NTSIKELELO NGALEKA | Why press freedom and democracy are inseparable besties

There is a particular kind of freedom you only recognise once you’ve lived without it, or more truthfully, once you realise how easily it could be taken away. For many South Africans,press freedomsits quietly in the background of daily life: in the morning bulletin, in a talk-radio segment, in a scrolling headline. It feels ordinary.

But it isn’t. Long before stepping into media practice, I relied on journalists, broadcasters and other media professionals to ask the questions I could not ask myself. I relied on journalists to help translate governance into something the public could interrogate.

That, in itself, is the first quiet gift of press freedom: it allows citizens to see. And seeing is not passive. Seeing is political.

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In a democratic society like SA, press freedom is not merely about the rights of journalists to publish; it is about the rights of citizens to know, to question and, ultimately, to decide. The constitution guarantees freedom of expression, and the media puts that freedom into practice every day. Without it, rights are only written down.

With it, they are exercised. Over the past three decades, and particularly in the past 10 to 20 years, theSouth African mediahas played a critical role in tracing the distance between promise and performance. This has not been about destabilising government nor about partisanship; it has been about accountability.

When the governing party makes commitments, it is the media that documents those commitments over time, measures them against reality, and presents that gap to the public. Consider the shifting political landscape leading into and beyond the 2024 elections. The ANC losing the majority vote for the first time since the dawn of democracy in SA.

Public sentiment did not change overnight. It was shaped, informed, and sharpened over years of reporting on governance failures, on corruption, and on service delivery breakdowns, but also on local successes, emerging political alternatives, and community-level dynamics. Through this sustained visibility, citizens were not simply reacting emotionally; they were making informed decisions.

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