin believing the new voice more than they believe the institution?
That last question should worry institutions.
Not because the new voice is necessarily right.
But because trust is earned, not inherited.
An institution cannot demand public trust simply because it has existed for decades.
A professor cannot demand intellectual authority simply because they have academic credentials.
A cultural administrator cannot demand respect simply because they occupy an influential position.
A journalist cannot demand credibility simply because they work for an established publication.
And an activist cannot demand legitimacy simply because they have a large following.
Everyone must be accountable.
Everyone must be challenged.
Everyone must be willing to defend what they say.
THE OLD MUST NOT FEAR THE YOUNG
There is something else we need to say.
The old must not be intimidated by the young.
But equally:
The young must not disrespect the knowledge of the old.
Experience matters.
Institutional knowledge matters.
History matters.
But experience should never become a permanent licence to control the future.
The experienced must also not be intimidated by the inexperienced.
Why?
Because sometimes the person who has never worked inside an institution can see the institution's problems more clearly than the person who has spent twenty years inside it.
Sometimes ignorance of the old rules creates the courage to ask:
"But why are we doing it this way?"
And that question can be revolutionary.
The young were never going to introduce new ways of doing things if everything had already changed for the better.
The inexperienced were never going to feel the need to intervene if the experienced had already created an industry that was accessible, transparent, equitable and conducive to growth.
If everything was working, why would disruption be necessary?
AND WHAT ABOUT THE ACADEMICS?
This is where I will deliberately step on another uncomfortable landmine.
Academia should not be above scrutiny.
If academics had completely resolved the problems confronting the Cultural and Creative Industries through research, policy analysis, conferences, journals and intellectual debate, perhaps those outside academia would not feel the need to challenge them.
But they do.
Why?
Because knowledge does not belong exclusively to universities.
A person working in a community arts centre can possess knowledge that does not exist in a textbook.
An artist struggling to survive can understand cultural policy differently from someone who has only studied it.
An independent journalist can identify a contradiction that an academic paper has overlooked.
A practitioner can challenge a theory through lived experience.
And an ordinary citizen can ask a question that an entire conference failed to ask.
That does not make the academic irrelevant.
It makes knowledge collective.
The question should therefore not be:
"Are you qualified to question me?"
The question should be:
"Is what you are saying worth engaging with?"
That is a much healthier intellectual culture.
SOMETHING IS SHIFTING
The rise of new voices in the Cultural and Creative Industries should therefore not automatically be interpreted as a war between generations.
It is not necessarily young versus old.
It is not academics versus practitioners.
It is not traditional media versus digital media.
It is not institutions versus activists.
It is ultimately about something much bigger:
Who gets to define the cultural narrative of South Africa?
For too long, certain voices have been treated as the official voices of the industry.
But there is no such thing as a permanent official voice.
There are only voices that have earned public attention at a particular moment.
The Creative Passport is one of those new voices.
Imbizo Magazines is another.
The Public Dispatch is another.
Podcasters, independent writers, community journalists, digital creators and ordinary practitioners are becoming part of an ecosystem that no single institution can completely control.
And that is a good thing.
Because an industry that cannot tolerate questioning is not an industry that is progressing.
It is an industry protecting itself.
WE ARE NOT ASKING FOR PERMISSION
The new voices are not perfect.
They will make mistakes.
They will sometimes get things wrong.
They will sometimes be provocative.
They will sometimes go too far.
They must therefore be held accountable too.
But accountability cannot mean silencing them.
The answer to a wrong story should be a correction.
The answer to an uncomfortable question should be an answer.
The answer to criticism should be evidence.
The answer to scrutiny should be transparency.
Not intimidation.
Not gatekeeping.
Not withdrawal of opportunities.
Not character assassination.
Not institutional bullying.
And certainly not the tired argument that:
"Who are they to question us?"
They are the public.
They are practitioners.
They are audiences.
They are taxpayers.
They are artists.
They are researchers.
They are journalists.
They are young people.
They are experienced people.
They are citizens.
They have every right to ask.
THE REAL THREAT IS NOT NEW MEDIA
Perhaps institutions should stop asking how to control the new voices.
They should start asking why those voices are gaining audiences.
That is the real question.
If people are leaving traditional media and moving towards podcasts, independent publications, YouTube channels and digital platforms, perhaps the problem is not simply that "the new media is irresponsible."
Perhaps audiences are searching for something they believe they are not getting elsewhere.
Perhaps they want directness.
Perhaps they want transparency.
Perhaps they want stories that traditional platforms consider too complicated, too uncomfortable or too politically sensitive.
Perhaps they simply want someone brave enough to ask the question everyone else is avoiding.
And perhaps that is why something is shifting.
The Cultural and Creative Industries cannot remain permanently trapped between the voices of yesterday and the institutions of yesterday.
South Africa is changing.
Its audiences are changing.
Its artists are changing.
Its technologies are changing.
Its media is changing.
And its definition of authority is changing.
The question is whether our institutions will change with it.
Because the future is not waiting for permission.
The microphone has moved.
The audience has moved.
The conversation has moved.
And those who spent decades controlling the conversation now have a choice:
They can join the conversation.
Or they can continue shouting from the old stage, wondering why fewer and fewer people are listening.
The new voices are here.
They are asking questions.
They are building platforms.
They are challenging assumptions.
And they are not asking for permission to exist.
That is not the destruction of the Cultural and Creative Industries.
That may be the beginning of its renewal.
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